A couple of days ago, it was Friday. On a Friday evening after work my routine has been doing the food shopping, washing the clothes and cleaning my house. I usually take my time with this, but sometimes I rush it or have a level of drive behind it because I just want to get it all done. Although there is a level of care behind my past actions, I realised I had a little bit of a rulebook approach when it came to getting through all my cleaning chores. This really means that even though I may have done things gently, I haven’t been completely listening to my body every Friday evening.
I like our house to be clean, to have things in their special place and to be organised with the many tasks that just have to be done. This helps me to not end up feeling overwhelmed with my list of chores, plus it feels nice to be in a clean and organised space.
Some of my thinking/mentality around doing the chores was along the lines of…
“I need to get this done – so I can have the weekend without cleaning chores”.
“If my house is clean, it’s one less thing to worry about”.
“If I get my jobs out of the way, I am free to concentrate on other things that a weekend may bring”.
I began to question the way of thinking that I had adopted and the beliefs I had around chores and cleaning my house… who would have thought that we could have so many ideals and beliefs about cleaning?
Then last week I chose to do my chores a little differently… I felt to do the clothes washing on the Thursday after work, leaving less chores for Friday. I left work a little later and actually questioned if I should do everything on the Friday afternoon. As I drove home from the school I felt pretty awesome and decided to strut my stuff around the supermarket while I did my grocery shopping. I decided that I would see how I felt about the rest of the house cleaning chores after the shopping was done.
When I left the shop it was 6.30pm. I checked in with my body and I felt that doing the other chores would be stretching it, as I was starting to feel a little tired.
I realised that the world was not going to fall apart if I didn’t clean my house on the usual day in the usual way.
At this point I didn’t really know when I was going to fit my chores in with everything else I had to do on the weekend, but I knew that I did not want to rush the cleaning and… I wanted to honour what my body was telling me.
It just so happened that a little moment early Saturday morning presented itself, so I began to clean the kitchen cupboards. I thought I was going to do my whole house cleaning routine but at a more honouring pace, when a little sentence popped into my head…
“Slow down – you have to do it, so you might as well enjoy it!”
This sentence made me think: Enjoy It?… Why not?! What if I just did the dusting and wiping now? What if I cleaned tenderly and allowed myself to feel my tenderness while I was cleaning? The tenderness that I know I have in my touch. What if I used the lovely gift of ‘self talk’, appreciating myself as I clean with how I am cleaning, and how lovely I am re-arranging the things on the tabletops?
This took a huge pressure off me because I was no longer putting an expectation on myself that would cause me to potentially put my body into an outcome based driven-ness. I said to myself that I was going to wipe all the surfaces and mirrors in each room tenderly, then replace everything lovingly. This felt amazing; each movement and moment felt complete within itself because I was in connection with myself as I moved… I was aware of what my body was doing and how it was moving as I was cleaning my house. I completely honoured myself and enjoyed what I was doing. The feeling of each room was even more amazing after I had cleaned it with this level of care. I could see and feel the care and tenderness I had left behind in each room from my loving touch.
It didn’t matter that I had chosen to leave the hoovering and mopping to another time… what I had done was complete and clean.
A moment mid-Saturday presented itself for me to hoover, and then I mopped in the evening. My house cleaning chores no longer felt like chores but lovely little moments where I was able to spread my loveliness around our home.
Cleaning my house this weekend has helped me to further chip away at some small but still false beliefs and ideals I had around thinking that I had to get through in a task orientated way without any consideration to how I felt: some Fridays I had the energy to do all the cleaning chores but others I did not. These beliefs and ideals were in-truth stopping me from trusting and honouring myself and my body completely as the gorgeous and tender woman that I am.
I have felt a deeper level of appreciation in my ability to Trust… trust my body, trust my feelings, trust myself and the rest (including cleaning my house!), will fall into place.
Inspired by the work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine
By Johanna Smith, Bachelor of Education, Perth WA
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
I’m glad I read this blog. Since I’ve become full time in my work, getting certain chores done were being done on certain days so the weekend could be enjoyed too. But now it feels I’m going against the grain of everything. It kind of feel like that chore, instead of that impulse to do it.
