What’s important right now?
How on earth do you begin to make the space to listen to yourself?
All the wellbeing talk about grounding and meditation and minimalism and slow living is so seductive, yet almost everyone I know is feeling overwhelmed, stretched impossibly thin and with a life that is hectic.
So how on earth do you begin to make the space to listen to yourself, your intuition, to make the choices about how you are going to spend your precious minutes?
Often the answers are big ones, big moves that require lots of change and hassle to implement and maintain. Change is jolly hard. I believe the best place to start (and often the most transformative too) is with very small things.
Something that gets talked about a lot in these types of conversations about space and prioritising yourself is the ‘Fair Play’ book / approach by Eve Rodsky. While this is a brilliant book/approach and one that has significantly impacted on my relationship with my partner, I’m not totally convinced it is the answer to overwhelm.
The focus of the book is that women are doing far too much (of course we are) while men aren’t pulling their weight (statistics and lots and lots of anecdotal evidence would suggest that no they are not). It shares some of the reasons why we’ve ended up in this situation and provides a very accessible and logical way of sharing the work involved with running a household and raising children.
Essentially it is creating space for you by parcelling up areas of responsibility and handing these over, completely, to your partner. So, you have made space by doing less. Less to think about, less to plan for, less to deliver. The result supposedly being more time for you.
I can see the logic; less responsibility equals more time. Yet somehow in real life this equation doesn’t seem to work in quite the same way.
I worry there is real danger in the idea that life is tameable. That running a household (especially in the early years of a family) can ever be smooth and organised and serene with everyone getting their needs met and it all being accounted for.
Of course, it’s possible but is it probable?
Personally, I don’t think so. I think family life is full and chaotic and messy. I’m not sure there is any amount of strategy that could tame it into a neat and orderly system.
I believe it is normal for things to be undone, messy, complicated. My understanding is that it takes a lot of time, work and effort (and often arguments and frustration too) to establish who does what and what’s fair and what’s not.
In coaching conversations this week, a recurring theme has been ‘is this normal?’ or ‘why am I finding this so hard?’ It’s conversations like these that make me rather angry with all the systems because what they are selling (intentionally or not) is the idea that life could be better if only you bothered to find out how.
It is normal to find it hard. It is normal to feel like you don’t know what you are doing. It is normal to mess things up and forget things and make a lot of mistakes. That doesn’t mean that you are failing or need to make changes. It does mean that you are in a very difficult stage of life that (almost) everyone struggles with.
So initially our plan for the Gathering this month was going to be about making space.
However, as I’ve thought about it more and more, I want to talk about choice and not space. Space is tricky and slippery to find. An old boss used to describe some projects as ‘like trying to nail jelly to a wall’. That is how I feel about trying to plan a life where it all feels spacious and considered.
I think it’s more interesting to give yourself a moment to choose what feels important to you right now.
So next Thursday lunchtime at 12:30pm, we are going to have our Gathering session. This one is going to be short in the name of spaciousness. We’ll meet for around 15-20 minutes. We will meditate, how a few moments for journaling and then we will close.
There is a Gathering session each month, on a different topic. When you join, you’ll be able to access all the previous sessions too.
If you would like to come along, you have three options.
You can join on my website for £4 per month.
You can become a paid member of this Substack for £4 per month (you get website membership included).
You can come along for free, as a trial to see if you like it, hit reply and I’ll share a link.
I’ll share a reminder and the log in information across on Wednesday next week.
If you have any questions before then or would like to explore any of these themes in a coaching conversation please do get in touch.
With love
Hannah