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I was chatting with a friend last week, and the words tumbled out of his mouth, “If I won the lottery, I’d still go to work.” 

I asked him to say more. He went on to say he loved his job so much and was so clear that it was the right place for all the growth he wanted to experience in his career. Now, if only he didn’t need the money, and could literally choose to go to work or not every day of his life. 

I was amused. 

In typical Rachel-fashion, I piped up. “Can you even hear yourself? You’ve found a place that you want to be every day for the foreseeable future – that stretches you in all the ways you want to be stretched, and pays you handsomely to do so – and you’re trying to find a way to not have to be there?! Do you understand how insane this is?” 

Ok, if you’re here, chances are, this isn’t your problem.

I’ve got a solid sense that being able and willing to commit isn’t your issue. It’s knowing how to have that commitment feel like one you chose, and not one that owns you. (Gah, the ones that own you are the worst, aren’t they?)

The reason we commit is because we see something in it for ourselves. 

When you’re feeling owned by the things you’ve agreed to, it’s easy to feel like we weren’t thinking clearly when we said yes. (And sometimes, we weren’t.) But, often the things we say yes to, we say yes to because we see something in the opportunity that will help us become who we really are, who we want to be.

And if you’re stuck in the muck of it, it’s easy to forget that. 

So, whatever commitment you’re struggling with right now, remember you chose it, and there’s something you want here. See if you can connect back to the thing you wanted that made you choose the commitment you’ve got. 

Also, the thing you thought you wanted to get is probably not the only thing you’re there to get. 

So, let’s say you embarked on entrepreneurship, because you really wanted to call your own shots, work your own hours, and keep all the money you made. But now you’re having to dig deep to claim the fees you want to be paid (aka sense of worth), to make yourself visible enough for people to know you exist (aka being seen). 

You probably didn’t sit down at happy hour one day and declare, “Friends! I really want to become an entrepreneur because I’m dying to confront my issues with worth and fear of being visible! I’m so excited!!!”

No, those aren’t consciously things that most people want, BUT they do want them. You just have to know that sometimes the gold of what you really want is buried where you least expect it.

Your job isn’t to question your commitments, but to question what you’re committed to. 

It’s not uncommon for people to start mulling over all the “wrong” choices they’ve made when it comes to things they’ve committed to (both over the years, and presently.) But, guess what?

THERE. IS. NO. WRONG. CHOICE.

The thing that is consistent across every single commitment you make is who you show up as.

Sure, some careers and relationships fit better than others, but they all serve to show you exactly who you are in any given moment.

So, what are you committed to? Or, better said, who are you committed to being?

A person who makes other people’s lives easier?

A person who stands for her own sense of worth?

A person who believes she deserves to be happy?

A person who wants to be loved and supported by others?

A person who puts herself first, because she knows that everything else is so much better from there?

If you’re in a commitment right now that isn’t working for you, before you claim that you’ve leveled up and it’s time to move on, I’d encourage you to take a closer look at who you’re committed to being before you move on – just to make sure you don’t reincarnate another, higher class version of that thing you’re ditching right now. 

And what if your commitment is about to have you committed?

If you’ve committed to something and it’s making you crazy, or full of rage, or despair, I have two thoughts for you.

The first is that the commitment is not allowing you to be who you truly are. (And chances are, you’re the one that’s decided that – you haven’t been willing to be more upfront about who you are because the commitment staying intact has likely been more important than whether it’s serving you.)

And the second is that commitment doesn’t mean forever. Seriously, it doesn’t. It means, I’m all in – to see what’s here for me. (And, I can choose to be not all-in at any time, but my commitment is to get what’s here for my own growth. Mind you, growing through an experience is not the same as allowing yourself to be bludgeoned by it.) 

Your commitment can be day to day, week to week, year by year. What IS important is that your commitment get all of you, so you can get all of it. And when you decide you are no longer committed, you name that, and exit gracefully. 

Your turn. 

Ok, time to spill your guts. Are you a runner, or a waaaay overstay the value of the thing kind of committer? Leave a comment below and tell me something about who and how you want to commit to being, that you think you could commit to for a lifetime?

I spent part of the weekend at a breathing workshop. That’s right, people, I paid actual money to have someone spend four hours telling me how to breathe. (You may be right to pause and question why you read my writing or associate with me any way whatsoever right now. I’ll wait while you re-group.)

It was frickin’ amazing! By the time I walked out the door of the workshop, my whole body was vibrating, and I was high as a kite. From breathing. 

And then I promptly ate pizza (because I had a vision of a slice of pizza floating by my face while I was in this meditation, so I took it as a sign that it needed to happen). Maybe I got the meditation munchies…is that a thing?

After that, I didn’t have any plans, and I didn’t feel tired, but I decided to lay down and just let things sink in a bit, and I fell asleep at 6:30p.m. 

And slept for the next 12 hours! (I never do that!) 

