Alexandra Johnson talks about how people, especially mothers, make life harder than it needs to be by adding unnecessary drama and stress. She references Karen Maezen Miller's book Mama Zen and encourages shifting your mindset to release negative stories and embrace joy instead.
Hey, it's Alexandra. I hope you're having a great day. So today's video is Don't Make Everything Hard. And this. I got this inspiration this morning. I was feeling a little. A little functified, and I decided to turn the music up, turn the music really loud, get my dance on, get things flowing, shake things out, Just get a new energy, new thoughts, new patterns, kind of rockin and rollin'. And in my little dance workout, I had the insight that sometimes I can make things hard, harder than they need to be. And sometimes I can make everything hard. Everything seems like a big deal or everything seems hard. And that's just conditioning that I have. And I think a lot of us can do this, especially in motherhood. And then I had the thought of book Mama Zen Mama Zen Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood by Karen Mazen Miller. And she's a Zen priest. And I love this book. Just a side note on this book, if you are thinking about having kids or you're a new mom, this book is amazing. I heard about this book a couple years before I got pregnant. And I read it because I knew I was going to be a mom. And I thought it was a little dramatic. I thought it was just a little, like, over the top, a little too much. And I was like, that's. I don't think that's gonna be how it's gonna be for me. And then I had my son and I read the book again and I was just laughing. It's hilarious. It's an authentic, real, down to earth, just hilarious book. It's just there's so many moments where I'm like, yes, that's me. Yes, that's what's happened. That's what it was like. And I just highly recommend it. So if you're thinking about being a mama or you're a new one, get this book. Mama's in. And one of the chapters, she talks about how she was making everything work. And I just want to read that passage because it's so great. So she was at a meditation retreat and the teacher says to her in a conversation, you seem to have a little problem with your work ethic. He said, I didn't follow since I judged myself to be the hardest worker there ever was. You make everything work. He said, I do. Do you. When you are scraping the crusted cereal from the wall with a chipped fingernail, do you think, for this I gave up vice presidency? When you are folding a stack of late night laundry, do you not think, this is my sixth Load this week and it's only Monday. When you stand over the sink of three day old dishes, do you think, when, oh, when will I ever catch up? And while you're at it, please don't complain about the mindless nature of a mother's work. The great transformative potential of a mother's work is that it is mindless. No thinking of any kind is required. And I just love this passage. I just went, I opened it up after I had that insight and just read it and was just thinking about how we can make all of it work and create more drama than is necessary. And there's so many amazing things about life and especially motherhood that it is mindless. Like, we can just be present, we can relax in our bodies, but for so many of us, we have conditioning of not doing it right. We need to hurry up, we need to do this. It's hard. I don't have time. All of those limiting stories that just weigh on us. And in my workout, I was just dancing and just shaking out that energy and saying, no, it doesn't have to be hard. Like, it does not. Nothing needs to be hard. It may feel like it's hard or we may be challenged, but we don't need to add drama stories onto it of how it's hard and make everything work that doesn't need to be work. It can be joyful, it can be amazing, it can be fun. It's all in our viewpoint. And this is a practice that I constantly have in my life as a woman and then as a mother and a wife and just the family life and the house and all of that. I can definitely have stories of like, oh, I don't have enough time, there's too much. And you know, I'm tired and I don't want to be doing laundry and I don't want to be doing dishes. I'm sick of cooking and whatever. All of those things that. Pretty sure I'm not alone on that, that we can all make things hard and we can shift at any point. We can create a new story. That's the best part about it because it's all made up anyways. And I have another passage, Mama Zen on that. She says you can change in an instant. You can change your mind, you can change your timing, you can change your approach, you can change your words, you can laugh instead of scream. You can hop on one foot. You can step away from the fray instead of stepping in. You can give up, give in and go in a completely different direction than you'd like to. You can do the dishes later. What then? What next? The Zen master has told you, you embody the golden breeze. You are change. You have infinite power to relax, to release, to change, and thus to change everything. If you find you don't have the energy or the good humor to do so, this time I will understand. There will be many opportunities afforded you. So amazing, right? She's such a brilliant writer. If you're feeling it, if you are in a space today or anytime in the future where you feel like everything is work, everything is hard, and you just feel a little heavy, then turn up some music if that's your thing. Shake it out. Shake out those negative stories. Just release them. Let it go. Knowing that you can hop on one foot, you can laugh instead of scream, you can choose joy instead of fear, you can choose love instead of feeling overwhelmed that there are so many different choices there at any point. So shake it out, dance it up and know that you are awesome. We get to create the stories of our lives. What are we creating? What are we creating now? What are we creating later? What are we creating for our future? What are we creating for our families? Like, who do you want to be? There's no reason that you can't be that right now. Just choose a different story, pick a different viewpoint, look from a different angle, and then shake out all that garbage that is not working. Release the stress, shake it out and have an awesome time. So that's the video for today. Don't make everything hard. There's always a different choice. There's always a different way. Remembering that you are the golden breeze, you are the change. And you can change at any point. Alright, Have a good time. And until next time.
