Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 332 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! As I record this it’s raining, it seems like it’s been raining for a month. It’s kind of funny, I actually love the rain. I don’t love days where it’s just cloudy and dreary, but I love the days where it rains all day. But. The weather has been kind of crazy lately so we have been getting a lot of both and some sunshine mixed in so it gives us a nice contrast. Which I think adds a nice variety to life.
Now some of you may be thinking you already have a lot of variety in life, it would be nice to have something that’s consistent. I get it. And I agree. And I’ve talked about this before in other episodes how the only thing that’s consistent outside of us is change. So if things are always changing, and we don’t control anything outside of us, we have to provide that consistency for ourselves. THAT we do control. We have so much going on in our lives, most of us have families, work, pressures, lots of things that are pulling us in every direction. It can be really hard to separate ourselves from the busyness of life. To be able to ensure we don’t lose who WE are or who WE want to be can be very difficult when there’s the kids, the house, the laundry, the job, whatever it is that keeps you busy….it can be hard to separate ourselves from that feeling of being busy all the time. It can be hard to be consistent with ourselves when everything around us feels chaotic. It seems like the thing to do is to keep moving, to try to juggle all the balls in the air. When really if we would be still, we can then begin to realize the reason we feels so stressed is because we are trying to think about all the things at the same time and we are giving each thing the same amount of importance and so everything feels pressed for time, when in reality, that 90% of the time is not the case. The juggler is the reason the balls keep moving. Have you ever seen a juggler on tv or on YouTube where they freeze a picture of the juggler and all the balls are still in the air in a nice arc but now they aren’t moving and the juggler is just sitting there looking at them? What if you could do that too? What if you could picture yourself as a juggler and all the things in your head that you’re trying to juggle are balls in the air so you can look at them…for just a few minutes, right in the air? Now, because you have paused, you can give each ball the attention it deserves, and you may also see that oh, this ball isn’t a problem at all so from it’s fixed position you just take it and set it in a basket, now you have one less thing you’re juggling. And from that pause position, you can also see that taking a moment to yourself has allowed you the ability to very quickly narrow down what’s important right now and what’s not.
This last week I felt like I was doing a juggling act and when I did this exercise, I realized that one of the projects I had running through my mind was complete on my part, we are now just waiting for a rug to come in, which will be 2 months from now, I don’t have to do anything more right now, so that ball shouldn’t even be in the juggling act so take it out and put it away. One of the other balls I was juggling was a quote that came in higher than I thought it would be and so I was worrying about what the client would say. She’s out of town, once she returns on Friday we will meet and decide whether we are going to move forward or not, nothing has gone wrong. Another ball out of the juggling act. You see as long as we keep the juggling act going, we use half our energy worrying about things that we shouldn’t even be worrying about. I still had two balls in the air and I can now put my energy towards them because they really need my attention if I’m going to get them completed on time. Sometimes the best thing we can do is hit pause and evaluate if there’s anything we are juggling that is complete or out of our control. Most of the time, there is. Hitting pause may not feel like the right thing to do because we are so used to reacting. But more often than not, it’s the absolute best thing you can do.
Talking about the crazy weather lately, My husband, Eric and I were going to a party for a friend downtown Memphis, which is about a 25 minute drive for us, not that bad, but the weather was especially bad the evening of the party, they were predicting tornadoes for our area, we were worried we were going to have to cancel, but at the last minute the weather went north of us and Eric said “Looks like the weather is going to be ok after all, let’s go!” So off we go relieved the weather had calmed down and looked like the threat was gone, so we get to the party and there are lots of people there, we are in a cool old renovated building with a very cool terrace that overlooks the city. We are inside and the music is loud and everyone is having a good time, I have my clutch under my arm with my phone in it and I can feel that it keeps buzzing like someone keeps calling and texting so I tell Eric Im going to check it, so I look at my phone and my mom has called twice and she and dad both have sent a message saying they are worried about the weather for us and I text them back an say “it went north, we are good”. Then they text and say no there’s a tornado headed directly for Germantown where we live. So I step outside to call them back and as soon as we open the door to the terrace we hear the tornado sirens. Then I hear a man frantically talking on his phone to someone saying you mean a tornado is on the ground in Tupelo heading to Southaven? To which Eric pulls up his radar and sure enough, another cell has popped up headed directly for our small city where our house is. SO I look at Eric and I say “Kenzie, that’s our little yorkie, is home alone we have to get home right now. He looks at me like Im crazy and says we cannot get in the car and start driving right now, that would be more dangerous than being where we are. I say we are responsible for her life and I’m not gonna just leave her to hope she will be ok. And then he said “Heidi, if we get killed in a tornado trying to get home to her, she will be much worse off”. She is fine, she’s deaf so she’s sleeping right through it, as soon as the danger passes where we can head home, we will. He was right, I knew it. So that’s what we did and everything turned out fine that night. Pausing for a moment and looking at the reality of the situation was most certainly the best thing once I gave myself a chance to think about it.
Feminine energy can often be very creative but along with that it can also be emotional and reacting when emotions are high . Having the ability to push pause whenever I feel overwhelmed allows me to take the time to evaluate what’s really important and what Im just allowing to take up space unnecessarily. And visualization is a big part of this. Actually visualizing each thing you’re stressing about as a ball in a juggling act where you are the juggler, but instead of continuing to juggle you hit pause and you just notice each ball and pick it up and ask is this something that I need to be thinking about right now or is it just using up energy that is better spent elsewhere? It’s a very satisfying technique.
My challenge for you today is to try it. Recognize that you are the juggler, but you’re the juggler with a pause button, that you can push anytime you want. And that seems pretty powerful Share this with 3 busy people that you love, I love you guys. Ill talk to you in a few days!