At some point during the workshop, a friend of mine said, “I don’t remember the last time I gave myself two hours to just do nothing, not distracted by anything, to just be with myself.” 

You can’t rest! You’ve got problems to solve, goals to achieve!

Do you spend most of your waking hours solving problems, and working towards goals (which is really just a more positive way of saying solving problems)? 

Right. 

I get it. Places to go, people to see, shit to get done – so you can you have the life you really want. 

Is this how it goes in your brain? (I’m gonna run with simple, just so you can see you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to make problems more complicated than they are!)

Problem: What to do for dinner tonight?

Brain: Hmm, what sounds good? Pizza. No, we had pizza on Sunday. Pasta. Well, Johnny might come over and he doesn’t eat gluten. What does someone eat when they don’t eat gluten? Dang, I’m eating so many carbs these days. I really need to eat better…and get my ass to the gym. Oh man, I’ve been meaning to sign up at that CrossFit gym that also offers yoga, because my hamstrings are so tight. When am I going to fit in CrossFit and yoga?! I’ll get up early! Yes! I can do the early CrossFit workout, and then do yoga after work. Ok, but if I want that to work, I’ll have to get to bed early. Holy crap, I’m tired…I really just want to sit on my couch and look at Facebook. 

Seriously, do you do this? 

And don’t get me started on how much bigger the spin out is when we’re talking about life-changing problems to solve!

Like a good wine, let the problem breathe.

What if, instead, in the morning, I think, “hmm, I wonder what I’ll make for dinner tonight?” and then move on with the rest of my day. Chances are good that at some point during the day I’ll get an idea. 

And then I can run with it. (Kind of like the pizza slice that floated across my mind in meditation. It wasn’t complicated or profound, just clear.)

Putting your attention on action causes a need for more action.

So, when we’re actively focused on all the problems we need to solve (and all the problems that come up as a result of those problems), it can get really crowded up there!

If you intentionally take space for not doing (and ideally, not thinking), the thoughts that hold the answers will have space to come through. 

It’s true, right? The problem you’ve been thinking about for months has a solution suddenly come to you in the shower, or while you’re on a walk, or right upon waking up from a nap. It happens all the time. Surely you’ve heard the saying “when I least expected it” once or 8,000 times in your life?

And doesn’t that sound so much easier than working at them all the time?!

Your turn. 

How good are you at doing nothing? What thoughts get in the way when you try? Leave a comment below and let me know!

I stayed up way too late last night. And I blame my best girlfriends. 

You see, a group of five of us have been steadily hanging for the last ten years. Brought together by new motherhood, the glue that has kept us together has been laughter, honesty, generosity, compassion, and connection. 

As we laughed into the wee hours of the morning over topics like urinary incontinence, I took stock of the room. 

None of us has had it easy. Among us, there have been divorces, death, illness, relationship issues, kid stuff, aging parents, career transitions. Life. Just life being life. And a little bit messy. 

And one of the most beautiful gifts of spending time with these women is this:

We all get to feel whatever we feel, share about it, and still be loved. 

If you have this gift, hold tightly to it. It is special beyond belief. (Seriously, it is with these women that I learned to receive love, no matter how extreme my hot mess was.)

Lately, so much of what I’m hearing from the women I talk with is a general sense that feeling all that they feel seems like too much. They feel so much and so deeply on the inside, but feel like those feelings don’t have a place to be shared on the outside. And it is eating away at them without their even realizing it.

At the end of the day, most of us want a place (or many) in our lives where we feel like all of us is welcome and is loved – whether that’s in our families, our job, our relationships, our friendship, or our communities.  

When you are accustomed to doing, feeling becomes an advanced skill. 

The “problem” with women like us is that we have used our smart, capable selves to get shit done. And sometimes that comes at the expense of pushing our feelings to the background.  

There’s more to do than there are hours in the day. When you don’t have time for everything, you have to make choices. And most of us have been taught to favor action instead of feeling. 

And, if you’re in the extreme, it’s been so long since you’ve been connected to your feelings that they feel tough to access. 

Are your untended emotions catching up with you?

Have you gotten so good at sucking it up and pushing forward that you haven’t really incorporated your feelings about what’s been going on in your life?

Ok, first with the bad news. At some point, your emotions will catch up with you. Being tough on the outside doesn’t mean you can ignore what’s going on on the inside.

Often, this shows up as feeling TIRED. If you are generally getting enough sleep, feeling lethargic is a strong signal that you are having emotions that need some tending.

But the good news is, that you don’t need to go back and retroactively process every single emotion you’ve ever had. And you don’t need to become someone that only ever talks about her emotions. 

You can start simply with the tiny question, “How do I feel right now?” 

And then, “What do I need?”

Your turn. 

How often do you ask yourself how you feel? Is this a question you want to be asking yourself more often – why or why not? Hit reply to this email and share your answers; I read and respond to every one. 

Bonus assignment: send the people in your life that love you no matter what some love and appreciation. It means more than you know.