“I can’t get anything done”.
A woman with a tear rolling down her face sat on the couch in my little cottage where I meet people for sessions.
She was a mother of three kids (and she was pregnant with her fourth).
The following week, at the mini retreat I offer sometimes on Saturdays, a man who was the head of a huge insurance company said “I should be doing more.”
He had the same deeply unhappy look.
I need to accomplish my goals, I must clean, drive, fix, take care of household items, I should be working on my dreams, I don’t have time, I have to focus on my vision, I should be farther than this, I wish someone else would take care of that.
And then, being washed with all these kinds of thoughts there is an urge to cut and run.
As in, ditch the project.
Like a ton of granite, the weight settles on the shoulders…you’ve just been taking care of kids all day, or working at your job…and all you want is to escape.
Oh for just a little television, or a movie. How about a little bite to eat, or a drink? Perhaps facebook.
But what about your meditation, or exercising, or buying lightbulbs or returning those books to the library?
Just leave me alone! I want to stop and do nothing for once!
I enter the large Victorian house on Elizabeth street in Denver Colorado where I’ve been living for three months. The door is large and elegant, built in the 1920s. It reminds me of my childhood home.
I share this house with four other perfectly lovely, young working single people. Outside it’s been brilliantly sunny all day long, with snow piled along the sidewalks.
No one is home.
The parking area is empty in the back alley.
I am alone.
Two ideas collide: 1) oh good, I can do anything I want without having to converse with anyone, and 2) I should do something productive.
I’m volunteering for student production at the college where I work tomorrow, and I could work on the programs. I could go running in the crisp air. I could write my grandma a letter. I could watch LA Law. I could look at grad school applications.
I drop my bag on the staircase up to the second floor, to my room, and I enter the empty kitchen.
Not even thinking about food, not even hungry really.
The mind chatters about what I should be doing…which by the way, I don’t even have enough time for if I DID do it…but I stay in the kitchen and start eating fat-free red diet jello that I made yesterday.
And then I want to eat some “real” food and I make a small plate of cheese and crackers and take them upstairs. All the while screaming at myself that I should be eating green vegetables instead. And getting something done.
Two hours later, I’m running in the park, jumping over snow drifts, pushing myself hard even though exhausted. I went up and down the stairs eight times, getting more food each time, consuming an entire box of triscuits and then another of wheat thins, a bunch of cheese and ice cream and stealing some of my housemates’ food.
Guilty as usual.
I run for an hour.
Even though I was in counseling and in a therapy group, and knew a lot about self-care….the way I talked to myself was vicious.
I look back now, and remember that young woman as I hear other people have the same thoughts.
Back then, I didn’t ask if it was true that I should do more, and that I wasn’t getting enough done. I just believed it was true…..and I wasn’t.
The same thoughts will run through my mind now and again, only I notice, I simply cannot believe them like before.
Who would you be without the thought that you should be doing more than you are? Without the thought that you need to take action, get on the horse, cross the finish line for that project?
But. Won’t I just lie around like a lazy slob and do NOTHING?
Without these thoughts I might never get ANYTHING done. EVER! I won’t win! I won’t achieve!
I won’t be guilt-free!
Are you sure?
Here’s the thing. Now that I hardly ever believe the thought that I should ever do anything, I do a lot more.
Seriously.
(Ask me right before a workshop is about to start and I might have a different story about done-ness).
Without the thought that I should do anything at all, I’m writing this Grace Note in this moment, hearing the wind chimes sing on the front porch. Feeling the thump of my daughter’s footsteps moving outside past my closed door. Feeling the delicious heat of my black sweater on my arms.
Every little thing alive, ecstatic, like the air is dancing.
Look around right now. Breathe in and feel the room you are in as you read this.
Feel it.
Who would you be without the thought that you need to do anything more, at all? Without the belief that this is not quite enough, there should be more?
“You have to understand that it is your attempt to get special experiences from life that makes you miss the actual experience of life. Life is not something you get; it’s something you experience. Life exists with or without you. It’s been going on for billions of years. You simply get the honor of seeing a tiny slice of it. If you’re busy trying to get something, you’ll miss the slice you’re actually experiencing.” ~ Michael Singer
Turn the thoughts around that you need to do something, that you need to stop procrastinating or wasting time, that you must achieve and do more, that you haven’t gotten enough done:
You need to stop, you should sit here, you do not need to do anything, it’s not your job to get anything special done, it’s not possible to waste time, you can slow way down, you do not have to write that letter, you can get everything done that is necessary.
You are enough. This moment is completely full.
Isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t it make you want to stare at everything, with wonder and joy?
The colors, the sounds, the temperature, textures, sensations, smells…can you see how much is around you?
Could this be enough?
Love, Grace