There is a ton of advice out there to help with selling a home and as in all areas of life, there are plenty of people who want to give home-sellers advice. That said, we love to do things ourselves and our way. We like to be our own general contractors, gardeners, teachers and cooks. We gain a lot of satisfaction out of doing things ourselves — learning and stretching along the way. This project of prepping our home for sale and our family for moving is huge, however, and so we’ve been more open than usual to hiring people to help us.

For the most part this has worked out very well for us. With the help of recommendations and our own due-diligence we have found a number of good helpers who seem to “get” us and can work with us for a result which is in line with our values and who we are.

We’ve been struggling with one person, however, who we will call, “Alice.” We know Alice is trying to help us in the best way she knows how and that she is trying to do what she thinks will give us what we want. The problem is that it’s becoming clearer and clearer that she doesn’t seem to “get” us. In the end, what she’s trying to do and the way in which she is trying to do it isn’t in line with who we are.

Although we’ve been under a lot of stress for weeks now, we’ve also been “going with the flow” quite well until recently, when we started working with Alice. Since then, our stress has gone up and our kids have noticed that we’ve been paying less attention to them as we talk more about Alice and how to manage her.

From a purely rational point of view, it can be difficult to argue with what Alice is doing because it all “makes sense.” Something in our intuitions, however, is telling us that for the first time, our project is starting to get away from us and we need to reign it back in before it drifts too far from who we are and from our core values. In the end, Alice may be on too much of a different frequency from us for this relationship to work. As much as we want help, it’s important that those who are helping us support us in who we are rather than rigidly adhering to what they think is the best course of action.

“Doing as we are,” isn’t just for the work of parenting or earning a living, or our soul work. We have challenged ourselves to “do as we are” as a way of living at all times. Sometimes our lives drift away from our core so gradually that we don’t notice until the distances have become great. Sometimes even well-meaning people can pull us away as well. It’s never too late, though, to reign ourselves back in and refocus on who we are and what we are about. When we do so, we can feel it in our bodies as our muscles relax, our minds as they quiet, and in our souls as they open up again.

When we refocus on “doing as we are,” it always feels like coming home again.