Dear Anita,

I posed such a difficult question to you without a direct answer. Forgive me. I reflected in it all last evening. And I learned. The way to slowly undo that baseline fear and anxiety is to do no other than simplify and observe.

Yesterday I came home and got back into my hectic pattern. Pattern of multitasking yet not doing any one thing mindfully. The pattern of acting out of compulsion (we have discussed before. To text someone to talk but realize you don’t actually want to talk it was just habit to be social). All of it.

And then I stopped. I was present. As in I did much of nothing. It is quite uncomfortable. I wanted to check my phone repeatedly to see if I got a new email. Why? Because I was expecting something important? No.  Not anymore. But the compulsion remained from all the times in the past few months that I was. Habits don’t die when the external changes.

I simplified my expectations of myself for this weekend. I realize that I often approach a day or weekend with subconscious stress bexuase I actively sought out to make the day complicated. Piling on too many activities. Expecting too much. Perhaps busy for the sake of feeling I must do as much as possible always. Uber productivity. max potential.  But all that leads to is burnout and the other extreme – feeling exhausted lifeless and down. No in between.

So today is the first day in a long time I did not wake up with dread. I woke up neutral. Thought about oh it’s Friday. That’s it. Sure Mt thoughts went elsewhere within a few moments. But that first feeling when I wake up has become important to me. It is telling on how I slept and how I spent the time before sleeping the night before.

I simplified yesterday against what felt natural. It felt as though I was missing something to just listen to my husband talk without worrying about something else. Felt I was forgetting something If I didn’t obsess over every aspect of my upcoming weekend. But no. I survived it. And I slept.

I hope I continue. I hope that simplifying soon over time becomes second nature. As it is quite self protective.