Happy in the NOT

This is the image I came home to after a very active but all around great day yesterday.  It was my little high-five with Mother Nature.  The clouds were yellow and I was reminded of this little video I had stumbled upon.  I did not blog as much as I wanted to this week and I have no regrets and I have no excuses and both (regrets and excuses) are things I’m trying to remove from my life…so at the end of the day, I feel successful about NOT blogging.  

 

Is there something you’re judging yourself about NOT doing.  Is there a way to find a reason to be proud about NOT doing it?   It feels kind of naughty (or NOT-y)…in a good way! 

Go with the flow

My husband is safely home….which means:

 

My time a single mom is over.

My back-to-back meeting day is over.

My back-to-back doctor appointment day is over.

My driving all over tar-nation day is over.

My over committing and finishing up things day is over.

My barely keeping the house together time is over.

I could go on…

I thought it was going to be easy peasy…

I was wrong…

I will definitely have a different intention for next week…

I think slow-flow-with a cup-a-Joe sounds good…but wait….

My son’s birthday and sleepover

My PTA meeting

My three clients

My group sessions

My, my, my, my….aw heck…

Might as well go with the flow…whatever it may be… 

I wouldn’t have it any other way…thankyouverymuch.

Avoidance

I have to admit, I’ve been avoiding this space.  I love to write and in fact I write daily in my other blog, but right here on this space, I think Ms. Perfection is visiting and the thoughts go something like this:

I have to have something profound to say.

I’m waiting for that perfect inspiration to write about.

I have to make another video and be “good at it”

I wonder what people think about my writing.

Is anyone even reading this?

I think I have to get my wabi sabi wand out and wave it over this space (and my brain) and just get going where “I am” and not try to make this something it’s not (and more importantly, I’m not).  So there!  I make this pledge that by Monday, my wabi sabi self will be back on track and will be saying things…whatever they are, and however I want to say them!  There…that feels better.

Mantra

My new favorite phrase is wabi sabi.

Woman’s Day had an article promising the secret to happiness (and who could not read THAT article), and lo and behold, my new favorite mantra greets me.  Wabi sabi is, in its barest essence, the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature.  Before finding this concept, I had been saying in my mind and out loud “imperfectly perfect” as I go about doing “things” like writing, coaching, cleaning the house, parenting …you know pretty much everything in my life.  I think that wabi sabi is WAY MORE FUN to say.  I can see that being my daily (or moment by moment if need be) mantra to release the perfectionist tendencies that can stop me in my tracks.  Wabi sabi is like our little secret code-phrase in my Martha Beck circles; being “willing to suck at it“…again, wabi sabi feels much kinder. 

As seems to be true for me a lot lately,if I find something I hone in on (ie “perfectly imperfect)…I see more signs of it in other places like in this blog post by Christine Kane  and then in the concept of wabi sabi, and then in a book I just read called Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway (I wrote about it here).  As I often say…I’m getting signs from the Universe, that I’m onto something.

The Woman’s Day article had this poem which REALLY speaks to me:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That is how the light gets in.

By Leonard Cohen

And to end this post I offer this intention to you:  WABI SABI