Today’s card says: Some days things choose you and you just have to let go and lean into the things that chose you. It makes it easier when you swim with the current than against it.
There’s a book that came out a bunch of years ago called Now Discover Your Strengths and it was all about how instead of focusing your weaknesses and trying to constantly make them better, maybe we’d do better by focusing on our strengths where we have the potential for much more quick improvement (and we can use our support systems and delegation to fill in some of the holes – weaknesses. ) There’s a lot more to the book of course but this was one of my take aways. I remember there’s a scene about how when your kids comes to you with their report card and when they have 4As and 1C we focus so much on the class where she or he got a C instead of focusing on the As. Here are things the kid is amazing at.
As someone who always looks at the “things to improve” section of her peer feedback way before she spends time on “here’s what she does well,” it’s easy for me to focus on the bad. Focus on what I should be doing more or better.
And yet.
It’s so much easier to go with the flow. To do more of what comes naturally. To do more of what is joyful. More of what’s something I love to do. More of something that I inherently like spending my time on. Or something I value.
I had a meeting at the school a few months ago, where we were discussing things about Nathaniel and the teacher made some suggestions on what we could do. We nodded and thanked them. We intended to do them but week passed and then we got another call to meet again and check in. At first, I felt really guilty about all the things I didn’t do but then I took some time to really look into my soul. And I realized that instead of saying I will do things that would be incredibly hard for me as a person, what I needed was to find things that I could do that come naturally to me and still support my son. I can swim against the current for a while, do all the uphill work, but it will leave me tired and I will give up much more quickly. Whereas if I find something that allows me to do this in a way that works for me, I can sustain it and make my son happy without completely wearing myself down in the process.
The trick I am learning is not to feel guilty for all I am not. It’s to really focus on what I am, to know myself well and to choose fully own who I am. Choose to step into myself and my life. That’s when the magic happens.
Choosing Means is a Monthly Project for May 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
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