The third session of the Crafting my Life Online Class is now underway – but it’s not too late to register. Sign up before February 7 for a chance to get in on all the life-crafting fun. This is your last chance, since I don’t plan to run the class again in its current form. I will be doing lots of other cool things, though. If you want to be the first to hear about those, and be eligible for special discounts and other perks, subscribe to my mail list.
Do you ever get the feeling that everyone else has it all together except for you? I’ve felt this way, and it’s not much fun. You feel like the odd one out, or the puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit. But you know what? All those other people are struggling, too. You just can’t see it because they’re not showing you.
Many of us keep long lists in our heads, enumerating our personal failings and shortcomings. We’re painfully aware when things are taking longer than we think they should, and we know when we haven’t cleaned the bathroom in four weeks because we just can’t seem to find the time. We don’t know what someone else’s bathroom looks like, or how many items from their to-do list have been left undone. How could we know? So we give other people the benefit of the doubt, as we agonize over our own situations.
Everyone gets the same 24 hours every day. People who appear to be really accomplished don’t get an extra hour or two on account of good behaviour. This means that if they’re devoting lots of time and energy to one particular area of their lives, they simply don’t have the same time and energy to devote to other areas. Maybe they outsource cleaning and childcare, so that they’re free to work on their career. Maybe they don’t get enough sleep, because they’re up at all hours writing. Maybe they eat a lot of take-out because they can’t find the time to cook. You’ll never know, but you can be sure that if it seems impossible for someone to do all that stuff, there’s some area of their life that is suffering for lack of attention.
There’s no way to have it all, and especially not all at the same time. It’s still possible to find happiness, though. The answer isn’t to work harder, or try to fit in more. The answer is to examine your own values and priorities, make choices that work as well as possible for you, and own those choices. The more deliberate you are about the way that you live your life, and the more clear you are on what you’re doing and why, the easier it will be for you to make the compromises you have to make, and the less time you’ll spend beating yourself up because your floors aren’t perfectly clean at all times.
As you make more deliberate, intentional, purposeful choices for yourself, you’re paving the way for other people. The more honest we are about the realities of our lives, and the compromises we have to make, the easier it will be for everyone to really own the lives they’re creating for themselves. One of the big reasons that we believe everyone else is somehow more accomplished than we are is that we feel the need to create this facade. When we’re all just showing our facades, it’s only natural that we would have a distorted view of the realities of other people’s lives. We can’t see the real picture for anyone but ourselves, and reality can never live up to fiction.
Let’s stop perpetrating that fiction. Let’s start living more purposeful, authentic lives, which reflect who we really are. In the process, we’ll discover a truth that was there all along: we are enough, just as we are.
Thank you for this! When I worked in customer service, I had a saying on my computer monitor that said something like “Be nice to everyone, because everyone is dealing with some kind of personal struggle.” Something like that. It’s all relative. What’s hard for one person may be easy for the next, but that person has another challenge to deal with. There is only so much time in a day, a year, and a lifetime. Setting priorities is huge. I’m slowly learning that!
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