I agree we grow up with so many beliefs, that certain things had to be done on certain days. Why do we clean on a dedicated day? Why not another day? I’ve made the bed with fresh sheets on another day than a Friday and it felt amazing, because I wasn’t governed by a dedicated day.
It is far from perfect but I love living my life more from that impulse than the pulse of life and belief systems….
I used to have a set day for cleaning but now it is something that happens more on an as-need basis. But getting to this point has meant letting go of expectations and demands on myself or others which has been a process. I have had to sit with some discomforts and let go of a control of how and when the cleaning happens. To be free of this feels amazing and I love how it opens up so much more space for all the things in our day to unfold naturally.
I agree Henrietta having set days for somethings and not others is from an expectation that has been passed on from generation to generation. And totally with you, when we are free from these expectations, we have more space and not caught up in that time warp…
Placing expectations on ourselves is like a a huge pressure we choose to put on ourselves instead of allowing a flow to be. I am more and more aware of how much I do this to myself in subtle ways, placing an expectations on myself to do something by a certain time etc, and then realising how much this stops me from really enjoying the moment as I am more in a driven state and a slave to time constraints. This is certainly not fun, and yet I know there is a different way to be and live! And so it is a process of gradually catching this and then changing the way I do things just like Johanna has presented in this blog too.
Johanna, thank you for this simple blog that presents how we can fall into a habit of doing something as a rigid tick box, rather than feeling how and when to do things to best support our body.
The difference between doing anything governed by time or in the space we can allow for ourselves, is absolutely huge. The more I realise this and put it into practise the more blown away I am by how we restrict ourselves in time (pitting ourselves against a clock) and how spacious life can be when we give ourselves space and choose to be present in every moment.
This blog shares how Joanna let go of ought to, listened to her body, and surrendered to the flow, ‘I have felt a deeper level of appreciation in my ability to Trust… trust my body, trust my feelings, trust myself and the rest (including cleaning my house!), will fall into place.’
The words “with love”, that I often use at the end of my emails, has just taken on a whole new meaning.
Yes, Mary. I love it when I stop to consider what ‘with love’ actually means and then really embrace and mean it when I write it. The same can be said for any words we express. Do we really get behind them and mean them? And for me this means living the quality that they are.
Johanna, I love what you have written, clearly showing and reflecting for me the deepening of our very foundation of our whole being within. Just taking the time to stop and change the way we are doing an action like cleaning, immediately beings a deeper level of love within my whole being. Thank you!
It’s can be so rigid to stick to how we’ve always done things, it can block the flow of love in our lives where we can respond to how we truly feel and what the body needs moment to moment. I really enjoyed reading this because the housework went from something to be done, to an expression of the joy of who you are, with love and consideration for yourself.
Thank you Johanna, what ever the work we do Love can pour through us and deliver the most amazing feelings about how complete we can feel in being Soul-fully-Connected in the simplest task. Then that feeling can expand or deepen the loving awareness we have in doing said tasks. So the things we do well deepen and we evolve to a new foundation of Love and create a new reflection that is felt by us and those who can feel the energy we are in doing these simple things in and this then allows us to expand and explore other areas of life that we can then also deepen into, but first it is those things we have a sold foundation in that we can deepen.
When we clean and are connected to our body, the end result is very different to when the job is done in arush just to get it done. I loveeeeee the way my flat feels after i’ve spent a few hours dusting, hovering, re-arranging cupboards etc. when done in presence, when not done it because I won’t have any other time on the weekend so “it has to be done now” or because there are people coming over and the house has to look amazing. When no rules, no pressures or demands are placed on my shoulders, they’re free to do the heavy lifting & the hard work with ease.
When we go into a task with drive, it feels like we leave a piece of ourselves behind while trying to convince ourselves somehow that part will be taken care of when we arrive at the point of completion, and we like to think we have everything under control. But that is so not true.
I love this; “Slow down – you have to do it, so you might as well enjoy it!” This could be said for so many things.
I love this blog. I recall as a little girl my room was immaculate. I used to clean my room every weekend. No-one needed to do this for me. It was my space and me and me alone was responsible for this. This shifted as I got older and busier. Other things in life took priority and still do. This is something that am still very much looking at.
