Introduction

Welcome to Sing With Your Feet, the podcast in which we look at how we channel our curiosity about the world, and plan for a time when we can get lost down a rabbit hole.

The podcast in which what is irritating us becomes a springboard for meaningful action.

The podcast in which we see that how we care for ourselves is going to impact how we feel about our lives…and we give ourselves an action plan to take better care of ourselves.

My name is Lily Fields, and I am going to be your fairy godmother for the next half hour or so.

This episode is part three of a four week series about the Idea Life Exercise. We’ve talked in the last two episodes about the first two questions that make up the Exercise: What is working? and What isn’t working?

This week’s question is deceptively simple: What do I need to think about? It is when we start developing an action plan…even if that action plan ends up being just one tiny little thing that we will do (which is what we’ll talk about next week).

But we start by taking a few minutes to think.

I don’t want to insult your intelligence, Cinderella. I know you know how to think. You are a problem-solver extraordinaire. You prioritize like a boss-girl. You keep your life in ship-shape. 

But let’s have this conversation anyway. The worst thing that can happen is that you will realize just how much of a boss you are. The best thing that can happen is that maybe you will come away with some tools for self-reflection that will help you channel your efforts into a helpful action plan.

Shark Week

Not too long ago, I was reading a book which cited a filmmaker whose specialty is filming sharks for nature documentaries, and of course, gained prominence during the cultural phenomenon that is Shark Week. 

What do sharks have to do with anything, Lily Fields?

Well, that’s a fantastic question, and is the same one I asked myself while I was reading a book ostensibly about the psychological origins of unwanted sexual behaviors in individuals. (Sounds like loads of fun, huh?)

How exactly does this filmmaker manage to get such intimate footage of sharks without any protection or cages, without getting eaten or at the very least, attacked?

The answer was fascinating: According to the filmmaker, sharks attack prey. (Obviously). But how does it know that something is prey? I mean, we all know about the blood in the water thing. But a shark recognizes a prey because a prey will swim away from the shark as fast as it can.

The natural instinct of prey is to flee from a predator. It’s about self-preservation, right? This flight reaction awakens the predator instinct in the shark. (I may have just explained that in a way that sounds like victim blaming, which is not what I mean to do.)

So, with nerves of steel, this filmmaker takes his camera swims towards the shark. And the shark, who doesn’t have any experience with something swimming towards it, doesn’t attack, but lets itself be approached. It’s predatory instinct is disarmed by curiosity as to what this thing is that is not prey.

That’s how the filmmaker manages to get this fascinating, close-up, never before seen footage of the shark.

This week’s episode is going to help us do that with what’s going on in our lives to trip us up…whether the shark we have previously been trying to flee is a habit of time-wasting down internet rabbit holes, or irritations both major and minor that really make us nuts, or simply a sense of boredom with our lives… 

With our theme this week, we are setting aside a few minutes each day to swim towards the shark to gain some understanding about our lives: head on. 

Part One: Isn’t that interesting?

The first two questions, what is working? and what isn’t working? help us to take a step back and be an impartial observer of our lives. I’m not saying that there isn’t any emotion in the process…I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: having a Kleenex box handy is useful during these few minutes you spend on your Ideal Life Exercise, because lucidity sometimes comes at the cost of a few tears. 

This third question, what do I need to think about?, is a wide open discussion question. 

I think I might have told you this before, but instead of using a paper notebook for my Ideal Life Exercise, I actually use a journaling app on my tablet. It’s not intended for how I use it, but I was able to create a template with the four questions, and I can create entries in advance.

This is a useful piece of information for what I am going to say next:

I am exactly like you. I get lost on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest just like you do. I have, on more than one occasion, gotten to, what I can only hope, is the farthest end of the internet. 

By the time I realize how lost I am, that shark is already devouring me. I’ve wasted a perfectly good thirty minutes looking at orange evening gowns on Pinterest, or reading inspiration relationship quotes on Instagram.

I’ve gotten much, much better at avoiding this time wasting trap, and here’s how: the minute I find something interesting, but I sense that it is going to send me down a rabbit hole, I ask myself which theme of my Ideal Life this little snippet of information addresses. 

One time, it was an article about how the different phases of our monthly cycles impact our efficiency at work. One time, it was a rabbit hole about Gravitas and what the elements of it are (don’t ask how the orange evening gowns are related. They just…are). Another time it was an Instagram post about free-range parenting. Or about self-care.

I know perfectly well that I don’t have the time to read the whole article or to think about it right then, and if I took the time I would be mad at myself for not getting the stuff I really needed to get done, done.  But I know that I have one day every three weeks in which I have set aside ten minutes to actually think about this. 

So I either screenshot the piece of information or the post, or I copy a link to the article. From there, I go into my journaling app, and I paste the information into the entry for the Ideal Life theme on the next day it is going to come up. 

It requires a little bit of self-discipline, but let me admit something to you: there is nothing quite like the sense of satisfaction I get when I can tell myself, “Yes, Lily, this is very interesting, but right now isn’t the time.” It’s a little bit like…well, it’s like I’m parenting myself. Or maybe like I’m being my own fairy godmother. 

When I can do that, and then set myself up with a time that I will be allowed to get lost on the subject…I’m actually quite proud of myself. I can give myself a little head-pat and get on with my day.

We’ve said this before, but our time is our most precious resource. We don’t get a minute of it back once we’ve wasted it. So actively redirecting, in the moment, how we use our time, means that we are investing our resources wisely. No one else can use our time for us. It is up to us to organize it. We are adults now. Our time is our responsibility.

By setting aside those few minutes to do your Ideal Life Exercise in the morning, you are making good use of your time. It is a date you set with yourself to catch up on some thoughts you’ve been having, or to actually follow an idea down an internet rabbit hole. By channeling your energies in this into a time in the relatively near future, (in my case, in the next three weeks), I am avoiding wasting my time now, with the promise of allowing myself the pleasure of hunting down these thoughts in the future.

Nowadays we have access to so much information. Granted, and I think I’ve already told you this, but as a child, I used to sit in our basement with our shelves of the Encyclopedia Britannica and thumb through it, getting lost as I read about weird and wonderful oddities in the world. I did the same when I was gifted my first encyclopedic dictionary in French. I know I’m a weirdo. 

I tell you this, not because I like to admit that I’m a freak, but because I want you to know that this “getting lost down the rabbit hole” is something that I have been fighting for a very, very long time. When the internet arrived when I was in college, and that dangerous dangerous dangerous thing that is a hypertext link…or as I call it, the portal to the end of the universe…there was no end to my capacity to be curious and waste every waking minute.

Then came social media. I think my only saving grace was that I didn’t have a smartphone until literally this January. My self-control issues when it comes to the pursuit of information would have been a death knell if I hadn’t started telling myself what to do! 

It wasn’t until I started scheduling time to pursue my geekery with my Ideal Life Exercise, and specifically, this third question, that I have gotten a handle on my time-wasting habits.

Now, when I find something that inspires even a tiny bit of curiosity, I say to myself, and sometimes even out loud, “Why, now, isn’t that interesting. Let’s schedule some time to think about this.”

There is a caveat to this rule, and it’s one that is hard to gauge as you start to tumble down the rabbit hole. I call it the “Thirty Second Google exception.”

