2022 is zooming by. I felt like it was just yesterday I was thinking about New Year’s Resolutions and setting the stage for this year. Now that we’re in Spring, it’s time to sweep up what we’ve decided to let go of and organize what’s left. For perfectionists, this is a fun time. It calls upon our super speedy multitasking skills to rise to the challenge. For some reason, I imagine Genie twitching her nose from the classic show Bewitched taking care of spring cleaning. 

When we embark on a new challenge, we need to prepare for it. Make space for it in our mind, in our calendars, in our physical efforts. That’s why many resolutions don’t stick. We have lofty goals of losing weight, changing careers, improving our relationships with our loved ones, taking up a new hobby – whatever it is – and we don’t realize how much change it actually requires of us until we start to take the idea and desire and put it into practice. 

We have to create awareness – What do I want? WHY do I want that? 

We have to create a plan – How will I get this done? What does my mindset have to look like to achieve these goals? What has to change to make space for this to be a part of my life?

We have to create accountability – Each time I go back to old and dysfunctional habits, I will do what next? 

We have to create compassion – How can I support myself to move forward instead of staying stuck in self-loathing and self-doubt when I steer away from the desired goals? 

Essentially, for many people, this is a redo in life.

Most of us live on the fly. There’s a cacophony of tasks and deadlines that surrounds us and dulls our senses from awareness. Even if you’re living in the future by planning out every second of it, you’re just as disconnected as the ones living so much in the present moment unaware of how they keep showing up in their world. 

If this is a redo, how can you be so hard on yourself for not getting it right on the first or five thousandth time? To be faithful to a new challenge means to redefine your allegiance to other obligations. If you want to carve out time to read the books, work out, learn a language, spend time with loved ones- what do you need to forgo? For parents, the never-ending quest of finding yourself after you’ve had children when the “shouldn’t I already know who I am AND be happy with it since now I am raising future voters of society?” zooms around like a pesky fly. For example, many parents I speak to say they would rather sleep in instead of waking up earlier to get to the tasks they crave along with caretaking of the children. 

So then, their allegiance is to sleep.

As long as there are no regrets or ill feelings about this decision, then, carry on. I would say that beyond the allegiance to sleep, there is an allegiance to the desire for more and the begrudging thought of “I am not good enough”. So then, what next? This is where most people get stuck and the New Years’ Resolution becomes a fad and a pun to the joke of life. What if, though. What if we held in just a bit longer and decided that Spring is when the pollen and flowers bloom and Spring is when we decide to clean up the mess, throw out some things, hold on to others you know you don’t need and will never use again, but for memorabilia, you’ll keep there. And, you take the time to make the rest start to happen. Bit by bit, step by step.  

The other day I was thinking about multitasking and the obsession we perfectionists have with squeezing out our best use of time. Frankly, multitasking when used wisely is phenomenal. Every time you are doing something important that can be paired with something easy do it! Like listening to your favorite music or audiobook while cooking or going for a walk. It’s only when we use multitasking as a way of bowing down to the “I should be doing more that I need to do a million things at once” thought that it is harmful because we become resentful and that’s just adding negative vibes and associations to the very things you wanted to add to your life to enhance it.  So, spring clean away and check in on yourself as you go through your process. 

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