Plates & Self Compassion
I had really good intentions.
I printed out the Grateful November calendar, got out my thank you note cards, even posted a blog about gratitude and all the things I was going to do and invited people to join me.
And then it didn’t happen.
Some of it did. I’ve kept up (albeit late the vast majority of the time) with tracking one thing I’m grateful for each day, and even writing down a person I’m grateful for each day (again, also late and almost never on the same day I intend it to be). But my big plans to post my reflections and actually write notes to all of those people, and do it with my kids, and meditate on it, and post a pic each day on my personal social media like I have before?
Not so much.
Does it matter why it didn’t happen? Maybe. Maybe not. I could justify the things that got in the way (and I do think they’re mostly reasonable). But that part doesn’t really matter, because it’s done and I can’t change it. That just is. I can’t undo what’s already been done and ruminating over what I should have done differently isn’t serving me.
What matters is what I do next.
I could hold onto it. I could beat myself up for not doing what I said I was going to do. I could let my thoughts spiral into “never”-s and “always”-es and get frustrated with myself. (Tempting.)
I could blame all of the things that got in the way and get mad at everyone else. (Also tempting.)
I could lie about it. I could try to rush and make it all up and do the “Look! I totally have my shit together!” (Not quite as tempting, because it sounds like a lot more work.)
I could go back and delete the post and pretend it never happened, because if the original post isn’t there then maybe people won’t notice I never did another one. (Also not super tempting because that just doesn’t feel like me, although I do wish I could go back in time and undo the expectation I set publicly.)
Or, I could acknowledge that it just didn’t happen, put down that “plate”, and offer myself some compassion about not living up to my own expectations. (Not really that tempting honestly, but ultimately better for me.)
I think you all know I chose the last one, partially because otherwise this blog would have taken a weird turn.
Well that’s all well and good but hold up now, Emily. What’s this about a plate?
Story time.
(And this story is shared with full client permission.)
I was in a session a few months ago, and my client was frustrated about all the things that had to be done and kept up with and equating it to keeping all of the plates spinning in the air. I said they didn’t have to do that. They looked at me like I had completely lost my mind, and exasperatedly said, “BUT HOW?! If I stop spinning them, they crash!”
I replied, “Put the plate down.”
This may have been the time in my life that a client MOST looked at me like I had grown a second head. Like what had just come out of my mouth was complete gibberish and nonsense and absolutely bonkers and they could not believe that I had actually said those words out loud.
And then after a few minutes they said, “Oh my god. You JUST PUT THE PLATE DOWN!”
Yep. It doesn’t have to spin. You don’t have to keep it in the air.
You JUST. PUT. THE. PLATE. DOWN.
Just like that ball metaphor thats floating around the internet (essentially we all have balls in the air, some are glass and some are rubber, we protect the important glass ones and sometimes let the rubber ones drop) this metaphor can flip our perspective on what we actually have to do.
Some plates we need to keep spinning. Some things HAVE to happen, and if they don’t it’s a big problem.
Some plates are “yes probably that should happen” or “that’s important to me”, and we find ways to keep them going.
Some plates aren’t even ours. We’re holding them for someone else, either because they handed them to us or thought we should have them or at some point we thought we should have them. Or even we’re just keeping them temporarily until we can hand them back because someone needs us to.
Some plates we’ve forgotten are even there. They’ve been built in for a long time and we forget that there is choice sometimes in what we choose to keep in our lives if we take the time to consider it.
Some plates look really enticing and we want to do a new thing, so we add it to our pile voluntarily, whether or not we’ve really considered if we want to (or can) put that energy in.
Some plates just aren’t necessary for now, or not serving us. And we can put them down with very little consequence and decide sometime later if we want them back up.
But the problem is, we can only really keep so many plates spinning.
Keeping all of that spinning is HARD WORK.
Some people can handle more plates than others. Some people can handle heavier plates than others. But when we’re up to or past our own personal threshold for plate-spinning-capacity, we start to panic. Maybe we can’t spin them as fast because we’re tired. Maybe there are just too many to get to before we get back around to that first one again. Plates start to wobble and we run around trying to keep them all going, maybe we catch them right before they crash, maybe they completely smash to the ground. And then the guilt and shame and self judgement swoop in.
When more and more plates keep getting passed your way, at some point you need to put some of them down intentionally. And intentionally is important here. I didn’t need to feel like I failed - I put it down. This is particularly true once we have kids, because kids are basically just chucking fine china at you all the time expecting you to catch it (looking at you, stomach virus).
And this month, for me, one of those plates that I decided put down was the intense gratitude practice that I had planned to do. I kept the plates that were a priority, and I set down the ones that weren’t. And I mean TRULY set them down, not “I guess I’ll have to begrudgingly set this down but I’m going to get it going again as soon as humanly possible because I feel shame about not meeting my own expectations”.
I truly set down the plates.
I didn’t rush around to try to keep them spinning. I didn’t eye them up once they were down and plan for when I was going to get them going again. I let them go. And I let myself stay in a place of compassion for myself for doing that, the same way I would offer compassion to someone else for putting down one of their own plates.
They’re just plates. It’s just a gratitude practice.
Maybe I’ll pick up that plate again sometime. Maybe I’ll let it lie. Maybe I’ll write “putting down plates and self compassion” and “myself” on my calendar every day for the rest of the month for the thing and person I feel gratitude for.
