I Was Giving up on Myself Without Even Realizing It
Also, why you can’t plan every single aspect of your life
Believe me, I’ve tried. I used to (and still sometimes do, old habits die hard) plan any important day minute by minute, leaving no room for unforeseen events. I lived under constant stress, and never managed to finish the endless list of things I had planned for that day.
And then the tachycardia started. I panicked and rushed to the doctor. Was it a heart problem? Was something serious happening to me? After several tests, the answer was simple: I had unhealthy levels of anxiety. “You should really learn to relax,” said my doctor, before suggesting I take meditation classes.
I couldn’t stand them. They were too slow, too calm. Of course, that’s the point of meditation. But it only stressed me more. Still, I decided to give them a go. As I’d thought, it wasn’t a good idea. All my head was thinking the entire time was the handful of other more productive activities I could be doing instead of meditating. It might work for other people, but it just wasn’t my thing.
What if I use workouts as a stress reliever? That idea wasn’t as bad as the last one, but when it comes to exercising, I have the willpower of a 5-year-old trying to eat food they don’t like. Don’t get me wrong, I love working out. I’m a handball player, I train twice a week and have matches every weekend. The issue comes when I’m alone, and I have to force myself to work out randomly. I can cope with it for a week, but then I just give up.
And then I realized that was my problem. Giving up. I gave up on the last planned tasks of the day because I couldn’t bring myself to do them. I gave up on meditation because it was hard for me. I gave up on working out alone because it required additional effort. I was giving up on myself.
It was a hard truth to accept, but when I did, the only thing that was clear to me was that I didn’t want to go on like that any longer. First, I thought about why was I giving up so easily on things. Planned tasks? Easy, I just had an overwhelming amount of them every day. No one could do that many things without going crazy. So, I decided to set fewer daily tasks, and not monitor them minute-by-minute, leaving room for contingencies.
Next was meditation. It hadn’t worked for me, but I had gone for it with the wrong mindset. If I didn’t like guided meditation, what about relaxing music while laying in bed and taking deep breaths on the days I noticed my stress levels increasing? No pressure, no obligation. I just needed to see it as a solution to my problems, not an additional task to fulfill.
Lastly, working out. This one was heavily linked with my self-confidence, and I knew it. The evident answer was to start accepting and loving myself, as well as lowering expectations regarding the results of my workouts. And again, I realized seeing it as a casual activity rather than an obligation would help enormously.
All those solutions were little things, but they weren’t easy at all. In fact, I’m still working on most of them. However, I’ve noticed a huge change in my life and stress levels, the main one being that my once so frequent tachycardia was now a distant memory. Honestly, it has been a tough process, but at the end of the day I’m the only one who has to take care of myself, and I want to be able to do it the right way.
