Do you ever just have the feeling that there are things weighing on you, but you can’t quite pinpoint what they are? It’s like this little niggling poke now and then, but when you turn where the poke seemed to come from, the source doesn’t quite come into focus. It’s not major anxiety, it’s just something underneath the current that keeps you from really fully being present where you are and feeling as energetic as you could.
After a slew of social events, a weekend was on the horizon with no plans. Not a one. And I decided rather than to just catch up on errands or cleaning, or even try to do some extra reading or organizing projects – things that for me are soothing and self-caring – I would design a specific retreat day that would allow me to try to uncover all of the things in my life that were lurking in the shadows. I realized that bringing these things into the light, and more importantly planning an action step around each of them, would make them far less scary. Consequently, I’d be less likely to be looking over my shoulder when I’m trying to fully live the life in front of me.
Here’s what I did. This was a stay-at-home retreat (although different in focus and scope than my regular QTR retreat I’ve described before; you can find a link to my guide for Quarterly At-Home Retreats here if you are interested in that process). The most important thing with any stay-at-home retreat is to have the day to yourself without interruptions. I know that’s easier said than done for some. I’d suggest at a minimum you do this somewhere you can be uninterrupted except for an emergency, and you keep any notifications off.
Because you are going to need your bravery today to face uncomfortable tasks, conversations, changes, etc., arm yourself with intense comfort. Plan ahead by thinking of what really brings you comfort using all your senses and gather whatever you think will be soothing. I was in the coziest of clothes, not one thing itchy or tight. I had warm lighting, delicious drinks and food all day (but nothing requiring any fuss or distraction), and classical music in the background.
Although I normally don’t combine work retreats and nonwork retreats into one – I hold fast to my strong boundaries between these realms – in this case I decided I needed to examine aspects of my whole life to understand fully where my blindspots were. I created a OneNote project for this; I am as a rule more of a paper journal person, but the speed at which I could type out insights appealed to me for this, before I lost the glimpse of whatever started coming up. I started with a freewrite just to get the juices flowing. Then, I wrote down various categories of home and life and asked myself “what am I pretending isn’t a problem here?” It was kind of like coaxing a cat out from under the bed; I just kept looking deeper until I saw it there looking back at me.
I can’t pretend that I didn’t at all have an “ugh” feeling looking at this list when I finally herded all these cats, but it was accompanied by a feeling of pride and bravery for taking my head out of the sand. It also felt like a really good start, and starting is almost always the hardest part. Once that first stage was completed, I did celebrate that accomplishment, but the process couldn’t end there. What I needed was the most concrete, doable action step I could come up with for each challenge. My rules were: (a) I had to be able to do it in the next 48 hours (and preferably some of them immediately doable), (b) the step would take no longer than 15 minutes to accomplish, and (c) it would be something I knew how to do and had the power to do without any additional resources. I also planned out some fun little rewards for achieving each of these first steps and for planning the next several steps once the first ones were completed.
When looking back at the details of this day to write this blog, I’m happy to say that I discovered almost all of these issues have been completely resolved or have lost their power to rattle me. Doing this one time of course hasn’t prevented me from burying things that I’m not sure how to approach and then letting inadvertently giving them the power to morph into monsters. My head still goes into the sand sometimes, and I recognize it when that niggling starts again, or when I feel myself more distracted or lower energy than normal. But now I know what to do, and you do too. ITL: Into the light.