I mean, I am the person at the grocery store googling random facts about Elvis because “Suspicious Minds” is playing on the radio, and I am the person who looks up the lyrics to 90s rock songs because suddenly when I think about them, they don’t make sense anymore. (Case in point, the song Two Princes by the Spin Doctors. Don’t get me started.)

My rule on this is firm: if it will take less than thirty seconds to scratch the itch, then I can do it. But then it has to be done. Phone put away. Internet browser closed.

All of this to say: When I sit down to work on my Ideal Life Exercise for any given theme in the morning, I will sometimes already have a few things to think about, because I have scheduled them ahead of time. I’ll be honest, quite often, by the time I get to the link or the screenshot, I’m not even terribly interested in it anymore. I mean, orange even gowns? Come on! But I’m glad that I scheduled that time, and glad I didn’t waste my time on it when I first found it. 

It also happens, though, that I am really, really glad I set aside some time to actually think about this topic, rather than just quickly trying to get the basic idea while standing outside the bathroom at the Conservatory waiting for my boys to finish up washing their hands before class.

Setting aside this time to really look deeply into something that might inform how I pursue my Ideal Life gives me a sense of progress, and it means I am taking myself and my interests seriously. And that is always something to celebrate.

Part Two: What’s pissing me off?

A second consideration, if I don’t have any previously scheduled thinking to do, is to ask myself the question, “What is pissing me off right now?”

This may or may not be related to question two, which is…anyone? Anyone? That’s right, what isn’t working?

This question relates back to earlier this year, when we talked about the little rocks in our shoes: those little things that are bothering us that we simply never bother to take the time to address.

I believe that I have often taken the example of not being able to find my keys, or losing my glasses (which are surprisingly difficult to find when they are not on my face!) This is a tiny little rock in my shoe that relates to several areas in my Ideal Life: my mental health (because there is nothing that makes me feel more crazy than not being able to find my keys), my “stuff”, or as I like to call it, “Contentment”, or the theme of keeping a clean house, or the theme of habits and routines.

When I ask myself, what do I need to think about,  and can ask myself, honestly, what is pissing me off? Then I can start finding ways to address it. Depending on the theme I am looking at on any given day, I can look at what is pissing me off through that lens. 

For example, I am irritated because for two days in a row I have managed to misplace my glasses, leaving them in random places. Keeping in mind, in my Ideal Life, I am a person who has a designated home for important items, and can find everything she is looking for. Let’s imagine that today, my theme is habits and routines.

So I can ask myself: is there a habit or a routine that will help me stop putting my glasses in random places where I won’t find them? (Yes, believe it or not, I have considered getting a glasses chain, but…I guess I’m holding out a few more years on this one. I just can’t. I just…ugh. I can’t.)

Or what if my theme is Body Positivity and Health. I can ask myself: why is it that I need to keep taking off my glasses? Is it because I can’t see well enough with them, and maybe I need to schedule a visit with the eye doctor?

Or what if my theme is Contentment—aka my stuff. I can ask myself, “why do you have a second pair of glasses if you literally don’t know where you put them, my dear?” And then maybe figure out where that rescue pair is currently residing.

You see, these are little annoyances we might never take the time to actually address if we don’t schedule the time with ourselves to think about it. 

I am of the firm belief that if something pisses me off, I need to do something about it. This is as true of the tread marks on the wall in the hallway of my apartment building, whether or not they are our fault, as it is when someone leaves trash on the sidewalk. If it pisses me off, then I need to do something about it. 

It’s not enough to just get mad or annoyed. I have always believed in channeling irritation into action. Being part of the solution is a way to help the cycle of anger complete itself. If it’s not something that I’m willing to do something about, then it isn’t something worth getting pissed off about.

So, this question, about what is the rock in my shoe right this instant, is one that will, often lead us to the fourth question, which is, spoiler alert, what one small thing can I do today to get me closer to my Ideal Life.

When you look at what is irritating you as an opportunity to take one small action to get closer to being the person you want to be in your Ideal Life, you are already making progress. But you have to start by taking apart what is making you feel like you’re going to pull your hair out, and examining it for what in it is something that is within your power to impact.

The things that piss you off can be a springboard to meaningful progress.

Part Three: Am I taking care of myself?

So, let’s imagine that you have already answered the first two questions, and as we evoked last week, that nothing in particular is working, but nothing in particular isn’t working, either. 

This happens. It so happens, also, that you haven’t already put something on your schedule to think about on this topic, and you don’t have any particular rock in your shoe, either.

This happens, too. This isn’t necessarily anything to be worried about. Sometimes, things are just chugging along without need for our intervention. 

On the other hand, if it happens twice in a row, it’s worth looking closer. We said last week that emotional numbness can be an early mental health warning sign.

I’m not a mental health professional, but I am someone who has experienced post-partum depression. Long-term emotional numbness is not normal, and it gets in the way of living any kind of life, Ideal or not.

When nothing is working, but nothing isn’t working…and nothing is irritating me, but nothing is interesting to me either…and this happens… I always ask myself, “Am I taking care of myself?”

Am I getting enough sleep? (often the answer is no.) Am I drinking enough water? (Also often a no.) Am I eating healthy? (hah. Usually not.) Am I getting enough exercise? Are my monthly cycles regular?

These baseline questions, if answered honestly, can also give us some insight to what is going on. 

I don’t know about you, but when I don’t get enough sleep, or if I am simply not sleeping well, I become someone that I do not like. My family gets the brunt of this, because I will have a short fuse, and often without cause. I just snap at them. Obviously, this impacts my Marriage and my Parenting circles of my Ideal Life, but also my Mental Health, and leaves me with zero Gravitas.

Not getting enough sleep leaves me unable to face my Commitments with joy, and it means that my work is less efficient. 

Getting enough sleep is the numero uno critical element to living the Ideal Life. We cannot live our Ideal Life when we are exhausted. It just can’t happen. So if you’re feeling numb and uninspired, I want you to take a very careful look at your sleep habits. 

That second basic need–hydration? You know, years and years ago, I worked at Walt Disney World in Florida.

 I lead a tour at Epcot called the Undiscovered Futureworld Tour. It was the ultimate Disney geekery tour, and I took guests around Epcot and talking about Walt’s vision for utopia, or as he called it, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. 

The people who took this tour were nothing but the geekiest of the geeks, the Disney dorks, the people who lived and breathed Disney trivia. These were my people…

We met before 7:00AM, so that they could experience Epcot the way Walt imagined it: the futuristic vision of what the 2000s would look like, back when he was imagining it in the 1970s. 

If you have been to Florida, you know what it is like. It is…hot. And it doesn’t wait for noon to get hot. It is hot as early as 7:00AM. So, here we were, traipsing miles around the park, going into absolute minute detail about every single material, every angle, every thought that went into the place. And we were talking. And geeking each other out. It was an absolute adrenaline rush.

By the time we said goodbye, it would be noon. And I would manage…just barely…to get home before the crash happened, whereupon I would pass out…literally…on the couch for the rest of the day and would wake up with a pounding headache.

This happened every. Single. Time.  I did the Underdiscovered Futureworld Tour. I vaguely remember my husband saying, “If that tour makes you feel this way, you should stop doing it.” But I loved giving that tour. 

One time, when we were at a fair at Lake Eola in Downtown Orlando, my husband was given a bottle of Gatorade as a freebie. He didn’t drink it, but he threw it into my bag as I was leaving for work one day.

