Day 194 - Off the Hook with a More Casual Approach

There's a silly little game my friends play with fortune cookies. After reading the fortune, they add the words, 'in bed". As in, "Today is a good time to finish up old tasks.....in bed." You get the drift. It's sure to create some giggles and a moment or two of playful embarrassment. I've taken a lesson from that game and I have been adding a word to describe my activities so that I am in better control of the energy I expend. The word? Casually. I will grocery shop, casually, Keep house, casually. Entertain, casually. Dress, casually. Take a walk, casually. Exercise, casually. Instead of getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday demands I am choosing a more gentle way to approach the potential pressures of these activities. Even though I carefully choose what I take on each day, I sometimes get over involved in the activity I have chosen, and all of a sudden I'm faced with an energy crisis.

 

I am the kind of person who demonstrates my enthusiasm and if there is fun to be had, I want to be in on it. If the kids are playing, I want to play along. If friends are dancing, I want to dance, too. If visiting an antique shop is good, exploring two or three is even better. I suppose there are days that I just don't know when to quit. Sometimes if I'm working at my jewelry I can lose track of time and an hour slips into three or four. I push through my bad vision by leaving the finishing work until another time, or I may even skip a meal because I am so deep into what I am doing. I ignore my aching back and neck because I am so wrapped up in what I'm doing. When I don't pay as much attention to my physical state of being as I do to the task at hand, I pay for it later.

 

Doing a task casually gets me off the hook of perfection and a demand for high performance. It also helps me to focus on the kind of energy I choose to bring to my activity. I can still be enthusiastic and get a job done, but I can be kinder to myself in the doing. I know that I often have a higher expectation of myself than what the people around me expect. I love the feeling of accomplishment and the awareness of a job well-done  and now I can think of what I need to do in a more relaxed way. I have never been a perfectionist in the strictest sense of the word, but I have always paid attention to doing what I thought was my very best. My new casual approach takes doing my best down a notch to doing the best I can in the situation that I am in. It's a shift that makes sense to me.