These Monday Motivation posts are just as much for me as they are for you… if, in fact they are helpful at all, which I’m hoping they are… because they help me and if they help even just one of you, then I’m happy :).
I’m juggling a ton of different things right now that each come with their own emotional chaos and I find myself constantly unbalanced… which seems to be a common theme these days, so apologies if it’s monotonous.
I’m oftentimes eager and excited about the future and big projects or completely terrified about how to move forward in other aspects of my life. All of this just creates a constant turmoil within that leaves me doubting and questioning and lacking confidence to take action when necessary and then falling into mini depressions and anxiety spirals at 6 in the morning wherein I suddenly want to take action, when I know it’s time to be sleeping. -And it’s not like I’ve been asleep for 6 hours when this happens, it’s that I still haven’t fallen asleep yet (like right now).
Admittedly, no matter what is going on in my life, I find that soon after the time change -and lasting for possibly 2-3 months (so, basically from mid-November until March) I’m a little off. And while usually I completely forget that I go through this strangely unfocused time and almost blue period, this year, I remembered.
I remembered because it’s often that my mood plummets come December and as a result, the things I usually find enjoyable seem difficult, and work that I usually love, becomes less of a priority. I then constantly feel like I’m not doing enough or not working hard enough towards anything at all. This happens every year no matter what I’m working on… and instead I focus on all the things I don’t have (mostly children and a family -which probably has to do with the holidays – just a guess). I know I’m ridiculously hard on myself at times though, so I’m working on that, but it’s a challenge.
While sometimes this knowledge allows me to be a little more forgiving with myself and allowing for some downtime, it’s also makes me want to work even harder, and then I go in circles because I can’t focus.
I’m not sure what the true solution is so I find that if I even just do a little bit of SOMETHING in areas that make me feel like I’m making progress, then I also build a little bit of confidence that pushes me to do a little bit of something in another area of my life -where I might feel like I’m slacking on.
For instance, lately I feel like I’ve been avoiding doing things around the house or keeping up on certain areas of the yard, etc. I think there are a few reasons why I’d been avoiding it, but the point is that each time I noticed an area of my house where I felt I was avoiding, I’d get this pit in my stomach that would make me feel even worse and then the negative self-talk would start and then I’d spiral into an entire shame-story inside my head about something so silly it was pointless. Nothing feels good about that and it only ends in less-doing and feeling worse about myself.
So the only thing to do is to take action.
But when you’ve let things go for so long, they feel overwhelming, like there’s no possible way you could accomplish it all, especially when you have other things to do that have priority. But when things get to this place, it’s about baby steps. Doing one little thing – NOT THE WHOLE THING – just one little thing, makes all the difference.
Because one little thing becomes another little thing and then I find myself doing all the things I’ve bee procrastinating and then those little things also build confidence, allowing me to take on the bigger things that I’d been avoiding. At the end of the day if I can list a few things I did that felt like progress forward, it makes me happy. So it’s a positive spiral up that leads to MORE rather than a negative spiral down that leads to LESS.
I watched this talk How to Beat Self-Doubt in 5 Seconds by Mel Robbins which kind of gave me an extra boost. She states a few of the things I had already been thinking and putting into practice, and it made me feel even better… like, okay, I’m doing the right thing here… which feels better too.
Watch it below…
Sometimes I feel like I wish I had all the answers but I know that when I was in a place where I actually did have all the answers, I was bored and miserable and searching for more.
When you leap and take risks and literally change everything in your life one year and expect everything to just fall into place right after BECAUSE WHY NOT!??! then it’s challenging to sit back and be patient whilst everything actually does fall into place. Keeping the confidence is key otherwise doubt creeps in and ruins your plans.
Sometimes I feel like I’m on top of my game and other times I wonder if I have any game at all. The highs and lows are extreme at the moment, but each day, if I make a little progress towards all the little things that mean something to me, that those extremes will eventually balance out and meet in the middle again.
I just hope that when I find my perfect new middle, the one I’ve been dreaming about and working so hard to find, that I don’t get bored and leap again…
But what is life without if you never risk it all for something that’s important to you? No life at all really.
Happy Monday Lovecats!
* Kick ass -but also, allow yourself to be human – even when it’s really hard to.
* Find all my #MotivationMonday Posts here