I think most of us can get into box ticking when it comes to doing jobs around the house, even if we do them gently. “I have felt a deeper level of appreciation in my ability to Trust… trust my body, trust my feelings, trust myself and the rest (including cleaning my house!), will fall into place”. This trust is something we are taught to doubt as kids. It feels awesome to reclaim this trust and appreciation of our body.
If we approach our routine chores with a sense of drudgery that’s exactly how they are going to feel..in fact even the word ‘chore’ seems a bit heavy to me. I will not do the cleaning if I see it as a chore – I would rather leave it till I feel impulsed to do it, and often when I continue to do things with a sense of enjoyment cleaning just naturally takes it’s turn.
I notice when I make my purpose in life greater than just about myself everything I do have more magic to it.
This is true, it is beautiful how this happens.
Great point Joshua – making it about a bigger picture, a larger purpose, takes away the focus on the ‘me-factor’ and how we might want things to be, and hence allows us to connect to a deeper meaning for all that we do in life.
I had a little giggle when I read that you decided to “strut my stuff around the supermarket while I did my grocery shopping”. I am sure that the shoppers around you got to feel your glorious ‘stuff’ as you strutted and those who followed would have walked in your gorgeous foot-steps. What a wonderfully healing moment in time for all, whether they realised it or not.
Regardless of what we are doing, if we do it as ourselves we can enjoy it.
I agree with enjoying yourself . . no matter what it is your doing because it is you doing it. . It feels unreal sometimes when I do this only because it shows me you do not need anything. It also feels just how important you are feeling a whole lot more that there is to be done. This is when you keep enjoying what is that next thing and make sure you are completing it in full.
When there is a joy to a purpose the task is effortless and leaves us feeling an ease within the body that supports our natural flow.
The moment that we honour ourselves the whole body rejoices.
I can relate to trying to get through chores or tasks in order to have “free time” and yet all the time I was probably rushing through things and not really bringing my full presence to the moment at hand. Unfortunately there is no true settlement in the next moment if we were not present in the previous one.
Tidying a house in joy creates a completely different space to tidying a house in control. Both may leave the house looking clean, but only one will leave it feeling energetically clear because no drive was brought into the equation (e.g. needing to ‘get it done’) and therefore nothing was imposed on the space.
I love that tou have fallen in love with cleaning! So incredible and so not how most of us feel about cleaning!! Inspiring oui!
I also used to rush when I cleaned the house as I wanted to have time for other things, I have realised that cleaning in a driven and rushed way doesn’t really support myself or the home in any way, as I get to walk back through this imprint constantly. I now take my time and have had to let go of any pictures about the house needing to look a certain way.
Bringing tenderness to every aspect of cleaning, and enjoying this, ‘This sentence made me think: Enjoy It?… Why not?! What if I just did the dusting and wiping now? What if I cleaned tenderly and allowed myself to feel my tenderness while I was cleaning? The tenderness that I know I have in my touch.’
There is a way to do routine chores that do not make them a chore but something that is wonderful to do because they support the foundation upon which we walk.
Yes, even enjoying the chores as Joanna said, ‘I thought I was going to do my whole house cleaning routine but at a more honouring pace, when a little sentence popped into my head…
“Slow down – you have to do it, so you might as well enjoy it!”’
I just love finding this blog again to read, it has really supported me to have a different relationship with cleaning my home, I really value it and often feel how amazing the house feels when I have the level of care and quality. It becomes so enjoyable – this really is a miracle!!!
We have been renovating our house and our new bedroom was recently completed. It took me almost all day to clean the room inside out and it felt so lovely to clean without drive. Waking up this morning I was appreciating how the room feels and our view into the trees and mountains is clear and fresh as the windows were sparkling.
Great timing for me to read this blog. Today we are going to have a big clean and tidy in and around our house. There is a lot to do but your blog is reminding me to clean with joy and not go into drive and the mental attitude of ‘I have to get it all done’. I am looking forward to this big de-clutter and reorganising.
We are made to cherish every single thing we do – for if there is something that becomes a chore it doesn’t just stay there but flows into every other part of our day. There is no task that’s separate from the truth.