I found it on my way home and drank it in the car. And that day, I didn’t pass out. As a matter of fact, I felt great. 

It was the most intense “duh” moment of my entire life: I was passing out because I was dehydrated. I know just how dumb I am making myself sound, but listen: I grew up in Northeastern Ohio. I had no concept of what the heat could do to my body. So this was literally the first time in my life that I had experienced dehydration. 

Since then, I have been very, very serious about making sure that I am drinking enough water. It seems like such a small thing, but in the heat of the action, I didn’t realize what was happening, and adrenaline and excitement can trick us into thinking we are fine, when in fact, we are not.

Staying hydrated, as simple as this sounds, sometimes requires an action plan. Whether it is a little timer reminding you to drink every hour, or having strategically placed bottles, or whatever works for you. But don’t wait until you feel thirsty. 

‘Nuff said. 

Eating healthy, eating balanced meals can play a big important role in how you feel about yourself. Nutrition, we know, is critical to helping children grow. It isn’t less important to our health as we get older. 

When I can point to my bad eating habits as one of the reasons why things aren’t going as well as I would like, I can start looking to build habits of meal planning and or getting creative about eating better. 

I also, as you know, am a binge eater, and this can be triggered by, among many other things: boredom. Emotional numbness and boredom are cut out of the same cloth, and one can impact the other. Being attentive to when the answers to the questions What is working and what isn’t working are both, well, nothing, I will nearly always be able to trace a direct line to a bingeing episode. This is for me, and for you this might not at all speak to you. It might not be bingeing for you…it might be something else. 

But being able to recognize how these elements fit together, for me, in my life, has brought me a sense of agency. I can recognize that the urge to binge is about having control over something, and that in that moment, I really need control.

It doesn’t always stop me, but it gives me greater compassion for myself, and I am sometimes able to take a less judgy-harsh tone with myself. Having a little perspective helps me talk to myself the way I might with a friend who is going through a hard time, rather than attack myself for my inability to quash my impulses to overeat.

We have all heard how exercise is supposed to be a mood elevator. I saw a funny tweet the other day that said, “I regret to inform you that regular exercise has, in fact, improved my mood.”

It’s hard to schedule, it’s hard to prioritize ourselves for this. But love it or hate, it really can impact our outlook. It’s such a simple thing. It’s worth trying.

I’m going to take my indulgent husband as an example for this, because for him, getting out to run in the early morning really does make him feel alive. When he starts to get overwhelmed with life and papers to grade and the scalawags, the first thing he drops from his daily routine is his morning run. 

And it is the first thing he will complain about lacking. It helps ground him, and I can always tell he’s having trouble keeping his workload and family load balanced when he starts missing his run.

When he does get back into the habit, he is almost instantly more balanced. For him, it is a magical 45 minutes in the morning that means everything.

And lastly, without dwelling on it too, too long, our monthly cycles are unique to each of us, but there are, within our unique cycles, patterns to be found. Digging in and tracking our cycles can help us to examine when we are feeling a little numb or disinterested, and see if it isn’t maybe a moment in our monthly cycle where we are simply less motivated. This happens, too, and it isn’t something to get up in arms about. If anything, it’s something to receive with open arms. 

Knowing our own bodies and our monthly cycles can provide insight into a lack of motivation. 

It’s worth it to keep an eye on it…for this reason, and for the myriad other reasons I have gone on and on about over the last few months! 

Conclusion

Self-reflection isn’t something we were taught to do at school. It’s something most of us don’t take the time to do, because…well…life often gets in the way.

But setting aside a few minutes each day to be curious about ourselves and our thoughts and our motivations, and actually taking time to think is going to have an impact on how we feel about ourselves. 

These few minutes each day when we become the object of our own study is when we get to know ourselves better–and knowing ourselves is the first step to falling in love with ourselves.

Closing

Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe on your podcatcher, and please, if you enjoy something you’ve heard here please share it with someone you think could use a fairy godmother, too!

 A great big thank you to Seven Productions here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie as the Intro and Outtro to the show. Also, thanks to Matt Kugler who sang it and Claude Ekwe who wrote it.

This is your fairy godmother signing off. Just remember: it is never too late to start singing with your feet.

Show notes:

Talking Points: I need to think! Escaping from the rabbit holes; how what is pissing you off can help you make progress; how ignoring our basic needs can lead to stagnation.

If you have a question about the Ideal Life Exercise, drop Lily a line: lily@lilyfieldschallenge.com

A great big thank you to Seven Productions, https://7prod.fr/,  here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie for the Intro and Outtro to the show. Also, thanks to Matt Kugler who sang it and Claude Ekwe who wrote it.

 Show notes:

Talking Points: I need to think! Escaping from the rabbit holes; how what is pissing you off can help you make progress; how ignoring our basic needs can lead to stagnation.

Homework:

• What are the rabbit holes that zap your energy and your attention? Instagram? Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? Imagine what it would look like to become more disciplined in your media use. 
• Think about a time when you successfully found a solution to a problem that was driving you nuts. Did it require an investment of time? Of money? Allow yourself to imagine investing in solutions to the little things that are irritating yourself right now. How would your life be better if those irritations were gone?
• Honest question: Are you taking care of yourself? What small tweak could you make–setting a bedtime? Drinking more water? Eating more vegetables? Getting outside more often?–that could taking better care of yourself make your life better?

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Introduction

Welcome to Sing With Your Feet, the podcast in which we hop down to the pumpkin patch to rescue a listener from a very very bad day.

The podcast in which we look at what isn’t working in our Ideal Life, without blaming ourselves for every tiny thing that’s going wrong.

The podcast in which we draw a distinction between expectations and expectancy, and find that one of them is an incredible vector for fairy dust…

My name is Lily Fields, and I am going to be your fairy godmother for the next half hour or so.

We are in week two of a four week series about the four questions we need to ask ourselves every day about just one theme of our Ideal Life. I sometimes will refer to your Ideal Life as something of a big beautiful Venn Diagram, and if you need help understanding that, then you should go back and listen to Episode 34, called Navigating Your Ideal Life. 

We’ve been trying to distill your life down to its basic components, and seeing how they interact and overlap…so that’s why I like to see it as a Venn Diagram. We did this by answering the prompt: In my ideal Life I am a person who… keep in mind, it’s not, “In my Ideal Life I have…” or “In my Ideal Life my husband is a person who…” 

After we’ve spent a lot of time answering that prompt, then we take the time to see what themes rise to the top. For me, there were 19 of them, which included Work, Parenting, Marriage, Health, Personal Style, A Clean House and way more. Your themes may be different from mine, and that’s okay. That’s great. That’s normal!!! We are all different, right?

Then, each day, we take just one of those themes and we answer four extremely simple questions about that theme: 1. What is working? (That’s what we talked about last week.) 2. What isn’t working (That’s what we are talking about this week.) 3. What do I need to think about? 4. What do I need to do today?

If you feel like I am getting repetitive about this, then I am 100% doing my job. Repetition is how we get good at anything, and getting good at examining our progress towards our Ideal Life is no exception! 

That said, I promise we will be moving on to another topic in just a few short weeks as we head into the holiday. Bear with me, Cinderella. We are on our way somewhere!!!

