Eating That Elephant

It’s a beautiful morning here on Mother’s Day. I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep; I was so excited to see the newly hatched, almost-invisible, Painted Lady caterpillars that my son and I are raising. My son has been relaxed and patient through the whole process; he knows how to trust, apparently, better than I do.  I have been anxious and impatient 🙂

Sometimes I get so conflicted about how to spend my time, always trying to manage everything and everyone. When I’m focused on tasks it feels like I’m missing the connection and fun of just being; but when I’m just present and in the moment, it feels as if a huge pile of things that need doing starts threatening to fall on top of me. I hate having to choose (being the control freak that I am) between everything running smoothly and having fun with my friends, my family, or just alone. So I tend to see-saw back and forth – resentment at not having fun; panic at not getting enough done.  And onto of all of this is a general unease about the reality that I’m not spending as much time as I would like on the “big” things I want to do in my life, such as writing, coaching, and speaking.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding a bit of a balance and I think I might be onto something.

My friend Amy and I have been starting a radio podcast show, and so many of the concepts seem to apply to other areas of my life. I expected them to apply to my own  parenting – that’s one of the reasons we do it! – but I’m finding more and more parallels with non parenting issues and that has surprised me.

We have been telling parents that if they are on the teeter-totter between permissive and punitive/authoritarian, they can step off – there is a whole new paradigm that is neither. I’m starting to believe that teetering between trying to control everything, and ignoring it while it piles up, cannot be the only way to find balance either.  How can I step off?

Instead, I think the key is trust, just like it is in parenting. I’ve also been telling parents for years that the time to try to solve your big parenting problems is not in the moment of conflict, and the same seems to be true of life in general.  And yet, when do I look at my todo list?  When do I try to make sure to get everything done? When I’m panicked – when it feels like nothing is getting done.  I.e., in the very moment I’m least able to do this, which undoubtedly is part of the feeling of panic. This is the shift I have been starting to make – letting go of the panic about the big picture in that moment, and instead focusing on short term needs. But how do we put this into practice in a way that also gets things done and does consider the big picture?

In parenting, my answer is being proactive: avoiding those situations by finding creative solutions in advance.  I’m getting good at doing this in parenting (the consequences are too high if I don’t, which a change-resistant, sensitive child).  But in life, I need more practice.  Do I look ahead at my todo list and my life challenges when I’m not in that panicked state?   Hmmm…not really.

In parenting, I realized the other day that without being proactive, it’s easy to become permissive and not parent from my values.  I think similarly, without being proactive, I’m not really living to my values.  The key to being able to spend time writing and coaching without my pile of todos falling on my head is to live more proactively.

I’d better go put that on my todo list 🙂