This is one of them, having a word with myself blogs. Do you, you are good at it, you really are, if only you took time to notice, and stopped comparing yourself to others. That is what I needed to tell myself this week, but I would rather impart this wisdom to you lot instead. It’s easy to support and care for others than it is ourselves, I am sure you all agree. Writing it down certainly helps remind myself that I am enough, and comparing myself to people around me is certainly not helpful. It is an automatic response obviously and we all do it without thinking about it. What we can do is notice when we are doing it, and shift our attention to ourselves and compare our current performance to our performance the day, week, month, or year before. You might not be performing well, but is it better than the day before? What could you possibly do today that will improve your performance tomorrow? What might be getting in the way for you that could be effecting how you perform? How could you possibly remove or reduce that obstacle.
Most weeks I have moments when I feel inadequate and a bit daft, I have to remind myself to compare myself to my previous performances and ask myself the questions above. If I only compare myself to others I am either never going to be good enough, or never push myself enough to strive to be better. When I look at my own performance I am able to hold myself to account for my performance and do something about it.
I am enough as I am now, as you are, my performance will vary at work and home, but I will always be enough. You will always be enough. You are doing your best right now, there may be room for you to do better in different circumstances, so change the circumstances you have control over and your best tomorrow will be better than your best today. There are circumstances obviously that we have no control over that can prevent us from doing better. We can use these circumstances as excuses for our inaction. I haven’t written anything towards my book since November. I have struggled with my grief since my Mum’s death in August and I have struggled to find the headspace to write creatively. For a few months I tried to write but just could not concentrate, eventually I just could not face it. The pain I was feeling was very acute, and completely out of my control. I still feel the pain most days, this week I have noticed that for quite sometime I have chosen to view this pain differently and not allow this to completely affect my work. This week I was booked to deliver a team development session and facilitate a planning meeting. I really did not want to do either of them, I didn’t believe I had the mental bandwidth to stand up in front of two teams of medical staff and talk with confidence, when all I wanted to do was hide away and feel sad and miss my Mum. I am grieving the loss of my Mum and that will continue, I could hide behind my grief and use it as a reason not to do what I need to do, or choose to have a different relationship with my grief. I loved my Mum so much and she influences so many aspects of my life, that I will always grieve her, if my grief is not going away I can put it down so I can do activities that are important to me. I wont forget how much I love her in the time I am doing something else. It worked I ran both sessions, they appeared to go very well, I came home and held the memory of Mum tight for a little while and put it back down.
If we can’t change our circumstances we can change how view them so they don’t prevent us from growing. In the moment though when there is a lot in your way, remember you are doing your best with without you have, just know it is in your power to get better.
Do you, you are really good at it! Remember you are enough and doing your best.
Connected Coaching 