Gentle hoss

Being gentle on yourself

This is an important belief for me.  It's also a relatively new one.  I used to beat myself up when I didn't accomplish or achieve what I set as my goal.  Inevitably, I set very lofty expectations and almost always managed to fall short.  One of the potential pitfalls for being in tune with yourself is that you can make a list as long as your leg for what you know you need to improve for your health and your well being.  The responsibility that accompanies this knowledge is that you also need to know how to be gentle on yourself.

To me, you can have a good self esteem and be happy, optimistic, and maintain a good attitude and still be harsh on yourself for not meeting your goals.  However, it is not optimal.  If you are kind to yourself, you will end up much happier, and I believe that you'll also come much closer to meeting your expectations for yourself as well.

If you want to keep a cleaner house, donate everything you don't use anymore, exercise every morning before work, cook nutritious meals every day after the 8-5 grind, devour a new book each month, spend quality time with your loved ones, meet new friends, and maintain a fabulous and successful blog all at the same time, you will not achieve everything all at once.  The problem I think most people face is that these goals are competing for your time and often are things that you consider to have relative equal importance.  You may feel like you need to calm the chaos in your life by exercising, eating better, cleaning up the house, and reconnecting with family.  Those would be equal goals in your life that all serve the one greater purpose.  Unless these goals become your new full time job, you won't reach a point of completion for them simultaneously.  (And if you approach them like they're a job, you won't be happy anyway.)  Jump in and do something.  Something is better than nothing.  In these life goals, there's no all or nothing.  There's no wasted effort.  You may get to schedule time with friends once a month after work, but that's once more than you did before you set your goal.  You may squeeze in 5 min of exercise before you hit the hay, but it's 5 min better than nothing.

As an added bonus, this attitude toward your goals helps you to be happier and more content with what you have accomplished.  You'll get to cross things off your list some days and you'll feel better than when you thought these tasks were unachievable.  Be gentle on yourself.  Be kind to yourself.  Be your own friend.

I know I know, enough with the cheese cheeze.  But now you know why I say that I'm gentle on myself.  Because something's better than nothing, and I celebrate each baby step toward a better, happier, healthier life.