I am finding the more I let go and allow my body to impulse all that needs to be done, mountains of space opens up for me to do whatever is there to do. No stress, drive or push needed!
By spreading your cleaning over 3 days you gave yourself the space you needed to enjoy the jobs that needed doing. I wonder how they would feel if they were spread over 7. Something for me to try.
Love it! It is great when we revise what we do and why do we do it and re-imprint things. As I have found and as you have found it opens up a whole new space for us to actually En-Joy what we do .. even the house chores ✨
I love it too Vicky. In the past, I used to clean in an energy of push and drive, and end up feeling exhausted and grumpy. Now, I re-imprint the way I clean with gentleness, love, and appreciation and the difference is huge. I can feel our space gets re-imprinted with love when I have been cleaning with love and it feels very nurturing and supportive. I now know when it is time for us to move we are handing over a house that has been re-imprinted with love.
If our moving now is just to preempt moving further down the road, the quality of our movements suffers. If our move is to lay out a quality that will support our movements further down the road, the story is a totally different one.
Clean what is needed at each moment rather than piling at the end of the week allows us to feel that its not a chore but how we move in every – day life!
“My house cleaning chores no longer felt like chores but lovely little moments where I was able to spread my loveliness around our home.” A beautiful way to change our attitudes to cleaning – our choice – drudge or enjoy these necessary tasks.
How often do we get into rigid patterns of doing things regardless of how our body is feeling? For me quite a lot and in the process exhausting myself and doing what I felt I had to do rather begrudgingly. Now I realise that is not a very loving way to do anything and the energy that comes with it affects not only me but what I am doing. Life is so much more simpler when I feel into what needs to be done and to honour how I am feeling at the time, and when I do everything flows so easily and when completed I can feel a loveliness within in me and all around me.
The simplicity is refreshing Ingrid, I have to agree.
I used to work in an energy of wanting to get things done but then I realised I would never get everything done because there is always more and it is not about getting it done but the quality (love / presence) we do things in. This changes everything and means there is a vital, joyful and ever expanding constant.
Constant because it comes from the same loving energy and ever expanding because our connection to that limitless source is ever expanding.
Beautiful Nicola, I love what you’ve shared here and it makes so much sense. I agree, with everything we do when we move with the quality of love and presence, we experience joy in all that we do and this can be applied to all areas of our life. Amazingly simple!
Today whilst doing something I let myself slow down and enjoy doing it and it felt wonderful to honour myself in that way.
There is an absolute joy in cleaning anything when we don’t come in with an agenda.
Yes, I did this too yesterday Elizabeth focusing on my presence and quality rather than what I was doing. It felt lovely to begin with but I observed how quickly I went back into an old behaviour of doing rather than being because I didn’t want to feel what I was doing.
‘Slow down, you have to do it so you might as well enjoy it.’ I love this. Having been someone who often tries to power through to finish tasks I now enjoy slowing down and feeling my body as I move and do them, that gives a completely different take on many ‘chores’.
Its great when we bust those old beliefs around house-work, where we ‘need’ to do the housework, to get it out of the ways so we can enjoy the week-end, makes housework a chore….whereas when we let go of time control, there is always the space to do some cleaning and tidying which is more enjoyable when we just flow with it.
There are so many sneaky ideas in life that we think are just the way they are, and we do not question them. What you share for me really highlights how essential it is to develop a relationship of care and trust with our own bodies, so we respond from them and not from what we so called ‘have’ to do.
It’s an incredible moment of surrender when we allow ourselves to trust our movements and enjoy the space this offers.
An awesome reminder that we can “Slow down – you have to do it, so you might as well enjoy it!” in relation to doing my chores, because I was cleaning my floor this morning and I could feel how I started to rush, I just wanted to get it done so I can start on something else. I find when I rush, I harden my body and it is super difficult to enjoy anything when I am in this state. But it is also easy to snap out of it by doing what you’ve so beautifully shared Johanna.
I can also very much enjoy doing things fast without it being a rush and also enjoy the completion – so as with everything it comes back to energy and not speed.
Enjoy?!!?? Enjoy doing the chores??? But then they wouldn’t be chores.