Part One: Listener Question:

I’m going to share a listener letter with you, but I want to assure you–I wrote back right away and even had an amazing FaceTime conversation with this listener to talk through some of what happened, before I asked permission to share her story with you. You’ll see that literally nothing could better illustrate what we are going to be talking about in today’s episode better than this tale of no good deed going unpunished. (And if you didn’t just hear Elphaba belting that out, then you and I need to reconsider our working fairy godmother/Cinderella relationship.)

So, all musical theater diversions aside…here’s that letter.

Dear Lily,

I hate my life. I hate my children. I really hate my husband. I’m sorry to dump all this on you, but I feel like you might be the only person who understands and won’t judge me.

Some idiot in my family (me) got an idea that it would be fun to go to the pumpkin patch with my kids. I got this stupid idea from an article I saw in People magazine about celebrities, and the pictures were so pretty. I got it into my stupid head that In my Ideal Life my family dresses in plaid shirts and cowboy hats and goes to the stupid pumpkin patch.

I have three kids, boy/girl twins age 4 and one toddler, boy, 18 months. I also have one husband, age 33.

I swear, the day started off bad, and I should have aborted the mission. My older son accidentally gave my toddler a black eye that morning. My daughter refused to wear a plaid dress I bought her because she said it looked like something a boy would wear. I finally convinced her by letting her wear a lace t-shirt of mine under the dress.

My husband was clearly not into this, and he kept saying, “why don’t we just get a pumpkin at Publix?” and I kept muttering  “please just shut up” because obviously, my husband not being into this meant that my older son, who already would have preferred to stay home and watch cartoons, was kept saying, “this is stupid.”

We drove by…count them…not one, not two, byt three Publix supermarkets on our way to the pumpkin patch, by the way, some sort of cosmic torture, with my husband saying, “we could just stop right here…” at each one. At the third one, I couldn’t hold my tongue and I said, “Can you just pretend for a few minutes that you love your family?”

This isn’t what I meant to say, but it was enough to get my daughter crying.

The pumpkin patch was a fiasco. My older son started sneezing within seconds of getting out of his carseat and my toddler fell in love with the ugliest pumpkin in the patch. I kept trying to take pictures, trying to get everyone to smile. You could imagine how that went, or you can see the picture I attached.

Lily, I went into this trying to live my Idea Life and I ended up hating my life. Help.

By the way, I’m not always this negative. I love the podcast and I like to listen while I’m doing the dishes because the music makes me want to dance.

Okay. Now help. 

Love,

Pumpkin Patch Party Pooper in Greenville, South Carolina

Ooooofff…Girl…I feel this. I feel this in every inch of my body, and not just because I saw the photo. I feel this because I have lived similar crises with my own family, and have come away saying, “we are never doing anything fun again for as long as I live.”

It’s like…the higher our expectations for an activity, the more certain we are to fail, right? 

Well, this is when we need to start singing with our feet.

You see, there is a fundamental shift in thinking that you need to do in order to stop hating your family for ruining your Instagram-worthy pumpkin patch photo shoot, and I can highlight it with just one sentence, taken from your letter, in your own words. May I?

In my Ideal Life my family dresses in plaid shirts and cowboy hats and goes to the pumpkin patch.

Let’s go back to the basics here for a second. When we answer that prompt, In my Ideal Life I am a person who… it is not about our family or how they dress, right? Or about where we go, right? It is about WHO you are in your Ideal Life.

Maybe, in regards to this situation, a more apt phrasing would be, In my Ideal Life, I am person who enjoys memorable moments with my family. Or In my Ideal Life, I am a person who has fun holiday traditions. Or In my Ideal Life, I am a person who is sensitive to the wants of my family and knows when to push and when to let go.

Let me reassure you: there is nothing wrong with wanting picture perfect holidays. We will talk about that in a few weeks. Dreaming about what we want our kids to remember about our holiday celebrations is fun! Pinterest is a great place to get inspired by, but a lousy place to set our hopes on. People Magazine articles glorifying celebrity holiday traditions is a great place to get an idea from, but a lousy place to get parenting advice from.

But to be truly authentic about what happened in this situation, you need to ask yourself that ever important question, “why?” What was it about that celebrity pumpkin patch article that inspired you? Having talked to you, and asked you this question live via FaceTime, I know that your answer surprised you, and I even wrote your answer down in my notes: I loved seeing them outside like that together.

You shared with me that your family doesn’t get to spend a lot of time outside. Your son has allergies, your daughter isn’t very outdoorsy. Your husband would rather build things in the garage than take a bike ride. And the little one–I believe you said you feel like the toddler leash was something created for him.

So. What we discovered is that in your Ideal Life, you are someone who gets outside with her family.

If that is what inspired your interest in doing this activity, then maybe there would have been a less high-stakes way to go about it, right? 

The idea was great. And, if you hadn’t pinned all your hopes for those perfect photos of the experience, maybe it might have been great. Your expectations got in the way of expectancy, and there is an important difference in the two, which I am going to stifle my urge to explain in the voice of the Philosopher Princess…I am going to try to summarize the difference in a completely normal voice, hold on…

Here we go… Expectations are like a checklist that will lead to an anticipated outcome. Expectancy is saying “I wonder what will happen if I bring these different elements together,” and then hoping for the best, but not hanging your ten-gallon hat on any one outcome. 

Expectations, while a perfectly valid way to get things done that depend entirely on ourselves, or when we have communicated doable steps with the people we need to have on board,  will inevitably lead to disappointment when they need to get checked by other people who don’t know that they are supposed to be checking off boxes. The outcome that you hope for cannot be met. Which is, we agree, what happened in your situation. 

Expectancy might say, “I’d love for my family to go outside together this fall, so I’m going to suggest a few outdoorsy things and see what makes my family sparkle.” 

I wonder what would happened if, maybe, in an effort to add some levity, you would have been willing to say, “Let’s look for the ugliest pumpkin we can find.” At the very least, this unexpected twist might have made it possible to not have to try and convince everyone to smile for pictures.

Just like when we talked about Creativity being the act of saying, “what would happen if…”, here you are creating a situation that is harder to fail. Ugly pumpkins are still pumpkins. And they are more fun to look for. More natural smiles. And oh no! What if they actually end up with a good-looking pumpkin? Heavens, no!

In this situation, there is no ideal outcome…but there is potential for less stress and more joy. And, lest I repeat myself endlessly, joy is the fairy dust that makes our lives worth living.

You and I talked about this, but I want to reiterate it for our listeners: Your Ideal Life is about who you are. It’s about how you react, about how you think…it’s not about anyone else. You can only control what happens between your ears, my dear, and how that impacts what you do with your mouth and your hands. 

When you love yourself, when you consent to your life, and when you stop comparing yourself and your life to others, and especially celebrities on Instagram with their nannies and their cowboy hats and their endless resources for cute outfits… you are, by the nature of things, going to create more memorable, joyful moments. 

It will happen. But you must let go of your unrealistic expectations.

And…actually, I want to insert a little personal story here, because I did something recently that could very easily have caused me to fall into the expectations conundrum…but by some miracle, and after years of practice in the seeking of fairy dust, I managed to let expectancy take the wheel, rather than my checklist of expectations for everyone in my life.

Many years ago, a very dear friend received as an inheritance an amazing grand piano from her great-uncle. Her house only being large enough for one piano, she asked if I would like to house her old piano until her son was out on his own, at which time he would take it back. It was like…a long-term loan. 

