What I did and what I did not do.
I did not click sent one something quite important the other week.
It was not a world-ending mistake, but it did mean that people who were expecting something heard nothing from me.
It was a basic human error. But it led me to notice how I speak to myself and how I treat myself when I make a mistake and how different this is to a few years ago.
Here's what I did:
I acknowledged I had done something wrong
I tried to work out how to fix it
I thought about what I could do to make it up to people
Felt embarrassed and disappointed.
Here's what I did not do:
Call myself an idiot
Waste time asking myself how I could have done something like this
Tell myself there is no point running a workshop is no one knows when it is
Waste hours (possibly months) worrying about what other people will think of me
Cancel the whole thing because I felt embarrassed and disappointed.
THESE ARE ALL THINGS PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF ME WOULD HAVE DONE. I grew up with the temper of a toddler. I rallied against anything which might expose me to other people and let them know how stupid I really was. I was terrified of being caught out. I believed it was only a matter of time before everything I ever touched fell apart because I was inherently rubbish. You might think this sound extreme, but I believe a lot of us harbour thoughts along these lines and we are absolutely taught that we should not make mistakes, or we will forever be followed around by our own internal version of Nelson from The Simpsons. And this leads us to People Pleasing, it leads us to over-committing, it leads us to ignoring our own needs in the hope that some external validation is going to tell us that we are OK to drown out our own inner critic. Ultimately this leads to burnout. And I see so many people teetering on this ALL. THE. TIME. Which is why I wanted to host the workshop in the first place. And I recognise it because that used to be me. Ask anyone who knows me how far out of my own way I would go for other at the expense of myself (right now I am thinking of the moment during one flooded Glastonbury where someone said they liked my poncho and so I said they could have it if they liked and my friend love-yelled at me “YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS”). And I don't feel like that any more. AND I don't care any less about people. The irony is, there is more of me, from my full heart and rest-prioritised self to be able to offer more to more people. I could not do that if I was wasting all my time telling myself what a dreadful person I was (see also, too fat, not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not xyz enough). It. Was. Exhausting. And I learnt how to put that stuff down. And this is what I want to share with you in November's course at SelfCareSchool which is How To Stop Feeling Exhausted the Whole Time. Even if you cannot make it, I hope this blog post brings you a little window into a world where you do not have to be so hard on yourself. That's what I wish for all of us.