What are you doing out of obligation instead of desire?

Here is where we dive deep into being a good mom/wife/girlfriend/daughter/woman. What are you doing because you feel obligated to do it? What are you doing because you’re supposed to that hurts your soul? How can the thing get accomplished without you doing it?

For example, if doing laundry feels like death to you, why not take it to the cleaners? Believe it or not, doing laundry doesn’t make you a good wife or mother. Who cares how the clothes get clean, as long as everyone can put on clean underwear every morning? (This is a strange example for me to use, since I rather enjoy doing laundry.)

I know that hiring someone else to do the things isn’t always a good or practical solution. (Although a lot of the time it costs less than you might assume.) However, maybe you can delegate some of the things to another person in your household who might even enjoy them. There’s no reason your husband or kids can’t do laundry. They can be taught how to run the machines and how to fold things properly. (I’m really stuck on this laundry example, aren’t I?) The point is that you don’t have to do it all. And maybe it’s time to take a look at who’s doing what and shift some things around.

Here’s the obligation thing I did for years: talking to people who weren’t very nice. And by not nice I mean that I would always walk away from the conversation feeling worse than before. But I felt obligated (they were my neighbors). I even kept talking to them after I moved because I felt obligated. The best thing I ever did (after repeatedly saying that it wasn’t OK to talk to me that way) was to block them. Poof – negativity gone. It was one of the most freeing things I’ve ever done. And my self-esteem has risen because of it, which more than offset the guilt I felt at first.

Try stopping the things you do out of obligation. I promise that they will get done if they need to, and the world will continue spinning. Most importantly, you’ll have a little more freedom.

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