CAN YOU RELATE?
Are you the friend who sends the Happy Birthday message? Maybe even reminds other friends to wish that friend a great day? Drops a mamma-friendly snack off to your friend who just had a baby? Or invites a friend who’s struggling to come for dinner?
And then had your birthday pass without those same friends sending you a note or gone through a hard time without them reaching out and wondered…how come it’s always me?
I know you’re out there. Lovely, I’m with you.
SEEING MY OVER-EFFORTING
To be clear: this doesn’t apply to all my friendships. But I recently noticed it happens enough with enough of them that I needed to slow down and get curious about it.
In a conversation over voice notes with my friend in Los Angeles (who left me a recording of her singing ‘happy birthday’ on my birthday) I recently said: “I’m becoming more and more aware of where I’m over-efforting. And why.”
Over-efforting is my new word for when I put in more effort than I need to. Here it mostly applies to friendships, but it’s also got me thinking of where I do it in other areas of my life. Becoming aware of when I was over-efforting was already eye opening. Starting to understand why was the illuminating—and unflattering—part.
THE UNFLATTERING REASON WHY I DO IT
In short: I over-effort in a friendship when I want more from the friendship than it will provide—unless I’m the one who makes it so.
I send the Happy Birthday message because I want the friendship to be one where we do that for each other. I drop off the food because…the same reason. And I invite the friend for dinner because I want our friendship to be that full of caring.
It’s really been more about what I want from the friendship than understanding what other people want from it. See? Unflattering.
Also: What if my definition of friendship is completely bonkers to other people? What if all the showing up I was doing simply felt like too much?
And, more importantly, why was I trying to make a friendship into something it would not be unless I made it so?
WHAT SIMPLICITY WOULD ADVISE
Simplicity wouldn’t advise me to over-effort.
Simplicity would say, “Pause at this pond where these water lilies are blooming and embrace the love and beauty in your world.”
That’s what simplicity would say.
But…since transformation is a process, not an event…
GROWTH IS A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT
My old ways showed up again a few days ago.
A friend messaged me. “I miss you. Are you free the week of xx, before baby comes?”
The week of xx is a very full week for me. It’s a week of work after a week away before another week away. So: it’s pretty full.
But, if I don’t see her that week, I won’t be honoring her request to see me before she has her baby, because by the time I’m home from my second week away she’ll be a mom not of just one, but two. And in the throes of those wild first few months of new-born-hood.
Of course, I texted back. Let me take a look at my calendar.
Days went by. I didn’t respond. Whenever I remembered I needed to get back to her I groaned inwardly. Because what I really, really want is to keep all the white space I’ve got in my calendar that week. To not add one more thing in.
I wanted to choose simplicity. Leave space to not rush. To sit for a moment. Go for a walk. Talk to my husband. Read a book.
But being honest and saying no was rubbing up against the way I’ve been a friend for the past twenty years. The “I show up” hat had lodged itself on my head. And it was sticky to get off. Whenever I thought about saying no I felt tight all over and bit the insides of my cheeks.
I remembered simplicity, though. And my last post about what I’d committed to, to get the ‘thrum’ back. To re-connect to simplicity.
I messaged her yesterday. I was honest. I was clear. I said no, and that I hoped we could see each other after I got back.
I was highly uncomfortable. I had to take deep breaths and tell myself it was okay.
GROWING
Growth is so often uncomfortable. Outside our comfort zone is where all the imaginary threats and what-ifs and what-will-they-thinks live. It’s also where freedom and peace and a dawning of a new understanding live.
It’s where the garden will grow once we plant the seeds of our change.
I planted one when I was honest with my friend. When I chose simplicity over over-efforting.
I gotta tell you, when I embarked on this year-long mission to learn to nurture my connection to simplicity I didn’t really consider how self-revealing it would be. How it would require me to reflect on the reasons behind my habits that keep peace and simplicity out. I didn’t foresee that it would ask me to face my own constructed beliefs that kept those habits in place.
Which is kind of funny, since in my day job as a coach I walk beside every one of my clients down the path of transformation via self-reflection.
I have a little smile on my face as I think about this. I’ll stay open to the self-reflection and empathetic curiosity this path is taking me down.
A MESSAGE FROM SIMPLICITY
And I’ll remind myself what simplicity would say:
“Pause at this pond where these water lilies are blooming and embrace the love and beauty in your world.”
“Let the seeds of simplicity and not over-efforting plant a garden of relationships where not only is the effort mutual, each friendship gets to be what it is intended to be. Not what you want to make it.”
Phew. That sounds revelatory. And freeing.
Sending you love,
Lindsey
{I loved this message on a lamp-post in my neighborhood.}