I’m a better person when I take time for myself. When I show up here, when I write and share my thoughts. When I get all the … well, “stuff”, out of my head and onto a screen.
When I jump right into doing-doing-doing? That’s when I know that I am not the best version of myself. That I’m not bringing what I want to bring to my work, my interactions with others, my life…
And yet, the past week+, I’ve felt compelled to DO, not BE.
Last night, I reminded myself that I chose focus as my word of the year. That my intention is to be focused on being the best version of myself, on making sure that I am bringing good into the world. Although it’s only February, I think I lost sight of that a bit already.
So today, I’m taking the time to remind myself to focus. To be. To take the time. No one is going to die if I get to work 20 minutes later than I did yesterday…. rather, it’s more likely that things will be better than they’ve been the last few days. Feeling frantic, panicked, and always, always, out of time? That’s not the best version of me.
Time to REfocus. Already. Yikes. Let’s hope I get better at this, or my year of focus is going to be a long one…
My word of the year is “Peace” and I hear you…I had several days last week that I got myself all wrapped around the axel, was worrying about dumb stuff, just a little ball of stress (mostly unnecessarily!). I also had a few moments where I thought, OK, come ON!! It’s only February and you are doing terrible at embodying “peace” already!” Hahaha! I guess as long as we don’t totally forget what our word is and we keep trying to come back to it, that’s progress though, right? 🙂
So true – progress, not perfection? I always want to do things perfectly and to find that I so rapidly lost focus (ha) on my word of the year was a bit disheartening. I saw your post about reminding yourself of your commitment to Peace and that was part of what made me realize that I had lost sight of my word, too. I suppose it’s always a process of committing, losing focus, recommitting, wandering off track again… part of being human!
I imagine that you do have to remind yourself a few more times to focus or re-focus this year… but this is why you chose this word, didn’t you? Take care of yourself!
That’s exactly it! I have a tendency to lose sight of the end goal. In work, in life in general… When I am focused, it’s great. I need to remind myself that things go more smoothly when I don’t do as MUCH, but instead focus on the things that are truly important. I saw that your word for the year is trust, which is another good one. I particularly liked how you talked about the importance of trusting yourself – not just trusting others. (And take care of yourself, as well!)
Be instead of do is thought provoking… to me, being what I want to be doesn’t necessarily mean to NOT do, but to do the right things with the right mindset. And to also allow to be silly and have a laugh. Some people seem to only focus on productive, self developmental things…. which creates a stress and something negative if you never allow yourself to have a bit of fun.
Doing mindfully – and in alignment with who you want to be – is a much more mindful approach, in my opinion. This jumping headfirst into the work to-do list, that was doing-just-to-do. I am trying to spend the first part of my day in mindful doing, before I shift into work-work-work mode. It seems to be helping (although of course I always fret about “lost time”… sigh… still more habits to break, apparently!).