When I embarked upon my Leadership Illinois journey, I never imagined that the most poignant message I would come away with would be this: “I am meant for more than laundry.”
Certainly there were more powerful takeaways to be had at Leadership Illinois, right? Our conference organizers didn’t spend hours developing presentation material for me to finally embrace something women have been learning since the 50s.
I’m not even the primary laundry-doer in my household, either. My husband dutifully drags the baskets downstairs and remembers to change the load from washer to dryer, whereas I regularly forget and have to re-run loads of half-mildewed clothing. There’s a reason my husband took over: I’m awful at laundry. I don’t pre-treat, I don’t sort lights from darks, and I never mastered the skill of instinctively knowing what fabrics can be dried without shrinking. (And when your husband is 6’4’’, not shrinking clothing is a good skill to have.)
But the words, “You are meant for more than laundry,” began echoing in my ears as soon as I met my Leadership Illinois peers.
The more I learned of the women in my cohort, the more I began to wonder: How did a mom of three manage to work full-time, become the president of her large Rotary chapter, vacation with friends in faraway places, and lead a hugely influential non-profit? How did another woman earn both a Ph.D. and M.B.A. while nurturing a family and maintaining a thriving faith life? How did yet another manage a team at her day job and run a successful fitness program for her community at 5:30 a.m. three days per week?
And then the answer came to me: they made a choice. Each woman I met through Leadership Illinois makes the choice to pursue what she values.
Author Laura Vanderkam asserts in her book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, that it’s not so much about finding time, it’s about making it. She writes, “Recognizing [that we have time for what matters] requires changing the narrative.” One high achieving woman Vanderkam interviewed for the book “doesn’t tell herself I don’t have time for X, Y, or Z. She tells herself that she won’t do X, Y, or Z because ‘it’s not a priority.'”
Last semester, I trudged through a very difficult economics class in my M.B.A. program. Did I enjoy being in class until 9 p.m. each week? Did I like calculating diminishing returns into the wee hours of the night so that I could get an A in the class? No, but I did, because I’d decided it was a priority. (And lest I needed reminding, my husband was always there to say, “Suck it up, buttercup. If you want something, you’ve got to put in the work.” Thanks, M.)
The truth is, we’ll always have to choose how to spend the 24 hours that make up each day. So it’s up to us to focus on the important-but-not-urgent parts of life instead of getting sidelined by that urgent-but-not-important basket of laundry. (After all, as Vanderkam reminds us, there’s really no such thing as “laundry inbox-zero”).
Part of this can be accomplished with outsourcing and organization. This once careful grocery shopper now gets groceries delivered every other week. And I’m currently weeding through my closet to make getting dressed a faster and more enjoyable experience.
Another part involves finding creative solutions to the fallback excuse, “I don’t have time.”
I often tell myself I don’t have time to exercise, but I still make time for reading at least 30 minutes each day. Perhaps I could read while on the treadmill at the gym.
Likewise, I tell myself I don’t have time to paint, but I often find myself mindlessly scrolling through social media after my kids go to bed. What if I were to set out my paints and a canvas before doing the kids’ nighttime routine, making it even easier to start painting right away once they’re asleep?
It becomes even easier to make these time trades when we fully embrace what unique gifts we each bring to the world. I’m meant for relationships, and adding beauty, and finding creative (and affordable) solutions to life’s challenges. I now know that to live out these core competencies I have to look past the seemingly endless demands right in front of me.
What are you meant for? What choices do you need to make today to live out your values and bring your gifts to light? Because if one thing is certain, I’m meant for more than laundry. And so are you.