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I had a wonderful conversation the other morning with a client, and it's a common one. The theme was "excuses"... But are they really?? 🤔
I've shared great stories about this client before. She's on and off with coaching over the past 6-years, as she's a single mom who goes into full blown "mom mode" often, as all mothers do. Not a bad quality of course, but also not a helpful one when it comes to her own deep health. Finding her balance can be tricky sometimes.
I checked in with her the other day as I hadn't chatted with her for a couple weeks, just to see how things are going. She said it was going good, but she's not going to her kickboxing class as often as she'd like and said she "always seems to make excuses". I asked what kind of excuses, to which she replied with a list:
Tired
Worked late
Did not pack my gym bag
I get home and dont wanna go back out
My friend is not going so im not
... "I can probably think of more" she said.
My next question was if any of these were sticking out more than others?? To which she replied, "The first two".
Your "Excuses" are Symptoms of your Reality
When most of us have a list like this, what is the outcome? We feel guilt, stress, maybe a bit of shame, feel like a failure... we just aren't doing what we set out to do and so every day/week, we remind ourselves of this. Allowing the inner bully to be loud!
As always, it's important to SLOW DOWN and CHECK IN with our body and our reality. I pointed out to her that in this situation, her #1 excuse (being tired) is a symptom of her #2 excuse (working late). Therefore, it's NOT an excuse!
She explained why she's been working late for the past while and it's understandable. It's also thankfully a temporary additional work load. However, as we tend to do from our personal, non-neutral views, we don't see it as "understandable" but rather, "a failure". In her case, the added stress of the ADDITIONAL workload to her already busy regular days, makes it very easy to see why her body would be balking at going to a class after work. To which I explained that this is your body trying to convince you NOT to go to class; we just have to learn to listen AND to understand it in that way. Our body is always looking out for us.
Progress is NOT linear
As the conversation continued, she agreed with what I was sharing and reframing for her. She followed it up by sharing that although her work has been busy, she has NOT returned to the second job she left in December!! This was awesome news!! Because of this, she's "wholesomely enjoyed her weekends again" (her words 🥰). I reminded her that LESS THAN ONE YEAR AGO, she would've been bombarded at her full time job AND would have been working the second job in her "free time"... So there has definitely been positive progress!
This helped clarify, for both of us, that in the non-linear, sometimes messy path of positive change, we move through "peaks and valleys". I reminded my client that she is simply "in a valley" right now - a snapshot of her progress and time - but that is NOT the bigger picture of what is happening or what she's done. When you "zoom out", you see how far she's come in LESS than 12-months time!!
As I shared in a previous Zen Blog post, our minds are VERY good storytellers. We modern humans need to understand this, so that we can SLOW DOWN and take a look at our REALITY. Self-compassion and the ability to listen to your body are two VERY OVERLOOKED and UNDER-UTILIZED skills in this world of abundance. Self compassion isn't "fluffy foo-foo" - It's being REAL with yourself, in a similar way, in my client's case, as she would with her daughter if she was going through something similar; with understanding, compassion and being realistic. When we practice these fundamental skills in deep health, we can more clearly see those bumps along the way to sustainable change are just part of the process. SLOW DOWN and ZOOM OUT to see the bigger picture, and you just might surprise yourself. 😉
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