On Wednesday morning, I read an article in the November
issue of O Magazine about flexibility. The
author had never been a flexible person and went to see a physical trainer
whose specialty was stretching to achieve greater flexibility. He explained to her (I’m paraphrasing) that
most people’s muscles are imbalanced, as a result groups of muscles over
compensate for other muscle groups. When
this happens you overuse certain muscles, which leads to tightness and
imbalance. The trainer put her through a
series of stretches and exercises to help release the tightened muscles and her
flexibility instantly improved. My
thoughts in reading the article were #1 releasing those tensed up muscles must
feel so amazing and #2 I wish it were only as easy as a few deep stretches.
Later that afternoon, I was invited to a work
dinner with a client. I was given about
an hour’s notice and my boss encouraged me to go. Jokingly I said to her “When in 11 years have
I ever been able to do anything with only an hour’s notice?” The answer is….never. I am fortunate that she completely
understands, being a working mom herself, as did the client (who ended up
cancelling at the last minute anyway).
Little did they know how full my night already was with softball
practice, homework, dinner (somewhere in there) and a last minute run to Target
for supplies for the science project.
The very next night, I stopped by a going
away happy hour for one of my team members.
I knew it would be a quick stop, but it was important to me to stop by
and wish her well. I was envious of
everyone’s frosty drinks but knew that I had to be getting home. I picked up the kids, everyone had a great day
and homework was done – hooray! As I
waited for the dinner to cook, I caught up on Facebook. A friend was tagged in a picture of a list of
the 5th & 6th grade Spelling Bee participants (of
which her daughter was representing one of the 5th grade classrooms). I looked at the rest of the list to see if
there was anyone else’s name I recognized……..when all of a sudden I saw my
daughter’s name next to her class. How
exciting! I rushed into the other room
to ask her about it and her face lit up with a big smile. Yes, she had forgotten to tell me but it was
true, she was in the Spelling Bee! We
celebrated, this was so exciting. A
couple minutes later I asked the telltale question -when is it? It’s tomorrow. At 8:45am.
My heart sank. What? (My first reaction is always panic, like that
feeling when your alarm doesn’t go off and you wake up late.) I have meetings in the morning and it’s
really late for me to try to change them now.
She started to cry and I wanted to cry.
Thoughts of frustration, anger, sadness and hopelessness ran through my
head. How could she have forgotten? What am I supposed to do? I can’t possibly miss this, can I? I took a deep breath, apologized and told her
I would do everything I could to make it.
In my head I knew it all came down to a choice.
My life is not flexible. My life works like the body works, each
muscle playing it’s part and compensating for the ones that can’t do it on
their own. It’s not easy and though I
may write this blog every week, I still struggle to find my own balance. The key for me is that it is all about
choices. In every situation you have a
choice. Every day you get to decide what
is important to you for that day. What
is important to you in the morning may shift and change in the afternoon. Those shifts and changes are ok as long as
you are the one making the choice, rather than letting another person or
situation make the choice for you. The
thing about choices is that there are consequences. The consequences are inevitable. Whenever you have to choose one thing over another
you risk disappointing someone or making them angry with you or putting yourself
at a disadvantage. When you weigh the
options and make a choice own it, the good and the bad and be unapologetic. Don’t commiserate over what could have been or
replay it over and over in your head.
Don’t judge yourself for the choice that you make. Make the choice that is right for you.
The choice I made was to email my coworker,
explain my situation and ask if there was a way she could cover me in the
meeting we had at 9am. I knew that if
she said no, then I would go to the meeting and miss that part of the spelling
bee. I knew that if she said yes, it
could mean losing credibility with the client or more work for me, but this was
my choice, I had to own it either way.
Fortunately for me, she emailed me back about an hour later confirming
she’d be at the meeting. In the end it
all worked out.
The moral of my story today - you can’t do it
all. It’s physically impossible. Instead you have to make choices. Before you make those choices you have to dig
really deep within yourself and decide what is important to you, you and only
you. Only when you are clear on your own
intentions, your own flexibility, will you be able to make the choices that are
best for you.
Heart-FULLy Yours,
Kacey
One more thought – working on your “flexibility”
is hard! As you can see, even after
working on it for a couple years I still have moments of struggle. But the good news is that along the way I’ve
found tools that really help and I’d love to share them with you. Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and
we can chat more about how you can find your flexibility.
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