I feel like in today’s society it’s a little more common for us all to aspire to be perfect – best at whatever we do – especially with social media advertising a perfect ideal version of ourselves. But, we also live in a society that moves at such a fast pace and prioritizes speed over anything else. As a result, we start living our lives as if we are all in a race to see who accomplishes more in a shorter amount of time. We are expected to sleep 8 hours a week, work full time, eat healthy, workout every day, have a social life and so many other things that we become conditioned to push ourselves constantly to the limit, and punish ourselves if we fail.
Something my therapist once said is “Why don’t you try talking to yourself as if you were talking to one of your best friends? Would you say any of the stuff you’re saying to yourself to any of your best friends?” My answer was of course, no. I tend to be really hard and mean to myself, but would never say any of the things I say to myself to my best friends. So, imagine a situation in which you’re feeling down on yourself – let’s say you didn’t get into the major of your choice. What would you say to yourself? Now, what would you say if your friend was saying the same things you say to yourself about themselves? Would you say the same thing?
We tend to be easier on our friends than we are on ourselves. But we forget that in the end, we are human, and we aren’t perfect. We aren’t a piece of technology altered to be the smartest, quickest bot out there. We have breaking points, peak levels and emotions and thoughts. We cannot be perfect 24/7. Breaks are indeed needed. Listening to your body and knowing when it needs a break is not a weakness. It is not taking the easy way out, it’s being kind, easy and forgiving on yourself. It’s being appreciative of your body. It’s being easier on your mind and soul.
When something goes wrong in life, you might be quick to blame yourself and think that if you were only a little bit better with time management, things wouldn’t have gone wrong. But what you fail to acknowledge is: “you’ve got a lot on your plate. You tried to set aside more time for that task, but with all things considered, it’s okay that you forgot.”
I promise that if you are more forgiving of yourself and are quick to celebrate even the smallest victories, you’ll feel even more accomplished with yourself and content with your life. Changing your mentality to be more forgiving and accepting of mistakes and easier on yourself is seriously a game changer. Rather than being hard on yourself for every little thing, realizing when some things are out of your control is so important.
You wouldn’t talk down to someone you care about nor would you be so hard on them, so why do the same to yourself? I think we all get too caught up in wanting to be the best version of ourselves, which is great, but we don’t take the time to appreciate the steps and the efforts we are taking to get there, even if they don’t always lead to the outcome we want. Sure, you might not have ran as much or as fast as you wanted to, but hey, you still ran, which is a lot better than nothing. Start listening to your body, so that you know when a break is necessary and start giving yourself more credit and I promise you will feel so much better about life in general.