The books were fun, and I could get a lot out of them because I always doubled back to see what would have happened if I had chosen differently.  I liked the feeling of being in control of the characters’ decisions (I was one of those kids who would talk to TV characters about their bad decisions), and I liked seeing the options in front of me.

Today, I was at the supermarket checkout, idly considering where I would put the groceries, and being glad that I had cleaned out the fridge and cupboards this morning.  I let my thoughts stray* to how tidy my house is at the moment, a fairly unusual circumstance.  My next thought struck me hard  – it went like this…

‘I’ve been doing a good job keeping ahead of the mess for the last few days but I guess it is just a matter of time before it catches up to me again.’

Crappy, hey?  Seriously, why on earth would I say that to myself?  It’s totally self-defeating and it makes everything sucky.

How about if, instead, I decide to choose my own adventure**?

So, here I go:

I’m choosing not to just accept that my family is so messy that untidiness is inevitable, instead I am going to work toward my new adventure***, an orderly house.

Now, before you think I’ve lost it entirely and that I think I can change my mind and things will automatically put themselves away – I’m not crazy (or at least this is not evidence of it – ha!).  I know there is work to be done, but changing my approach to the problem gives me a little list of questions at the end of my page, and now I can choose which adventure to follow to a solution (and double back if I don’t like the outcome).

I think my solutions lie in the following questions

1) If Christine uses her recent schedule to figure out what is helping her keep things tidy, go to page…

2) If Christine tries to figure out where things got off track in the past (that resulted in a big cummulative mess) and figures out some work-arounds, go to page…

3) If Christine figures out the things that have worked for a short time in the past and refines them before trying them again,  go to page…

4) If Christine figures out how some ways to engage her kids in the process, go to page…

5) If Christine takes a good look at her storage and organizational systems and finds ways to make it easier to put things away, go to page…

See? Changing my thought patterns generates solutions, instead of generating the brick wall of ‘I guess it is just a matter of time…’

So, how about your adventures?

How are you choosing a different chapter at the moment?

******************************************************************************************************************************************************

*Clearly not a mindfulness moment – oh well!  Can’t be on duty all the time.

**And there’s the connection with the first section, you were wondering when that was coming, weren’t you?

***Admittedly, this is a dull use of the word adventure.  Let’s consider a tidy house an adventure foundation.  The less stuff I have to do to manage the house, the more time I have to have fun.

Okay, so it’s a lousy riddle but it’s been a real dilemma for me.

At the moment, I’m trapped in what parents around here refer to as kindergarten hell.  Kids in kindergarten here go to school in the morning (8:45-12) for two weeks and then switch to afternoons (1-3) for two weeks.  So my schedule is a little frustrating.*

I can add almost anything to my day, as long as I can do it at almost the same time each day.  I also work best when I have a couple of hours at time – choppy schedules cause me great stress.

Are you starting to see the shape of my problem here?

My favourite work days are the ones when I can bring both kids to school for 8:45, come home, have breakfast, tidy up a little, catch up with some friends online using my laptop at the kitchen table, drink some tea and then head to my home office to work at 9:30.  I work until 11:30, get lunch started and then pick up The Little Guy from school.

That works really well when he’s in mornings.

But when he’s in afternoons, I bring The Boy to school for 8:45, come home have breakfast, hang out with The Little Guy, do some housework, try to squeeze in a little work between requests from TLG, talk to him endlessly about the fact that this is not actually a day off and that he is going to school this afternoon and no, they won’t have playtime or snacktime because school in short.  Then The Man comes home to lunch,  the three of us eat together and then I bring TLG to school, rush back home, try to work from 1:10 to 2:40, and then head back to school to pick them both up and start the snack/homework/play/make supper part of the day.

So yeah, when he’s in afternoons I don’t get a lot of work done because everything’s so choppy.

I tried to solve that by having my friend K babysit a couple of afternoons each week.  When TLG is in mornings, she babysits from  1-5 (and picks TB up from school). When TLG is in afternoons she picks them both up from school and babysits from 3-5.

That backfired on me because I found it hard to settle and focus in the afternoons.  If I had been working all morning, my brain seemed to think we were done for the day, and if I had been hanging out with TLG all morning my brain was scrambled from five-year-old conversation.

This has been plaguing me for a while (in fact the afternoon problem even predates the kindergarten problem) and I haven’t been able to find a workable solution.

