It’s January First 2019, I woke up this morning knowing exactly what I had to do. For the past few months I could feel the growing desire to finally put my efforts behind my life coaching business. It was easy enough to ignore the feelings as we had a lot of transitions happening at our wellness center, and I was the driving force behind the change. The change is 95% complete and I was at an impasse, pick up a new distraction to keep me from the thing I really wanted, of dig in. Stop talking. Start doing. I decided to start doing. In order to do, a cleanse was in order. A cleanse from social media. INSERT PANIC HERE. Social media is like my prozac, when I don’t feel like I can deal with the pressure of running a business, building a business, and running a family of 8, I turn to social media to calm me, distract me, tell me it’s okay (or make me feel worse, depends on the day). When I feel stressed and like it’s too much to handle Facebook is there for me, when I can’t sleep at night because I am doing the budget and running numbers in my head, Instagram quiets the calculator in my head. Waiting for someone to finish gymnastics? Instagram my friend is with me. Can’t decide what to make for dinner? Facebook helps me put I off a little longer. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

At 9:30 this morning I knew, what I’ve known for a few weeks now, me and Facebook and Instagram needed some time apart. I could have quietly deleted the apps from phone. Never telling a soul, creating some security so in a few days if I just couldn’t hang I could quietly download the apps again and no one would know I was cheating myself out of the things I truly desired. TO provide accountability and follow through on my part I loudly declared “I’m deleting social media and staying off of it for 30 days.” My husband said, that will be so good for you. He then casually threw a few things out that he was going to give up, but momentarily placing the distraction in my hands. He then started to say that he too would join me in the 30 days of social media sobriety. I was so grateful to no longer feel that I was going it alone. I have done this in the past, I usually have him change my passwords to avoid the temptations, but as we would lie in bed at night, I would struggle as he would mindless scroll and I tried to busy myself with something that would fill the time.

To further the fun I notified my teenagers tonight that they would be Instagram free Sunday night through Friday, or they could choose to join us in the full 30 days. I gave everyone fair warning, as I have done this before, that about 4 days in I get a little cranky. I want a fix, my hand is tired of picking up my phone and tapping where the little icons of joy used to be only to find that I am opening up the banking app or the weather. There is that moment of shame, when I realize how frequently and habitually I pick up my phone to check out. Little bits of justification come in, that I was still getting things done, and being mom is hard. Both true. But, how many years did I parent without my little buddy FB and Insta? Maybe that’s why a few years ago I didn’t dread the “interruption” of going to the grocery store, finding something to make for dinner was a little more fun (sometimes), and falling asleep at a decent time was easier because I wasn’t holding a distraction in my hands.

It’s definitely not goodbye forever, I know that one of the next steps in building my business lies directly in the path of having a strong online presence, here, there, and everywhere. I am taking the time now to develop pathways in my life that are filled with speed bumps of me picking up my phone when things feel to hard to deal with right now. I’m sure my viewership of HGTV and Chopped on the Food Network will see a slight increase, but commercials are there to give you a few minutes to get things done until the big reveal.

My big goal for the next few days is to develop a really solid list of things to be done in place of picking up my phone and tapping my way out of reality. This list will be the actual, fill in the holes that dog made in the wall and paint things, along with pay the library fine and check out a fiction book to read during down time.

I have set some exciting and long-waited goals for myself this year. I am taking the first step to ensure my success.  My fortune on New Years Eve is saying it’s so. I am taking up bubble blowing to fill in the gaps, and maybe I’ll start taking more selfies 🙂

 

Stay tuned, I will be back to document the progress of saying no to habit and avoidance and saying yes to progress and success. (in case of emergency I will have my password changed by my husband, it makes it so much easier when I know that even if I want to I can’t get back to it). Like right now, the itch to post about this post all over Facebook is STRONG!

 

In December of 2014 my husband and I traveled to San Francisco for his work, and a break for me. I was interested in finding a labyrinth in the city and was not disappointed. We found ourselves at a beautiful Catholic Cathedral, Grace Cathedral, to be exact (Grace Cathedral). We experienced so much more than the labyrinth while we were there, it offered a time of quiet reflection that we both were seeking. Upon entering the Cathedral I was captivated by a large Christmas tree covered in origami paper cranes. Next to the cranes was a description of why the tree was filled with them and the significance of the crane.

The Japanese legend was that if someone would fold 1,000 cranes the would have a wish granted. Sadako Sasaki developed leukemia after the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. She set out to fold 1,000 cranes with her wish to be healed. She died before completing her task and her classmates folded the remains 356 she needed to reach 1,000. On each of her cranes she wrote messages of hope. The tree pictured above in 2014 was covered in cranes with the wishes and the dreams of the world. When we left the Cathedral I knew that somehow I wanted to incorporate cranes into the traditions of our family.

In 2014 on New Years Eve we had our first folding of the cranes. All 8 of us wrote on a piece of origami papers our wishes and our dreams for the upcoming 365 days. Once the messages were complete I folded them into cranes and we hung them in our dining room window. I was convinced that I would remember what was written, but as the days of 2015 turned into months I forgot what I had wished for as did the other 7 participants. On New Years Eve 2015 we took our cranes down and reviewed what we had wished for 12 months prior. There was laughing, and delight at the things we had forgotten that had happened without conscious effort. There was giggles at the embarrassing thing that, to my children, our far younger selves had dreamed up. Once we had them opened we read them together and tossed the unfolded crane into the fire releasing our dreams and quickly turning to the wishes of the coming year.

Cranes from December 2018.       Cranes from December 2017.

Last year I had the thought to record everyone as the read their opened cranes. I will have to remember to do that next year. When the cranes are freshly written often the words feel to private to share. Over the course of the year the secrecy softens and sharing is much easier.