You Can’t Do It All

I have just been out in my garden and, as is so often the case, it prompted a post. Hope you like it.

A few years back my garden was my pride and joy. When my children (and several other people’s kids!) had stopped using it as a playground, and the sand pit, swings, and slide became redundant, I began to reclaim it, bit by bit. For a while the lawn served double duty as a rugby pitch and my washing line prop is still a pole once used for vaulting, but once the offspring disappeared it became my own personal terrain. My pet project.

It was a labour of love (and source of huge expenditure) but the results were worth it. It was a joy to see the garden I had oft dreamed of emerge. It wasn’t Kew, and wouldn’t win any prizes, but it was mine and it gave me huge pleasure.

Letting Go

However, about two years ago we were finally granted planning permission to build a wee bungalow for my Mum on a plot of land opposite our house. This too had been a long held dream but the vagaries of Bath planning delayed it for year after year. We reapplied for a third time, having drawn up lots of different plans and permssion was granted. Suddenly (or so it seemed after the enforced delays) we were in the throes of building a house with builders, and the consequent disruption, despite having fabulous builders!

Temptation

We have lived in our family home for over 30 years and during that time I have had many a fantasy (not shared by my husband) about knocking down walls, replacing windows etc, but in the way of these things very few had become real. But now I had a team of lovely builders at my beck and call and the temptation was too much.

“How much would it be to knock down that wall? Really, that cheap if we let you do it when it’s raining and you can’t work on the house? Great, it’s a deal! Oh and we’ll now need a new floor, new…”

Many similar conversations followed and at one point I found myself ‘supervising’ the new build, a new kitchen installation in my mother’s old house, and major works in our own! And I had more training and coaching work than I could handle! Of course, my husband was a huge help but I had very clear ideas about how my Mum’s new house should be designed, and I’d been plotting the wall removal in ours for ever, so I was voluntarily at the helm. Ms ‘I can do it all’!

The Garden

And I still wanted my lovely garden. But the garden became a dumping ground for rubbish and ‘possibly useful one day’ items, like old sinks, bits of pipe, and tons of wood to be stored for our new wood burner (another addition to the Woods household!)

The trouble was I wasn’t always around to supervise where all this rubbish went and a lot of it ended up on in places it shouldn’t. My lovely garden was being destroyed. I’d come back from a day training and wail:

” But there’s a beautiful clematis on that trellis, don’t you remember? Oh no, all my white tulips are under a pile of wood! You can’t put a wood shed there it’ll block access to the pond”

In short, and in all honesty, I was a right old nag.

And one day it dawned on me.

To achieve the more pressing and immediate dream of building my Mum’s new house and gaining my lovely huge kitchen diner, I had to let the garden go. And so I did. I made a conscious decision not to worry any more about it. Not to go rushing about like a demented witch every time I came home and found something on top of something about to bloom, or right in front of the window so it looked like a world war two bomb site. And not to nag my poor husband ragged about it.

Relief

It was actually a huge relief. I hadn’t stopped loving my garden - I hadn’t given up on the dream, but I had relegated it for a wee while.

And that’s what we all need to do sometimes to survive, postpone things in order to achieve more immediate aims. It’s what sociolgists call ‘deferred gratification’.

Sometimes we have to let go of our sacred cows, our long held dreams to get where we need to be. If you feel like you can’t see the wood for the trees (in my case it was the literally the trees for the wood!), pause a while. What is the most important to be doing right now?

You’re So Cute!

If you are like most of the population you will have looked at the photo opposite (or one similar) and thought ‘Ahh, cute’.

The Institute of Neural and Behavioural Biology, Munster has undertaken some research that shows features such as a large head, big eyes, and round cheeks provoke a caring response in us, a fact advertisers have understood for ages. Presumably it’s something we have been programmed with to ensure the survival of the species, but I think it also explains the popularity of some of those weird dolls on the market!

What brings out your inner nurturer?

Are You In a Rut?

Here’s a quick exercise to determine if you are feeling stuck in the same old groove.

Think about your life in three boxes (for simplicity):

Personal (Your friends, spiritual side of life, hobbies etc)

Home (where you live and with whom you live)

Work (Where you work, whom you work with and what you do)

If you are 100% satisfied give yourself a mark of 10 for each category and add the three totals. So being 100% satisfied in all areas of your life at the same time (congratulations if that’s you!) would give you a total score of 30.  Nil points would mean you are very unhappy; you’ll probably rate yourself somewhere in between.

20 and above is pretty good going. Well done you.

Less than 20, what do you need to change? And how are you going to change it?

Do You Bad Mouth You?

Take five minutes to think of the worst things you say to yourself and the effect it has on you.

Examples might be:

‘I have no willpower’.

‘I’m always late – I can’t get anywhere on time’.

‘I always fail interviews’.

‘I am so unattractive’.

Once you’ve identified that critical inner voice try this; for one week silence it. As soon as you hear yourself start carping, stop immediately.

It will do two things:

It will show you just how much time you spend putting yourself down

and

It will show you how much better you can feel when you stop nagging yourself.

Next Step- Replace the moaning and quietly say something good about yourself!

Looking After You

‘When we’re well we want so many things, but when we’re sick we want only one’.

It’s so true, isn’t it? Like many of you, I suspect, I glibly talk about health and happiness being important yet consciously working to maintain my health is not one of my more obvious priorities. But without it all of my other goals will need revisiting.  It should be top of my list!

So I am resolved to take better care of my physical health from this moment on. I don’t want to lose it to know the value of it!

How about you?

The No Quiz!

How many times do say yes when you want to say no?

How many of these thoughts which stop you saying no assertively, do you hold in your head?

• If I say no, they’ll never help me when I need it.
• If I say no, they won’t like me.
• If people don’t like me I’ll feel worthless and get fewer opportunities.
• My needs are not as important as theirs. They must take priority. I can’t say no.
• I mustn’t be rude or unhelpful (particularly if to a senior manager or older person).
• How dare they ask me that (prompts an aggressive response).
• These people are taking me for granted-I’ll show them. (Aggressive again).

If you ticked just one of these, take a look at my article on How to Say No. And if you have some tips to share on being more assertive, or found something that works well for you, please do share them with us!