To celebrate the arrival of her grand piano at her house, she had a party, at which we made music with her family, some musician friends…it was so much fun. This is also the same friend who organized a living room concert to celebrate her 40th birthday. 

Well. Years passed, and her son picked up the piano back in January. I was very sad to see it go, because it had become part of my family. 

Fast forward to the start of this summer, when a dear old lady from my church was moving out of her home and into a Residence for seniors. She was looking to rehome her piano, and offered it to me. She mobilized some people to help move it, who had a little truck. A friend watched my boys while we went and helped pick the piano up, and then suddenly, I had a piano again!

I knew that I wanted to celebrate my new piano, just like my friend had all those years ago. Obviously, my new piano was not a grand piano, and my apartment is not an exquisite showpiece on the hill. But nonetheless, I organized a little party, inviting the people who helped move it, the lady who gave us the piano and her adult son. A few people canceled at the last minute, so I scrambled, inviting everyone I ran into to my party.

Now remember, I celebrated a birthday recently. It wasn’t an accident that this party was around my birthday. I wasn’t going to tell anyone in advance, but this was, for me, a way to celebrate my 45 years in a special way, with special people. Plus, I convinced my friend Myrtille, who loves to sing, to perform a song for our guests. My friend Aline even got out my son’s double bass and played along. It was…in a word…magical.

Listen. My apartment is tiny. Everything in it is falling apart. I usually don’t like to invite people over because of the shame I sometimes feel at the state of affairs. (I mean, we literally do not have cupboard doors on our under sink area…so the fact that we store a dozen PlayMobil toy bins under there cannot be hidden.) But I decided to set that aside, and do my best to create a pleasant atmosphere with pretty food, good people, and nice music. And you know what? It was amazing.

And you know what else? I didn’t take a single photo. It never even crossed my mind. I was so enjoying being with my guests, and singing songs and eating cookies and drinking bubbly… It is not because we didn’t take pictures that the event never happened. I really believe that each of my guests will remember our afternoon as something very special, even though we don’t have any photographic evidence.

When you do something, anything, no matter what it is, please don’t do it only for the Gram. Don’t do something just to have a photograph. Do it because it fills you with joy to do it. I promise you, this will make the difference in how you experience your life.

I love love love love to hear from my listeners. If you are having an Ideal Life conundrum and would like to work it out with some help from your fairy godmother, drop me a line, lily@lilyfieldschallenge.com.

Part Two: The Second Question

If I included this particular listener question in today’s episode, it is because it goes so well with the topic we are tackling this week. 

Today, we are looking at the question, “What isn’t working.”

Now, let’s remember, the context of asking ourselves these questions is not between you and your spouse, or you and your mother. It is just you.

There is no one who is going to judge you for what isn’t working, because no one else has to know. I think that there is power in putting things into words…remember, a few weeks ago I said that “Words are Surgery for the Soul”–And I believe that with all my heart.

Not necessarily conversations–although having a good, heartfelt conversation can bring healing. I really believe that the articulation of what isn’t working…even things that seem relatively small…is a powerful vector for finding a solution.

You know how…okay, maybe this is just me, but, sometimes I will complain about something to my husband and then he will swoop in and say, “well, if you don’t like that activity, maybe you should just quit?” or, “Have you tried doing x,y or z?”

Usually when that happens, I just end up more frustrated, because I wasn’t looking for a solution. I just wanted to put my frustrations into words. The act of saying the words was sufficient, sometimes, to have performed the surgery and gotten my soul into the recovery room without anyone else’s intervention.

So…in the end, in the words of the immortal Mike Birbiglia, “What I should have said…….was nothing.” 

Well. When you answer the question “What isn’t working?” in the context of your Ideal Life Exercise, you are not going to get any reaction to your answer from someone who, however helpfully, wants to solve your problem for you. You are simply going to have put your concerns, anger, frustration, boredom, whatever, into words. And then you can study it, solve it, or dismiss it.

Part Three: Beware Self-Criticism

For many of us, we have little microscope for things that aren’t going well. Like the Princess and the Pea, the tiniest inconvenience knocks us off our trajectory and we end up with outsized reactions to things that might, really, not be that big of a deal. But to us they feel like a big deal.

Listen, Cinderella. I live in France. I live in the country where complaining is the national pastime. I believe that French people are genetically different from the rest of the world in that regard. They just…they have a vocabulary for complaining and a capacity to find things to complain about that astonishes me.

But I think that for you and for me, we are capable of being lucid about what isn’t working. It isn’t like an additional level on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for us to find things to complain about. 

What I get concerned about is when what isn’t working turns into self-critique. Remember, as we answer these questions, we are not judging ourselves for things that aren’t working. We are being curious. We are showing genuine interest in ourselves, and compassionately digging deep. I think, for example, about Party Pooper in the Pumpkin Patch, who sent me the letter. Her words were pretty harsh about herself and her situation.

Sure, I enjoy a nice expletive every now and again, like the next fairy godmother. I mean, a good harsh word can really capture a mood, right? But we can’t just stay there. We can’t just say, “What isn’t working?” “I’m an idiot.” We need to go deeper, no matter how unpleasant it is.

(sidenote: I told you that I want you to do this exercise when you are completely alone, and that having a Kleenex box nearby can be a really helpful thing. Something magical happens when we clearly state what isn’t working: We can release a lot of the stress that we’ve been holding in. And yes, sometimes, a really good cry can be what will help us make a breakthrough. Bonus points if it’s a really good cry followed by a nap.)

It is possible to look back on a week, when, for example, my pants aren’t fitting anymore and I know full well that I ate my way through a bag of chips for breakfast and ate an entire plate of brownies for lunch, to answer the question “What isn’t working?” by “I’m fat and I eat like a pig.”

My pants not fitting anymore is the symptom of something. That something happens to be that I was not taking good care of myself, and I knew it full well. Binge eating was the end result. But how did I get there? I got there by being tired. I got there by being stressed out, having no self-control and having no healthy outlet for my stress. I got there because I had no other food in the house. Those are the things that weren’t working. 

What isn’t working will inevitably lead to more questions. And those questions will help us as we head into the third question, which is “What do I need to consider,” which is the theme of next week’s episode. 

When a lot of things aren’t working, the most important thing to do is simply write it down. No judgment, no editorializing. Be honest with yourself. Address the elephant in the room.

Trust yourself enough to recognize what isn’t working.

Being compassionate with ourselves, being patient with ourselves, treating ourselves like a good friend who needs a kind ear…these will help us stay out of the self-criticism trap.

Part Four: When Everything Isn’t Working

Just like we said last week that we can sometimes end up answering the question “What is working” with…”Nothing is working…” We can also end up answering the question “What isn’t working” with “Everything.”

First, there’s this: The feeling that nothing is working is not the same thing as itemizing everything that isn’t working. We can feel like nothing is working, but also have a hard time coming up with anything that isn’t working. This is a kind of neutrality which is extremely important to understand.

You see, when you find yourself in a place where both nothing is working but nothing isn’t working either, then you need, you absolutely must, ask yourself the important question, WHY?

Creative low-tides, fatigue, overwhelm, boredom…these are very real manifestations that can lead to stagnation. Sometimes we can’t even put them into words, or put our finger on exactly why we’re just not making any progress. It is very important, then, to catch these when they start to appear. 

