How to stop doing and just enjoy being.
In August 2020 I started to feel a pain in my foot when I walked. It didn’t seem that bad so as most of us do, I just carried on.
By the beginning of September I wasn’t walking well and the pain had got worse. A trip to the doctor resulted in an x-ray which showed nothing but after a long series of phone calls, discussions and an MRI scan I was eventually told at the beginning of October I had a possible stress fracture in my foot and I would need to wear a fracture boot for at least 6 weeks.
The doctor then told me that I basically had to sit for that time and only move if I absolutely had to. He made it very clear looking after the kids or even putting clothes in the washing machine wasn’t a need and that to heal as quickly as possible not moving was what I had to do.
On the way back home from that appointment I cried on the phone to my hubbie as I just couldn’t imagine how this was going to be possible. We had a 4 year old and 3 year old and he had a full time job. I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing, it just wouldn’t work. As usual hubbie was my voice of reason and said “We’ll make it work because we have to.”
We called in the help of our parents for the first two weeks and then we were back in lockdown, with all help being taken away. Hubbie was incredible and literally took over everything, school runs, nursery runs, food, washing, cooking and managed his job too…. while I just sat there!
I’m very lucky that I haven’t had many physical set backs in my life. I have a bad back which is helped by a chiropractor but I’ve managed that for years and it doesn’t affect me too much but this was different because it wasn’t the physical that was affecting me. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t discomfort, it was how what was happening to my body, was affecting my mind that was the issue.
You’d think that if someone told a busy mum to sit down with her feet up for a few weeks she’d jump at the chance and if I’d been on my own with Netflix and a pile of books maybe I would have seen some positives but for me those first few weeks were mentally really tough.
As I sat there watching hubbie get the kids lunch, rush to help littlest on the toilet or fetch them a drink when they needed, I felt helpless. But more than that I felt worthless.
I questioned what sort of mum I was if I couldn’t do these things for my kids. What was the point of me being there in the room with them if I couldn’t do the things that needed doing.
I realised at this point how much of my self worth was attached to the doing, the jobs, the items to be ticked off the list, instead of the being. If I got to the end of the day and had accomplished nothing, what did that say about me?
I also realised that while self care is my passion and my business the universe obviously had a big lesson to teach me about what it means to slow down and take time to just be.
You see life isn’t always about the doing, you have to be comfortable with just being.
Your worth isn’t related to how many jobs you can get done in the day, it’s about how you experience that day. Your kids are never going to think of you as a great mum because of how many loads of washing you accomplish in a day, they will think about the way you make them feel.
I realised I could still make them feel loved. I could be present for them, possibly more so than usual. I could read to them, engage with them, play with them, listen to them, talk to them, cuddle them, tickle them and tell them how amazing they are.
Sometimes we can get such a kick out of the doing, such a rush from the feeling of completion and achievement, that we rush from one task to the next without ever slowing down enough to just be.
When I talk to other mums about self care, two things that always come up are not having enough time and also not knowing what to do for themselves if they did find time.
You might ask yourself why you’d ever find time just to do nothing when there’s so many other things to do. It might make you feel lazy or as if you’re wasting that time.
Let’s face it though you’re never actually going to get to the end of the to do list. There’s always going to be things to do and we need, for the sake of our well being, to find the balance.
So as I sat I started to reflect on how much time I actually spend being rather than doing. It’s definitely more than it used to be but why didn’t I take more time to just be?
The first thing that came to me was that it’s actually quite uncomfortable at times. To just sit and do nothing feels alien, so different from everything else I do.
I meditate and I will share my practices with you in another blog but it reminded me of how hard meditation was for me at first because I didn’t feel like I was accomplishing or achieving anything. I had to sit through the uncomfortable, through my mind fighting me, telling me to get up and get something done. The benefits though of just being are huge.
So how can you introduce more being rather than doing into your life?
The main thing is to find what works for you. It doesn’t have to be doing nothing. Maybe you’d like to try meditating. Maybe for you it’s going for a walk in nature. Maybe it’s listening to music. Maybe it’s reading a book. It’s just about removing the accomplishment, removing the task. If you’re reading a book you enjoy you aren’t counting the number of pages you’ve got through or trying to tick reading 2 chapters off your to do list.
Find activities that give you that sense of just being rather than doing.
Fortunately during the 6 weeks I was eventually able to start some gentle movement around the house and although my injury is still not completely back to normal I’m grateful that it taught me two valuable lessons.
The first that my self worth, especially as a mum, is not attached to how many jobs I can get done in the day.
The second is that we need to prioritise being as much as we prioritise doing, however uncomfortable that might be at first.
My quote for today is from the amazing Dr. Wayne Dyer.
"I am a human being, not a human doing. Don't equate your self-worth with how well you do things in life. You aren't what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don't...you aren't." - Dr. Wayne Dyer
Much love
Gail x
Photo credit - https://unsplash.com/@emcomeau