Janet’s Perfect Life- Be gentle on ourselves
In 2007, I wrote a story to try to explain to my life students that what they expected of themselves was often impossible. I would ask them to list down everything that they felt they “had to do” and everything they wanted to do. Everyone’s expectation of what could physically fit into a day or even a week was so ridiculously unachievable that they were all becoming increasingly depressed by the experience of failure.
So I decided that the best solution was to give them a role model of someone who was ticking all the boxes. … ‘Who Me? Oh h*ll no. This was a job for Janet.
Here is the story of Janet and her “perfect life” Pay attention to the time zones of Janet’s reality. The website won’t let me add the master piece of the picture I drew of her family, but it’s the front picture for this blog. True art lol.
The story of ‘Perfect Janet’
I want to tell you about Janet. Janet lives in the perfect world. She has a wonderful partner and 2.5 children. She has just enough natural beauty that society loves and accepts her and not so much that her friends would ever be jealous.
Each morning she wakes up gently at 7 am after 10 hours of uninterrupted, restfu,l deep sleep. She has 1.5 hours to get washed, dressed and fed. She puts on her makeup more for sun protection and to make herself feel good, rather than any real need. During this uninterrupted joyous self-care process, another part of her has gone downstairs to where the 2.5 well-behaved children have magically got themselves dressed and washed and ready for school. ( A particularly good trick for the child who is only .5 of a child). Janet enjoys the process of cooking breakfast for the children, which, because everyone is so relaxed and has infinite time, is a fun experience for all. Her partner prepares the lunches because he enjoys being with the family so much that he offers to do this job every day and enjoys the challenge of giving the kids healthy and nutritious lunches that are still fun and appealing to the children.
At 8:30 am they all walk to school. While they do this, they play a fun game of quiz questions that Janet has lovingly prepared for each child, in her spare time. Janet gets each child to school and lovingly settles them in for the day and kisses them goodbye. Then she takes a long way home, running up hill for an hour to get in her exercise for the day.
On her return to home, Janet and her partner do 1 hour of yoga, 1 hour of meditation and spiritual practices. Then they spend 30 minutes sitting in a tantric position, staring into each other’s eyes, connecting with their perfect life partners' highest potential. Once this connection is made, they make love in a deeply spiritual and connected fashion. Climaxing in a round of perfectly in tune, harmonising mantras, that they learnt on a couple’s tantric retreat in the Himalayas. They then take another half an hour to recover while they tell each other how lucky they are to have each other and be in the perfect world, because ‘you know, no matter how hard life is, It is important to live with an ‘attitude of gratitude’.
Janet re-showers and redoes her make-up and hair for work. It is important to her to be a career woman.
It’s now 8:45 am in the perfect world. They both work in their perfect life, fulfilling jobs, that are conveniently a 5-minute walk from home. They walk into their respective workplaces and are so happy to see everyone there. This job has the perfect balance of social and professional challenge. There is always enough time for everything to be done. And all of their work family are just perfectly beautiful, life-affirming people.
At 5pm Janet finishes a full day of for filling work. She does a meditative, contemplative walk to the school to process her work day and arrives just in time to pick the children up at 3.
She takes half of each child to their after-school activity, while the other half goes home with half of her to work on their homework.
When they get home, half of each (half) child does their homework while she lets the other half/half of each child go off and play because it’s important to let them be children.
Then she takes one child into the kitchen to have quality time while learning to make dinner, and charge the food with positive healing energy. Her partner spends quality time with the point 5 child while the other child is encouraged to celebrate their independence and spend quality alone time, in the full and happy knowledge that tomorrow it will be their turn to have time with a parent. With this understanding, they, of course, have no problem accepting that they are alone while their siblings are receiving attention. This is a lovely time in the house and peace reigns.
When the half children have come home from their after-school activities and everyone is whole again. The entire family sit at the beautiful dining room table and eat happily together. They celebrate the meal, congratulating and encouraging the new budding cook. Then they celebrate the day’s achievements of everyone in the family. Oh what a happy time this is.
After dinner, the 2.5 children are lovingly bathed and changed for bed. Each one is read an age-appropriate story and kissed goodnight. They go to sleep immediately, with sweet dreams and not one request for a last glass of water.
Janet and her partner then both split in two. One half goes out to learn a new skill or do their volunteer work as a valued member of the community spirit. The other half stays home in contemplative family bliss and works on those photo albums and keepsakes that are so important for the children's memoir boxes.
At 9am Janet and her partner get into bed and give thanks for the magic fairies that did all the housework, paid the bills and all the other jobs that needed to be done, but wouldn’t add enough quality to their lives to be worthy of time
This is Janet's reality, and most people's expectations. I only tell you this to support you in recognising a few truths.
Firstly, most people place the expectation on themselves to do everything in a day that Janet does. Then they give themselves a very hard time when they discover it isn’t possible without splitting themselves in pieces. It’s time for a reality check. What can you realistically fit into the time you have? Share this reality with those who are actively in your life. Take time to look at their reality. Make choices. If you can’t fit everything in, you either need to outsource some or give something up. Make sure to factor in downtime and travel time.
Its ok to make choices. Create your personal priorities list. You don’t have to schedule everything, provided that the things you expect yourself to do in a week are actually possible to fit into the time and energy you have. Then it is safe to hold the intention that everything will get done. You can trust that you will feel like being where you need to be, when you need to be there.
Often, people will say at this stage, “Oh my goodness, how am I meant to choose?”. This is where life coaching and healings help. Come and see me and we can defrag your life. Clear some stuff. Simplify some stuff. Really understand your motivations. I can help you make sense of everything and help you to stop trying to be like Janet. If you can’t do that, at least download the core values ebook, then at the very least, you will start to know yourself well enough to set some priorities.
There is nothing to be gained from giving yourself a hard time about what isn’t done. You did the best you could with what time and energy you had at the time.