A few days before the end of last year I had a call with my mentor. We talked about what I was planning on doing next. She made a suggestion on some things I could work on that would lay the groundwork for what I want to eventually do with any extra non family involved time. She suggested I do some of my homework by, "Following the trail of bread crumbs."
Something interesting happened. Let me give a little background so this makes sense. I am a highly intuitive person. I make by very best decisions by sitting quietly with myself or being calm and centered enough to let my intuition guide me. I have long struggled with the way we are taught to get things done, usually involving making lists and setting deadlines, and the way my own best living unfolds. Not long after my conversation with Jennie I noticed something happening. I was not making lists, I had no inclination to set goals. But, I was moving ahead more deliberately and methodically than I had ever moved. I have been getting up in the morning and following my instinct about what happens next. This has been mostly cleaning out the house, reorganizing, creating a home that is more easily cared for so I can have more time to do other things. When I am done for the day, I am done. I hold myself back from doing what my head wants me to do. When the energy shifts away from organizing and cleaning for the day, I follow my intuition to see what comes next.
I took a good look at family meal prep and realized it was not something I love. I realized that I had to find a new way to feed our family that took less time and could be more enjoyable for me. I started having less of a plan for meals, creatively combining what we had in the kitchen. I started using the crock pot whenever I could or utilizing leftover ingredients from other things that would take less time and effort than starting from nothing. I am seeing so many more possibilities in how I do the things I need to get done.
Then, just to make it all nice and tied up, I started taking this class. Although, I do not need a why to trust my intuition, this class explained so much of what I was feeling pulled to do in the first place. Creating joyful, easy care, and creative solutions to the things I am going to do anyway can make my life more sustainable. It can make the things I add in to my life more sustainable. And this is a very good thing, because it does not matter if I can get something done once. Most things in life are going to come back again, daily, weekly, monthly and having an efficient way of doing these recurring things helps me have more time for other things.
Perhaps the most profound thing I have learned in the last few weeks, is that discipline does not require strict routines. This is the part that has always failed me in the past. For me, it is not about having a set routine, up at a certain time, doing the same things on the same day. For me, it is about having the discipline to do things, to keep doing them, and to hold myself back from doing them too quickly (which ends up being less precise) on some arbitrary time schedule.
(Perhaps the best reason to do things my own way, is that even with a huge amount of progress made I have had a lot of time to do stuff like this.)
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