But then last week, I had a great chat with Liz from Dream Garden Coaching and she got me thinking about what made mornings work for me.  Then I enlisted The Man and my friend J to help me brainstorm how to make my afternoons more like my mornings.

And, as usual, a friend could solve my problem when I couldn’t.  J quickly identified the fact that my morning work sessions started with putting my house and my brain in order, and spending a little time by myself NOT working before I started trying to work.

Then we brainstormed ways for me to get that downtime in the afternoons, especially when K is babysitting and she and the kid (or kids) are downstairs and I can’t be alone there.

So, my new afternoon work plan looks like this:

If someone is home:

Have lunch

Take laptop and tea to my bedroom for 15-20m and hang out with online friends

Head to my office to work

If no one is home:

Come back from school run

Have tea and hang out time at kitchen table

Head to my office to work

And THAT’S how I’m going to make my afternoon more like a morning.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

How about you? Does your best work time match your schedule? If not, can you make your scheduled work time feel more like your best work time?

*And that’s before you add in professional development days, one day off per month so the teachers can host the Kinderstart program, parent-teacher meeting days, AND the fact that my older kid goes to school from 8:45-3 each day so I have to go back and forth to the school at least 3 times per day.

Oh, that doesn’t happen that often?  Well, it happened at this one.

This guy, Peter Vidmar, won a gold medal with the US gymnastic team in the 80s and he’s parlayed that into a speaking career.  He seemed like an odd choice to me at first but once he started talking the connections made sense.  Aiming for the Gold, aspiring to excellence,  go business people go!  That sort of thing.

He was funny, charming, and he could swing himself around on the pommel horse like he was born to it.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

He wasn’t born to it.  He PRACTICED. A lot. Way more than it would be practical for a non-Olympian hopeful to practice anything.

But it was awesome to see the results of that sort of practice and since  I will never have to perform on a pommel horse *,  I can just take the practice thing and run with it.

And knowing the years of practice that went into his demonstration really drove one of his comments home.  He was talking in a general way about practice and how it helps, when he did that call and response set up that every speaker tries to do.

Peter: “And as you know (sing song voice) ‘Practice makes…’”

Audience: “PERFECT!”

Peter: (smiling) “Permanent!”

It took a few seconds for us to laugh at ourselves.  The cliche ‘Practice makes perfect’ is so ingrained that it is practically meaningless, no amount of practice will make you perfect at anything.  It’s a level of control we can’t begin to aspire to.

But permanency?  That is something we can work toward because even semi-permanent puts us ahead (semi-perfect doesn’t sound good at all).

It gave me a whole new framework for my Taekwondo practice, for encouraging my 8 year old to keep at his handwriting homework, for getting my five year old to put his own shoes on.   If we practice those things, they’ll become part of us**.  Something unshakeable.

I like that.

So, I’ve committed to daily practice of my Taekwondo.  How about you?  What are you making permanent?

*I may be going out on a limb here, but I think at 37 I could take gymnastics off my to do list ( had they ever been on there).

**Okay, skeptic, I know where you are going already.  Yes, we *can* make bad habits more or less permanent too.  But if we recognize those habits we can replace them with something else to practice into permanency.  I guess it depends on awareness and the desire to change.

I grew up thinking that my level of worry was completely normal, and that I was somehow keeping danger at bay by worrying.   These ideas weren’t reinforced by my parents or anything, they just existed and somehow got woven into my concept of ‘the way things are.’

My anxiousness wasn’t debilitating, and it didn’t center around any one thing. It was just there and I dealt with it.

Then I started seeing my kids exhibiting some of my coping behaviours (e.g. avoiding competition, overcompensating, withdrawing from heated discussions, stressing about learning new things) and I realized it was time to find some tools for myself, and, to find some tools for them so we could all have easier lives.

I’ll be discussing a lot of those tools on this blog, so I won’t get into them now.  I just thought it was worth noting that one of the things that causes me the most anxiety – trying to parent effectively – is the very thing that is helping me to learn to reduce my anxiousness.

Reason eight million and twelve I am glad to be a parent.

I’m referring to those days that are so hectic that all you can think of is the hecticness,  and you can’t even begin to try and figure out how to relax and feel better.

Start with three deep breaths* but make these three breaths happen while you are either boiling the kettle or peeling an orange (choose your poison!).

