Gemma If you haven’t already completed part 1 go back and do that now. In that exercise we discover what is on your plate – your reality right now. You might have found that there was a lot more going on in your life than you had realised. Part 1 might have kicked up some areas that you want to work on before you move on to step 2. Don’t rush yourself through this process, take care of yourself.
Part 2 – designing something new
If you are ready to move on to step 2 then get the exercise from part 1 in front of you now.
Go to the list of priorities that you made at the end of part 1 and focus on the top 2-3. Check in with yourself to see if they are still your top priorities and have a little switch about if not.
Step 1:
Take your top three priorities and write them in big letters on a fresh piece of paper. Turn the page and if you are open to being playful I would ask you to close your eyes or lower your gaze and get creative for the next few minutes.
Step 2:
Take a few deep breaths and ask yourself this:
If I could design a new lifestyle around family meal time what would I create
Play, imagine and dream up your ideal dinner time/kitchen culture. Think about different aspects of this including:
Meal planning
Shopping
Food prep
Cooking
Eating
Organising
Start to imagine what each of these areas would look like if you could design something completely new for your family.
Step 3:
Start writing down then words, ideas, themes or sentences that best represent your imagined future. You can draw things if you like too. Do whatever feels right so that you can capture it on paper.
Step 4:
Answer these questions:
When I go to this future version of my family meals it makes me feel:
When I think about this future version of my family meals I can see:
When I imagine this future version of my family meals the benefits are:
Step 5:
Write two to three words that describe your imagined future in a nut shell.
Step 6:
Turn back to the page where you wrote your top three priorities. Next to them write the two – three words that describe your imagined future for meal times.
Ask yourself, do my priorities and my dreams align?
Alignment
What we want and what we do can be in conflict without us realising. When this happens it can make it hard to move in the direction we want – we can feel stuck.
Sometimes we find ourself feeling stuck and not knowing why. Part 1 and part 2 of this exercise helps us to see our inner world and our outer world and where our attention is being spent vs where we want it to be.
Remember that list of all the things on your plate from part 1? It is likely that some of them are in conflict with your dreams and priorities. That’s a normal experience, especially in parenthood when often times we are pulled in many directions.
It might be the case that the words in front of you do align. In Part 3 we will stat to look at alignment and disconnect as a way of helping us to get unstuck.
