I’ve really been tuning in to how often I’m looking at the improvement instead of the enoughness and the goodness in what is here now. The easiest way to see this, and has been coming up a lot lately for me, is in our home.
We’re on house #3 now and every time we purchase a new home it’s with a “this has great bones” mentality. Walking somebody through our new space, I’d say, this is it. And don’t worry, we’re going to do this, this, and this to make it “perfect.”
I wasn’t saying that out loud, but now in hindsight, that’s totally what I am always aspiring to. That when it’s this, then I will feel a certain way scenario.
And we’re in that same cycle again right now.
Filling up a laundry list full of projects that I can’t get out of my mind. It’s been really confronting for me lately because as we’ve been doing more slow living, and really, really been trying to bring Collin in to this business full time, I’ve had to readjust the way that I’m looking at how I want to spend my money.
I don’t want to say that takes sacrifices, because I don’t believe it like that. But there are certain levers that we can choose to move (and not move) to make it happen faster.
And I think it’s a two fold thing for me of:
Perfectionism really holding me back.
And the root of it being enoughness.
And so, what I've been uncovering for myself is this concept of: as is.
How can I look at what is in my life right now and learn to love it as is?
I was journaling on this the other day, and my end conclusion that I wrote down was: What if every day for the next month, I look for the goodness, the abundance, and the future in the now?
Because I’m thinking to myself, again, the house example is what’s very top of mind right now, but it’s like, oh, you know, the kitchen’s nice, but I would like the marble to be changed to this, and the backsplash isn’t my favorite, and we’ll change out the handles, and da da da.
How I’m managing perfectionism through minimalism:
I'm learning to love things in a new way.
I keep looking at the marble countertop and thinking, well, maybe could we just like maybe epoxy paint it? Maybe we don’t need to replace the whole thing, but we’ll just do the little things so it could be, you know, the white marble countertop instead of the brown marble countertop.
And then I stopped myself like, NO, love it as it is now.
Today I picked up some plants (and I know this isn’t really business related, but I think the core of it truly is, right?) and now I had a new appreciation for our space.
I looked at the kitchen a little bit differently and I was like, wow, this kitchen is great. And…. Is this really where I want to spend my money and my time and my energy on continually doing all this stuff around the house instead of actually living my life and living in it?
Which serves me more: making the house perfect, making the next thing perfect, or actually living it?
And I think that’s, what’s really confronting. I always say I want space and time and this and that. It’s like the future vision I have in my head is: when all of this stuff is perfect, then I can sit back and relax.
I’ve done a recording on this before about the hard work mentality and how engrained that is in me.
And now that I say this out loud, I really do think those two things go hand in hand: the hard work and the perfectionism.
It's almost like I create these tasks for myself.
I look at a room and I decide, okay, this is the Pinterest picture I want it to be (not from a picture perfect perspective but a template/an end goal perspective.) And that’s going to be the next thing that I work on.
I keep adding to my to do list?!
And the more I’ve been having this conversation in my head, the more I’m just trying to have the awareness of:
Is this really serving me?
How often am I holding myself back from what I want because I’m trying to be perfect about it?
Now, instead, I’m trying to look at it as: what if I just enjoyed what I have instead of constantly perfecting it?
Why is this stillness and this “lack” of like moving forward, of working towards the next thing- so confronting?
For me, it really feels like enoughness is the root.
Being a minimalist, being a slow living person, and the more that we’re leaning into this, it makes me realize I’ve never had a problem with getting rid of things or looking at things intentionally.
But what I’m realizing…..
Where I think I need to focus my minimalism: is on this laundry list of more.
As I was journaling on this, Denise Duffield Thomas came to mind. She says with her personality type, her and her husband are both, what she calls rulers, which is like an empire builder. And so they’re constantly coming up with new ideas and like this new thing and that new thing that they want to work on.
She has a program called Money Boot Camp, and so she says all roads lead to boot camp. So when either of them say, Oh, what about this idea or this mastermind I could create or something like that, they stop and say, nope, we can get creative in our marketing, we can get creative in selling more boot camps, but her focus is on keep leveraging what you have.
And the more I did this journaling, the more that that came up and felt like, wow, I think I’ve always resonated with it because it’s what I truly crave and like the mission that I’m on.
I started our first podcast, the Mompreneur Guide, because I wanted to find out how other people are being both present and productive. That’s been my “goal” in mompreneurship is to be both present and productive.
And it’s so funny the more that I’ve gone through:
this journey
mindset work
and just the layers of the onion that never end
The word productive feels out of alignment with our slow living mentality now. Versus intentional or life giving or I don’t know exactly what else that could be- I’m still on my journey with that. And then the word present makes me chuckle a little bit because it’s the #1 thing I want and the #1 thing I struggle to give to myself.
And so I’m trying to change that narrative
As I’m going through my kitchen- I try to shift my thoughts from:
Well, it’ll eventually look like this
To, this is actually beautiful and just what I need.
And when I look at the business, I see:
Let’s leverage the space and everything is good as is.
Versus before, instead of letting all the roads lead to one thing like bootcamp, I would try it and then I pull myself back.
Like, well, maybe there’s something else that we could offer, or maybe this would be more in alignment.
And it’s like….
What if I just offer what I offer? And what if I just have my space, how I have my space and we leverage it. And that is good. And that is great. And it is awesome- As is.
On to my next challenge: giving myself space to actually fully be present. And not dream about this day and what that’ll look like and try to over plan and manufacture that end result, but just recognize that I have that in this moment now, if I just allow myself to see it.
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