This is, then, another brilliant reason to develop the discipline of doing this exercise every single day: this neutrality can sneak into one area without touching others, and remain self-contained, meaning that it’s really just a sticking point in one circle of your Venn Diagram, just one theme of your Ideal Life where you are stagnating a little bit. This happens. 

Next week, when we talk about the third question, “What do I need to consider?” We will ask, for example, “Am I taking care of my basic needs?” And very often, our honest answers can reveal that we are stagnating because we aren’t taking care of ourselves well enough. But that is for next week. 

Where I would start to be concerned is if this neutrality becomes generalized across all the circles on your Venn Diagram, at which point, you really need to get professional Mental Health support. This feeling of being stuck and not being able to suss out anything at all that is working, without having any reason either that nothing isn’t working? That is something you need a professional to help you with. 

So first, I want us to imagine a little plotted graph with y-axis “What is working” and x-axis “What isn’t working. Were you to place points in that graph, what we just talking about would be at the 0 point on our graph.

Theoretically, we would end up creating a downward slope from upper left to lower right. Why? Because, in theory, at least (and you know how much I love theories!) if everything were working, then nothing wouldn’t be working, right? So you would be at a theoretical infinite point on the “What is working” y-axis, since if everything is working, then nothing isn’t working. Right? Right? 

Likewise, if everything isn’t working, or said another way, nothing is working, then you logically, you are at an infinite point on the x-axis.

These extremes, either the “everything” or “nothing” are something to keep our eye on. Nothing is infinitely perfect yet. Nothing is infinitely horrible either.

Taking this time, early in the morning, when you are completely alone and don’t have to be anyone for anyone else, means that you can perform a little verbal self-surgery, simply by putting into words, factually, what isn’t working right now.

Next week, we are going to take a look at how what isn’t working can become a springboard to solutions and progress, one little mote of fairy dust at a time.

Conclusion

If you feel like you are drowning–you are having a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month…or a year…or….a bad life…? That really, really stinks. 

And it can get better. There are an infinite number of tiny steps of progress that you can make, millimeter by millimeter, improving your trajectory through your Ideal Life, and not all of them mean you have to learn how to swim or else you’ll sink.

Simply factually articulating what isn’t working is the act of putting your head above the water when you are drowning. Being lucid and stating what isn’t working will help you define the real forces at work so that you can counter them.

I want to encourage you. If you are feel like you absolutely nothing is working right now, find someone to talk to. Whether it is a friend or a therapist, put your concerns into words. Remember. Words are surgery for the soul. 

Closing

Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe on your podcatcher, and please, if you enjoy something you’ve heard here please share it with someone you think could use a fairy godmother, too!

 A great big thank you to Seven Productions here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie as the Intro and Outtro to the show. Also, thanks to Matt Kugler who sang it and Claude Ekwe who wrote it.

This is your fairy godmother signing off. Just remember: it is never too late to start singing with your feet.

 Show Notes

 Talking points: The Good Girl Paradox and the Mama Paradox: how they keep us from being able to articulate what is going well in our lives. Also, how finding yourself interesting can make you more interesting.

If you have a question about the Ideal Life Exercise, drop Lily a line: lily@lilyfieldschallenge.com

A great big thank you to Seven Productions, https://7prod.fr/,  here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie for the Intro and Outtro to the show. Also, thanks to Matt Kugler who sang it and Claude Ekwe who wrote it.

Homework:

•  Overall, would you say that your “what isn’t working” is less than, equal to or outweighs or “what is working?”
• Think about the big things that aren’t working right now. Write them down, without judgment and without self-criticism.
• How would you characterize the way you care for your basic needs (sleep, hydration, nutrition, fresh air)?
• What relationships might there be between what isn’t working for you right now and how you care for your basic needs?

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Introduction

Welcome to Sing With Your Feet, the podcast in which we figure out that the question why doesn’t actually mean why.

The podcast in which we learn to enjoy our own presence as much as we would someone fascinating we’ve just met.

The podcast in which we dig around looking for something that seems to be working, whether it is big or small, and find a way to celebrate it.

My name is Lily Fields, and I am going to be your fairy godmother for the next half hour or so.

Getting Started:

Let’s start with a little housekeeping, Cinderella. Today we are starting a four episode series to examine the four questions we ask ourselves each day about just one of our Ideal Life Themes.

Pop Quiz: can you name five of the Ideal Life Themes? There are nineteen Ideal Life Themes, and we spent half the year looking at each one of them under a microscope. 

So this little series about Curiosity will take us up to Thanksgiving. When we arrive at the holidays, I am going to unleash some serious fairydust to help you live your holidays according to who you are in your Ideal Life, according to your love languages and the love languages of those with whom you are celebrating. We’ll talk about how to give awesome gifts and to feel good about it–hint, it’s about the love languages, too and we are going to return to the evergreen problematic holiday topic of Commitments. 

Speaking of Commitments, a few weeks ago, I promised that I was going to give some helpful hints and handy tips about withdrawing from Commitments that we dread, that we simply do out of guilt, or that have reached a logical conclusion but we can’t figure out how to end. Well, that is still coming, and we are going to be looking at it through a lens of the holidays, but the lessons will be applicable across our lives.

Now, with a little bit of perspective about where we are going with the rest of the year, let’s talk about Curiosity!

Part One: Curiosity–The Question “Why”

Curiosity is a perfectly natural part of the human experience. It also happens to be a virtue, which means that if we aren’t careful with what we say, we might wake up that strange woman, the Philosopher Princess, who literally only exists to pontificate about how the pursuit of virtue is the path to happiness.

Now, if both these ideas are true: that curiosity is an innate part of being a human, and that the pursuit of this curiosity can be one lane on the path to happiness, then I just have one question: why in the world are we not asking more questions?

Curiosity is what takes a helpless infant from lying on his back to lying on his belly, and curiosity is what takes that same child from tummy time to scooting. As child development goes, the first crawl and the first steps are often an effort to reach out for something of interest…it’s curiosity that motivates a child to become mobile. So first point on curiosity: Curiosity, from our earliest moments of life, is a mobilizing force in our lives. 

Once a kid starts talking, he will almost without fail enter a “why” phase. The parent, incidentally, also starts entering their own “why” phase, like “why did I ever think being a parent would be a good idea…” but I digress.

Actually, no, no I am not digressing. Because when my child entered his “why” phase, I truly thought that there was something wrong with him. This question seemed outrageously outsized. It felt almost like it was a tic of some kind…like maybe he couldn’t say anything else. Like he was stuck. How in the world can anyone keep their sanity intact when, and I am not exaggerating here, every single thing a parent says is countered with the question, “why?” 

My own Google search was proof that I was losing my own mind: “Dear Google,” I would write. “Why does my child say Why all the time?” and “Is there something wrong with a child who says Why all the time?” and “How am I supposed to not lose my mind by answering Why all the time?”

I guess I was a little bit in my own “Why” phase, only Google didn’t mind answering my questions all the time.

I learned one very very important thing about the “Why Phase” of a young child.

“Why” doesn’t mean “Why.” 

Give that a little thought, would you? 

The question “Why”, when it comes from a child, did not mean that I, as a parent, needed to become a walking encyclopedia of how magnetic forces work, or how a seed sprouts underground.

