INTRO MUSIC
I am a recovering girl boss. I graduated college and I said, give me a glass ceiling, I wanna break through it. Give me a corporate ladder and I will scale it. Tell me it’s a jungle gym and okay fine, I’ll swing across those monkey bars no problem.
And when I left the corporate environment and started freelancing and making podcasts and writing books and made myself a little LLC I thought, wow, look at you. You’re doing it babe. I got apps to help me with scheduling and prioritizing. I had a device to tell me when to walk and how many steps I took. I had checklists and goals. I read books about how to be my best self.
All of this was…right after my husband died. At one point, I remember laying in my friend Dave’s guest bedroom, listening to a book by a famous self-help author, trying to FIX MYSELF??? Because I didn’t think I was motivated enough, or working hard enough, or doing enough. I was not being my OPTIMAL SELF, I was not MY BEST. Uh whaaaaat?
This kind of thinking and messaging waxes and wanes in popularity, and I was surprised, this week, to be served a video of a woman around my age, in a crisp and expensive looking outfit, asking the camera,
IS ANYONE ELSE OBSESSED WITH MAXIMIZING YOUR POTENTIAL AND BEING MORE EFFICIENT?
The video went on, and was about how the woman was waking up at FOUR IN THE MORNING!!!! To workout and read self-help books that vaguely are about business, and the other life hacks that she’s using to be MORE EFFICIENT and not waste ANY TIME.
I saw this video while laying in bed at 8:40pm with unwashed dishes in the sink, an unfinished to-do list and an Elin Hilderbrand novel on my chest that I would stay up all night reading because I had to know how it ended. I knew this already, that I would ruin my tomorrow to finish this book and I would be tired in some meetings and I wouldn’t get as much done as I’d hoped to this week.
A few years ago even, I would have liked this video, saved it, implemented her tips and tricks. I did, for a while there, wake up at 5 am and go to the gym before the kids went to school so I wouldn’t “waste” any time working out that I could spend working. I had every minute of my day planned and color-coded all in the name of DOING. I was also very miserable and got in an average of two car accidents A YEAR, usually running into something like, I don’t know, the tree in our own yard, because I was so frazzled.
And for what! There is no potential that needs to be maximized! I am not a naturally efficient person and the cost of efficiency for me was happiness. I want to spend this life meandering a little more, existing more, not trying to optimize a damn thing unless I am literally driving a Kia Optima in which case I will always say, in honor of my friend’s dead friend…let’s Optimize.
If you are a naturally optimized person who lives for a 4am wakeup and loves her systems…I salute you. But the pursuit of a better version of myself has mostly made me unhappy with myself.
I’m not a smart device that needs to be updated, I’m not a computer, I’m not a small countertop appliance. I’m a person. And I don’t think that our purpose on this earth is to make ourselves the very best doers that ever did. So what’s okay for me today is to be myself. I will, as I encourage my children to every day, do my best and forget the rest. What gets done gets done. What doesn’t…will get done eventually. I will read my Elin Hilderbrand novels – 26 more to go before I’m all caught up! And I will stay up all night to do it if I want to.
We don’t have to be the most optimal version of ourselves. Today, we can just be.
OUTRO MUSIC
I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay.
The IT? Is subjective and subject to change and I want to know YOURS. Call us at 612.568.4441 or email us at IGTBO at feelings and dot co.
CREDITS
