This week in The Virtual Wire, Laura posted about receiving messages and asked us what messages we've received. Well, I got a message this week!
Since I've closed Virtual Angel, one of my life lessons is to learn how to work without devoting 100% of myself TO work. I've been taking it easy, if you can call birthday parties, various family and business trips, surgeries, school starting, daily homework, and after-school activities taking it easy.
Still, my natural inclination is to devote all of myself to whatever I'm doing. Plus, if there's a vacuum, it's pretty easy to fill it up. There are some days in which I keep going to the computer and checking e-mail and new blog posts from my Bloglines indicator. I could pretty much do this all day without running out of things to do. Then, after a day of this, I feel guilty, as if I've fallen off the wagon.
However, I also have those days in which I refuse to schedule anything, and I just do whatever the heck I want. Glorious, blessed life! One day, I read in bed for over three hours after the kids went to school. It was lovely, but I immediately had that thought of "Can't do too much of that!!!" and "It's fine for every once and a while, but you can't get lazy!" I'm self-monitoring, and I sound like a punishing parent – "Okay, that's enough." My coach tells me that another of my life lessons is to learn that I'm allowed to have fun before I work and do my chores. That's certainly a foreign concept to me.
(We really are getting to the message part; just bear with me.)
Mondays tend to be busy work days. I have a couple of weekly calls, and there are some Monday tasks to do. This Monday I had two of my calls canceled, which should have led to LOTS of free time for me. Instead, I used that time to get a TON of work done. I watched the clock, and I told myself that at 11:00 a.m. I would stop working. 11:00 came, and I was in the middle of something. I told myself, "I'm on a roll, so I'll keep going until 12:00."
"And it sure does feel good to get all this work done, Dawn," the voice also said.
12:00 came, and I was finished with what I had started, but I was feeling stressed by my Bloglines new blog post indicator steadily increasing. So, I read all my blogs just so that I could clear that damned red star. Whew. Everything cleared off the plates.
Uh-oh. Dawn is backsliding. There was some guilt, and I wasn't too happy with myself. I talked about it with my coach at 1:00, and we brought up that old issue of feeling as if I have to get all my work done before I can have fun and relax. I decided to cancel one of my tasks in the afternoon and do just that - relax.
I decided to read one of my favorite inspirational books, Wealthy Spirit, a series of daily affirmations. They're supposed to encourage healthy thinking about finances and financial stress reduction, but I find those affirmations so much more than just financial in nature.
Guess what today's affirmation was?
"I have as much time as I need to have as much fun as I want."
Pretty weird, huh? I had gotten the same message three times in one day: first from myself after a morning crammed with work, secondly in a conversation with my coach, and finally in a book of daily affirmations. It's a bit too much to ignore.
So, Laura, this is my message!
P.S. You know how I said that darned Bloglines notifier was stressing me out? Well, I changed the settings so that instead of checking for new blog posts on the blogs to which I was subscribed, it would check every six hours. Quite a difference! And you know what else? For some weird reason, I don't feel stressed about checking it. I'm letting it go, which is something I wasn't able to do before. Maybe it's not so weird. When it was checking every minute, I felt I had to keep up with it because IN THE NEXT MINUTE there could be something new. Now I know there won't be something new for a whole other six hours. Blessed relief!
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