We want our best work in the world, because the world needs it. We want our homes to feel relaxed. For our bosses to eye us for promotion. For your life to fill with ease and joy. Your kids will look at you in awe. Customers will queue up, and people as cool as you will want to sip tea with you - and you’ll have time.
Hi friends,
As I change gear into the new season after a wispy, juggly summer, I hold all the same dreams, a little chaos, and a lot of love, though with a marked shift in energy.
We are excitedly getting my daughter ready for Uni. I have had to spend more time on the back end of my jewellery business this summer (which pays my bills) - visit Grace and Flora Handmade Jewellery to explore.
I love having two creative businesses, though both tug at me like demanding toddlers, whilst I address personal things like hospital and vet appointments and all that goes with my lovely daughter leaving home.
I am not naturally organised, often laughably the opposite. Life is sometimes like being a kid in a sweet shop, and I’m wide-eyed at the front with a bursting bag. At other times I can feel like I’m buried under a piles of rocks.
You have your work too, and we forget to count the unseen places our energy goes, like caring, maintaining healthy relationships, friendships, homes piled with life-lived laundry, nourishing groceries present or absent, cooking, botch-job cleaning, messy personal admin, all while protecting our health and sanity.
Makings our Dreams Happen
Our dreams sparkle on the ordinary, peppering us with inspiration and hope. We gaze as we fold. We stir our desires into the pot. We battle the admin so we can be free. We stare out of the window at the clouds, despite the deadline. (You may also like these posts: The Road Less Travelled, Setting Intentions to Reclaim Your Power).
It has become the norm in western culture to be too busy. To pile it on.
‘How are you?’
‘I am soooo busy. You?’
‘Yes, soooo busy.’
Then we feel we are failing. We can hardly keep up. All you need is unforeseen problems at work, illness, death, something going wrong in your home, relationship strains, a cost-of-living crisis. Pressures that send the plates we spin flying all over.
When we live in fire-fighting mode for too long, we create a nervous system under threat. This causes anxiety, burnout, poor sleep, more pressure on relationships, poor quick fix groceries or ‘treats’ that only cause more harm like booze, fast food, or excessive shopping.
These are your body’s wake up call for change. Listen.
I don’t want to turn my joyful businesses into a treadmill of doom, and keep turning up the speed. I sometimes have to take a view of my life from outer space to get perspective.
This September, I have to re-establish my boundaries after a messy but lovely summer as I settle back into a routine. I got this useful tool below out to help me.
Put First Things First
“Do less, accomplish more.” Indian proverb
Let’s Establish Priorities
What lifestyle do you want? What matters most? What is there too much or too little of in your life? What are you spending too much time or energy on? Why does everything feel so urgent?
Paid subscribers can download the Life Audit Workbook on the Members Therapy Tools page if you haven’t already. And have you understood your values yet? Knowing these can bring so much clarity.
Problems Preventing Getting Our Shit Together
Avoidance
There is always something else to do, so we need to focus. The grid below keeps our eyes on the prize, bringing the courage and strength to plough through. Let a sense of meaning light your way.
Procrastination into Flow
I am one for writing a to-do list, then doing something totally different as if my life depended on it. I need a little procrastination time, and allow myself to wander in circles before I settle down. The grid helps with this too.
Creating Your Routine Riverbank
Routine reins in procrastination, and we humans crave structure, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. Rather than feeling routine as a restrictive dam around our body of water, let’s create a riverbank. The boundaries of routine we give ourselves allows our river to flow. Contained and flourishing, our river whirls with a wealth of life and energy. Birds may swoop in over the riverbank’s reeds because we gave our waters edges, and they can fish in our waters.
Do Less, Accomplish More
We want our best work in the world, because the world needs it. We want our homes to feel relaxed. For our bosses to eye us for promotion. For your life to fill with ease and joy. Your kids will look at you in awe. Customers will queue up, and people as cool as you will want to sip tea with you - and you’ll have time.
Let’s embrace these lines and squares for a moment, with open arms and a full heart. Let those dreams sparkle up your life so it shines.
Plan Weekly
Steven Covey, who wrote ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, knew how to get shit done, and have a lovely life too. His dreamy voice on audible is worth a listen. I guess he got it from Eisenhower who had a similar matrix, and also got shit done.
We are getting shit done this season.
Covey suggests we plan weekly, not daily, as days often wander in their own direction, which leaves us feeling despondent with an unchecked to-do list. It also means we can ‘chunk’ our time to save time, especially when we use this grid. Then we get to live more of our life with sandy toes or muddy boots.
The Get Your Shit Together Grid
Draw this grid to plan your time. (Paid subscribers can find the printout here). And it reveals your time. This grid determines which activities are ‘important’ and take out firefighting ‘urgent’ ones. It helps you see what does not deserve your time or attention now (or ever). Please do take ten minutes to do this.
Add everything from your to do list into the boxes. We want to prevent the top first box, ‘urgent, important’ getting too full, by spending more time in the top second box, ‘non-urgent, important’, where the birds sing as we work and we marvel at the beauty of our labour. This is the box where we get our shit together. This is where the writers among you do your hour a day. No more firefighting, no wasting time to cope with box 1 by doing stuff in box 4 that adds no value, like watching too much TV, scrolling and filling the trash with our empty crisp bags and wine bottles.
Goodbye stress and overwhelm. Hello commitment, responsibility and enjoying what we do.
Your Glittering Tasks of Gold
Next, identify one activity in your life that if you performed it regularly it would produce highly desirable results. Like writing your novel one hour a day over a year or three. Like ten minutes yoga. Or my one minute daily gratitude practice. I spend an hour extra making jewellery for my busiest month now so I wont have to do it urgently in December and enjoy the season.
I hope you enjoyed getting your shit together with me. If you liked this, please click the heart and share if you think others might find it useful. Paid subscribers can find the download and further materials in the Therapy Tools Page. Do consider upgrading to paid if you enjoy my writing, so I can continue!
Do you have more tips to share? How did you find using this grid? Are you naturally organised or more like me?
With love and gratitude,
Kate
Do you have more tips to share? How did you find using this grid? Are you naturally organised or more like me?
Oooh, this is so good. Perfect for my return to life and creativity I'm excited about now after months or depression and apathy!