Body Doubling

I've had a really good and productive day. This afternoon was great, cause Nicole called and we chatted and worked together. Back in May, Nicole shared a text with me about something knowns as "body doubling" which is: "a productivity and self-help strategy that involves working with another person around to help improve motivation and focus." Nicole and I are great at body doubling! Today she got a lot done as we were on the phone. I did some stuff here in the basement too. She sent me some before and after photos of her bedroom. I usually do a great job folding laundry as we talk. I'm grateful to have her as an accountability partner and motivating friend. I hope to take a chunk out of more of the to-dos in the rest of the house tomorrow as this motivation hopefully keeps rolling. I might just call her everyday this week. Here is what Katharine was doing in the basement as I worked.

Yes, she served herself up a bowl of Friend Lego Cereal.

And yes, instead of taking the choke-able legos away from my one year old, I took a picture instead as she took a heaping bite of toy humans. 

Try as I might, I have not been able to keep legos away from this little girl. They are all over the basement, all over the main floor, and all over the bedrooms upstairs. They are all over the house. But no legos have ever come out in her diaper, so the good news is that it appears she just likes to put them in her mouth. 

After 10 days, Peter's green robot has been broken and a lot of my phone conversation with Nicole was me hunting for lego pieces to fix that for him. Hence why Nicole had a more productive day than I did, but it was still good. And I finished the robot well enough. Katharine also was pretty cute when I gave her this note pad and pencil. 

She holds her pencil so well! We all think it is stinking adorable and that she is so smart.

After Abi and Lily got home today, I invited them downstairs to see all the progress I had made. I asked Abi if she was impressed and she said "Mucho!" (she had a Spanish test, so Espanol was on the brain.) Lily was behind her, and she started to say "mucho" too, but then started to change her word into "Ooo!" as she was so amazed by what I had done, and Mucho + ooo = Moo! So she said "Moo!" and Abi and I looked at her like "What??" and then Lily laughed and we all laughed. Lily then explained the two words she was saying and how they came together like in a Brian Regan "Take Luck" moment. It was funny. 

Even before Nicole called, I had already had a great morning. It was raining this morning, so we didn't go on a ride, so INSTEAD I had an hour to read in a relatively quiet house! That doesn't always work on mornings we are at home, but it did today cause K stayed asleep. I read the Book of Mormon and then went downstairs and read "On Fire" while waiting for the oatmeal to cook. This book is REALLY REALLY Good and I want to do the things he suggests cause I can tell I need it. So far from chapter 1 is to realize that you want to live, so choose to really live!! Chapter 2: Stop hiding - don't hide your struggles, they are part of your story and part of the miracle you are meant to contribute to lift others. I'm just starting chapter 3. I found this book after first finding "In Awe" (which I haven't read yet but is in my library stack) and that book stood out to me because of the word "awe" which is a word in my patriarchal blessing - it says that I'll be able to help explain God's plan and that will help people "wonder in awe" at how merciful it is. So that's why I picked up In Awe, and now I'm wondering why I hadn't heard of John O'Leary before? Like this is an amazing story. Watch this clip~

I'm so inspired by his gratitude. I want to be like him. One other part from Chapter 2 - What are you hiding, reminded me of a comment that was shared in sacrament meeting recently - Sister Stubbs said something to the effect that we should share our trials as we are in them, so we can help each other, not just after it's over and we've learned what we think we need to learn. Page 54 of On Fire, talking about our trials "Those are the places that can bring us together. So often we push people away, afraid that hey don't want to see the hard stuff. But the hard stuff is what we should be doing together. It is what joins us as humans. ... Share your struggles and your heart and find true connection. Are you feeling that too much is going on, that you are stressed to the max and you just can't handle it? You can just keep plowing forward, completely spent, burned-out, yet hiding how much you hurt. OR you can text a friend, share your burden, and realized that he or she feels the same way. (continuing on pg 55) That's where real life is lived. In the moments when we let our guard down and open our lives and hearts. Let our light shine so it can illuminate the darkness others are feeling. And I've discovered that in lowering my mask and letting other into the deepest corners of my heart, that far from pushing me away, they'll frequently respond with the beautiful words, "you too?" But that can't happen if you are pretending your life is Instagram perfect, creating a façade that prevents other from ever seeing the real you. Living life on fire means you aren't afraid to know and own your story; you celebrate the scars you've accumulated along the way, and you are ready and willing to live life honestly. Otherwise you'll never know the gift of your story. You won't know the power of your experiences. You can't embrace the beauty of your scars. You'll never be a light to a world desperate for it." So I read that yesterday and I was crying after. (I know cause I wrote down on that page "I'm crying"). I want to live life honestly. I think I'm mostly real here on the blog. I don't always share the hard things, which are mostly finance related. But I know that I have so much to be grateful for, so I don't want to focus on the hard things, but it is real. We are all facing unique and personalized trial curriculums. Everyone is dealing with hard things. As Julie Beck said in April 2010 "Despite popular media messages to the contrary, no one is rich enough, beautiful enough, or clever enough to avoid a mortal experience." We are all being tested, so open up and share and find some relief, there are people that care and can help ease our burdens. (Thank you Nicole!)

I have a stack of library books that I've been thumbing through. Another one is M.J. Ryan's book "This Year I Will" and I loved the quote at the start of chapter 1: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle. I've heard that before, I think I'm understanding it a bit more because of another book by MJ Ryan that I have " Habit Changers: 81 Game-changing Mantras" ~ I'm trying on new one liners and new habits - like if I tell myself "I can wait to eat" and I develop a habit of sitting when I eat (not standing or while running around doing other things) then I think that will cut out a lot of the mindless snacking or stress eating that I'm still working to overcome. 

Today I also finished a very small book (hardly qualifies as a book) but I'll count it cause I finished it and that is my main goal lately - to finish a book I start. This one was called "Keeping It Together in a Pull Apart World" by Mary Ellen Edmunds. I have been feeling for the past few months like I'm being pulled apart. So it was good. One take away from that book was her definition of stress: stress is how we react to the world! I remember thinking that one other time - that all the problems in our lives don't cause divorce, it's STRESS that causes divorce! SO if we can get a handle on our stress, we can get a handle on our lives. Edmunds gives us the basic solutions and permission we all seek to just let some things go, while still admonishing us with love to keep the most important things at the top of the list all the time. The book is a fast read, taken from a Time Out For Women presentation. Good stuff. 

Ok, I'm prob out of time. Go find a friend to talk to today.