Do Less
"You can be anything you want to be"
I think this is supposed to apply to career goals - it's meant to encourage kids to expand the idea of what they can achieve without being limited by gender or social norms and ideas (at least that what it means for us, maybe in other families it means you can grow up to be like Donald Trump, ew).
I say it to my kids, I want them to dream big and do great things, not just with their career but also with their free time but somewhere along the way in my overachiever brain (and the brain of my partner) this morphed into: "you have to be all the things" and "you HAVE to do all the things"
And I'm not talking fun things like travel and trying amazing restaurants (although I want to do those too). I'm talking laundry, planning events, making slime with the kids, running the business, attending the family/friend/school events, finishing the house (what does that even mean?!), read the books, see the films and so on and doing it all from every angle perfectly...All. The. Things. Like an exhausting parade of failure I'm learning that being or doing "anything" does NOT mean you have to to be and do "everything".
After Quinn was born we were hell bent on not letting having a tiny human in our care change us and so we carried on trying to keep up with all the events and tasks that we did before without stopping one little bit and it almost destroyed me. After our friends starting having their babies we saw them disappear for, at minimum, 12 months with no shame. 12 years later we are still learning this lesson.
I think the first move for us into this new mantre of "Do Less" was a couple years ago. I was writing about this very thing back then and the following example was the first big move in a lifelong commitment to doing less and being ok with it:
I remember this first big move that honoured our needs over the "do everything or you are a garbage human" lifestyle we had adopted. I remember our shame in cancelling and our struggle to be ok with it and in truth, it was a group effort to talk each other into it being ok and even with cancer recovery as an excuse it was still a stretch.
Since then we have realized that by saying yes to things that strain us we end up having to say no to other things that really matter to us. Namely, peace in our daily lives, time with our kids, time with each other. We've been applying "Do Less" liberally and there is more calm and grace in our home. We don't chase everything madly anymore. In a lot of ways the tasks, events, box checking comes to us now because we attract the things we need and are intuitively better at saying no to the things that don't serve us.
Same mantra applies to mothering/friends/activities/hobbies. I have been forcing myself to do and be every kind of mom to my kids, or at least the mom that I was in my mind before we had kids and it's just not working. My kids want ME to be their mom...they don't need some stressed out version of myself scrambling to check all of the boxes. They are more than happy to snuggle up and let me read them a book (which I love) and they will forgive my extreme disinterest in crafting (although I love seeing what they make when someone else gets covered in glue and sparkles).
We have moved into a time where the age of our children allows us to do less without major needs being ignored. Our kids like having a bit more free time and less places to run to. We are busy but not frantic and we are totally ok with cancelling things that simply don't fit or that we are finding are making us stressed out as we lead up to them. We are also working on letting go of our insane punctuality. Being 5 minutes late is not going to ruin us although Adam would disagree, we are working on this daily. As I approach 40 I'm seeing some things more clearly and prioritizing doing less has become easier but it's still something I'm working at every day. How about you? Is this on your radar? Leave me a comment below!
I think this is supposed to apply to career goals - it's meant to encourage kids to expand the idea of what they can achieve without being limited by gender or social norms and ideas (at least that what it means for us, maybe in other families it means you can grow up to be like Donald Trump, ew).
I say it to my kids, I want them to dream big and do great things, not just with their career but also with their free time but somewhere along the way in my overachiever brain (and the brain of my partner) this morphed into: "you have to be all the things" and "you HAVE to do all the things"
And I'm not talking fun things like travel and trying amazing restaurants (although I want to do those too). I'm talking laundry, planning events, making slime with the kids, running the business, attending the family/friend/school events, finishing the house (what does that even mean?!), read the books, see the films and so on and doing it all from every angle perfectly...All. The. Things. Like an exhausting parade of failure I'm learning that being or doing "anything" does NOT mean you have to to be and do "everything".
After Quinn was born we were hell bent on not letting having a tiny human in our care change us and so we carried on trying to keep up with all the events and tasks that we did before without stopping one little bit and it almost destroyed me. After our friends starting having their babies we saw them disappear for, at minimum, 12 months with no shame. 12 years later we are still learning this lesson.
I think the first move for us into this new mantre of "Do Less" was a couple years ago. I was writing about this very thing back then and the following example was the first big move in a lifelong commitment to doing less and being ok with it:
Our friends from high school go camping every year at Sandbanks in July and this was supposed to be the first year we were able to join them. We booked it while we were on a "just us" sans kids vacation in February so we were seeing it all with kid free vacation coloured glasses. As this weekend of camping (which we haven't done in 15 years) approached it became more obvious we cannot be campers right now, so we felt bad and cancelled. This is so very unlike us. I mean, we can do anything right? We would previously never let little things like packing everything we own for 2 nights away and buying a bunch of new gear we may never use again and dragging our very camping nervous 10 year old stop us for checking that box we signed up for! Turns out there is freedom is saying we can't be all the things. There is also something to be said for listening to each other, our needs, the needs of our children and being grown ups about what is and isn't possible or necessary. Camping is fun! Camping is fun! Camping is fun! You'll miss out! You'll miss out! You'll miss out! My brain chanted this trying to goad me on and guess what? Camping is fun...but not for us, not right now and that's ok. We will miss out on seeing those friends under those conditions but we will be a lot calmer at home making sure our family has what it needs right now and that is rest. We are now planning a(nother) weekend by the pool and looking forward to planning a coffee based visit with the same friends another time.
I remember this first big move that honoured our needs over the "do everything or you are a garbage human" lifestyle we had adopted. I remember our shame in cancelling and our struggle to be ok with it and in truth, it was a group effort to talk each other into it being ok and even with cancer recovery as an excuse it was still a stretch.
Since then we have realized that by saying yes to things that strain us we end up having to say no to other things that really matter to us. Namely, peace in our daily lives, time with our kids, time with each other. We've been applying "Do Less" liberally and there is more calm and grace in our home. We don't chase everything madly anymore. In a lot of ways the tasks, events, box checking comes to us now because we attract the things we need and are intuitively better at saying no to the things that don't serve us.
Same mantra applies to mothering/friends/activities/hobbies. I have been forcing myself to do and be every kind of mom to my kids, or at least the mom that I was in my mind before we had kids and it's just not working. My kids want ME to be their mom...they don't need some stressed out version of myself scrambling to check all of the boxes. They are more than happy to snuggle up and let me read them a book (which I love) and they will forgive my extreme disinterest in crafting (although I love seeing what they make when someone else gets covered in glue and sparkles).
We have moved into a time where the age of our children allows us to do less without major needs being ignored. Our kids like having a bit more free time and less places to run to. We are busy but not frantic and we are totally ok with cancelling things that simply don't fit or that we are finding are making us stressed out as we lead up to them. We are also working on letting go of our insane punctuality. Being 5 minutes late is not going to ruin us although Adam would disagree, we are working on this daily. As I approach 40 I'm seeing some things more clearly and prioritizing doing less has become easier but it's still something I'm working at every day. How about you? Is this on your radar? Leave me a comment below!
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