Giving Yourself Grace

This morning during my Miracle Morning, I was reading a book called “How to Be Everything” by Emilie Wapnick (see her site Puttylike and her awesome TED talk). This book is about “multipotentialites” – people who have many interests and struggle with the feeling that they need to keep searching for their “one true passion” to focus completely on.  

In this book, Emilie was discussing how you may have many, many projects and you need to recognize that you do not have time to do everything at once – and nor do you need to. She recommended moving projects to the “waiting in the wings” category and addressing them later. I know this is a simple concept, but sometimes you read something that you need in that moment and it hits different. That happened with this idea that I could move things to “waiting in the wings”. 

In my day job as a software developer, we follow the agile methodology for projects and we have what is called a “backlog”. Essentially, this is where you store everything to be done, and during your planning phase, you move everything you think you can accomplish during the next chunk of time into the current “sprint” and leave everything else in that backlog.  

I have had what I call a “backlog” for my day to day tasks for quite some time. However, what occurred to me when reading this morning was that I could and should do the same for my big projects. I have so many things I want to tackle from (re)learning Spanish to reading all the books on my book list to decluttering our whole home to landscaping our yard. All of these bigger projects roll around in my brain constantly as I walk by a window and see the rough patches of lawn or open my phone to see that Duolingo hasn’t been opened in so long that my iPhone removed it. 

I realized this morning that it’s time to give myself some grace. And not just a little, but a LOT. My brain is constantly reminding me that I “should be doing this” or “need to do that” or “have to get started on this” and it never stops.  It is time to stop. 

I have decide there are three big areas I’m going to give myself grace on for the rest of this month. I hope that my sharing these areas will help you think of some areas you could give grace to yourself and take it a little easier. 

1. Counting macros 

Earlier in the year, I started counting my macros instead of focusing on calories and I felt such a huge difference. I really focused on protein and getting a nice split of 30% carbs, 40% protein and 30% fat. I have never focused so much on getting my full protein of at least 125g and my body felt so good. 

However, as good as I felt, I just don’t have the time. Working from home has really made a lot of this easier, since I have my food scale and can measure everything I’m eating during the day. Yet, as good as I felt, I just felt so much stress, always worrying if I took a single bite that wasn’t measured and logged. Also, I found myself busy measuring while my family was enjoying their meals. We are so busy these days with spring sports having practice or games almost every day of the week that it just doesn’t seem feasible to keep this up during this season. I’m giving myself grace and deciding that I will revisit macro counting in a few months when I may have more time. 

2. School breakfasts 

This one was difficult for me to give up because for many months now, I have wanted so badly to try different breakfasts for my kids before they head off to school. I have been sticking with cereal, Greek yogurt, Kodiak waffles and sometimes an egg. They also have school breakfast about once a week. I have really wanted to try new recipes to increase the amount of protein my kids are getting and have more well-rounded breakfasts. 

Yet, I have just kept pushing it off. First it was a March goal, then April, and now I even wrote a post that it was going to happen this month in May. Nope. I’m done. I realized that my kids have less than a month of school and I just don’t need to do this right now. I think it will be easier to try new recipes during the summer when mornings may be a little less insane and I can spend more time on this. I’m giving myself grace and I will take this one off my plate. 

3. Reading all the books 

This one is tough for me. Currently I have 25 books checked out from the physical library. I have over 30 checked out from the online library. How in the hell will I ever get through all of those books? Not to mention, I’m adding more books daily to my “Want to Read” list. What?? There’s just no way. And these aren’t just read and be done books, almost all of them are books I need to take notes on and plan action items for. 

Nope. I just can’t do it. As much as I love to read and as much as I hate to give up all of these books, I feel like I need to start over. Check out a few, finish those, then check out a few more. It gets difficult because sometimes it can take so long to get a book after I put it on hold, that a bunch of books will come in that I had on hold while I’m reading many other ones and then it just gets out of hand.  I need to take a breath and maybe even a book break while I figure out what I’m really trying to gain from all of these books. 

And there it is.  The three things I’m going to give myself grace on right now and push to my “backlog”/back burner. I already feel a weight lifted off my shoulders – the weight of decision making! 

What about you? How is your current project list? Is there anything you could give yourself grace on and push to later in the year? Or maybe never? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!