When you’re done chucking at that Seinfeld reference, here’s a prayer:

May I be an easy vehicle for laughter

May I be smooth passage for tears

May my heart beat with all that is

I have a lot on my plate this week.

Looking at my calendar, my shoulders start climbing toward my ears and my chest tightens.

I’m tensing up because I assume it’s going to be hard. 

What I see is that it’s going to be full. 

Hard is not actually a requirement. (Unless I’m trying to PROVE I’m good enough because someone modeled an idea of “hard work” that I’m trying to live up to [cough] Dad…)

I’m done prioritizing some dumb Dad story over enjoying my life.

I want ease.

I feel the power of just speaking this into existence. But, how do I actually live it?

Create ease in my body and mind right now.

Create ease in my body and mind while I work.

Since I’m writing this blog now, I’m going to start with ‘while I work.’

I decided that what will best support my ease is to dive into this blog, so I dove into this blog. I started by telling myself, “let it be easy.” It does not have to be grueling or self-punishing. Let me repeat that. It DOES NOT have to be grueling or self-punishing.

As I sit here and type, I’m going slow, breathing, and staying with my body. I’m noticing when tension creeps in, and relaxing BEFORE I continue. 

I also notice my desire to be perfect and sit here until every word is right. My perfectionism won’t rest (ever) and wants me ground down into a pulverized piece of dust, water-deprived and head aching. Thing is, I don’t want that. And I’m the big boss. I wear the leopard print shorts around here.

So I’m just going to witness that part of me and let it sit next to me while I do things differently. 

I write down what’s coming, let it flow “good” or “bad,” and trust that time will be my friend and collaborator and when I come back to edit. (I’m here in the future, editing, and I was right.) It will be clear what is important and what is not.

When I feel complete, I soothe that perfectionistic part of me and tell it, “You can trust me. We’re done for now. We’re going for a walk and we’ll come back later.”

So that’s bringing ease into doing the work. Now for the right now. This one’s for you, version of me looking ahead at the calendar.

I’m often tempted to cover all my bases and prepare and think of every possible thing that might happen or what I might need or what that person might say, or, or, or….

But when the moment actually comes, it never feels like I predicted. Something I was excited about disappoints me. Something I was anxious about actually felt okay. Some random thing I could never have anticipated changes how I see and do everything anyway.

It’s not useful to spend the currency of the present trying to predict the future. 

Part of making things harder than they need to be is drawing the “hard” toward us, into the present moment.

Why do we try to predict the future anyway? Because WE WANT TO FEEL EASE NOW. The irony! (Go ahead, let yourself laugh at how silly our minds are sometimes.)

The more I focus on the future and try to pin my security to that, the more I’m actually pushing my security away. The emotion I want to feel, can only ever be felt NOW! When I’m feeling it! 

So, instead of trying to feel ease by fixating on the future, I have to relax and allow ease. Right, the fuck, now.

Here’s one way. I name something in my life that I trust. (I am a creative person. I have things to say. I have done hard things. There are people who love me. I am safe to sit here and just breathe.) These things aren’t going away. I let myself relax into them.

How does trust feel? 

I can exhale. My focus comes back to my body, in the present. My shoulders start to drop. I feel solid. I’m breathing more easily.

So when I notice my body start to get tense or anxious, I practice feeling trust. I bring that into right now. That way, when life comes, I can meet it with ease.

The future will come in its own time.

It’s okay to feel good now. 

It’s December 27th. Which means a lot of conversations about the NEW year. What do I want? Who do I want to be? What are my goals?

I like self-reflecting and setting intentions. It’s clarifying, organizing and empowering.

AND, it can be a lot of pressure. To wrap up the past, leave old ways behind and write the future.

A fresh start is REALLY appealing. Like peace and satisfaction are on the other side of a comprehensive list, or a perfectly worded intention. And hey, sometimes, they is.

Personally, I visualize myself meditating on a mountainside like a little Buddha. Nothing bothers me because I’ve found the solution to all my problems. “This year, I’m going to be completely present and stop setting impossible expectations I can’t meet.”

. . . mmkay

How do I observe the new year as a marker of change, without the pressure to magically be perfect?

After asking a big, honking question I don’t have the answer to yet, I’ll start with, “What’s true?”

It’s winter. It’s cold and dark out. It’s ‘the holidays.’ We might be on break, traveling or outside our normal routine. Some of us are with people that stress us out. I’m going to take a big swing and say, some of us are tired. There’s a lot going on.

I’m struggling to generalize about who you are, what you’re experiencing, what I’m experiencing and offer answers.

I want to be able to tell you one thing. I want to give you whatever you’re here hoping to get. And yet, I’m just another human person on the other side of a screen riding the waves of whatever the hell this all is.

There is no ‘one way.’ No new year’s resolution to save us all. No permanent arrival. There are moments of clarity. There are moments of connection. There are moments when we recognize the absurd truth and just laugh.

That feels good.

To open up and let all the messiness, imperfection and incompleteness breathe.

There’s no one way. But there is a little freedom at the bottom of the truth.

More of that, please. More laughter. More truth. More closeness. Okay?

