This morning, after I exercised, I found myself frustrated about a recurring task at work that I just don’t like to do. Because I don’t like to do it, I put it off quite often. And then I feel bad about putting it off. And then I feel bad about being a “bad employee” because I put it off. And then I feel resentful that I have to do it at all. And on and on went my wonderfully non-constructive feelings. After going through the whole cycle, I found myself trying to quickly rush through it while backfilling weeks of it.

Clearly not helpful.

Not to mention, I was doing this right after exercise, at 6:30am, before I showered and what I really needed to be doing instead was to get ready and wake the kids up and help them prepare for school. What finally allowed me to walk away was having to say “This is definitely not what I should be doing right now” out loud. I apparently had to hear myself say it. So I finally walked away and went about the business of starting my day. But, of course, this unfinished, way-behind task was still nagging at me.

After the kids were off to school and I’d had time to make some coffee and oatmeal, I decided to take a different point of view. Instead of doing the task resentfully, I decided to have fun with it. While I completed it, I also added humor and used it as an opportunity to connect. I was having enough fun with it that I stopped worrying about it and decided to only catch up on last week and this week and to try to stay on top of it from this moment forward. Making it fun helped me take the pressure off myself and it helped me finish the task without dread and frustration. Since it became my own personal game, I also stopped comparing myself to other colleagues, etc.

All of this made me think about what other areas of my life could use this sort of “lightening up” or at least some major perspective change. When I dread doing things, my normal reaction is to put them off for a while and then power through them once the pressure is high enough. There are times this is productive but most of the time it’s stressful and it’s always unpleasant.

I love the idea of making it fun instead.

We tend to this with kids often. When we give them medicine, we try to make it fun by singing songs or making airplane sounds (at least my parents did.) We either create a distraction or a more enjoyable experience so the task at hand seems less onerous.

Why can’t we do that as adults too?

Yesterday, when I was doing my weekend journaling, I wrote down something that resonated with me so much that I found myself revisiting it today. I wrote:

This is just one chapter of my life. Neither the first, nor the last. When this one ends, there will be many more. The goal is to savor this one while it’s here. Savor its gifts and celebrate its magic. This one chapter will not ever come back exactly the way it is now.

I wasn’t really writing about this as a concept. It was in response to something different but it just stood out to me and I found myself thinking about the idea of looking at my life in chapters.

If I think of life as a journey and destination, then a misstep can impact the whole journey and, specifically, the destination. One bad step here and now can mess everything up. Whereas thinking about my life as chapters automatically lifts that pressure up, for me. It makes everything disconnected in a positive way. It creates this setup where there’s no actual destination.

Think of it as an interconnected short story collection. Each of the chapters of my life stands on its own. There’s an overarching thread that holds the book together but any one chapter isn’t making or breaking the book. And while each story contributes to the whole, none of the stories singlehandedly determines a specific destination. And without a destination to focus on, there’s no “messing it all up.” There’s no wrong. And there’s no right either. It just is. This is one of the stories in my life. Nothing more, nothing less.

All I have is this story. This chapter. And all I can do is maximize that. With what I have now, with where I am now, how do I increase my fulfillment?

Imagine if you were selected to write one of the stories in an anthology. You don’t get to even see the other stories. All you can do is really focus on the one story you’re writing. You work on it to get it as “perfect” as possible. You make every word count. You take this one chance you have and you give it your all. Maybe it sounds high pressure when I put it that way, but, to me, it sounds more like there are barriers. I cannot control the future or the past, I just have my one story I’m living now and this is the one I get to have. So the focus falls fully on this one.

It might not work for you, but for some reason, the idea of thinking of my life in chapters creates a quick link to presence for me. It makes it so the past and the future are not as pressing as they seem otherwise. It creates a focus on the now without the pressure of causing permanent harm.

I am not sure if this makes sense.

But I am not sure I care. Because what I’m realizing is there are very few Truths in life. Most of us don’t know anything for sure. (And if we think we do, we are often proven otherwise. Certainty seems to be the fastest way to ask for trouble.) None of us can tell how the future will unfold. And, so, whatever helps you get through this life with the most joy, the most fulfillment, and the most presence is a gift.

And, for today, thinking about my life in chapters is doing the trick for me.

How about you?