Because I think everyone needs more.
I’m building my ideal week and then attempting to build my life and work around it.
If I have an ideal week, I can create anywhere I am.
I can be anywhere and feel great.
I find this has incredible advantages.
Designing My Ideal Week
I have been fine-tuning my routines and systems.
After having them blown to smithereens by divorce, housing instability, unemployment, financial constraints, single parenting, and deep grief.
With a backdrop of global pandemic.
I am not starting from scratch.
I am starting from a pile of rubble in two different states.
I had an idea of what I wanted my ideal week to be back when my life seemed ideal.
And then things blew up.
I began iterating as necessary to survive several years when my life was far from ideal.
Crazy thing is, I wasn’t that far off. I knew three years ago what I wanted to do, and it hasn’t changed much. I have field tested exhaustively in myriad crises, and this is what works.
I can be in a different place every single week and gain traction. (Although it has taken me time to figure out how!)
I can do it because I have routines and processes I have automated.
To be in a different place every week requires a huge amount of energy. Your body is constantly on alert taking in new information. You are a perpetual traveler.
You cannot be a perpetual traveler without routines and processes to keep things running smoothly.
Or at least I can’t.
I thought I could when I was younger. In retrospect, very little ran smoothly.
I could tolerate things not running smoothly more easily when I was younger than I can now.
Putting out preventable fires is not how I want to spend my finite energy today.
This is how I want to spend my finite energy:
Mondays are for memoir writing.
Tuesdays are for self-compassion.
Wednesdays are for grief.
Thursdays are for gratitude.
Fridays are for culinary therapy.
Saturdays are for brain food.
Sundays are for rest/travel/transition.
You’re catching me on Tuesday.
Every Tuesday I will show up here and share ways I am showing myself compassion that day. In time I will weave in ways I see others showing self-compassion, why self-compassion is essential, why self-compassion was so hard for me for so long, how self-compassion changes the structure of the brain, how to raise self-compassionate children, and more.
I devote a great deal of attention to things I don’t understand. Because I don’t like not understanding things.
I didn’t understand self-compassion for the longest time.
I was raised by two parents who both lacked it. I had no one modeling self-compassion for me. I did not understand it was a choice until my neural pathways were well formed.
It has taken me many, many years of study to understand self-compassion. It was foreign to me. It has taken me even longer to rewire my brain.
What your parents don’t learn themselves they can’t hope to teach you.
I know I am not alone in having been raised by parents who lacked self-compassion. I know it has impacted my life greatly.
I invite anyone else whose parents struggled with self-compassion to join me here on Tuesdays. I think you will find things of value. I welcome your attention and time if you have it to spare.
And if you know someone else who might benefit, won’t you please share? If I can get 100 followers, I might be able to start making money from my writing here. Which would help me be able to keep writing here.
Thanks for reading. Hope to see you again.
As for my self-compassion today:
— I have just written, which is a form of self-compassion for me.
— I have two animals sitting on my body. They are showing me compassion, but I allowed myself to have them in my life, which is self-compassion.
— I have a session scheduled later this morning with a coach, Joel Elfman of Body Mind Hypnotic, who uses hypnosis and neurolinguistic processing to help me rewire my brain each week. This is also a form of self-compassion.
If you were raised by one or more parents who lacked self-compassion, chances are good you struggle in this department as well. What can you do today to show yourself greater compassion?
Your life will be better for it.
Which will improve the lives of those around you, too.
Total win-win.
This post has been republished it its entirety from its original source, Medium.
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