This Christmas I was on my ‘B Game’ which is a pretty shocking admission for me.

I’m normally an ‘A Game’ type of person. You see I’m a recovering perfectionist. My normal approach is that is if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. That means I hold myself to high standards. I’m achievement orientated and have been known to measure my sense of worth by how much I achieve and how well I achieve it (and often how quickly I achieve it).

Yet this Christmas I did things differently. I wasn’t on my ‘A Game’. Instead I was on my ‘B Game’ – this was due to being pregnant. And on the lead up to Christmas I was in my first trimester. I was feeling pretty damn awful; exhausted, emotional and nauseous. This meant I wasn’t able to approach things with my normal mental willpower of pushing myself to do my best. My body, not my head, was in control. This B (baby) Game was taking the driving seat.

The result was:

• some Christmas cards didn’t get sent
• I didn’t attend all my son’s school Christmas activities
• some presents weren’t given until the week after Christmas
• my wrapping was done but not to my normal standard
• I shop brought my cranberry sauce rather than make it myself
• some of my Christmas decorations only got put up on Christmas Eve
• I didn’t get to see all my friends over the Christmas festivities

Normally any of these results would have left me feeling a failure. But not this year. I genuinely felt that being any where near organised for Christmas was a miracle, taking into consideration how dreadful I had been feeling.

It actually felt really nice to not put so much pressure on myself. And things seemed to happened much more smoothly and effortlessly as a result. The added bonus was that I didn’t feel so frazzled at the end of the festive season. I also didn’t feel any of my normal martyr style resentment towards my husband for not having exhausted himself with me for the Christmas craziness.

So this Christmas was an unintended but interesting experiment in doing less. And it felt good!

Here at Wisdom For Working Mums were all about helping working mums like us achieve more by doing less. Helping us step out of martyrdom. Helping us to let go of perfectionism. Helping us find a way to achieve what we want but without burning ourselves out. As quite frankly most of us working mums are a breath away from burnout. And doing more just isn’t an option. But doing things differently is!