Be Gentle with Yourself
Do you ever get overwhelmed by the pressures you put on yourself? Often the pressures I put on myself far outweigh the pressures others put on me. How often are you your own worst critic? It is interesting, how if you pause and look at the pressures you face, while you may initially think they are coming from society at large often times the biggest overwhelm is the pressures we put on ourselves.
If you struggle with perfectionism, like I do, then learning to be gentle with yourself can be a big step in the self care journey that you might really need. What are the biggest stressors you have in your life right now? Is it a large to do list? Not being in the place you thought you would be by now? Thinking you need to make something perfect before you start? So much of the pressures we put on ourselves come from our own internal struggles so learning to be gentle with yourself gives you opportunities to take the pressure off, that really, only you are putting on yourself.
It took me a very long time to learn to be gentle with myself when really I was the one putting so much pressure on myself to do well. No one else in the world cared about what I was hyper focusing on and stressing myself over. Years down the road something that caused me to really doubt my worth means absolutely nothing now.
My most clear example of putting too much pressure on myself comes from being a bit of an overachiever. I remember doing a paper that I worked really hard on for a course that I was taking and I got my mark back and got an A minus. I was so upset that I cried for like an hour. I had worked so hard on the paper and put so much pressure on myself I thought for sure I was getting and A. It crushed me to see the minus beside my A. Now when I look back on this I almost laugh at myself for how upset I was and how much grief it caused me. No one else in the world cared how I did on that paper, it was only the pressure I was putting on myself that sent me spiralling into a puddle.
Learning to face let downs for something you worked hard on is part of the journey of life. Now if something like that happened I would have better tools for not letting something as trivial as a grade on a paper send me into a self-doubting spiral, but at the time I had no tools. Learning to be gentle with yourself is a journey. Part of that journey is our ability to learn from our patterns and examine how those patterns are showing up as unnecessary stressors in our lives.
What is an area of your life that you could be gentle with yourself on. I am sure if you really took a look at your life you could find an abundance of opportunities to be gentle with yourself and not be overly critical of where you are currently at. What pressures do you put on yourself that are unnecessary? Spend some time this week exploring areas where you can be more gentle with yourself and give yourself some grace.
