Under Pressure

I am the queen of beating myself up if I'm not doing SOMETHING. I feel guilty when I don't cross things off of my to-do list, or if I am "just relaxing." I put pressure on myself to do my best, and be my best self, ALL OF THE TIME. So when I'm not doing those things, I convince myself that somehow I have failed.

Even though my Wise Mind knows that I am doing the best I can at any given moment, there is an old tape that plays in my mind that tells me "Your best isn't good enough." I over-compensate, I wear myself out, I ruminate on ways I could have done things differently so that the outcome could have been more productive, more efficient, and more impactful.

The dialectic of doing the best you can, is to do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change. But my Emotion Mind takes this dialectic as a challenge, and it sucks me into it's dangerous ways of never being satisfied with my thoughts, my actions, my reactions and myself. It's in this place that I commiserate with old wounds from my past, and those old wounds convince me I need to do more, not less, to make up for my deficits in life. Pretty harsh, right? I go to this place in my Emotion Mind almost daily. Sometimes without even knowing I am there. I hold grudges against myself, and sometimes others in my life, for not being at 100% all of the time. 

When Wise Mind appears (which is also daily), it reminds me for the bajillionth time, that no one is perfect. It reminds me that in any given moment, I AM doing the best I can, and if I have chosen to see it differently than that, I can choose again. I have the choice to recognize that the old wounds are teaching me, not punishing me. I have the choice to see myself as worthy for being a human and existing, and not just because I have the ability to get things accomplished. It reminds me that the more pressure I put on myself, the less likely I am to be successful. It allows me to be less rigid, and to go with the flow.  

The thing about the pressure I put on myself, is that it can either motivate me to move forward and create beautiful changes, or it can paralyze me, weigh me down, and keep me stuck. It's a delicate balance. It's a dance of awareness, acceptance, and change. Without one, I cannot have the others.