I am a recovering overachiever. I no longer want to value myself based on how much I’ve done. I want to feel good as often as I can, not because I’m “productive” enough. I want to enjoy my life! I want others to be able to enjoy their lives! And I want to live in a world of people enjoying themselves. Not one where we’re all grinding ourselves down to fit some status quo.

I see people (myself, my clients, my friends, people out in the world) who are exhausted and unfulfilled. Trying our hardest 24/7 and rarely landing. Rarely permitting ourselves to just be. I think this happens for a lot of reasons. We live in a world where being “busy” is not only the default, but is praised. So there’s external pressure. But also, we keep ourselves busy because, we LITERALLY don’t know what else to do. We are INCAPABLE of relaxing. If we even dare take time away, when we get there, we sit down to “relax,” twiddle our thumbs for five seconds, and then start making plans or pick up our phones. We’re crawling in our skin and reach for ANYTHING to alleviate the discomfort of just inhabiting the present moment, as it is.

Even typing that, my stomach turns. There’s an automatic aversion to SPACE, NOTHINGNESS, SILENCE.

And yet, we CRAVE it. We’re exhausted. We live in a perpetual state of stress. Even the activity we most prefer to “unwind,” (watching TV), activates our body’s stress response. But the idea of just closing our eyes and breathing, not taking in any stimuli to give our brains and bodies a chance to decompress, terrifies us. We say we want rest, we desperately need it, and yet, we make a full-time job of avoiding it. WHAT IS THAT?!

Here’s a glimpse of it in action. What I’m noticing in myself lately, is a tendency to pile on. I tell myself I’m going to make breakfast. I find myself making breakfast while washing a couple dishes and listening to a podcast, and oh, I wanted to sweep the rabbit cage, so I’ll do that while the eggs are cooking. And when I walk over to their cage, I notice a plant that needs to be watered, so I put the broom down and go get the watering can. I need to fill it. And oh, my filtered water pitcher is empty, so I put the watering can down and start filling the pitcher. Now I’m back in the kitchen so I peek at the eggs I remember I’m cooking. 

WOW. Chaos. Exhausting chaos. Jumping from one thing to another without finishing anything. Letting my mind ramble and bounce. Picking one thing up, then setting it down to pick up another. Why? Why not just do a task? Start it, stay on it, and complete it.

Peering under the hood, I think my inner overachiever is calling the shots. Everywhere I turn, something needs my attention. Facing so many somethings, I want to get the most done as efficiently and quickly and simultaneously as possible. The more I cram into each moment, the more time I will have later. Right?

But wait, remember my tangent about how we never actually arrive at this imagined future where we relax and focus on what we want? THAT is the problem with the overachiever program. 

Letting our overachievers run amok presupposes that at some point, we will earn the ability to underachieve. All that hard work and multitasking will finally pay off. Any one else feel like they’re still waiting for that big pay day? There’s a problem with relying on this system to manage our work ethic and life satisfaction. The input and the output aren’t balanced. We’re constantly outputting and running on empty.

So I challenge you to create more balance. See if you can find moments to rest, whether it’s a whole weekend away or two minutes in the middle of the day. Instead of treating them like another space to fill, try letting it be empty space. Try balancing doing with not doing, instead of balancing doing one thing with doing another. Maybe you’ll land in being an achiever. Because for me, being an overachiever feels more like being a never-enjoyer. I’d like that to change.

I wonder what today will be.

~ a total blank slate ~

anticipatory, unknowing

Who am I today?

Who am I here?

I hope, I feel

I am excited.

~ an adventure ~

I wonder what I will decide.

being as present as possible so I can absorb as much as possible

I can’t take it all in.

~ bubbling ~

Something has opened.

~ explore ~

What’s possible in this body?

I had a major creative block when it came time to write this week. I post on Wednesdays. It is Friday. Wednesday evening, at the end of a long day, I sat down to churn something out. It did not churn. I felt completely disconnected from my creativity. I forced myself to sit at the computer, typing up choppy strands that didn’t add up, frustration and angst mounting. While I ground my gears fruitlessly, I was boiling beets I had just bought for a much needed healthy meal. Before I knew it, something smelled weird. I kept grinding. Eventually, the smell worsened and I forced myself up. All the water had evaporated and the pot sat on the stove heating four scorched beets in a cloud of black foam.

I wasn’t in the headspace. I wasn’t in the bodyspace. I had waited until the last minute and then the last minute came and I couldn’t. I was really sad. I was really angry. I had nothing left in the tank. Not only had I not made enough space to write something, I hadn’t made enough space for myself in general. I felt myself running on empty as I dragged myself through my commitments and hoped for the best. But it came back to bite me, as it always does. And my apartment smelled like burnt beets for 48 hours to remind me.

Thankfully, I had yesterday off. I got a massage. It changed my life. I felt completely reborn and committed to preserving the S P A C I O U S N E S S I had just recovered. Today, a new moon, I effortlessly found myself creating a blackout poem from old morning pages. This is how I want it to feel. But in order for it to feel effortless, the work I have to put in is holding space. Noticing when I need it, and making it happen. Saying a clear, firm and loving “No.” when the grinder wants to keep grinding. “I know you don’t want to, but it’s time to stop. Your beets are burning.”