If you’ve been following along at Living the In-Between Times, you know I’m all about been devising experiments to transform the in-between times of our days. You can read more about how I got started here:
Today, we’re diving into what all this experimenting is “for,” and what we can get from them.
I once read a productivity book called “Win the Week.” I think the gist was to make progress on your goals by selecting five things you want to get done each week. Prioritize those five things, cross them off the list, and Bam!, you win the week.
My productivity-junkie self salivated as she rolled up her sleeves and got to work listing her 5 tasks each week. It seemed like such a simple equation: check-off 5 tasks = reward yourself with a fat, juicy W.
My problem was, I couldn’t seem to win any weeks.
Sometimes I lost track of my five things and not realize until the end of the week I hadn’t finished them. Or something urgent would come up to displace my carefully crafted list, or I’d feel tired, or unmotivated, or I’d realize the week’s items were too time-consuming or overly ambitious.
Even worse, as I lagged on completing my five weekly tasks, the “air time” in my brain would increasingly tune into what writer Ann Lamott calls radio station KFKD, or K-fucked, her nickname for the voice in your head that whispers “the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit...”
Before I began my experiments, I spent most of my day tuned into a similar station—the one I call radio ISUK. Ironically, I tuned in because I thought ISUK radio was broadcasting from a “good” place—my desire to be a “good” parent, wanting to keep the house clean, wanting to do a “good job” at work, etc.
I thought focusing on doing “good” would save me from feeling “bad,” but all it did was keep me focused on the ways I was falling short—my “shitty shoulds” and endless flaws.
It also served to keep me working with a monotonously predictable emotional palette—self-loathing, shame, confusion, with an occasional sprinkle of happiness if I managed to nail a task or allowed myself to enjoy a moment with my husband or my kids. On the whole, there wasn’t much variance in my daily emotional landscape—not exactly the lovely life I’d always dreamed of.
Then, one day, I came across a life-changing question. The host of a podcast I listen to regularly asked listeners: What are the top 3 feelings you want to feel consistently?
As I started pondering this I realized:
1. I hadn’t thought much about how I wanted my daily life to feel beyond a generic “happy” or “good.”
2. That I’d been deriving my feelings each day from either external circumstances (My kid did his homework without me having to nag him 18 times! I landed a big work contract!) or from my performance of perfectionist standards (I drank 64 oz of water! I cleaned off the kitchen counter completely!), essentially waiting for permission slips that would grant me a moment of “happy.”
I began to wonder how my days would change if, instead of organizing them by striving to check-off to-do’s, I oriented my days toward to-feel’s—intentionally cultivating specific feelings into my days. As I mused I realized there are so many more choices than “happy”! Love, fun, excitement, gratitude, pride, worthiness, satisfaction, acceptance, delight, freedom, vitality, calm, peace, accomplishment, curiosity.
Ultimately, I landed on what I call my D.A.L.E.Y. 5, the five feelings I want most to experience in any day. The acronym is handy, as it makes it easy to remember and convey to others what I want to feel as a result of my experiments. But it’s not precise, as each feeling actually represents a related constellation of possible feelings I’m after:
Delight (joy, happiness, contentment)
Awe (wonder, gratitude)
Love (compassion, connection)
Ease (peace, calm)
Yesss! (enthusiasm, passion)
Perfectionist fantasy alert: I do NOT try to feel all of these feels every day! I’m not interested in setting myself up for more radio ISUK. The D.A.L.E.Y. 5 is more like a menu to choose from, and if I hit any of the five, I consider my day a win.
Turns out I don’t have to wait around or even accomplish anything at all to get a permission slip to feel “good” or “happy.” And I don’t have to resign myself to a 24/7 radio KFKD or ISUK.
Instead, with a little experimenting, I’m learning to manually adjust my tuner during the in-between times of life to find the frequencies I’m most after—delight, awe, love, ease, and, always, a little bit of yess!