Being gentle with myself - forgiveness and self care

I get the blahs. I procrastinate on demolishing the pile of clean laundry on my couch. I delay taking the recycling bin out until I either feel like it or I have to scrounge a second container to hold all the recyclables. This list of not-so-great behaviors could go on. Through all this, I keep reminding myself to be gentle with myself. I have worked hard on re-configuring my thinking away from the need to achieve things to win approval. Now I'm focusing on approving of myself and it's working.

When the dreaded chore looms I think "Have I already done a few good for me things today?" and then I name them. Even if the good for me thing is simply making time in my morning grooming to floss my teeth, it's an accomplishment. Today I got a mammography and got my eyes checked out. I didn't floss my teeth today (oops!) but I did take care of some adulting and I emptied the overly full recycle bin. I even made a simple meal at home rather than grabbing chicken tenders. The disapproving voice in my head is reminding me of the other chores I've not done, but the gentle voice is reminding me that I've done well and I'm not stressed. I'm able to enjoy my pot of herbal tea rather than pop out for a bottle of wine or something stronger. The laundry is clean, there is nothing wrong with popping tomorrow's work blouse into the dryer to de-wrinkle or (gasp) ironing it. Forgiveness and self-care is working so much better for me than prior methods.

Taking the day in bite-size steps is working so much better for me than stressing about all the things I "should" do. I put the word in apostrophes because I once went on a rant to my bestie about the vile implications of the word should and how abusive that word is. She's brilliant and has a memory like the proverbial elephant. If she catches me using that word, she teases me.

The author generated this image in part with GPT-3, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model. Upon generating draft imagery, the author reviewed, edited, and revised the image to their own liking and takes ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.