When The Feeling of TOO MUCH visits and Stays a While

A friend of mine told me I was ‘Managing Weariness’ as she responded to my Voxer message to her.  In retrospect, maybe it was an SOS call on my part.  But she responded and said “Landria like so many women (of color) you are managing weariness.  Thank you for sharing your heart with me and I will hold this space for you like you have for me”

Until this call/message on Voxer, I had proclaimed October 1st to be the day I would give myself a space of respite.  But as managing things, details, people continued to mount I sensed that I would crumble or burst…and that is not the plan.

I am the friend that holds a space for others.  I am the consultant that understands and can give actionable steps.  I am the boss that listens.  But I am also a person.  And in my own humanness of giving and doing, I started to fall into a trap of working to manage expectations others held for me.   I noticed this in a car ride home when upon picking up my son from school, I scolded him rather harshly about a mistake he’d made.  True to our relationship, we began to delve into the how and why of it all.  I apologized and we dissected what that meant and would mean if this mistake or another would happen again.  While unwrapping all of this, I realized that what I said to him and the expectations I held for him were what I held for myself… and the care I wanted him to display for himself in that moment was the care that I missed for myself. My exact words for him were “I wish you would take care of you more than you follow the rules of what people say you need to do. YOU are more important than any rule. Get and do what you need first. The rest will work out.”

And then I thought about us.  You and Me.  How we manage as people..as leaders…as servant leaders:

1. How we manage the Nos and Not Yets.
2. How we manage people
3. How we manage the emails asking us simple things
4. How we manage people who need our help and we would love to do more
5. How we manage pickup or drop off
6. How we manage school parking lots
7. How we manage not getting what we want
8. How we manage people who use and betray us
9. How we manage when we are overqualified and overlooked by colleagues who know of our existence and see us
10. How we manage dealing with disappointment
11. How we manage the spouse who didn’t say quite the right thing in the moment we needed it
12. How we manage friendships and relationships that are not measuring up or in transition
13. How we manage taking care of people
14. How we manage the administration and paperwork of our business

And here is my truth.  I manage so many things, I internally shut down or say I can last until a certain date (October 1st) and then I quit.  But we all know October 2nd is around the corner.  So shutting the world out and not dealing with our stuff and managing expectations won’t work. It’s actually dangerous.

This is what I have found. Hopefully this will help you as it helped me.

1. Don’t wait.  Find grace. Pull it down.  Give it to yourself…even if it’s for five minutes. On the ride to school this morning, the highway was backed up.  I opted to keep straight down the road and avoid the construction.  We rode so smoothly listening to my son’s Suzuki Violin CD.  My daughter snored in the backseat.  We reached school at 7:46am.  Record time.  Early.  And in that moment, I felt as if the internal angst of finding the best route in construction navigation had been heard.  I had been given grace.  My need was seen and met. I grabbed that moment and saw it for more than the surface of being ‘early’ but with the deep understanding that I am heard and seen.
2. Stuffing down our emotions is dangerous.  Giving people a tongue or verbal lashing is bad for all involved.  And human hearts or animal hearts  or living things do not deserve that.  If this is you…reset. 
3. A date with yourself per month is good.  To just be.
4. Get your people. Send an SOS to YOUR people (these are the people you call or text). Your professional group on social media are not your people…. I am grateful for the friend who is on Voxer and we talk via this medium quite a bit. I am grateful for my family and my handful of friends who get me and answer my call.
5. Forget those people who turn your words or intentions around. Stop explaining yourself and find new people.
6. Find your moment each day.  Your grace-moment.  Your self-care moment.  Your YOU moment.  It’s important…essential for you each and every day.
7. Don’t put on for others and show that you are the person that can take it.  Stop stepping up to support the expectations that people have of you.  Be human.  Unapologetically so.  
8. Never get so far from failure that it is heart-braking to you when it comes.  Truth is, failure comes and not because YOU-WE are failures.  Even with our best intentions.
9. Some people suck.  YASSSSSS.  They really do.  And we leave them there being present in their own sucky ways.  But we move on.

We should not be weary in our well doing because we will receive our reward if we faint not. 

So here is to focusing on the Well Doing and our Well Being.  Hearts up and hands out waiting on our reward.  And There is no fainting in Business and Clinical Leadership when we realize who we are and that life is worth living well.

Here is to Enjoying Our Lives!

~Landria