How scheduling yourself into your day strengthens discernment

Image by ThePixelman from Pixabay

Long before I became a yoga teacher or meditation coach, I worked in corporate. Keeping a schedule with a child and a full-time, in-office job was automatic, albeit one-sided, in that my work and child informed my calendar: I’d wake up, get ready for work, have breakfast with child, go to work, work out during lunch, go home, put on my mommy hat, eat dinner, throw in some laundry, do bedtime routine with child, spend time with husband, go to bed, start all over the next day. 

When I started working for myself, I had more freedom to set the flow of my day. I realized how much I hated schedules. It isn’t me, I thought. I want more freedom. 

Schedules are easy scapegoats for feeling bound and tethered. But the truth is, it’s not the schedules. It’s what we schedule and when. Long story short, I came to see that schedules help manage overall energy, time, and sense of purpose.

Temporary, non-scheduled days are wonderful. As parents, when your children sleep over somewhere and someone asks you what you’re going to do, expecting perhaps something spectacular that you can’t do with child, you say Nothing! And are happy about it. The day belongs to you. No schedule… though I’ve seen what parents fall into during these unscheduled times… i.e. errands and general catch-up. But beyond these moments, without a meaningful schedule, we can start to feel lacking in purpose, non-existent, and existentially anxious. If you work, and your calendar is dictated heavily by work and children, this one-sided schedule also begins to eat at your sense of purpose. Your nursing days of feeling like a milk cow may be over, but you may still feel like you’re being milked for all that you’ve got. This, even when you love the work that you do. 

That’s because while they may be vital parts of your life, work is not who you are. Your children and your relationship with your life partner is not who you are. They are beautiful extensions of parts of you expressed in this world. But they are not you. 

Without connection to your truest sense of self, those external connections can feel strained and become sources of depleted energy for you. Which makes you feel isolated, confused, and misunderstood. This is why those life-balance diagrams always include physical and spiritual health (spiritual means nothing more than to know yourself). 

Scheduling yourself meaningfully into your calendar is what allows you to relate to your work and family in the most authentic and impactful way. Here are some examples of ways you might schedule yourself into your day. Remember that keeping them in your head or on your to-do list for when you have time (haha) doesn’t work. 

• Daily practices like meditation, contemplation, and journaling where you get to meet yourself without the goal of running so many miles or writing a chapter of your book. This allows you to be with your tantrums, heartaches, questions, celebrations, and skepticisms. You won’t get there if you try this under perfect conditions, promise of no interruptions, and perfect moods. Schedule it and show up. 
• Work or play that’s meaningful to you, not as a mother, daughter, or significant other, but you. The answer to what’s meaningful to you when you’re not wearing any other hat is a question which many clients are searching for.  So no worries if this is you; you’re in good company.
• Something challenging that will help you grow your capacity in a way that you yearn to be. 
• Friendship time. 
• Some forms of “domestic” work that you do yourself that would ultimately help you feel nourished and empower you to make better decisions in your life. I.e. cooking a meal that you want to eat with your own hands and unrushed, hand-washing dishes for the sake of washing dishes and taking your time, spending time with your finances to understand your budget, or re-organizing a part of your home for a specific and brief period of time. It keeps you connected to that which nourishes you on a deeper, more foundational level. 

You’ll push back against what you schedule in for yourself, but that push back is vital. 

• It gives you point of reference to assess your priorities, values, and desires. 
• It gives you an opportunity to notice how you respond to your own authority. 
• It becomes a practice in self compassion, patience, and flexibility. 
• It will make communicating what’s important to you to others easier. 
• It becomes a visual sounding board for you to realize whether what you put down is as important as you thought it was in your head. 
• You begin to discern your yeses and your nos because you now have practice in putting things down and facing them (experiencing what they really mean for you to follow through on them).
• It gives you something to look forward to and ways to blossom. You get to tweak, play, and delve deep because you gave your ideas actual space in your life to speak. 

You get to know yourself better. Which is key to understanding others better. Both are key to feeling seen and connected. Which naturally gives rise to your sense of discernment aka sense of self. 

Love, Savitree