For When You Feel Like Garbage
Hello world! I feel like garbage today.
I can be honest with myself about why: the holidays were full of intense family stress. I chose not to honor sleep, my biggest lever. My choices around food and drink--like most people over Thanksgiving--were not ideal. Hormonally, I'm, uh, let's say compromised.
But a week or two ago, I blocked off all day today (I'm writing to you on a Monday) for Action Planning. It was never gonna be peak performance day. Not every day is gonna be a peak performance day. And now I get to write to you from the more raw, un-photoshopped end of my emotional spectrum (where, realistically, most of us spend probably 50% of our time--you can thank your hedonic set point for that), and show you how I deal with these moments.
I ask: who am I becoming?
And I'm not going to overthink it. There's a couple extremely important things I'm becoming right now:
The owner of a million-dollar business
Half of a high-functioning, loving partnership
A practicing healer
What are a couple things Who I'm Becoming does every day?
Turn towards my partner every chance I get, even when it's hard.
ONETWOTHREE GO myself to yoga, even though it's snowing.
Brainstorm ways to cherish myself the way I tend to seek from external sources--cultivating that skill. (p.s., please god click that link and read the Ask Polly column; it's an absolute classic and makes me feel SO SEEN.)
List the tasks I'm taking on this week to grow my business, and box them out on my calendar. (hire a new assistant! schedule this email! update my CRM! all totally non-overwhelming when I give myself an hour for each thing, right there on my calendar, eliminating any need to "decide" if and when to get it done)
Then, I can Just Start. I'm no longer Becoming. I Am.
I stop using the past as a way to measure what's possible. Luckily, the past has no bearing on what I'm setting out to accomplish. If it did, none of us would ever be capable of learning something new.
And that sense of possibility--the truth--feels Good.
Does the garbage feeling just evaporate now? Kind of. Not completely. But you'd be surprised how rapidly these feedback loops do their job.
Thanks for bearing witness to this exercise. Try it yourself and let me know how it goes.
An article I liked:
Asynchronicity: The Invisible Force That Makes You Who You Are (Zat Rana)
Question for you:
What's one thing you're becoming?