It's tough to juggle 3 kids, while running a small business, maintaining a household, and being a wife. I feel like I'm mediocre at all of them as my focus is pulled in many different directions.
Last night I was reading from a book (Creating a Charmed Life), and found one of the segments that resonated with me. So I will share:
"Somehow the notion cropped up that we'd better do everything today. The idea took hold, and now almost everybody believes it. This is why so many women are running nonstop just to keep up. In a frantic attempt to realize their dreams, the dreams retreat and the frantic feeling takes hold.
A charmed life is different, because you live it in chapters, the way you would read a long novel. When you're engrossed in a story, nothing exists except what is happening now. Even though chapter 10 is laying the foundation for chapter 11, the book only makes sense one chapter at a time.
When you live your life this way--focusing on one chapter now, another later--you can devote more unfettered attention to what is yours to do at this time of your life, a time that will never come again. Look at the chapter you're now living. You may be in the college chapter, the crummy-first-job chapter, the home-with-small-kids chapter, or the second-career chapter. Circumstances can certainly make things more complicated and less clear-cut than these examples, but if you can keep in mind the main point of your present life chapter, you can give it priority.
Chapter living is the rational way to "have it all", because when you live this way you're not expecting to have it all at once. Its essence is paying close attention to the current chapter and not worrying about what you may be missing from prior or future ones. Their times are past, or yet to come.
The key is letting go of the compulsion to pursue every possible opportunity right now--even if pursuing it means a crowded life, an alienated family, or a hospital stay for exhaustion. That old saying about opportunity only knocking once is archaic as the flat-earth theory and as patently untrue. Opportunity knocks all the time--and it rings your doorbell, calls you up, and send you e-mails.
Ignore the message the keeps repeating "You aren't getting any younger." It's true, of course, in the literal sense, but the unspoken rest of the sentence--"and therefore you'd better do everything now"--is hogwash.....maturity helps, rather than hinders, any dream or aspiration you have....
Decide what chapters you want in your life story. Accept that fate may insert a few others. Give yourself without reservation to the chapter you're on. Trust that living this chapter fully will prepare you for what will next unfold. Don't worry that a choice like putting off college to volunteer overseas or taking tine from your career to be with your children is foolhardy. Such an experience will make you richer as a person and more valuable to the world.
It could also be the finest chapter in your biography."
4 comments:
What great advice! I've felt that way lately as I've killed my sleep in an attempt to finish my book. I read something on a literary agent's blog that was similar to the advice you posted--no book is worth alienating your family or putting off things that are truly important. I fell into that trap--staying up waaaaaaay to late writing and therefore being a totally grumpy, short-tempered mom the next day. And for what? It's not fair to my family, and really it's not fair to me, either. So, I am trying to embrace my family and my home (ie cleaning, laundry, all that fun stuff I am not a fan of) for this chapter of my life, and fit in writing when I can. I'd hate to find years later that I put too much emphasis on MY dream and lost what was really important in the end--time being a mother to my children. I can't get these years back once they're gone. Balance. It's so hard!
really good. I might have to borrow the book? My mom actually told me a story that she heard from a 70 about a life being verses in a song. She told me when I got married that being a "young married person" is only one verse in my song. To not rush having kids too soon. To enjoy that verse. Because once the verse is over, it's over. I always remembered that. Now I'm trying to enjoy the "young kids" verse--all too soon we will be in the "teenage kids" verse. (SCARY.)
I love that book. Did I give it to you?? If not, I meant to :) Thanks for the reminder. Is there a chapter in life called "utter chaos"?
I like that idea!! we all need to focus on our chapters because our lives will just be a blur if we don't slow them down and enjoy each chapter!! thanks for the reminder and analogy!!
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