The question “Why”, when asked at the height of the “Why” Phase means “I want to talk about this.” The child isn’t looking for a technical answer about electromagnetics, or about biology. He just wants to talk about how cool it is that magnets stick to the refrigerator, and wants someone to think it is as fun as he does. He wants someone to marvel at how cool it is that a seed can go into the ground and transform into something else.

He’s not asking for a technical answer laden with principles of physics to explain why birds fly and he can’t. But he might just want to talk about birds, or flying. And instead of answering the question “why” with a sigh and a “Hey Google,” if I could shift the conversation to something I did know something about, or was at least a little curious about myself, like, a movie I saw once called “The Boy Who Could Fly,” or about Icarus and his wax wings, or about how funny flamingos look when they fly, or about ostriches who can’t fly…Or maybe about a flying squirrel…or jetpacks…well, his curiosity wasn’t going to make me crazy anymore. It became a wide-ranging conversation.

The question “Why” doesn’t mean “Why”. It means, “let’s talk more.”

I don’t know how it happens, but at some point, this curiosity, this incessant “Why” starts to fade. It happens, I guess, because we actually start learning about how things work. We develop a sufficient body of knowledge of the natural world to not be surprised by everything we see. There are fewer mysteries.

Another thing happens, and this goes back to something I mentioned when we were talking about Creativity: I think we stop asking “why” because our curiosity gets suffocated by certainty. Remember how we talked about how the antidote to the discomfort of uncertainty was creativity, because creativity hands us back a small amount of control and can help us build resilience when faced with circumstances beyond our control.

Certainty, comfort…as pleasant and as desirable as those are, they are NOT guaranteed. And when we start to have too much of either of these, we get lulled into a false sense of security. Our curiosity gets blotted out.

When something comes in and shakes us out of our comfort or certainty–we lose a loved one, or a job, or a child moves out of the home, or–anything, really, anything that upends the way we are used to living–what is out first question. “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME!!!” 

And then we are back to square one. “Why.”

A child is curious and creative. Adults are set in their ways and rigid. (I am stereotyping, and I apologize if you were offended. But if you were offended, then maybe you need to ask…why?)

I want to help you re-engage with your curiosity. I want you to learn how to be inquisitive about your own rich inner life, and about who you are and who you want to be. There is so. Much. to. Gain. by learning how to examine your own heart, your own behavior, your own wants and…yes, your own disappointments.

I want to help you cultivate curiosity about yourself.

Part Two: The Golden Rule

When we meet someone for the first time, we can tell rather quickly whether or not that person is someone we want to get to know better. If you have ever been stuck next to someone who likes only to talk about themselves, and never asks you a single question, if you are like me, you will escape from that conversation as quickly as possible. You see, getting to know someone is about asking questions.

When we find someone, though, who is openly intrigued about us, and who we are interested in knowing more about–well, curiosity comes in and makes time fly. Conversations are easy and we are naturally curious.

I suspect you know where I am going with on this subject, don’t you… Yup. I want you to love yourself. I want you to be your own best friend.  I want you to start being curious about yourself the way you would with someone fascinating that you just met.

The finality of this curiosity is, as with just about everything I like to talk about, is the Golden Rule. Love others as you love yourself. But if you don’t love yourself, then how in the world are you going to love others? 

If you want healthy relationships, and to meet interesting people who are interested in you…well, darlin’, you need to start being interested in you, too. You need to start being curious about you. So that’s what we’re doing here.

Let’s pretend that you and I are at a dinner party. There are fifteen other boring, snooty people, and you and I end up alone drinking our Manhattans in the corner by the fireplace. I’m telling right now, I find you fascinating, and I will never get tired of asking you questions…hopefully not questions so prying that you want to run out the door as fast as you can, but I won’t get tired of it.

Here are the questions that I would ask you, as we are sitting watching the fire while those other bores drone on. There are three of them, so get ready.

1. Who are you living for? 
2. Do you love yourself?
3. Can you celebrate who you are? 

If you can’t answer those huge, important questions, then you and I will be talking all night, long after the drones have had their nightcaps and gone home.

Your ability to answer those three questions is going to be influenced by two paradoxes that our friend the Philosopher Princess has elaborated for us. 

The first is the Mama Paradox. The second is the Good Girl Paradox.

The Mama Paradox isn’t just for moms, but it’s one I have come to define since becoming a mom. It is for anyone who lives with Existential Guilt. The Mama Paradox says, “I must live for others because that’s what the Golden Rule tells me to do, even if I never actually live.” Somewhere along the line, we learned to prioritize the needs and desires of others above our own, and end up either living vicariously through or, by proxy for, other people. Neither of these is an actual life.

When we pin our hopes and sense of self on the successes of another person, AKA, living vicariously through someone else, we are not using our own time, talent and treasure. We are imputing on ourselves the rewards of someone else’s time, talent and treasure. Each of us has our own time, talent and treasure that we were assigned and that we are to use throughout our lives. Hiding from our responsibility to that assignment by living through someone else is one way we actually start to attenuate our own curiosity. We delegate responsibility for living to someone else.

The other side of this is when we are living as a proxy for someone else. We carry the weight of the hopes for someone else’s Ideal Life, not our own. That is an Ideal Life for which we were not equipped…we were specially equipped for our Ideal life. We will never succeed at living out someone else’s Ideal Life. We can only live our own. Anyone who puts on us the expectation of their dreams is blocking their own joy and ours.

Looking at this first paradox helps us determine our answer to the first question: who am I living for?

The second paradox is the Good Girl Paradox.

Being a girl is a mindbendingly complex thing. I mean, there is a cultural expectation for little girls to be cute, gentle, well-behaved… Even while nowadays there are efforts to increase girls’ representation in STEM subjects, there are actual biological differences between boys and girls which make it so that certains concepts come to boys without trying. External genitalia is a boon to learning about physics. I say this as a mom to two boys…and I have literally watched in wretched awe as my little boys learn about physics through pissing contests. ‘Nuff said.

As we grow up, we learn that a good girl doesn’t call attention to herself. We learn simultaneously that our bodies are wonderful and can do all kinds of things, but that we need to keep them under wraps because they make boys go crazy.

So we live in this inconsistent space: we are worthy, we are awesome, but we can’t say it too loud or make too big a deal out of it, because you know. Boys.

Humility and modesty are two virtues that get easily confused one for the other. Modesty is about not calling attention to ourselves, much like discretion. Humility is about not having a too high opinion of ourselves.

The virtue of lucidity is one that I think can come in and help us get out of this miry muck of paradox. Lucidity means that we know what we are good at, we also know what we aren’t good at. Not in a prideful or self-destructive state of mind. But in a, “I know my worth, and I don’t get down on myself for the things I don’t do well” kind of way.

This helps us answer the second question: Do I love me?

If you don’t have an answer to that question, then we need to keep digging.

And that last question: Can I celebrate who I am? Well…that is the one that we will develop as we get into the meat of the first of our daily Ideal Life Exercise Questions.

Part Three: What is Working

Let’s remember real quick the context in which we do our Ideal Life Exercise. I have been arguing since day one that this be something you do early in the morning, before anyone in your home wakes up. It only takes a few minutes, but being able to do it without the distraction of having to be anyone for anyone is going to help you get to the heart of the questions more quickly and efficiently.

I do mine every morning on the couch. I set up my little spot in the evening, setting up the pillows just right, with the hotplate that I will eventually set the coffee pot on the next morning when my coffee percolates. I have a blanket at the ready.

