Two in one day? Lately I find it’s been so easy to base self worth on how productive you are or are not on any given day. It’s so easy to devalue your self worth if you don’t finish every last item on your to do list. But worse is the desire after those days happen to overcompensate, which just leads to more stress in the first place.
Like virtually everything, I believe the secret to productivity involves mindfulness and self kindness. Mindfulness, the ability to self-reflect on how you’re feeling at any given moment is REQUIRED for identifying when to deploy discipline or self kindness.
But once you are able to identify when you need a break to “unplug”, practicing self kindness and actually training self kindness as a skill rather than a weakness is required for effective execution of braeks.
On the other hand, so many folks mis-interprate what self kindness should mean. Some take to the “treat your self” to make ill-advised purchases that don’t really make them happier in the long run. Others develop an overactive “self care” complex which suggests to folks to be a lump at all times and never actually do anything.
In fact, I believe that very effect is one of the most sinister symptoms of depression. If you base self worth on how much you get done, but depression makes it extremely attractive/compelling to not get anything done, or makes doing just difficult in general, then you can be trapped in a vicious downward emotional spiral.
When this happened to me I had to not only train myself what it meant to be self-kind, but also had to reinstall discipline. And to this day, the tug of war between discipline feels eternal. But interestingly, I feel the two get closer to harmony each day.
