In yesterday’s Thursday HotSeat session, the Member in focus shared about his experience since his family situation has changed and how that’s affected his discipline and achievement of things that are important to him.
For example, he explained how previously, when his daughter was first born and his wife was at home to look after her in the mornings, he had easily had the time and discipline to keep up an avid exercise routine, which effortlessly complemented his work schedule and his other activities.
Since his wife has been back at work and he’s looking after their daughter in the mornings and doing the school drop-off, his exercise and other things have had to take a back seat and he shared he’s not feeling totally on form because of it.
It’s an interesting thing when we are forced to contemplate what appear to be conflicting priorities. Especially when they involve loved ones and particularly children, who we can tend to prioritise above ourselves.
The first thing to consider is that in my experience there is ALWAYS a way to ‘have your cake and eat it too’, providing we are at least open to the possibility of that.
A situation asking for compromise can be the indicator that we have an opportunity to practise accessing having this AND this, rather than this OR this. I personally ask, and encourage you to ask yourself, “How can I have/do this AND this?”, which engages all of our considerable cognitive processes, and creativity in searching out the solution, based on our assumption that there IS a way to have or do both.
The other approach would be something more like accepting the idea that sacrifice and compromise are absolutely necessary when it comes to taking care of loved ones (or ourself), and then finding ways to justify to ourselves why we can deal with it for now and then make up for it later, when circumstances change. This route invariably leads to further compromise or sacrifice and a limited experience in which we are not truly happy.
An interesting thing to consider here is that given the choice, would we want our loved ones to have the best, most exciting and fulfilling life possible in all ways?
Of course we would.
And would seeing that totally fill us up and have us happier?
Of course it would.
So then why would we think that our compromise on the things that are important to us would not potentially have a dampening effect on those who watch and learn from us, love us, and want us to be thriving?
Really, what is here for us to discover is how to have our cake and eat it too, so that no one compromises on anything and everyone wins.
It can take commitment to holding the belief that it can be done, until you get used to that always being possible, then it becomes normal and hard to imagine any reason to ever need to choose this OR this.
