Amid COVID-19 (a widespread virus that can lead to death and something I haven’t written about much yet) our little one – turned one!

A fun day flowed, nothing like we had planned, a big gathering of 100+ family members, an expensive cake fine Asian suits worn and small talk all day. It became a day where the four of us (all family members who live together) played outside in the sun, we delivered food to relatives nearby, opened presents, ate cake and chatted to further away relatives over the internet.

It was great that everything manifested what I truly wanted myself and as a small family. I wore white Bana (traditional Sikh wear) and so did SK and husband, I saved £100 not buying a big cake, then £22 not buying a home-delivered one. I simply made one myself (badly, I need new cake tins) and that it didn’t matter anyway because instead of getting a knife to cut the cake, SK put her hand in it and took mouthfuls. She looked at it as if to say ‘Ah, Mummy has put a messy activity out for me, great!’ As well as ‘I’m tired I need to nap, ok first I will put my hand it here, oh it’s squishy!’ I see why people make/buy smash cakes!

We played a version of Sukhmani on the TV (a Sikh prayer on peace) I loved listening to while walking around my hometown, instead of it being read by someone from the temple (Granthi from the Gurdwara). I even got some me time in, I set up my new video light while she napped and finalised and sent out registration forms for free yoga classes I’m teaching soon. You can find these on my Facebook page.

It was a quiet celebration, those are rare and magical.

I kept catching myself over tidying, trying to do things and them not work out and I realised I had created a mini-story of expectations, perfection, even at a much smaller gathering. I dropped my teacup twice and a nappy change became a bed cover change in the middle of the day. I was tense about the family Zoom call I had set up. A set of words came to me that I heard on a COVID episode of School for mothers podcast:

Drop all expectations.

That’s it. Simple.

I was creating expectations, they didn’t match up with reality or my internal sense of peace. I relaxed, my shoulders dropped, I breathed and carried on our fun day.

As well as letting go of expectations, I remembered a series of blog posts on Cal Newport’s site, they were on productivity and a discussion came about from the word ‘productivity’. It seemed as much help as it was a block for people and to instead say to ourselves:

What’s my intention?

To carry out our intentions, to put into action our meaningful tasks fist.

Simply put.

My intentions that day were to ensure we had an enjoyable day, despite changes and not being able to go out, to not go with the flow but be in the flow.

My intentions as of lately, are to stick to a baby schedule I set up before this whole virus came about and to do my most important tasks first. Easy to say harder to do when more tasks are added, ideas pop up, social media suggests something I may want to watch or read.

As a mum, of a now one-year-old, I can say from experience – put everything through a fine filter of what’s truly important, remove things that you don’t fit anymore and start from where you are now.

Side note lovelies – I’m teaching a week of classes and a bonus class online from the 8th-14th April 2020, if you’re not on Facebook, drop me an email at yogawithtaran at gmail dot com to register.