If you choose the kettle option, here’s what you do:

1) fill the kettle with fresh water

2) plug it in or put it on the burner

3) close your eyes, and take three deep breaths

4) put your tea in the pot, or the bag in the cup

5) pour the boiling water in the pot or the cup, and let it steep while you breathe in the steam (if you used a pot, pour the tea into a cup before continuing)

6) sit with your tea, smell it, taste it, enjoy how warm the cup feels in your hand, drink your tea

7) breathe some more

now pick one thing to do that will move you a step forward

For oranges

1) pick out an appealing orange (ha!)

2) take three deep breaths, inhaling the orange scent

3) focus as you peel it, does the inside smell different, stronger or weaker than the outside?

4) how does the skin feel in your fingers? how about the inside?

5) separate the orange into sections, and eat one at a time, enjoying the scent of the orange sections

6) breathe some more

7) now pick one thing to do to move yourself forward

Now, I know I’m not tricking anyone here. These are clearly mindfulness exercises but there is a huge difference in saying BE MINDFUL and in saying Do X, then Y, then Z.  If you have a ritual to call on when you feel the hectic hit, then you can put yourself back in a more peaceful frame of mind more quickly.  And a peaceful frame of mind beats the heck out of a frantic one.

Now, breathe again!

*yeeeessss, I do think that they help everything – well, except for cracked ribs, three deep breaths aren’t going to help there.

I was at a real low.

Then I read this blog entry by Briana at Blisscovery and I felt so much better.  She’s talking about  an incident that left her feeling horrible and how she went through a series of steps to feel better.  Step 5 is where the magic is.

Her step 5 was to give herself space to feel what she was feeling.  She didn’t try to talk herself out of it, she just felt hurt, sad, and upset.  And she let herself feel that way.  And then, and then, she STARTED TO FEEL BETTER.

So, after reading that I decided to give myself some room to feel bad.

I feel weird about my kids being in school, and how that changes the amount of time they spend with me, and how that’s going to keep changing as time goes on.  That’s not necessarily bad, it’s not necessarily good, it just is.  And I’m not going to try to talk myself out of that.

I’m probably going to keep disagreeing with those people.  Neither of us is right or wrong, we are just not on the same page.  And that’s frustrating.  But I’m not fighting it.  It is what it is.  And I’m sitting with it.

When I don’t get enough sleep, when I don’t eat right, when I get a low-level cold, I skate around the edges of low-grade depression.  It’s a fact, and even though I try to eat right, try to get enough sleep, sometimes I won’t be able to and I may feel bad.  But that’s not permanent, and it will pass.  I don’t have to fight it, because that just ends with beating myself up about how I ended up here again.  I can just be right there with it until I feel ready to step back on the path.

Thanks, Briana.

One real system-seeking situation for me is my To Do list.  I’ve tried all kinds of systems, paper and electronic but until recently I haven’t been able to find one that lets me keep a good running list and a flexible daily list*.   (And as a juggler of kids, freelancing and volunteer work, I need flexibility)

One thing that does work for me, though, is my whiteboard.

Last fall I picked up a cheap 8×10 white board at the dollar store and put it up next to my calendar in my kitchen where it would be easily visible.  Now, whenever I have a busy day or something that REALLY needs to get done I put a list on the whiteboard where I can see it (and so can the rest of my family) and it creates a sense of urgency about those tasks.

When I’m really organized and I’ve taken the time to plan my week’s To Do on a piece of paper (or on the websites listed below) I can pick the things to do each day from that but often my list is composed by looking around at housework and other tasks as yet undone, and by wracking my brain for details on work and the like.

The board is fairly small so I can’t really add too many tasks (and I put a time limit on any large ones  – work on article 30m – so they are something I can measure, take action on and cross off).  And the funny thing is that the kids respect the white board,  they ask me to put things for them on there (‘I’d like to play videogames this afternoon, can you put that on the list?’  ‘I’d like to have pizza for supper, can you put that on the list?’) because they know that the stuff on there gets done.

If something odd comes up, and I can’t get a job done, I can erase the other tasks and leave that one for the next day without feeling weird about it.

All hail the whiteboard!

What do you use for a To Do list?  Have you used a whiteboard? Did it help?

*I’m currently having good luck with Pocket Informant on my iPod Touch – I’m using in it in conjunction with Google Calendar and Toodledo so I can add things using my desktop computer and then check it on the Touch.

And almost every single time, I forget that unless I am on deadline, the solution is to delve into whatever my kids want for a little while. To stop and read a story, or to go play, or go see the fantabulous new trick, or to just lie on the floor and let them climb over me.

The thought of doing that is exhausting, but it is usually the only way to do it. At least then my work delay is for good reason.

