Habit-building is one of those things that come easy to me, as well as creating and following a schedule and getting a lot of things done. Those are my things. Call me type A, INTJ, or whatever. But what helps me with all of those comes with a particular health consequence: chronic stress. I’ve only since learned to acknowledge how stressed I get when I unmindfully overload my schedule and end up with not enough time to breathe. Even worse when I don’t even realize that I’ve been holding my breath all that time.
These days, I’ve been able to focus more on taking care of myself and the biggest challenge with it has been to give myself time. It isn’t that I don’t have the time—not anymore, I now do have the long quarantined days to myself—but I’ve been so used to functioning in a way that feels like I don’t: always in a rush and with much internal and external pressures.
I’ve been doing better at taking my time these past couple of days, but today I hit a roadblock—one that I have been ignoring. Again, I have unmindfully filled out my schedule with routines, tasks, projects and the like. I thought it would be fine as there were still a lot of blank hours and most if not all of the things on the calendar are things I love and truly enjoy doing. However, after an urgent and important (and also, admittedly, incredibly enjoyable) task came up unaccounted for in the calendar, I found myself several hours later with backlog.
Routines unfinished, daily tasks undone, more work coming up.
Backlog: like tasting blood in my mouth.
I felt stuck for a while. Restless but immobile: that’s usually how stress feels like.
I was torn between two concepts: the idea of consistency for effective progress versus… well, letting one’s self breathe.
One reason I had realized why it’s been difficult for me to take any break whatsoever is the thought that if I slip even just once, then all my previous work would be futile. They’d be gone if I close my eyes for just one second.
As I write that line, I realize: where did I even get that idea?!
Because for one, not true. At least, not in my experience. I’ve taken a lot of breaks and came back to things still being okay. Sure, sometimes the progress takes a dip, but it’s a generally insignificant dip. After a good rest, I’m able to bring it back up to a level that I probably couldn’t have accomplished without the break.
It is important to be consistent, yes, but consistent doesn’t mean perfect.
You don’t have to get every little thing right. And not even the bigger things, too. You know how sometimes you take on a big project that could have resulted to substantial progress but the project fails?
It happens. And that’s okay.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, and don’t dwell too much on the bigger ones too.
Where then should the focus be?
On whatever will keep you going.
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