Balance Over Consistency

It has been an interesting month for me, I have been busier than a bee, which has caused my priorities to go out of whack. This has prevented me from meeting my expectations. If you have an annual pass to High Achievers Ville like myself then you will know how much of a downer that puts you in. My biggest defeat has been dropping the ball on my consistent blog posting. This is because I promised myself when I restarted writing that I would improve my writing by posting twice a month as a means to increase this over time. And I would only break that standard if the situation was life or death. My usual pattern of behaviour after considering that I have disgraced my character by not sticking to an agreed plan or goal would be to spend various amounts of time being self-critical and crowning myself a complete failure for not managing my own goals. I mean what kind of advisor can I be if I struggle to maintain my own standards? In the spirit of emotional regulation I chose to take a different approach this time and I feel like it has made me a better person. So here are some of the methods I used to reframe dropping the ball.

Positive Self-Reflection

Instead of concentrating on what I was unable to achieve and attending the pity party of all I haven’t done, I took time to consider all that I had completed and found that my reason for not hitting my target this month was due to the summer being prime time for my 9-5, a lot of my personal time was relinquished to the responsibilities of my full-time job and that is my writing time. A rule of thumb for me nowadays that I use at work to support my anxiety around underperforming is to make my To-Do List at the start of the day and cross the items off as I go along also adding any ad-hoc tasks that were not a part of my original plan but still things that needed to be done. When I look back at what my day consisted of, I still get left with light pangs of the anguish of what still remains, however, feel rest assured by everything I was able to achieve and that I was not a slave to procrastination or mismanagement of time.

Going With The Flow

I am a control freak in recovery, so I strongly believe that everything in my life happens because of the actions I do or do not take. Not only is this the biggest lie of life, but it also puts a lot of pressure on me to unceasingly be accountable for why something goes right or wrong in my life when really we often don’t have a say in how something goes. Growing older has taught me no matter how hard I try to re-route the satnav of life I end up at the destination I was leaping over hills and valleys I tried to avoid. As a creative I need moments of peace in order to produce content. I have found I am more likely to get writers block when I try to tackle all responsibilities at once like a chaotic superhero. Instead, I need to take time to allow the juices to flow. With time, I’ve been becoming more relaxed with the motto “Kay Sera, Sera” and as our younger generation says now, “Charging it to the Game”, since constantly trying to overpower life is not only exhausting, but also impossible. Sometimes you just have to ride the wave and pick up the lessons amongst the current.

Extend Kind Self-Talk

My line of work is to motivate others to make different decisions about their lives which I believe I do quite well. Unfortunately, I am awful at doing this for myself and often catch moments of me groaning in public about that expired duty no matter how hard I try I just can’t get to (trust me I do this out loud and it is very embarazzing). I have been counter-acting all my soliloquy’s of negativity with mantra’s of acceptance of my current position to reassure myself through, the messages put out into the world around the hate embedded in society which I wholeheartedly agree with. Although the sting is different when it involves your inner self-critic something that can leave you in turmoil for days. Reminding myself that it isn’t my fault and that I am doing a great job with the disorder to stop me from spiralling into the depths of despair.

Moral of the story is to make like Jay Z and get that dirt off ya shoulders because you will fall off route at some point. But what matters is how you get back on track. In order to be productive, you have to release control and allow the universe to take the reins. Plot twist, did your progression stop because you were heading the wrong way?

Now leave me so I can relish in the generational curse I just broke…