Year Two, Skill # 15: Press The Reset Button

I stayed home with my daughter her first year of life. I loved my work as an educator and school counselor, but I wanted to savor those early days and I could not imagine putting my baby into someone else’s care. It was a challenging and life-changing year full of gifts and sacrifices, yet I was excited about and ready to return to my work when it was over. But when I did, nothing felt right. I constantly felt over-worked and exhausted. I often felt like I was doing a mediocre job, at school and at home, and mediocre just was not in my comfort zone.  I was food shopping at 10 o’clock at night and cleaning toilets at 5 o’clock in the morning. I had nothing left for myself or my husband. During my spring break that year, I sat in silence more than a few times and opened myself to ideas about how to make a change. I didn’t label it this way at the time, but I know now that I was looking for a way to press the reset button. Two weeks later I received a phone call from the Pastoral Counseling Department of then Baptist Hospital offering me a part-time job in their center. It felt like an answer to prayer. God heard my need to press the reset button, to work in a way that was more congruent with who I was. The way I was living was not true to how I wanted to live. It didn’t fit with my own values: God, family,  relationships, creativity.   Have you uttered any of these statements recently?

We got off track.

I know I need to get back to what worked.

We are off our normal routine.

I just need to start over again.

Nothing is working. Nothing feels right. 

If any of this sounds like what's been going on in your head, you may need to press the reset button. The end of the summer, beginning of the school year is as popular a time to press the reset button as the beginning of the new calendar year. Summers, even for people who continue a normal work pattern, are often times when life pulls at us in ways that take us out of our rhythm. Longer days. Vacations. Kids at camps. Kids at home. Parents visiting. Sometimes it is just one damn thing after another; which, by the way, is the definition of sanity. You might already know that the definition of insanity is the same damn thing, day after day, and expecting a different result.

Sometimes it is just one damn thing after another; which, by the way, is the definition of sanity.

Summer isn’t the only time we get off track. It can happen so easily when life events surprise us. Perhaps we get sick. Or a parent gets sick. Or someone dies. Or we lose a job. Or we get a new one. Or we have a baby.  So when we are off track, or off our rhythm, and it is time to find a way that works, we have to press the reset button. How do we do this? I offer a couple of steps below:

• Find a quiet time and place to empty yourself of all that you are holding on to. Allow yourself to feel fluid and flexible, creative and calm.
• Remember what worked. In detail. “I got a workout in when I got up 30 minutes earlier. I also remember that I had to go to bed 30 minutes earlier if I wanted to get up early.” OR, “I use to talk with my friends after I put the baby to bed. What am I doing now instead?
• Decide if this is really a priority. You won’t stick to anything if it isn’t personally important to you. Is eating family meals a priority? Don’t make it one if it isn’t.
• Set your intention. Have a vision. Write it down. "My intention today and this week is to make a nutritious dinner and eat it with the family. My intention is for that dinner to be a fun and bonding time.Find some accountability: Do you have a friend who would take an interest in being an accountability partner? Someone who you would feel comfortable talking to and being honest with. If you called and said, “I know I said I was going to have a nutritious family dinner twice this week but I just don’t know how to do it”, is there a friend who would help you think about that, help you find a creative solution, help you decide if this is truly a priority?
• Finally, look for small successes. I am one who often forgets to breathe in the incremental ways things improve. I don't know who said this but most change happens because one small step turns into more small steps which turn into a big leap!
• SOMETIMES, Friends, we just need to press the reset button on a very small thing. It is like calling a "time out". Just last night my husband and I were snappy with each other, trying to get some food in the crockpot to cook overnight. I finally said, "Can we start over? I don't want us to talk to each other like this."  In essence, we pressed the reset button on just a moment in time. It's good to do this.  Just wave a symbolic time out flag and ask to start over.

 Change happens because one small step turns into more small steps which turn into a big leap!

Let me leave you with one more small tip. This came to me by way of  Twelve Steps and recovery wisdom. Remember the acronym H.A.L.T.  Hungry, Angry or Anxious, Lonely, Tired. If you are any of these, and especially if you are more than one of these at any time, press the reset button. Nothing good can happen if you are in H.A.L.T. brain. Trust me. Maybe sometime I will tell you a story about the only time in my life that I threw something at someone. I was all four of the above. It wasn't pretty. But that is for another blog! Life is Messy, Friends. Don't be insane and do the same damn thing over and over. Press the reset button when necessary.

Amy