Personal Promises 2006.

While Mimi makes targets for the year ahead, this year, like last, I will be making Personal Promises.

Looking back I see now that I am perhaps a little more battle scarred than I was last year. I made three promises, that in retrospect I think I may have abused a little bit:

I promise to be kind to myself.

And lo and behold I was. Too kind to myself. So kind I didn’t force myself to get off my bum  and actually do the things that would make me feel better: so kind that I abandoned the pleasure/pain principle altogether, and  didn’t force myself out of my comfort zone for longer than a  moment. 

I promise to cultivate the art of delayed gratification.

HA.HA. HA. I WANT IT NOW!!!

I promise not to shy away from commitment.

Oh at last. A promise I made, kept and even kind of excelled at. I didn’t have an affair with the postman. I turned up here at BrocanteHome each day,  and yes indeed my  commitment  to chocolate remains as strong as it was twelve month’s ago.  I am very proud.

So what’s new for 2006? Without wanting to sound too philosophical, I think I’ve learnt  a lot about myself  this year and my new promises  are specifically concerned with attempting   to fix all those things that I believe  are compromising my ability  to  reach my authentic goals…

I promise to keep things simple.

I am in the habit of making things complicated. Meals, housework, websites…
If I can make twice as much work for myself as I need to, then wouldn’t you just know I’ll go out my way to triple it.  It isn’t a good thing. I end up exhausted and dissatisfied, which is downright ludicrous, when I could apply my energy and skills to one or two things, do them really well and thereafter stop over-promising and under-delivering: thus….

I promise to stop over-promising and under-delivering.

I don’t know why I do it. I talk things up. Get the whole world excited, then feel overwhelmed and beat a  hasty retreat away from other peoples expectations- letting nice people down and feeding my self belief that I am utterly hopeless at seeing thing’s through. It stops. Right now. From today, if it happens, it happens, but until it does I won’t talk about it. Does that make sense?

I promise to learn to prioritise.

OK so it’s Finn, then Mark, then the house, then BrocanteHome, then me.  Which is of course utterly ludicrous.  If I come first, then I attend to  my authentic needs, and daily frustrations,  organise my life so that I don’t feel like I’m  banging my head against a brick wall all the time, make some money from BrocanteHome, so that I add much needed financial value to that which I ache to do (BrocanteHome has actually cost me a lot of money this year: it can’t go on.), then popular belief informs me that I will be a better Mommy, Wife to be  and Vintage Housewife. Is that how it works? Have I been living a pear shaped life all these years??

Only time will tell how I do.