Hello Space Makers!
I hope this Friday finds you with at least a little space for yourself and with some room for fun on the weekend.
Since my plan for this week was to talk about managing expectations, I was thinking about how I can get caught up in my vision of how I hope things will go.
It’s not that I am trying for perfection really, it’s that I want to have fun and I want to feel good and I want things to be straightforward. In my vision, everything goes according to plan and I don’t feel stressed or hassled or off-kilter.
This morning, I was thinking about my vision for the next few weeks and I realized that I have a fixable flaw in my process.
Slight tangent incoming. Please bear with me.
Years ago, I was often the ‘sacrifice’ at local Story Slam events.
Story Slams are storytelling contests in which individuals tell stories on a given theme and they are judged by a panel of audience members.
The role of the ‘sacrifice’ is to warm up the judges by telling a story that is going to be judged but is not eligible for the contest. The sacrifice’s story is evaluated in comparison with the judges’ imagined perfect story and is often marked fairly harshly.*
After the sacrifice has warmed up the judges and the crowd, the actual competitors have a much more even judging process. This is because their stories are being judged in comparison to that first story – not a perfect story, an actual story told by an actual human, and a story that has already gotten low marks so, obviously, the others stories are going to be better! 😉
What does this have to do with my plans in December?
Well, I need to stop using the ideal, the imagined, in order to create my vision because that means I will always fall short and feel hectic and stressed.
If I use my memories from previous years to construct a vision or a plan (maybe with some adjustments), I will have a more realistic sense of a what a good party/meal/celebration/meeting could look like and I will decrease my chances of judging myself harshly (and getting stressed out) as things unfold this year.
Maybe you would like to join me in warming up your internal judges by offering them last year’s events as ‘sacrifices’?
Anyway, now that we are back from the tangent and we have worked a little on managing expectations, here are our suggested videos for today.
I wish you ease and self-kindness as you make space for yourself today.
Our movement practice for today is this 10 Minute Chair Cardio Workout (Seated Total Body!) from Caroline Jordan
Our mindfulness practice today is this 5-Minute Meditation You Can Do Anywhere from Goodful.
PS – For some additional Space Making inspiration, check out this IG post from Kate Bowler which really speaks to releasing some of the pressure we put on ourselves. The post is Christmas/Christian in nature but the message can be applied to anything you are doing this December.
*If you know me, you are probably thinking that this sounds like something I would hate doing – agreeing to be judged when things are obviously unfair. And under normal circumstances, this would be difficult for me. However, in this case, I was unfazed because I knew what was happening in advance AND I wasn’t actually competing.
