An Invitation For you

I’ll share a note of encouragement in just a moment, but first, I’ve got an invitation.

I’m working on a project for you that will accompany my book release in September. As I’m working on it behind the scenes during the next few weeks, you are invited to join a waitlist to be the first to know all the details when it launches!

AND … I’d love your opinion on a couple things as I develop it!

Want in on sharing your feedback and getting first peeks?
Just REPLY to this email with YES!

Oh, I hope you reply YES! I’m excited to share a couple things about the book and get your feedback on the new project!

Now for your encouragement …

 

Do you enjoy cleaning the shower?
I don’t. Not at all. At any time.

I gather the 13 different sized scrub brushes, 4 bottles of cleaners, 1 tub of deep-cleaning paste, rubber gloves, and put on my old t-shirt.

Good grief. With this arsenal of grime-busting gadgets laid out on the floor of our very small shower area (which then leaves me verrrry little room to kneel and scrub), you’d think our shower stall was a soap-scum and hard water-stained disaster zone. It’s not.

But every single time I go to clean it, I attack it like it’s the dirtiest ecosystem in the world. I’m determined to make it look like it’s never been used. I want it to look pristine white. I want it to sparkle. And smell like a blend of citrus and pine.

But, bummer. All the elbow grease, whining, and scrubbing doesn’t get it back to pristine.
Clean? Yes.
Sparkling? Not really.

Last Saturday I decided I’d had enough. It dawned on me …
My mind has created an exaggerated picture of the difficulty of the task ahead.
I am making this way too hard. The shower stall doesn’t need to be pristine and sparkly. It needs to be clean. I’m putting way more attention and time into this than what’s necessary.

So. I took just one bottle of cleaner and one scrub brush. I sprayed and cleaned without needing to rehydrate and massage my arm muscles half-way through the task.

Funny thing. It looked just as clean as when I’d attacked it in the past with the full arsenal of disinfectants and cleaners. There really was no difference.

So, here’s a question for us to consider …

Is the project on our not-fun list really that hard? Or are we anticipating it’s going to be hard because we just don’t like doing it? Then we make it hard because it feels hard?

When we’ve got things to do that are not on our fun list, we spend a lot of time fretting about it before we start, fretting about it while we’re doing it, and fretting about how awful it was when we’re done. The fretting makes it feel harder.

Sometimes we just need to cut out all the extra, simplify the project, stop the fretting, and just do it.

The day after the shower cleaning jublee, I had a kitchen cleaning project to get done. (If we’ve been friends here for a while, you may remember that the kitchen is not my happy place.)

But! I looked at the cleaning project and said out loud, Gaye just do it. It’s not going to kill you. Keep it simple and get it done.

And I did. To use the shower lesson, I went for clean, not pristine.
It didn’t take as long as I estimated. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I expected. And it was nowhere near as hard as I anticipated.

I changed how I approached the task, and it made all the difference.
Instead of defining it as a hard task, I defined it as a task that simply needed to be done.

When your unpleasant task shows up, tell yourself, “I’m going to keep this simple. It’s not hard. I’m just going to get it done.”
Eliminate the word hard. Then get at it. Simply.

Get the task done and sit in the sun for a few minutes. Pat yourself on the back.
You’ve got this.

P.S. Remember to Reply Yes to get on my waitlist to get some sneak peeks and share your feedback on my new project! (It’s not hard. I promise.)