Mental Models

 I am trying to keep my mind in a healthy place during the wait for our day 6/7 call and the start of our last cycle. In doing so, I realized that my mind seems to have two settings: living life, and waiting for something. This is waiting in the sense of: I'm putting in serious amounts of effort with the hope and expectation that something good will come of it. My focus is primarily on the effort and the possible outcomes. 

Most of my life has been 'waiting for something.' Waiting to get into grad school. Waiting for my PhD. Waiting for my first leadership role. Waiting for a promotion. Waiting to have kids. Waiting to have enough saved to be financially independent. 

Since having the kids, though, and settling into various jobs at my current employer, I've spent more time focused on living life. That's living life in the sense of: concentrated focus on what I have today versus what I want for tomorrow.

Realizing that I'm back in waiting mode, but if I consciously shift myself to living mode my anxiety reduces, has been unexpected. I'm not sure it's really dawned on me before now the extent to which waiting mode has been detrimental. That's because even when deeply entrenched in periods of waiting, I am someone who routinely stops to appreciate the daily joys in life. I will marvel over the colors of leaves, or a hillside of fireflies. I notice and mentally celebrate every hug I get from the kids and DH. I smile every single time I see the plant my girlfriends gave me, which is miraculously still alive 4 years later! I have always assumed that those are signs that I am living my life, and if you asked me, I'd tell you my life is great. But the waiting still brings anxiety with it, even when the joys aren't overlooked. For today, I'm trying to focus on living. Yes, it's living while waiting, but if the focus is on living rather than waiting, the stress is lower. If the waiting ends with bad news, then it's good that I'm in living mode, because living mode is where I need to be once this round of waiting is over.