You'll never guess what I did the other day.
I totally reverted to one of my old patterns. One that rolls perfectionism in with overworking in with trying to carry the world on my shoulders.
Well, let me just show you. It all went down like this:
Me: Drops the toddler at preschool then puts together a healthy crockpot meal (Woke up sick! Better make something healthy I can eat for the next few days!)
Ben (my husband - sick 3 days later): Drives to work
M: Hops online for weekly lives on IG and FB (Because I promised and they need it!), then crawls into bed to continue working
B: Leaves work shortly after arriving and goes straight home to sleep, even though it’s Day 2 of an important military exercise . . . that he’s in charge of!! (His team will handle it.)
M: Gratefully accepts help from Mom to walk the dog, grab some groceries and bring the toddler home . . . but feels concerned and a bit guilty (What if I overtire her?)
B: Zero emotional labor. No checking to see if the child, dog, or anybody else needs anything. (Jenna’s got it!)
M: After taking care of the baby the rest of the day, remembers to put on retinol cream and carefully braid hair up to avoid breakage (HD is NOT kind to women over 40!)
B: Deodorant? Check! (What does my appearance have to do with anything?)
Ok, not sure how you’d interpret all this (my mom thinks, "That’s just the way it is,")
But here’s what comes up for me:
It’s NOT that men are useless. Or babies. Or self-absorbed.
(Because really . . . he’s sick! Why shouldn’t he take off work? Why shouldn’t he give his body the sleep it needs? Why shouldn’t he rely on trusted loved ones to temporarily pick up the slack?)
It’s that we’re so concerned people will think WE are!! (Or we might feel like we are.)
It’s pretty frustrating comparing my sick day to his . . . how the "right" things come so easily and effortlessly to him, but to me it’s kind of like a foreign language!
Here’s what I mean:
If I’m well rested and prepared, I do pretty well with the #notsorry vocabulary -- the lack of apologies, self-sacrifice, the worries about "imposing". . .
Heck, I even help OTHER people with it! #notsorry is one of my things!
But as soon as I’m off my game in some way (sick or new situation . . . which obviously happens a lot in the entrepreneurship game) I catch myself reverting to my "mother" tongue.
(Once I suggested that my mom go to the emergency room. She said she didn’t want to "bother" the doctors with something that might not be serious.)
So what's a girl to do?
Well, I’ve come up with a new tool to use in those situations! Because one of the most effective ways to break an old habit is to have a default intervention on hand so that IT becomes the new habit.
I’m calling it, "WWBD" aka What Would Ben Do? And all I have to do is ask that question when I suspect I might be slipping.
And what I’ve been thinking about today is . . . what would it be like to go through life like that ALL THE TIME? (And is it even possible??)
That’s something I’m going to play with more and more in 2020!
What about you? Are you an #imsorry or a #notsorry person?
Jenna