12-3-12

My whining theme de jour is “I should get caught up”.  I woke up crazy early this morning with that thought.  I should be on top of all of it–my personal finances, the admin of my business, finishing the book and clothes purge I’ve been in the middle of for months–and the list goes on…

So I therapized myself with the following questions:

1)  What do I want?

2)   What are the barriers to having what I want?

3)   What have I done/tried to get what I want?

4)  What am I willing to do differently?

I want an uncluttered head, home and life.

The barriers are a sense of being over-whelmed which makes me feel immobilized and then embarrassed at my ‘stuckness’; a work-day/week schedule I’ve created that leaves little room for flexibility once I get into it; a fear that life is flying by too quickly which I’ve thought meant that I need to pack as much into each moment, hour, day as is humanly possible.  I used to blame my combo full time/part time jobs for ‘doing it to me’.  But I’m now the boss.  And it looks pretty much the same.  I’M DOING IT TO ME!!!

Which brought me to question three, what have I done over the last year to fix it?  I’ve taken a full day here and there to get on top of it.  Added some miscellaneous evenings working on it while watching TV or otherwise distracting myself.  I’ve given myself pep talks that nobody’s perfect although that seems to be less and less effective.  Sometimes I even convince myself I’ll get on top of it tomorrow.  But the thing I’ve really perfected is the whining.  I’ve perfected whining to the point where it almost sounds like I’m doing something.  I can make it seem reasonable that I’m still talking about the same thing a year later.

The moment I asked the fourth question, what am I willing to do differently, I GOT IT.  I realized why this chasing my tail thing hasn’t resolved.  Because I’m not doing anything different than I was doing when I first noticed it.  I haven’t yet changed my behavior(s).

So what am I willing to do?  I want a whole new schedule.  And I want it in place, or at least close to being implemented, by January 1^st.  But if I’m cash-register honest, I’m not ready (willing?) to create it just yet.  What I AM willing to do is come up with a list of things that aren’t happening or getting done to my satisfaction.  And I AM willing to consider the possibility that the solution will be something very different than anything I can come up with at this moment.  Finally, I’m setting an intention that I’ll be kind and take it easy on myself if it isn’t easy or perfect.

Anything in your life that you’ve been whining about for forever that you’d like to take a look at?