I learned to be kind to myself — the hard way
We, in fact, our generation, and the generations before us, after us, all have one thing in common. We judge ourselves on some of the strangest criteria. The parameters of success may change, but to become successful is put on a pedestal.
Often I have seen the moms who are dying trying to do everything at once being glorified. Exhaustion is a medal to be displayed and gains approval of the toughest of the tough.
I have to confess, until recently I was a believer of this very ideology. I genuinely believed that unless I am giving in 100% every day, all day, I am a failure. I have to be the perfect employee, the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, host, manager everything at any given moment.
I had unexplained aches and pains all the time and I would blame everything else, except my lack of sleep. I had become cranky and I would either claim it to be my nature or blame others for not understanding my POV. I would be sleepy all the time and I would blame it on a variety of factors including the weather, but never on the fact that I was ignoring self care.
One day, I just broke down, I fainted and fell at work in a cabin, where no one could see me. No one came to check on me, no one probably knew. I waited lying down on the dirty floor to regain strength and complete consciousness and then got up to sit for some time and just reflect on what is going on.
And then, it struck me like a big yellow school bus!
What even is 100%? What does it mean to give your 100%? Is it an absolute?
I now know that your 100% varies every day, every hour sometimes. There are days when I am at a 40% capacity and on that day, in that moment if I give 40%, it is actually my 100%!
What am I trying to achieve by rubbing myself to a nub? Instead of being around for the key moments and key people in my life, I am burning myself out for something that is not even a part of my core!
Here are the three big changes I decided to make on that very day:
- Analyse my capacity for the day
- Plan and prioritize
- Be Kind (to myself)
Analyse my capacity for the day
I make sure that I check in on myself and have the conversation with myself and analyze where I stand. This takes a little getting used to, because we have a tendency to get carried away with the thousand different things that scream for our attention at any given time.
My trick is to do this introspection as I am switching between tasks. It did take me a little while and slow me down, but that is the point. Doing things fast and back to back, may not be the most efficient way to do it. Before this, I never gave myself the chance to explore this approach, because all I believed in was “Go! Go! Go!”
Plan and prioritize
Once I know where I am, capacitywise, it is time to plan things out and assign priorities. I was guilty of keeping every task and responsibility at the same priority level.
I would approach every task the way a firefighter would approach a burning house. Everything on my task needed to be done right now! Even as I am writing this, I realise how unrealistic and ineffective this approach is. I wonder why it took me so long to notice this.
What I do now is categorize my tasks into three categories — urgent, important, and no priority tasks. I have had to train myself into using the third category because it would often end up empty. Learning to prioritise is one of the most important skills to acquire, and I am still a work in progress.
Be Kind (to myself)
The single most important lesson I learned from the incident of me fainting and falling was about being kind to myself. I am an empath, and I am great at understanding what the other person is feeling. I tend to go to great lengths to ensure that people around me are at ease and comfortable.
But I failed to do that with myself. I would often berate myself for missing a deadline, taking more than one sick day even when I needed five, making a mistake, and other such small things.
Being kind to others comes naturally to me, but being kind to myself is a learned behavior, and I am still learning. However, even at this initial stage, I am observing a shift in how I feel. If I had to use one word to describe the feeling, it would be — light. I felt light, removed from the unnecessary stress that no one but I had built up around myself.
Have you ever paid attention to how you are feeling before deciding to take on the day? Try it, and let me know what changes you observe in yourself.
