I rarely sit still. I don't relax like most people think of relaxation. When my house is clean and organized, I feel less anxious. When the grass is cut and clear, I enjoy sitting outside more. I love pulling weeds. It gives me such satisfaction taking the junk out of the ground and manicuring flower beds, by yanking them out and getting dirty. I don't typically sit and just watch television. I'm either on my phone scrolling or working on something on my computer. I'm a veracious reader of non-fiction, historical fiction or stories that involve warrior women overcoming societal norms. Never just fluff reading. Reaction being part of my nature, its been a growth challenge for me to PAUSE. As a leader I've always believed that I needed to have all the answers, that I needed to have immediate solutions or that everything was urgent. This led me to burnout, making too many mistakes and going back on initial decisions. Being so reactive also caused me not think about ...
I like to be in control of most situations in my life. Planning for my family, organizing and knowing specific details regarding events in my families life or work events simultaneously relieves and enhances my anxiety. I am not a very spontaneous person. I feel more in control by keeping my Google Calendar up to date with personal and work meetings/appointments, activities and reminders readily reminding me of what needs to get accomplished throughout the day. Daily, I'm adding to my calendar, checking my calendar and adjusting events that I may need to cancel, move around or push back for another time.
I'm not good with just being. I have "to do" lists for regular household chores, work responsibilities and getting to the gym or studio routines. As a mom, leader, wife, I feel like I am constantly multi-tasking and sometimes I feel like everything is important. However, there are other times when I get too over scheduled, which then enhances my anxieties, because then I feel that I "can't do it all" and nothing is being done with my whole heart. Usually, I reach a boiling point of my available time and realize that I'm not doing anything well. That is when yoga allows me to pause, and realize what is truly a priority. Yes, yoga is something else that I add to my calendar, but it also my chance to pause, stop running through all my responsibilities and take a moment to realign and balance myself.
Even during practicing yoga, there are moments when I'm going to quickly. I want to push myself into a specific pose, or my breathing is rushed. I'll be clenching my jaw, shoulders or glutes and not releasing myself into the pose. As Bernie Clark has said "We don't use the body to get into the pose, we use the pose to get into the body". I either get a cue from my instructor or realize that I'm not surrendering to moment and letting myself just be and not always have to do.
I also tend to try to control others around me. As a mom of young children, I was in charge of every aspect of their lives; what they ate, where they went, who they were with and what they played with or what they did within our home. As my children have gotten older, it's been a huge shift in releasing my control, trusting my children to make the right choices that I've taught them, and allowing them to make mistakes and learn from them.
When my children were younger, my biggest fear (somewhat irrational) was that they would be kidnapped and would be lost to me forever. I would be worried about what could happen and not focused on what was happening. I wasn't noticing the joyful moments or how my anxieties were rubbing off on my children. After reading Anxious Generation I realized that I was stifling my children's authentic and natural opportunities to learn, develop their own sense of the world and discover their own interests without my constant involvement.
As a mom its also been hard to not fall into the competitiveness of being the best, or doing things because your feeling judged by other moms. As a young mom, I would buy the latest toys, go to all the events or activities (even if I really didn't want to) because my other neighbors had them or were going and I didn't want to feel left out. After a while I was always trying to visually look better to my fellow moms, but didn't feel like I was doing these things for my kids, I was doing them to appear to be part of the "cool mom's club". I was focusing on what other people thought of me, instead of focusing on what really mattered, doing what my children wanted to do and enjoyed.
Letting Go of Control: Ishvara Pranidhana teaches us to release our attachment to outcomes and relinquish the need to control every aspect of our lives. This allows us to see what IS here…instead of holding onto what we think “should” be here. - Laura Goellner
People don't like to be "should" on, and you should never "should" on yourself. When we surrender to the present moment and trust in the inherent goodness in life, we can notice the imperfections and uncertainties that keep us open to endless possibilities, which allow us to be closer to our authentic self.
Trusting others is essentially releasing control and strengthening our relationship with others. Trusting others has always been a challenge for me, as trust is something I don't give out easily and I always believed that it needed to be earned. My father is also not a very trusting person. Being stingy with trust has been a survival mechanism for an immigrant and someone dependent on others to be truthful in payment for services or moving through the system that inherently sticks it to the poor and uneducated.
Growing up in an environment where asking for help signaled a weakness, as well as just doing it yourself guaranteed that it would be done "right" and the way that you wanted it to be done, was an everyday occurrence. Being a first born daughter in this environment also entitled me to be the "fixer". When I was able to do a task, I took it on as to not bother anyone else or add to anyone else's already very full plate. However, in the world of leadership and education, this is not a remedy to build trust with your staff and colleagues.
Majority of the time, my intention is to help or do it myself, as to not bog anyone else down with the details or "extra's" that I think they don't need to necessarily worry about. Unfortunately, this mindset has not equated to trust between myself and my staff. My perception to help, has depleted our ability to have shared decision making and thusly shared ownership.
Last year, my assistant principal and our district educational consultant had somewhat of an "intervention" with me to open my eyes to my struggles with trust and seeing how my lack of trust was becoming detrimental to culture of my building. It is true that I do not have control of other people's perception of me, but I do have control over my ability to listen more, being clear with my words and where I put my energy and efforts for the betterment of my students, staff and school community.
Everyday I will need to work on releasing control and surrendering to a higher power. I can not be in control of every aspect of my life or the life of others around me. I have to allow the flow of energy around me. This does not need mean that I need to be passive and just a lump on a log, but to focus my energy on things I do have control over, like my thoughts, my words, my action, and what I give my energy to. I have to seize opportunities that are presented to me, have courage to take leaps of faith and release worry and stress of what others may think of me. I will live in the present moment, by enjoying and being grateful for what I have and the abundance that life has given me.
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