It’s just another manifestation of the paradox of choice, the grip of indecision, really. I need to commit myself fully, for the moment, to one thing or another and since I cannot fully immerse myself in my work when I am also solely responsible for my children, then I must choose them. And that’s a satisfying choice in itself. I never feel that time spent playing with them is wasted, but yet I have trouble making that switch from even half-heartedly focussing on my own interests and focussing on theirs. Yet once I do, I feel much better. I feel like I have made an investment in them once I switch. Because I hate when a whole day goes by without me having spent ‘quality’ time with them.

And turning your attention fully to the matter at hand is very satisfying, even without the moral weight of giving your children ‘enough’. I can lose myself in time with my kids, just as I can lose myself in anything else, but I will admit that it is much harder. My children don’t bore me, but their activities can. I don’t want to direct their play, but the building and rebuilding of lego structures can only hold me for so long and I would much prefer to spend the two minutes talking to them. Idon’t know if it is their ages or their gender but they are not very interested in talking to me about ‘nothing’ It’s different if I can talk to them about what’s in front of them, but that puts me right back to trying to engage myself with legos.

It’s really a challenge, to strike that balance, to find the way to keep myself there, but when I do I feel good. At the end of spending time just doing what my kids want, I don’t feel ansty, distracted and frustrated. I feel peaceful.

Ryan suggests that asking yourself why you do a particular self-sabotaging thing repeatedly is not always useful.  Asking ‘Why?’ gets your left brain analyzing the problem but it won’t necessarily trigger any solutions.  To do that, you need to bring your right brain on board by asking ‘What?’

What can I do differently? 

What can I do right now? 

What would make this situation better? 

She says that answers may not be immediate, and they may not be direct – you might get a song or an image caught in your head and have to find the message – but answers will come. 

I have already found this technique useful when I was trying to figure out how to exercise more.  I had spent a long time trying to figure out why I didn’t but I had gotten nowhere, so after reading Ryan’s book I asked myself  ‘What can I do to help myself exercise more frequently?’  and the answer came.  I had to commit to doing some type of exercise daily, and I had to set a period of time to do it in. 

So I decided that every day in May I would exercise for 30 consecutive minutes, but I wouldn’t specify what those 30 minutes would be.  So, all throughout May, even when I was sick (Mother’s Day weekend! it sucked!) I clocked 30 minutes, either walking, doing WiiFit exercises, or going to the gym.  Letting myself off the hook for the specifics, and deciding on an end date was key, and it made the difference*.

So, now I ask you to stop asking yourself why you aren’t getting something done,  and instead ask what you need to/want to/can  do to get it done?

*My Myers-Briggs personality type (infj) leaves me with a tendency to waste a lot of time searching for the perfect system to acheive sometime.  I tend to avoid starting if I haven’t got a system in place.  BUT being aware of that tendency has made me find ways to avoid the question of a system and just get started – to find the system as I work.  It’s a challenge, but it’s helpful.

You can’t focus, and you feel like lying on the couch, balancing a bowl of cheezies on your chest and watching reruns of Friends until your eyes burst and you have an excuse not to get anything done.

Now, while that is indeed one strategy to cope with being overwhelmed, you won’t actually feel much better at the end (although the middle part will feel okay, at least until the eyes bursting part).   If you would prefer to feel a little better when you are done, why not try something like this:

Pick three categories of stuff you need to do.

Pick one small task from each category.

Write them down.

Do one small task.

Cross it off.

Do the second small task.

Cross it off.

Do the third small task.

Cross it off.

Call it a day*

There, then you will have accomplished SOMETHING today, and you will feel at least a little better.

Here’s my list from a rough day a few weeks ago:

House:  Wipe stovetop.

Writing: 5 minutes brainstorming for article.

Kids: Read two books with the boys.**

I was fully prepared to call it a day after I completed those things, and when you have been stuck, that’s perfectly legitimate, but on that particular day my three tasks gave me momentum, and I was able to get about 30 minutes of writing, and some unpleasant housework out of the way, and created enough brainspace to play some games with my sons.  The purpose of the exercise is not to ‘trick’ yourself into doing more, but if that happens, all the better.

Good luck.

*Whenever anyone I know suggests that it’s time to call it a day, one of us invariably says ‘Okay, it’s a day!’  and makes the rest of us smile.  Try it, see if it works for you.

**In case I need to state the obvious,  care and feeding of my family is part of my autopilot,  so the ‘Kids’ category of my to do list is for fun extras not for the basics.