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.

Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10: 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years: A Life-Transforming Idea , to paraphrase various descriptions, is about learning to choose the life we live, acting rather than reacting to changing circumstances.  When faced with a decision, following her 10-10-10 method will guide you to give serious thought to the consequences, rather than just going with your ‘gut.’ 

I joined the MotherTalk/MomCentral book tour for 10-10-10 (and received a free copy!) because I love reading personal development and success books. 

Now, I don’t go in for the Stuart Smalley  ‘You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!’ type guides, but I enjoy books based on solid guidelines that helped the authors get a better grip on their lives.

Suzy Welch uses lots of examples (from her own life and from other people who use 10-10-10) so the reader can see how the method works in real life** situations, which makes for an enjoyable read.

I like Welch’s writing style, it’s authoritative but friendly at the same time.  And the system that she suggests is very simple.  When you are faced with a decision that matters, instead of going with your highly emotional, reactive, ‘gut’ you should put the decision in your brain by gathering information and doing a 10-10-10: asking yourself about the consequences of your decision in the immediate future (10 minutes), in the short term (10 months) and in the long term (10 years).

My first reaction to this idea was a bit of tension, because I was afraid it was one of those ‘Will this matter in 10 years?’ ways that people use to dismissing someone’s immediate concerns, but that wasn’t the case.  Instead, Welch is suggesting that you develop a fleshed out idea of how the consequences will affect you, not suggesting you write off today’s turmoil because it doesn’t matter. 

In fact, she specifically cautions against focussing too much on any part of the 10-10-10 timeline because all of the time frames matter – this method is about teasing out the big picture, identifying important issues, rather than going with our immediate reactions to situations. 
  
10-10-10 works best when you have a good sense of your own values.  Welch guides you to identify your values* by asking a few specific questions, and then you are supposed to use them to guide your visualization of the outcome of your decision over time.  Will this decision bring you closer to living by your values?  (People often state values differently than they live them, because they are not always conscious of how day-to-day actions add up).

Once you are clear on your values, you can use 10-10-10 to make sure you live as close to them as possible.   When faced with a decision, Welch says to develop a specific question addressing the problem (i.e. Should I accept this job?).  Then gather information*** and use the 10-10-10 structure to imagine what you will feel, and what the impact of your decision will be in:

- 10 mins (How will you feel? How will others feel?  What does it make you think about?)

- 10 months (Will you be settled in? Will things have calmed down?  Will you be closer to living the sort of life you want?).

- 10 years (What path does this decision put you on? Where could your decision lead you?  How will others remember this decision?)

I like the idea of using a framework for making decisions, because in parenting and in writing I often find myself with only vague ideas about why I chose a particular path, or why I feel we *should* choose that one.  That makes it hard to be consistent and hard to explain (and I’m a huge fan of information and explanation****) why I think things should go the way I do.  Using 10-10-10 will help remind me that some of the challenging actions I must take now (not giving in to the whining about video games, for example) are the groundwork for benefits in the future (kids with a variety of interests).

I’ve already helped a friend use 10-10-10 to make an important decision, and the feeling of regret that came over her when she thought about it being 10 months from now and not having taken action was immediately useful to her – and powerful for me because I could see how the thought affected her. I can definitely see myself using the 10-10-10 structure for helping my kids, for making career decisions and for mediating disagreements.

I do have a few suggestions (when do I not?  I am a suggestions queen!). 

I realize that people should read the whole book (or at least most of it) before undertaking 10-10-10 so they would have all the information before starting to use it, but lots of people will probably skim for the action steps.  For that reason, I would have like to see the section about determining values earlier in the book.  To be fair, it IS in the third chapter, which is pretty early, but it felt like I already had many of the tools to use the method by that point and then discovered there was a step before step one.  

Welch mentions values in the first two chapters (she says in chapter 3 that she has already mentioned them five times) but I would have liked for her to reference the upcoming values section in the first two chapters.

I would also like to have a 10-10-10 template included in the book or on her website.  Perhaps a values worksheet and then a form to use to structure the process the first few times you do it.  And a few, leading, thought-provoking questions would be great too. I think that would add great value to the book and help some people cement the process.

 Overall, I think the 10-10-10 method is a very useful framework for decision-making and it could remove a lot of angst from the process of making important changes in your life. 

*And she does this without injecting her own values in there.
**For everything from a discussion with a kid to choosing to relocate for a job
*** Sometimes the 10-10-10 structure helps you gather information, sometimes you need to gather information first and sometimes it helps you realize you need more information before a decision is possible.
****Seriously, I could never, ever, get enough information, not if I had a million years to research a topic.

Before the last two weeks, had you asked me about my household routines I would have said something like : “I like the idea of routines, how they simplify your days, and how you can reduce the number of choices you have to make  every few minutes, but I don’t think I have very many.”

It turns out that I’m wrong, I have lots of them.  And having three men tearing out gyproc, adding plaster, and generally taking over most of my main floor and two upstairs rooms, forcing me and my sons to spend most of our time in our recroom, has brought them into stark relief.

I have spent most the past two weeks out of sync, a little flustered, and rather stressed out.  I used every technique I have (and I have many) to get myself to calm down.  I  took three deep breaths, cut my to do list to the bone, meditated, did yoga, tried to get out of the house as often as I could, and I immersed myself in activities with my sons.  They all helped but they didn’t get to the heart of the problem.

Then, on Thursday, I casually mentioned to a friend that my ordinary patterns were all thrown off and it clicked.  My ROUTINES were shot.   Unfortunately between Easter vacation and the continued presence of the workers, I couldn’t just re-establish my usual days. 

But I gave it some thought and realized that I need to be able to sit by myself with some tea, and read a little,  as close to first thing in the morning as possible.  I couldn’t put all my routines back yet, but I could do that.  So on Friday morning, I got the kids’ breakfast, got them dressed and then sent them to the recroom without me.  And I sat in the kitchen with my giant cup of tea and a book, and there, amid the plaster dust, bits of plastic, and all manner of household detritius, I gained a little sanity, a little calm. 

So I’d fully recommend that if your routines have been shifted, for whatever reason, you take a few minutes to look at your day and see what parts of your routine make you feel most centered, most in control of your mind, and see if there is a way to re-establish those.

PS – Sorry for the radio silence, the house repairs have limited my computer time and my brainspace.  Regular posting resumes today.