Sometimes life gets really overwhelming, really fast.
It’s when you are just going through the regular things in life – work, parenting, grocery shopping, meetings, making dinner, answering questions from the kids, prepping for the weekend, looking up a new recipe…
–and then—
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Ten things become 12 that becomes 258.
And before we know it, we are juggling a million balls and getting exhausted.
Can we just hit pause and breathe?
This was on my daily calendar today:
“Expectation is the mother of all frustration.” ~Antonio Banderas
I think Antonio was onto something.
Expectations, The Build Up of Life
The expectation of our days, nights, and everything in between gets piled up so high as we get older. But, you know, what doesn’t happen easily as we get older?
Easy ways to destress and decompress.
That’s why spa days aren’t the end all be all of self-care because we would need a spa day every three days to keep up with the build up of life.
(That’s why spa days CAN’T be the end all be all of self-care.)
Which is a shame because a massage or facial in a lightly lavender scented room with ocean wave sounds in the background would be amazing.
So how do we find that ever elusive balance for all the stuff we are in charge of and getting back to center?
**crickets**
Yeah, I’m still trying to figure it out.
So far, what I’ve come up with from good ol’ Antonio’s quote is that the expectation itself is frustrating.
Then where do we go from here?
Lower the Expectation
As my friend Mark would say, “Do less.”
Stop trying to do it all.
Stop trying to answer all the questions when they are asked. (Because let’s face it, sometimes kids’ questions just never end. There I said it.)
Stop trying to make dinner by 6 pm every night. We didn’t eat by a certain time every night when we were single and in our 20s with more time than we knew what to do with, so how would it be feasible now with more people to care for, more things to do and a busier life in general? That math isn’t mathing.
Stop grocery shopping in between meetings to get it done before the kids come home. Trying to squeeze in more productivity in the day “so that nothing falls to the ground” takes a lot of energy. It’s not sustainable for the long haul.
Stop working right up to when dinner needs to be made and then jump from one to-do to another. Even trains on a schedule rest in-between routes.
It’s too frantic of a schedule, of a pace.
It’s impossible to maintain for more than a few weeks at a time.
AND it sucks to have to keep all the balls in the air when the circus isn’t in town.
Who said the expectation was to do ALL the things, ALL THE TIME?
Geez, seriously.
That’s a lot of things.
And that’s literally all the time.
Why is that even the expectation?
The cave people didn’t do it. They didn’t even get dressed with real clothes.
The renaissance people didn’t do it that way either. They painted on ceilings for the entire day. That’s literally one task.
Who in history had the expectation to do everything all the time with all the responsibility?
Regular people?
Nope, Kings and Queens.
But, you know what?
They had a whole castle full of people to run it all. You know, 22 people to run the entire household: laundry, meals, care for the kids, get dressed in the morning, go grocery shopping, walk to the market, pay bills, make laws, and just plain adult.
Not only did they have a small army to help them do everything – they had specific people with one job and one job only. As in there was a whole person to get them dressed in the morning and help with clothing changes throughout the day.
A whole person to get them dressed!!
And then after that person helped the King or Queen get dressed, do you know what the person did?
Nothing.
They were like, “Hey my job is done for the day. Let me think about tomorrow and go find something else to occupy my time.”
I want that job.
I want to be in my house, help my kids get dressed, think about the next day’s outfit, and then put my feet up and sip a lemonade.
Except in today’s world, we get to do everything by ourselves for decades, stress ourselves out and then not relax.
Who’s idea was that?
That person needs to be fired.
Why do we have this crazy expectation that we are going to do everything, all the time?
So, do less.
Tomorrow is another day.
Maybe find ways to relax without having everything done, breathe even though the work never stops, and find a few moments to sip a lemonade.
