november 2019: what I’m learning and loving
It’s already time for the second-to-last What I’m learning and loving (WILL) post of 2019. That gives me a little case of the shivers (H/T Owen Meany), but here’s to being present and making December count. On to the list…
What I’m loving
TOMS Paxton slip-ons. I planned to ask for these for Christmas, but I saw they were on sale and just bought them (still offering 30 percent off with code FAMILY right now FYI). I pretty much have worn them everywhere : work, date night, basketball games, yoga. They’re pretty much slippers that look respectable for just about everything, and I’ve already gotten my money’s worth in a few short weeks of owning them. For you minimalist footwear peeps, the sole could be thinner but it’s at least even and twisty and the toe pad is nice and wide. Put these on your Christmas list.
Akamai Oil Pulling Mouthwash. I’ve written about my love for the Akamai toothpaste in the past (still obsessed and I’m only just now about to finish the tube I ordered last December), but I bought this mouth “wash” a few months ago and have been loving how much cleaner my teeth look and feel. It’s really more of an oil pull (benefits here). I’ve never minded oil pulling with just coconut oil except that I always forgot to actually do it, plus the feel in my mouth wasn’t my favorite. This stuff is a mix of oils and essential oils with specific purposes that seem to heighten the benefits of coconut oil alone. My favorite part is that it stays in oil form (versus coconut oil that solidifies when cold), so I keep my bottle in the shower, swig a little bit at the start of my shower, and then by the time the shower is over, I wind up with fresh breath and a very clean feeling mouth. I do this about twice a week, but more when someone in the house is sick because so many of our infections start in our noses and mouths. If you use code SEASON20, you’ll get twenty percent off any order over $35 through 1/5/20. (Psss the toothpaste would make a great stocking stuffer!)
Chalkboard wall sticker. Grant and I have tried at least 27 different methods of tracking chores. I bought this as a maybe-last-ditch-effort of trying to track the kids’ chores. Its success or failure at chores is a story for another post. BUT I put it on an inconspicuous (narrow) wall between their bedrooms that guests can’t really see and didn’t have anything else on it. I used the top part for the chores stuff, but then I had a ton of space on the bottom that we made into an “acknowledgements/quote” board. The verdict is still out on whether it will work for chores or not, but having an acknowledgments/quote board back by our bedrooms is a definite – albeit unexpected – success. For under $10, find a spot for one in your home. (Also buy the chalk markers for less and much easier clean-up).
Star Wars. I was as surprised by this entry as you are. Grant had this grand idea to watch all of the Star Wars in order (this was the order we did) as a family and then go see the new one together when it comes out at Christmas. I have seen all of the Star Wars movies, but I wasn’t really that into them until the newer Disney franchise to be honest. I had low expectations for this plan because I figured the kids would get bored, and Grant would be sad that the rest of us weren’t as into it as he was. Well, I was happily very wrong. The kids are obsessed, totally get the story lines, and convinced us to do Disney+ just so we could watch The Mandalorian to really complete this project. I was skeptical, but this whole thing has been a really fun thing to get into as a family and now we can all hardly wait to see the next one at the theaters.
What I’m learning
What we look for in others, we can provide for ourselves. I did a lot of self-compassion study over the last few weeks and spent a ton of time listening to Dr. Kristin Neff (if you only have time for one podcast on the topic, listen to this one). At some point in an interview or in one of her books, she said something along the lines of this:
It is wonderful when the people we love can give us what we need, but it is important that we learn to give ourselves what we need. It is not our loved ones’ responsibility to meet our needs; it is great when they do, and we all need each other of course. In the end, though, it is really our responsibility to meet or speak up for our own needs. And we can better show up in the world, for ourselves, and for our people when we are capable of giving ourselves what we need.
Sara’s paraphrased version
This really resonated with me, as something that I could do better at and as something that I want to model for our kids. Westerners, Americans particularly, tend to live in our heads, “power through,” and put constant hustle on a pedestal.
In order to give ourselves what we need, we first have to learn how to listen to ourselves – bodies, minds, and spirits. So many of us live so disconnected from our own bodies and intuition that we relinquish all control to experts and gurus and formulas. I’ve been thinking about the ways that I seek advice from others outside of myself instead of tuning in to my own inner voice to see what She is saying. This requires quiet, stillness, repetition, and intention. I’m hoping to grow in my ability to care for myself, not so that I won’t need anybody else (that’s dumb), but because we can only truly love and care for others to the extent that we have already offered that to ourselves.
Depth > Breadth = True Learning. Yin yoga is a very seasonal practice – it marries the wisdom of yoga and Taoism (to way oversimplify things). We practice with different poses and intentions based on the season of the year. The fall is associated with the lung and large intestine meridian lines, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine (which has its roots in Taoism), so we focused on letting go and grieving, emotions that come up when the lung and large intestine meridian (or energy lines) are blocked or imbalanced. For the month of November in our yin class, we focused on cultivating the pract ice of gratitude. By digging deep into those concepts for an entire month or more, I, as the teacher, had to really dig deep with my own study to be able to offer new ways of saying and teaching similar concepts in slightly new ways. I learned so much by sticking with a topic over the course of several weeks versus my normal MO of hopping from one interesting thing to the next. It was a good reminder of the importance of depth, and it is making me want to pick a topic or two to make 2020 a depth year.
Love in particulars. As I was deep diving into gratitude, I spent a ton of time listening and reading Br. David Steindl-Rast (if you only listen to one thing, make it this. Or this if you’re short on time). He said that we are called to love our enemies – and that we should have enemies. Our enemies are those who oppose our highest convictions. We can practice loving them while vehemently disagreeing with them. For me, what came to mind immediately are those who still deny the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change and refuse to do anything about it. They are my enemies because they oppose one of my highest values (caring for all of creation), and yet, I am still called to love them. Ugh, even writing this makes me squirmy because I don’t want to!
But then I listened to this episode (another great one and highly recommended), and Don Golden says that we should love in particulars and hate in generalities. I think both Golden and Steindl-Rast are saying similar things in different ways, and I think they both are onto something profound about how we can dig ourselves out of this vehemently partisan and toxic hole we find ourselves in.
I’m not saying I’ve learned even a little bit of how to actually do this, but I think the first step is understanding, even philosophically, the how and why so that we can start making, even the tiniest of steps, in that direction.
How to make the degree symbol. I randomly learned how to make the degree symbol on my phone – hold down the zero button, and it pops up as an option. I’m not sorry about how excited I was about this new-to-me-knowledge.
My morning routine is just fine. I mean, DUH SARA, but I felt so vindicated by this piece. I, too, compulsively read about other people’s morning routines and beat myself up about my own trouble sticking to one one hundred percent of the time. I don’t know why it took the few sentences below to help me see that people self-reporting their morning routines were likely talking about their idealized morning when everything goes perfectly (and/or they also have nannies and trainers and who knows what else to help them actually accomplish their list of 37 things they supposedly do every morning before 5AM).
Gordon Flett, a personality researcher at York University, in Canada…studies “perfectionist presentation”—the tendency of people to present flawless versions of their lives, particularly on social media—and the way others react to it. People are far more likely to describe their ideal morning than their realistic one, Flett says.
The False Promise of Morning Routines
I also realized that I do have a pretty decent morning routine, so I gave myself a pat on the back. Add this to my ever-growing n-of-one evidence file.
Your turn – what have you been learning and loving lately?!
