Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Perceptions

Sometimes, life is so busy, so full of little things that all add up, that I forget about things that make me happy and grounded. Mostly, life gets that way because I let it. A chance remark by somebody, a declaration by someone else, makes me think that I ought to be the way these other people are. Instead of thinking about how my life, as it is currently, makes me happy, I think about what I ought to be doing to try to achieve some ideal. That ideal is never reached and I begin to feel like a failure.

It's all in the perception.

The truth of this statement is becoming clear to me slowly. If my goal is to have a house that is spic and span and never dirty or cluttered, then I am never going to be happy, because that state is impossible to achieve. "Spic and Span", "Dirty", "Cluttered" are words that are entirely subjective. So, no matter how clean the house actually may be, it will never live up to the fantasy that I have built up in my head. Instead, if I were to focus on objective, measurable, achievable goals, such as "I must have a clean towel after a bath every day", or "I must have clean utensils to cook in", then immediately housework becomes scalable. More importantly, there is a feeling that housework is DONE.

A month or so ago, I was complaining that my list of things to do never got shorter. As soon as I finished things, there would be others to take its place. With my new epiphany, I have consciously begun to shorten this list. Does the laundry HAVE to be done today? Nope, we have clothes to last us another week. Does the floor HAVE to be swept and mopped today? Nope, let me just remove the big, visible dirty stuff that the baby won't shove into his mouth.

All of a sudden, I have time! Time to read, time to bake, time to play with my baby and time to stare into space. And I have space! Space to breathe slowly, to walk slowly and to think that I ought to call my friends and see what they're up to.

This method has worked so well that I am trying to adapt it to my work. What is the bare minimum to do to get an answer? Do that first. Then, what is the bare minimum to do to confirm this answer? Do that next. Suddenly, I have chopped down my list of experiments from a couple of pages, to about 3. Sure, the experiments listed probably will be done at some point of time. But in my head, since I perceive their importance differently, there is suddenly more space. My head is no longer cluttered with lists and lists.

So. Lessons learned: do things that make your mind uncluttered. If you perceive something as lessening your happiness, don't do it. Change your perception about it.

I feel empowered.