My Dirty Shoes

Hi!

So I didn’t intend on this being my 2nd blog post but oh well. That’s kind of how I run my life anyways. I think and plan and then don’t have the time to act right away and then I just do something else. Today, I am going to write a quick post about my dirty New Balance tennis shoes. No, it’s not actually about my shoes. It’s part of a bigger idea.

So often, we want to be portrayed as perfect. Like we have our shit together. We are on top of it. We have it handled. Even when we talk to our best friends, we don’t really tell them how we feel or how we are struggling because we don’t want to be judged or we THINK everyone else is so perfect and we are the only IMPERFECT one. NOT TRUE, GUYS and I am here to prove it today.

I was getting ready this morning. I was actually getting dressed for physical therapy and bringing my work clothes with me to change in after. As I was brushing my teeth, I thought ‘Don’t forget to pack your sandals.’ Well… that fleeting thought escaped my brain as I came downstairs to pack up my work stuff, help my kids, say hi to our nanny, etc. It totally slipped my mind until I went to grab my bag after PT to change and realized I forgot to pack my sandals. “OH SHIT!” is what I said out loud. Yes, I swear more than I should but oh well. I like it and it’s actually been proven that people who swear manage stress better so I am pretty sure that I am not going to stop anytime soon.

I got dressed and had the option to race home, grab appropriate work shoes and then race to work but I weighed my options and decided that 1.) I really WANTED to grab a coffee and a muffin before work and wouldn’t be able to do that if I went back home 2.) The shoes, although dirty and not shoes I would ever plan to wear to work, were fine enough 3.) I have been trying to cut down on the amount of rushing I do. I have been trying to not act like everything is an emergency. When my kids yell for me or scream as if the house is on fire (but I know it’s not), I finish what I am doing before going to help them. I knew that if I CHOSE to race home, grab my sandals and then race to the clinic to meet my first client, I would be going into my workday more frazzled than I wanted to be. So, I decided that I was going to choose to rock my dirty tennis shoes with my cute jean dress for work. I grabbed my muffin and coffee and leisurely drove into work.

You know what happened? NOTHING! I had 9 clients back to back and not one of them commented on my dirty old tennis shoes. I will note that they were all established clients that I have a good rapport with. I will also note that I AM REAL. I am not the kind of therapist that wears a black pant suit and heels and analyzes you while you lay on a $5000 couch. I am the kind of therapist who looks nice and pretty decently put together but I wear jeans and 3 day old hair for most of my work days. And it’s likely that while I was pumping and nursing my children when they were infants, that I saw a client with a breastmilk stain on my shirt a time or two. Again, no one said anything. I didn’t lose any clients and life went on, just as it does. Life is real. The sooner you can ACCEPT this, the sooner you get to live a life with less anxiety and sadness. Less guilt. Less negative self talk. MORE HAPPINESS. MORE JOY. MORE SATISFACTION.