Pretend you are ready.
“Dear Colette, please find attached a spreadsheet that I would like to see in our next session. If you could review it before then, I think it would make our time more productive. Many thanks. Joan.”
The above was an email I sent my therapist just a few days before our scheduled session. The spreadsheet contains a detailed timeline and plan for getting out of my first marriage. The truth was, I wasn’t actually ready to take any concrete steps forward in that direction, but I was ready to pretend that I was. The timeline included multiple milestones: meet with a divorce lawyer, find an apartment, prepare divorce papers, negotiate with the husband, hire movers, move out. Somehow, typing these things in Calibri font in an Excel spreadsheet made them smaller, more manageable, less cluttered. If I follow the spreadsheet, I will be moved to my new apartment within a year. It was ambitious in every way—logically, physically, legally, and of course, emotionally. But, I have no one to hold myself accountable to this crazy timeline but me, I thought.
When running a marathon, I always say to myself around mile 23, “If you go to the next water station, you’ll walk a quarter mile, I promise!” I know with about 99% certainty that I wouldn’t do something like that, but, in that moment, I tell myself what I need to grind out another mile. Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to moving forward is not how the world sees us, but how we see ourselves. If only my brain could believe how strong and capable my legs are – I wouldn’t have to use my bag of tricks to get through the finish line.
It’s okay if you’re not ready today. I was not prepared the day I walked into Colette’s office with a printed out copy of “Divorce.xls”. But it’s okay to pretend that you’re a person who starts doing something is May be ready. In the end, I ran through every milestone and final finish line on that spreadsheet six months ahead of schedule. And it taught me something I could never learn:
Much harder than I sometimes realize.
This week’s Are You Ready podcast episode.
This week, I sit down with Nemanja Golubović, founder and owner of Calle My Name, and we talk about the decision to open a restaurant. Believe it or not, he opened the doors to Calle My Name just five years after immigrating to the United States from his native Montenegro. He was just 30 years old and had worked his way up from general manager of a moderately successful restaurant in Chicago’s Loop to restaurant host to server. Today, Calle My Name is one of the country’s most acclaimed vegan restaurants, picking up awards with surprising frequency. When I asked him what inspired him to start his own business, he replied,
“I knew I was ready.”
Tune in to this week’s podcast!
This week’s recipe inspo – Dal Tadka.
The inspiration for this week’s recipe came from my friend, Nisha (@rainbowplantlife) who recently visited and made one of my all time favorite Indian dishes – Dal Tadka!! If you know me well, you know I love lentils and I love Indian food! So, when Nisha came along and offered to teach me how to make her delicious recipe, I couldn’t help but get more excited. You can watch the full recipe video on my YouTube channel and find the written recipe on Nisha’s delightful website!
best,
– Joan
