being comfortable with myself is my thing

So, now that we (I am taking for granted that you and I are in this together now) have decided that my goal for this challenge the next 9ish months is to figure out how to feel comfortable in my own skin… I (*cough* WE) need a plan.

A structure of some kind so I don’t feel like I’m going in a million and one directions.

I have been thinking this week about times in my life when I have felt completely at ease.

However, there is a slight hiccup: I am not sure the way my brain works actually lends itself to a lot of ease.

I have a mind that goes and goes and goes. My process involves thinking about the thing and then breaking down the thing and then breaking it down some more while simultaneously running possible outcomes/consequences for each sub-step.

While I can appreciate that would sound exhausting to most (such as my husband, “You think a lot” is a refrain I hear a lot), for me it’s just normal. Every scenario feels like the set up for a practiced safecracker tasked with cracking a huge safe and I am the safecracker, à la that movie Army of Thieves. Sure, cracking a safe can be a lot of work and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t… but safecrackers crack safes. It’s what they do, they just have to.

Safecrackers crack safes. My brain goes (and goes and goes).

That said, it’s not like I never feel that warm hum of calm. I’ve had heaps, HEAPS of beautiful moments just like that (thank you very much):

Summertime, I’m about 10 years old. Barefoot in the backyard after dinner in my pajamas, trying to teach myself how to do a roundoff with Madonna’s True Blue blaring in my ears. The evening dew plastering grass clippings to my legs…

Buried under a slightly damp but cozy blanket on my Grandma’s porch with a stack of Sweet Valley High books at my side and a pile of graham crackers balanced on my knee listening to the rain…

Flying down the highway on my way home from an evening cocktailing at the restaurant in my tiny Hyundai Excel, windows down, Hotel California blaring on the radio…

When I think back on those times I just felt at complete ease. It’s not reasonable to think that the ease I had as a child can just be bottled up and sprinkled everywhere, I realize, but what is the right-now-adult version of that?

Since I am needing a way to break this down more to help me tackle this in bite-sized chunks, what I’ve come to is the classic breakdown:

When it comes to being comfortable with oneself, how does that translate when it comes to the body, mind and spirit?

More specifically, how does a woman in her 40s who is a mom and a wife and a daughter and a friend who is trying to get 10,000 steps in a day, while also being a chauffeur to her children, and works, and is trying to be a decent human in the world while cleaning white cat hair off everything who should meditate more and take part in school activities more and plan a Date Night whose mind goes and goes… find peace and ease for the body, mind and spirit?

Body. Mind. Spirit.

I think every belief system through the ages includes a mention of these categories in some shape or form so I am thinking this is a good place to start.

Those are my categories. That is what I want to know more about.

This is what I want to find.

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I am conducting an experiment: I have challenged myself to try something new each month in 2022. Here are my (self imposed) rules. Let me know if you have ideas on fun/ interesting/ novel things I could try in the comments. Or join me, that would be even more lovely actually…