'What are you Practicing?' Michelle Obama's got my number, and yours too I bet
The former First Lady got me to tidy my room without even asking - what profound impact might she have on your bad habits? + the best online yoga, and free coaching.
I reckon Michelle Obama is an amazing friend - she’s certainly my top fantasy BFF. The former First Lady (why doesn’t she get to hang onto her title like the Presidents?) is funny and wise - but you just know she’d also call you on your shit. And you wouldn’t mind! I’d actively invite her to - “Michelle, be honest: where am I f*cking up today please!?”
Which is why I love love LOVE the insta post of Michelle at the United States of Women #USOW event (above) where she bluntly tells the audience: “Life is practice…you are practicing who you’re gonna be”. She clarifies that if you’re practicing being “spoiled, whining, trifling”? (Love that - who says ‘trifling’ in 2024!?) - “that doesn’t just go away“.
It’s a great analogy that of course brings to mind yoga where the emphasis is on practicing at whatever level you’re at. Basically, be patient, and you’ll see improvements over time - and be mindful that yoga practice is non-linear: some days we’re more bendy or strong than others. Yoga invites us to go with the yin and the yang of our bodies, and to ideally embrace the discipline of a regular practice.
Michelle however emphasises how whatever we practice day-in-day-out we get better at. So - watch what you practice! Because the more you practice a behaviour, the more it will become part of who you are. Yay I thought - I practice yoga most days now, and hate it when I miss it. But then, as Michelle’s wisdom sunk in I realised: OMG. I am also practicing having a really untidy office, and I am getting better and better at that too!
Instead of thinking that tidying my office and creating my long desired-for streamlined space was just something I needed to get around to - the not getting around to it was actually me practicing working in disarray! My relative ease at taking calls and writing stuff whilst sitting in a fudge of papers and random items that related to all manner of ongoing but incomplete tasks was me getting better at working surrounded by mess.
I went straight to my office and began clearing and organising and getting rid of the detritus that I’d been barely registering. I do clean and tidy my office of course - I’m not a pig and it’s not in a gradually declining state. But I tend to put a few things away and then somehow it feels impossible to remove various papers etc. from my eye-line - for fear that I won’t get round to doing whatever the hell each paper or item relates to. Which I guess is practicing procrastination too. Oh heavens.
But I hate mess, as much as I can easily make it. And it’s only because of my husband Hamish’s massive need for tidiness that our home is a sanctuary throughout. Apart, of course, from my office. When I cook, I clean as I go. I instinctively tidy away blankets in the lounge and straighten cushions and just generally put-stuff-away in every room - most of the time. Apart from my office. That has somehow slipped through the nearly decade and a half of Hamish’s influence.
Perhaps it’s because my work-self is something I like to think of outside of my marriage. Having met my husband in my early 40s, that work-self was well established and perhaps not as open to being influenced by a husband as my personal self (especially second-time around!). In fact, I had to inculcate my professional strategies into Hamish, because - well - let’s just say I found his practice of financial management terrifying and unacceptable. I agreed therefore to greater tidiness if he got his admin in order.
I quickly learned to ensure our home didn’t look like a bomb site when he returned from work having seen how much it pained him. Yet I didn’t incorporate that tidiness into life behind my office door. Was it childish defiance? “You can’t change me!”? Whatever the reason, it is Michelle Obama (sorry Hamish!) who has prompted me to finally get things in order.
I think Michelle’s is a genius way of framing our persistent bad habits that we ourselves don’t like. And I realise there are many things we can struggle with as individuals that require more than reframing and willpower to solve. Structural aspects of life are insidious drivers that can make seemingly simple change very hard. And even when we do identify the problem, it’s important we don’t see it as an individual failing when we struggle to change it on our own. I’m a coach - helping people who come to realise they can’t do stuff alone is literally what I do!
Many things - like me and my mess - require a subtle but significant mindset shift that can be possible to achieve without support, but not always. Regardless, hiding the reality of a habit’s impact behind excuses around time and priorities doesn’t cut it when you strip it down bare to the bones - as Michelle showed me. But being able to actually shift into a new way of being sometimes requires us to dig a bit deeper to see what’s driving the behaviour that we know is detrimental even as it continues. And I’ll be raising my tidiness challenges with my coach next time we speak for sure, because I know I’m unlikely to create the lasting change I desire without her help!
Ultimately, Michelle’s take disarms the embedded nature of some bad behaviour in our lives. It shines a big light on how an apparently small thing we’re doing (or not doing) becomes a Way of Being. Michelle’s framing shows how rather than being insignificant, that behaviour builds strength and takes deeper and deeper root in our lives. And that’s great if that’s yoga! But if it’s something we know we’re not proud of - then it helps us see where we need to take stock and change.
Once you see your slack and self-sabotaging habits this way - you can’t un-see them! And for me, having a messy workspace goes against my conscious sense of self. I don’t want to be someone who practices being messy and is OK around unnecessary chaos! I don’t want to be slovenly when my professional disposition is nothing of the sort.
So instead of seeing my inaction around keeping my desk and office tidy as something I just hadn’t got round to doing - Michelle had me see it as something I am ‘doing’ - every day! I am working in mess. Or I was. And it now makes me shiver to think of how much ‘better’ at it I might have become…
So what are YOU practicing - and what might you be unwittingly creating…..?
Michelle wants to know and she’s got your number…
DFY Recommends…
Do this:
Seems like the right week to share my favourite online yoga practitioner - the amazing Kassandra. She has hundreds of videos of varying length - from beginner to intermediate and beyond - so it’s easy to find one that’s right for you. I began doing her 30-day ‘flexible body flexible mind’ playlist about 18 months ago after a series of surgeries left me feeling unfit and in need of a slow rehab. I now practice about 5 days a week - and have recently got into yin yoga. That’s the passive version that has you relaxing into poses, and is the very necessary antithesis we all need to our yang exercise and lives! I like to do it in the evening by scented candle light - a really yummy treat…
So whether you’re a seasoned yogi, or just tentatively open to giving it a go, Kassandra’s videos are a great way to go. Let me know how you get on!
Book this:
Hit a wall and realising you need to do something different with your life? You might just need coaching support to make those necessary shifts.
If you’re ready to make real change, why not book a FREE taster coaching session with me? Just click here and arrange a 30 minute slot where we’ll explore your midlife reinvention and how you might best achieve it.
You’ll leave your powerful 30 minute session with:
Your personalised goals and achievable outcomes.
A new awareness about your professional and personal skill gaps and what’s been holding you back (it might not be what you think!)
Renewed motivation to do things differently and take charge of your destiny.
A next-step action plan for exploring new options, acquiring new skills, and stepping into a new phase that aligns with your ambitions and heart’s desires.
I’m foundations certified in Women’s Centred Coaching, which is an evidence based framework that’s proven to specifically tackle the ways in which women are held back in life.
So whatever success looks like to you - overcoming public speaking and performance anxiety or other issues of self-confidence, raising your game professionally, finding true love or purpose, following your neglected dreams, I can personally vouch for how this is genuinely transformative coaching.
It’s likely the missing piece you didn’t know you were looking for.
Email wendy@dramafreeyou.com with any questions you don’t see answered at my website www.dramafreeyou.com
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That’s it for now - keep on reaching for your best self, and reaching out to those who might help you.
Because Drama belongs in the movies, not in your life.
Until next time,
Wendy
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