I read an interesting book recently by Dr. Martha Beck entitled, Breaking Point Why Women Fall Apart, And How They Can Re-Create Their Lives. The most interesting thing about the book, other than the entire book was the line that read . . . “You have to decide that you are no longer going to play the game.” This resonated with me so much because, I have tried to be everywhere and do everything for everyone. I foolishly thought that I was actually doing something good. What I was actually doing was getting a lot of things half done. As a mother, wife, lawyer, daughter, sister, neighbor and resident clearing house for all things irrelevant, I found myself running faster and faster and getting farther and farther behind.

From that vantage point I found myself under a hair dryer one day preparing my list of things to do just as soon as the dryer clicked off reading an article in a famous African-American women’s magazine and it hit me, that this was the only life that I had. And as far as I knew it was the only one I was going to get. So, the question became, what was I going to do with it?

Two weeks later I was on a plane to Utah to learn to become a life coach. Immediately upon returning friends wanted me to “fix them.” I found it amazing that there were so many people at the same cross-roads as I. They had done all of the right things, gone to the right schools, and gotten all the right degrees, but still found that happiness had just left the building by the time they arrived.

So, here is the answer to the question, how can you be everywhere and do everything at once. . . You CAN’T ! Deal with it and move on. There is an art to determining how much you have to do and how much you really have to do. As a mother, wife, employee, small business owner etc., etc., etc,. I had to be able to leave things undone. And so do you!

The poet, Mary Oliver, wrote the poem, The Journey and it changed my life. I invite you to read it. Once I realized that if I did not do it somebody else would life got a little easier. Now I realized that the task might not be done as well as I would have done it or with as much aplomb as I would have done it but it got done.

One of the first things I try to identify when I set out to coach someone is just how much of their life is spent sustaining others and how much is actually spent on things they enjoy. I take them through this exercise and one of the questions is “how often do you play?” This question is met with profound silence almost every time. Some of my clients ask, “What do mean like play with the kids?” I say “Yeah, if that is your idea of fun.” I love my kid but playing GeoBee is about as much fun for me as having tarter scraped off my teeth at the dentist. I mean, “how often do you do whatever it is that you perceive as playing,” I say.

For me playing is hanging out at my favorite mall trying on obscenely expensive clothing. Then going for a almond cappuccino to sip while, in route to my favorite shoe store. Then lunch with a girlfriend before it is time to pick up the kid from school and start the homework mambo followed by saxophone practice. Anyone out there who has sat through saxophone practice with a 7 year old can feel my pain. Can I get a witness?

That’s how I play. That is the first step in refusing to play the game you have to decide that play time is just as important for you as it is for the kids. I invite you to step out of the role of trying to be everything to everyone. I invite you to go out and play.

Angela Richard
NorthStarAngelaATatt.net