Despite Good Intentions

Listen to this as a podcast or read below.

In the heat of late August, despite all of my good intentions, nearly every year there comes a time when I’m ready to surrender, to surrender to the heat, to the grasshoppers, to the weeds. Any of you gardeners feel this way? Sure, we love our flowers and tomatoes and all of the beauty and deliciousness our gardens offer us, and we can still get tired of what it takes to keep all of our good gardening intentions.  

If not a gardener, you likely have other projects or hobbies or activities you may find yourself exhausted by at times, or not as up for as you have been. And I know we all have those things we have to do that we don’t enjoy at all, that understandably exhaust us. 

How do you approach or handle being worn out, exhausted, not as interested in, or committed to your good intentions? Whether it’s projects or hobbies, goals or big dreams, creative endeavors or responsibilities, what stirs in you when you feel your focus, your desire, your energy, your commitment fading away? 

There’s a line from one of Lyle Lovett’s songs that I just love, “She wasn’t good but she had good intentions.” Now Lyle has his whole story going on in that song, maybe about infidelity, but I’ve got my own story about that line. I know that woman. You do, too. She’s me and many of my beloved friends and clients. She, like us, has really good intentions, big plans, honorable goals, lofty dreams, and practiced discipline. Even so, sometimes she’s just not good about following through on these good intentions.

Ever feel this way about yourself? If so, how do you treat yourself? 

It’s super important to get clear about how we treat ourselves when we seem to be failing at something we have been committed to, something we might really want to do. Because how we treat ourselves is a reflection of the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves. Does our story offer us some self-compassion or is it more likely to berate us or attempt to beat us into submission? Can our story include understanding for the good reasons our efforts might be lagging rather than judge us for not being enough or not doing enough? Is it possible to embrace our distancing from our past goals and closely held intentions in order to discover more about ourselves in the present moment? 

Here are a few things you might want to consider as you play with your story about yourself when you’re running out of gas on your way to where you want to be.

There are always good reasons why we slow down or get distracted from our goals. Curiosity can move us towards clarity and choice. Self judgement is the domain of the inner critic, the predator that devours our dreams, that critic whose messages suck even more vital life force out of us. You could journal a bit about what some perfectly good reasons might be for what’s going on with you.

Discipline or self-control is an exhaustible resource. This is from the book Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by the Heath brothers. When we use it up, self-control is gone until we re-source ourselves. (More about this and the spoon theory in future podcasts.)

We can run out of focused commitment to our dreams because we are using up all of our self-control taking care of other things or other people. We have exhausted our self-supervising discipline, our clear focus, and our motivation on other tasks or dreams, challenging emotions, or obligations. 

Next quick tip: It helps to remember our strengths when adaptation might be necessary. Humor is my jam and if I can giggle at myself for even a nanosecond, I’m at more ease. I have more spaciousness and breathing room so I can get curious about what might be going on for me. When I sing to myself “She wasn’t good, but she had good intentions,” I’m way ok with the part of me that isn’t perfect. I actually like her, that part of me, much more. I like her sass. 

Giving up, for a time or forever, on my past good intentions isn’t about me being unfaithful. Change is a constant. Seasons change and I change and grow. Situations change, some of which require way more of me than I could ever plan on. Adaptability is an absolutely awesome and necessary human survival trait. It’s also key to our thriving. To my mind it only becomes infidelity when I give up myself in destructive ways, when I lose track of myself, when I’m no longer deeply rooted in what is meaningful and essential for me.

And consider this perspective:  There are some things that are best done with C+ effort. The first time I heard this from a fantastic yoga teacher it blew my mind. Although my sweet mama did say that housework is best done half-assed, I knew I was expected to be a straight A student. I learned if it’s worth doing, do your best. We’ve all heard the NASA saying about failure not being an option. Oh yeah, and women who come to coaching are all about success as each one defines it. 

The instructor said that yoga is best done with C+ effort. It’s about being in your body, in your beingness, with awareness and compassion, noticing what your body needs in the present moment. What if exhaustion is a prompt from our bodies to be more aware and in the present moment, with deep self-compassion?

Another quick tip can be to remember the concept of seasons (beyond those related to sports or TV shows or taxes or schools.) We are impacted by the solar and lunar seasons, and we all have our individual seasons, our times of ebb and flow, in our particular ways. You might want to get curious about your internal seasons and how they affect your focus, energy and ability to hold to your good intentions. 

By the end of August, I am all about gardening with C+ effort. Everybody gets water as needed and maybe some light fertilizer, minor bits of dead heading or trimming, still my deep appreciation and awe, but not nearly as much focus or sweat as in the cool of spring. And maybe next year I’ll make the garden smaller and think more about gardening in these times of climate crisis. It’s all ok and so am I. 

The story I’m telling myself is that I’m extremely grateful for my abundantly full life, and thankful that my garden doesn’t have to feed us through the winter! Many blessings for farmers and migrant workers in the fields! It’s been a full and challenging season for me, so, in order to re-source myself I need to make some hard choices about where to focus my vital life energy.  I love my plants, but I don’t need to have a perfect garden. C+ works well for me here and now. It would be more fruitful for me to shift my committed focus in this season of my life.

How about you? In what areas of your life might you be running out of self-discipline? What story about this is living in you? What’s the story you really want to live? What might be possible if you were to be super compassionate with yourself and curious about what might be a next good step for you? 

Thanks for listening! I’m Christine Thomas, personal life coach for women devoted to our shared well-being in overwhelming and chaotic times. This podcast is part of my series offering nuggets of practical feminism and practical magic so we can Root Deep to Weather Storms. Coaching is a conversation focused on your big intentions. It’s more about questions that lead you to your answers than about my instructions. Please join me in the conversation. I’d love to hear from you.  You can find me at hawkview.net. Bye for now.