I don’t do anything until I have coffee. 

Our first question of the four is “what is working.” One reason that doing this exercise early in the morning is beneficial is that it sets you up to start your day by being mindful of at least one little success, and also sets you up to have the entire day in front of you to answer the fourth question, which, spoiler alert, is “what one small thing can I do today to get me closer to my Ideal Life?”

Once you have developed a habit of doing the IDeal Life Exercise, you will quickly have data points to refer back to. My themes repeat every three weeks, so already after three weeks, I am able to start checking back on progress. Seeing what was working, what wasn’t working, and checking in on what I did to get me closer.

So, let’s get into that first question: What is working?

The Ideal Life Exercise: What is working?

Remember, each day, we are only looking at one theme in our big beautiful Venn Diagram of our Ideal Life. This is already a slightly targeted question: what is working in this area of my Ideal Life. Whether Parenting, or Body Positivity, or Gravitas or Work…

What is one thing that has been going well?

Now, I hear what you are already thinking Cinderella, what if nothing is working?

We’ll get to that, and I do have an answer and a list of questions to get you curious about this too. But for now, let’s look at when something actually is working.

These can be big things or little things. Big things are obviously easier to pinpoint, and usually, if something big is working, we don’t have to think very hard for it to pop into our minds. This is often getting something off our plate, or meeting some kind of success for ourselves. Very often, when we answer the question “What is working” and we have a big thing that is working, it is a result of having steadily made progress towards a goal. Taking a moment to recognize that work is part of the fun of this step.

We aren’t being prideful or showy. The Good Girl Paradox gets thrown out the window. When something works, it is in our best interest to ask that evergreen question, “Why?” Why did it work? Was it something we did? How can we get more of that into our lives? 

It is when something is working that we can understand more about our own motivations…how did we stay motivated to get through to this result? What were the overlapping influences that brought us to this successful outcome? 

Be curious. And make sure you celebrate yourself. 

Write these things down, because they will become a precious part of your autobiography, from which you will be able to become your own inspiration as you seek motivation at times when things are going less well or when you are struggling to see any progress at all.

When nothing big is working, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still rack our brain looking for something to celebrate. Something that is working doesn’t have to be a major goal that was accomplished. Most of my answers to the “What is working” question are little things. Working hard to remember them, and writing them down is a daily effort at mindfulness, gratitude, contentment. 

Asking myself “what is working” puts me into the state of mind, “I am living for myself, and I love me. Therefore, I am confident that, if I look hard, there is something good to be found in this area of my life.” 

I’m not asking you to be toxically positive. I don’t want you to be Pollyanna. I am asking you to dig deep and look for one small silver lining, and if a lining is too much to ask for, then to look for one random silvery hanging thread. Searching for that one tiny thing that is working is an exercise in lucidity and mindfulness.

Again, I hear you. Sometimes nothing is working. Not everything is sunshine and roses and mindfulness and gratitude.

But not everything sucks all the time either. Really seeking out, with curiosity, asking myself to find just one little thing that worked over the last three weeks in this area, means that I am not simply being reactionary to a recent situation. It means that I am learning to relativize.

An Example

So. Last night I set up my couch cushions, got my blanket folded just right so that when I sat down I would just have to pull it over me and not have to mess with it. My Theme for today was Wise Decisions. 

We’ve all agreed in the past that this is not a terribly exciting theme, and it is one that does not exist by itself, either. It comes from statements about how I want to make decisions that get me closer to my Ideal Life, and don’t get me further away from it. For example, in my Ideal Life, I am someone who consents fully to my commitments and doesn’t commit rashly. It’s also about moment by moment decisions: how I react when my children misbehave and choosing to do the right thing even when I’m tired or bored.

Obviously, I don’t always succeed at all of these. But this morning, I needed to give some thought to what worked over the last three weeks since the last time I covered this topic.

I’ll be honest. There was nothing big that worked. I haven’t made any big important decisions lately. If I weren’t dedicated to digging deep on this topic, I might have been tempted to say, eh, nothing is really working particularly well.

But instead of skipping this question, I went back and looked at where I was three weeks ago, and then the three weeks before that.

I was struck by just how much had happened since then. Six weeks ago, it was still the summer vacation. Three weeks ago, we were in the throes of back-to-school, and back then, absolutely nothing was working. It was all chaos. Three weeks ago, I was in a decision-making paralysis. I was getting invited to do things, and asked to head up little projects, but I was overwhelmed and unable to think straight.

So I decided to not decide. On purpose. In mid-to-late September, I decided that I was going to put off making any decisions or commitments that weren’t already in the works, until October.

 My indulgent husband, who is a teacher, and I have always said, even before we had children, that we can’t freak out about back-to-school until October 1, because we need one full month of data before we are allowed to freak out about how busy or crazy things are.

So do you know what I was able to list as having worked for me? Deciding not to decide. Something magical happened once the calendar switched to October, and the overwhelm lessened all by itself. I was able to think straight again.

It’s not a big thing, by any stretch of the imagination. It is, by definition, inaction. But that inaction served me well, and gave me time to come back in off the ledge of back-to-school.

So, you see, while I couldn’t off the top of my head find anything that was working particularly well, it took comparing to what had been going on a few weeks ago and a few weeks before that to see that I was moving in the right direction. 

And do you know how I am going to celebrate that? I am going to take a walk on this gorgeous October afternoon, while my two scalawags are at their music lessons. I might even take it with a mug of tea in my hand and find the sidewalks that are thickest with fallen leaves so that I can crunch them underfoot, listening to Vivaldi in my earbuds. 

Ooh. That sounds amazing.

Conclusion

You are fascinating. You have so much life behind you that made you who you are, and you can be proud of how you got where you are today.

I really want you to think about those three questions, Cinderella: 

Who are you living for? I do not want to hear that you are living vicariously or living by proxy for anyone else. I want you to pursue your Ideal Life. Not your mother’s or your neighbor’s or your spouse’s. Yours.

Do you love yourself? Are you willing to look for the good in yourself and be lucid about what you are good at? Admitting that there is good in you is not pride, Cinderella. If loving yourself feels like an interrogation today, then it just means you have more work to do on this. But there is so much about you to love, that I believe that if you just spend a few seconds a day thinking about what’s working and the progress you have made, you will start to see it, too.

And can you celebrate who you are? Can you set aside some time to celebrate in ways that feel authentic to you, in ways that demonstrate your affection for yourself meaningfully?

You can do this, Cinderella. Be curious about yourself, Cinderella, and you will never be bored.

 Closing

Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe on your podcatcher, and please, if you enjoy something you’ve heard here please share it with someone you think could use a fairy godmother, too!

 A great big thank you to Seven Productions here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie as the Intro and Outtro to the show. Also, thanks to Matt Kugler who sang it and Claude Ekwe who wrote it.

This is your fairy godmother signing off. Just remember: it is never too late to start singing with your feet.

 Show Notes:

 Talking points: The Good Girl Paradox and the Mama Paradox: how they keep us from being able to articulate what is going well in our lives. Also, how finding yourself interesting can make you more interesting.

If you have a question about the Ideal Life Exercise, drop Lily a line: lily@lilyfieldschallenge.com

A great big thank you to Seven Productions, https://7prod.fr/,  here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie for the Intro and Outtro to the show. Also, thanks to Matt Kugler who sang it and Claude Ekwe who wrote it.

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