Definition of chore – “a tedious but necessary task.”
But what you are presenting flips all of that for in fact if we are with ourselves and bring our all to whatever the task is then, absolutely, we can enjoy it. The more I do this then the more I find myself enjoying some of the most simple and seemingly mundane actions. And as soon as I check out or go into drive, then they become chores again.
Brilliant Otto, this is exactly my experience. Once I go into drive or check out while I do anything, be it work, house-work, cooking etc. it wipes out the joy in what I do. It is awesome to understand this and even better to apply more joy into everything that I do. I am starting to practice this more and more. But when I slip back into drive, it is easier to snap myself out of it and be more present because of what I am aware of now and by being more observant of myself and things around me.
That’s the thing; the more we connect to that joy, the more the opposite stands out. WIP = Work In Progress.
The more I ‘trust’ my body and what I am feeling the more everything starts to fall into place and the less exhausting life is. It simply means I need to honour my body and attend to whatever is presented before me and not put it off until a later date.
When I am in drive my body pays the price and often I will only listen when my body puts a stop to me through illness. There is nothing worth doing in drive.
I can relate Leonne, when I am in drive, I am more likely to react to people around me and to my environment. It is a force that hurts our body and it travels further than we realise because the energy behind it can permeate through everything.
Just goes to show when we actually take the time to listen to our body it knows exactly what is the true thing to do in any given moment.
We can easily go in this mood in which we just want things to be done with the attitude that if that is done we can relax and have a weekend.
This is a ill pattern as we do not care for the quality we put our body in at the moment itself.
This blog shows us beautifully how we can do all this in a different way.
A way that is loving in each moment.
It is lovely to reread this sharing and to have actually changed how I am with my cleaning of the house, I do it all the time now instead of once a week, this has had such a positive impact on the whole house and I am enjoying the feeling of my home being more loved and cared for.
We learn so much from our everyday, everything that we do can be a lesson – no need for a guru.
If we’re locked into a belief about how we think things have to be done it stops us from sensing or connecting with what is really needed in that moment…
Yes we lose touch with what is next truly and only operate from our function and heads.
When we trust and listen to our body things flow much better than when we listen to our mind alone that is just ticking boxes but ignoring the body. Doing things solely from the mind is like we let someone do all that is on a list but not checking if they are capable of doing it and if they need sleep etc.
‘You might as well enjoy it’ I love this little piece of nugget! It makes such sense to actually allow ourselves to enjoy the daily tasks in our days rather than rushing through them.
It makes such a difference when I clean my house from my body rather than what my head is telling me, there is a flow and a deeper quality in how I clean that leaves a loving imprint that feeds me back.
There is no greater joy then being in the flow with life. Moving to the impulse of the universe, listening to the breath of our body and all it has to say. Cleaning in this was is total joy for me and it’s a great offering to all who walk the path after we have cleaned this way.
I so love how practical and real your sharing feels. This is so inspiring as I can so recognise how I would have an image of how things should be done and at times how detailed they are and I often set myself up to feel defeated by it. Thank you, Johanna.
Any picture or expectation is a perfect set-up for failure. It gets us focussing on something in the future we want to reach, lessens our awareness and mostly puts a strain on the body.
The really cool thing is that when there is that level of care and self-honouring when we clean the imprint we leave behind in our house feel amazing, so it’s a win win situation – you’re cared for and the house is cared for and it’s like that care just keeps multiplying.
This blog reminded me of how sometimes when I go to the gym and work out I find myself just wanting to be finished with the work out so I can feel good about exercising instead of enjoying each movement and staying present with my body in gentle movements that feel so nurturing. When this has happened, I instantly know that I have lost that connection with my body and fallen into an old pattern of focusing on end results instead of in-joying the moment.
Cleaning with joy not in a push or a drive… who would have thought it possible but the loving practicalness of this approach is undeniable.
The house is the body in repose. Its overall quality is our overall quality. So the quality of care we put in it matters greatly.
Just imagine finding that place within us where by we did not tend to our chores, our work, so much in fact in a driven way, but rather in a way that celebrated… This is without doubt, the way of the livingness that is possible for all of humanity