Saturday Mornings and the Stories We Carry
How ease isn't something you can force, and how it's also not something that just happens.
Saturday mornings hold so much potential… and a lot of pressure.
It’s the pressure accumulated from the week. Promised relief. Anticipated. Fantasized. Even romanticized. What joy a quiet saturday morning (with coffee) will bring.
I think of Friday as being the blissful release of the pressure cooker, and Saturday morning as those moments after you open the lid. When all the good stuff is revealed.
Born from all that pressure, Saturday mornings often end up feeling like the New Year's Eve of the week: so much build-up, and often... a let-down. I often wake up feeling off, irritable, or simply just too exhausted to enjoy the time. It’s disappointing.
Disappointment is unmet expectations.
What I expect to feel on Saturday morning is ease. In the absence of ease, I get worked up (the opposite of ease) and in turn, feel disappointed. It’s quite the cycle.
The hilarious reality is that the story I have, the expectation that Saturday mornings be enjoyable and relaxing, is itself part of the problem.
So what of expectations?
As always, we need to hold complexity.
To manage our story AND create conditions by taking actions that encourage ease.
To Manage the Story:
Detaching from the expectation that you will feel at ease is easier said than done. It helps me to realize that I am many things at the same time, and to find the part (no matter how small) that is at ease.
Sometimes that part is physical: the space behind my knees is neutral, my ear lobes are relaxed. Othertimes I notice my relational part is at ease: I feel ok about work, or my parenting, or my dinner plans.
The thing is, every day you’re going to be how you are. You contain multitudes, and not all of the parts of you will be satisfied at the same time time. You will feel what you feel. That’s not only ok, it’s just what being human is.
Here’s what I do, to detach from the story:
I ask myself, “What else?” all the time.
What else am I feeling? What else is here? What else is relevant?
To Take Action:
The ability to feel that ease is directly proportionate to how much stress is in your system.
Context switching and time passing are not, in and of themselves, enough to bring about ease. Yes, a gorgeous beach helps. Sure, the fact that it’s 10:00 am on a Saturday morning does inspire some sense of “let it go”.
However, ease from stress is not something that just happens to people who thrive on reaching, striving, and pushing themselves.
You have to help your body find ease, by metabolizing your stress… regularly.
Stress is what happens in your body, when something you care about is at stake.* It’s not thoughts, it’s stuff happening in your body: your brain signals the release of epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine, activating your sympathetic nervous system. Your heart rate increases, your breathing quickens, your pupils dilate, and blood is redirected from long-term systems like digestion to immediate action. This is followed by a slower, longer-lasting release of cortisol, which helps sustain energy and alertness over time.
So let’s be clear: stress is physical, and so in order to feel ease, you have to metabolize it.
There are six evidence based ways to metabolize stress in your body**:
Move
Laugh
Cry
Physical Affection
Breathe
Creative Expression
A helpful way to think about Saturday morning then, if you want ease, is “effortful before effortless.”*** Go for the walk, then crawl back into bed and read the cookbook. Call your friend to connect, then turn on the show and revel in the solitude. Spend time in nature, then scroll social.
In my first post, I shared a simple idea: you make sense.
Not just in your work, or your striving, but in how you long for ease, and how hard it can be to feel it. Saturday mornings are a perfect example. We expect they’ll bring relief. And sometimes they do, in part. But often, they bring something else: the reality of our own nervous system, and our stories, catching up with us.
Ease doesn’t arrive just because the calendar says Saturday.
Ease arrives when the body believes it’s safe enough to let go.
Be gentle out there, with yourself and one another.