Commit to the Bit

(But Don’t Forget It’s a Bit)

Lately, my greatest spiritual teacher is three years old and currently obsessed with being Elsa.

If you’ve ever watched a toddler in full pretend-play mode, you know what I mean. One minute she’s my daughter, the next she is not taking feedback because she is, in fact, Elsa. Or her teacher Miss Bree asking for a volunteer to be the weather helper. Or a sad kitty who can only wimper and meow.

She doesn’t “kind of” play. She is the character. Fully in. Method acting level 10.

She is so committed to the bit it’s wild.

Sometimes she gets stuck in a loop and can’t quite find her way out. She truly believes she is the sad kitty.

Clay will walk downstairs and I’ll say, “We’re in a bit right now.”
Translation: Just go with it.

And I keep hearing myself say it and thinking:
Don’t forget you are in a bit right now, too.

We forget this as adults.
We forget we are still playing roles.

We pick up identities along the way: mother, founder, wife, leader, friend, and then start to believe that’s all we are. We get lost in the character and forget that, underneath, there’s a pureness that exists before the emails, the meetings, the laundry, the launches, the productivity, the metrics.

We’re all just method acting our way through this life. Some better than others, and I think I figured out why.

They best actors don’t forget they are playing a role.

So the question I keep sitting with is this:

How committed can you be to the role you’re playing… without forgetting it’s a role?

Because that’s where I see people (myself absolutely included) get lost. We go all in on a part and then confuse the costume for our actual skin.

In my life right now, my days feel like three distinct shifts. Three roles.

Role 1: The Morning Mom

From about 5 to 9 a.m., I am fully on the morning shift.

I wake up the house. I’m doing breakfast, lunches, outfits, negotiating with a tiny dictator (mini-me) about which color synthetic braid extension she wants in her hair, I’m playing music, wiping counters, feeding a baby with spit up on my hoodie, coffee in hand, getting everyone out the door.

I am so committed to this bit.

I’m the mom in the trenches at school drop-off, wearing some version of pajamas disguised as a “matching set,” holding backpacks and water bottles like I’m juggling on a street corner.

This is a role.

Loving, exhausting, sacred, mundane. Still, it’s a role.

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Role 2: The Daytime CEO

From about 9 to 5, I walk into my office, shut the door, and the energy shifts.

Now I’m in my founder / creator / strategist role.

I’m a CEO. I’m a writer. I’m a coach. I’m a decision-maker. I’m leading my team, planning offers, building launches, obsessing over data and ad performance, facilitating calls, and trying to say something useful on the internet.

It’s silly when you really think about it.

At least actors know they’re acting and get paid to do it.

But we’re all doing some version of this. We’re stepping into a role the second the Zoom light goes green, rehearsing our lines in the shower, walking into the meeting already wearing the energy we think we need to have.

In business, I think we forget we’re playing a part. We take it so seriously that our nervous systems cannot tell the difference between “this launch underperforming” and “I am personally a failure as a human being.”

What if we saw our work as the role we were born to play (dare I say our dharma) and still remembered it’s a role?

If this is the character you’re here to play in this season, founder, coach, designer, teacher, artist… how would you show up differently?

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Role 3: The Night Janitor

Then there’s the night shift.

My husband cooks.
I clean.
We do bath time, play time, stories, bedtime. There are diapers, footsie pajamas, brushed hair, one more book, sips of water, stuffed animals arranged in a very specific order. I get it, to be honest. She is a bit of me.

But here I am, back to Mom. Back to householder.

I can get lost here too unless I keep tuning back into myself.

For me, it looks like lighting candles or incense, putting on music I love, saying a quiet prayer, vocal toning, taking a hot bath at night, breathing for 30 seconds before I walk into the bedroom to do bedtime. Reset. Reload.

These are tiny rituals but they remind me:
It’s still me under all of this.
I’m me, playing mother.

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The real checkpoint, the one I can’t spiritually bypass, is 3 a.m.

I always think of that version of me: the middle-of-the-night me. The lights-off, can’t-sleep, no-one-is-watching, no-performance-left-in-me version.

Who am I then?

When it’s dark and quiet and every role is stripped away: not mom, not wife, not founder, not “insert title here” not whoever the internet thinks I am, just me and my thoughts and my body and my breath.

That’s the one I report back to.

If I’m honest, the work of my life is making sure she is proud of the roles I’m playing. That the way I “do” wife, mother, founder, leader, friend actually lines up with who I am in those 3 a.m. hours.

Because the roles are still just roles. They’re costumes. They can change.
The part underneath is the constant.

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So… How Committed Are You to Your Bits?

I want to be the mom who goes all in on pretend play, who cries with the sad kitty and sings at the top of my lungs as if I am Elsa. I want to be the founder who shows up fully for my clients, my team, my work. I want to be the wife who’s present at dinner, who actually looks up from her phone. Who shows up in love.

But I don’t want to confuse these roles with my worth.
I don’t want to make every scene life-or-death.
Commitment is not the same as attachment.
You can give a brilliant performance and still know you’re allowed to step off stage.

So here are a few questions to ask yourself?

• What roles am I currently playing in my life?

• Which ones feel like costumes that actually fit… and which ones are too tight, itchy, outdated?

• How can I bring more of my actual self into each role: my humor, my values, my authenticity, my heart?

I’m learning to move between my roles with intention.

To let myself play, really play the roles I’ve chosen in this season: parent, partner, founder, friend.

Please remember that you are more than any single character you’ll ever play.

And to ask, gently and often:

Am I aligned with the person behind the script?
Or have I forgotten I’m on stage?

Either way, you can always step off, shake it out, take a breath, and choose how you want to enter the next scene.

You are the writer, the actor, and the director.

The bit is temporary.
You are not.

-Said the Gemini ♊️💋

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