Recorded on the beach with the backdrop of crashing waves, I wanted to talk about comparing our progress with others and feeling inadequate with how much we are doing. And It's okay to not be doing as much as others. We all have different lives, commitments, and work paces. The important thing is taking small steps forward.
Welcome back to the podcast. I'm sitting right by the shoreline here and the waves are breaking quite close. Actually, it's high tide just now, so you might hear the waves in the background. I've had a little bit of a upsurge in the nice weather, so I have been getting out every morning again and making sure that I'm swimming in outdoors in the early morning before the day starts.
Speaker 1:
One of the things that I was thinking about was the was giving ourselves grace and not beating ourselves up. So and I think we can often fall into the trap of thinking that things that you're doing or things you could be doing better, maybe we're not doing enough, maybe we're not keeping up enough with others. But I think we just need to give ourselves a little bit of grace sometimes, and it's okay if you aren't quite doing as much as other people. We all have different life circumstances. We'll have different things that we're going through in life. At the time I was speaking to my members group last night about the finding your voice that we're running for for a few months and one of the things that I suddenly realized halfway through as we were looking through some of the people had done some amazing work and, you know, spent quite a lot of time on it and energy. But we all have different lives to live, we all have different commitments and we all have different headspace and we all work at a different pace. And one of the things that was really quite important to tell everybody was that it doesn't matter, even if you're just thinking about this, don't feel like you're falling behind simply because you haven't done as much as the next person. And sometimes just a small step and that could be just in your thoughts. It could be simply writing a word or two in a journal. It could be taking ten minutes out on your day and sitting outside and practicing gratitude. It could be anything like that. That's a step forward and that's really actually relevant in my own life at the moment because I am taking a course with Louise Fletcher, who is an artist. She's doing it. Actually it's a free eight day find your joy course, which is about freeing up in in painting, in art, and Skye's trying to eat treats up my pocket just now, so I'm just going to give her one.
Speaker 1:
So I I'm taking that course and I'm seeing every day people posting their work that they've done from that assignment that day and it's looking great and I'm thinking, oh, I didn't get to that. I didn't actually manage to do that assignment yesterday because I had a podcast recording. I had a meet-up, I was trying to paint the house and I was trying to carve out that time by the, by the sea, in the sea, just for my own, my own well-being and all those things were important and I didn't actually manage to find the time to do the art assignment. So my choices are to feel like I am falling behind because everyone else's work was amazing and I didn't. I didn't do it. So actually I'm just gonna give up.
Speaker 1:
Or I could just reframe that and say, well, I didn't get to it today because I had this going on in my life at the time, and do you know what? I'll get to it tomorrow? Or put it on the list for another day, and if I don't complete the course, or I don't do everything every day that I'm supposed to be doing, not to beat myself up about that and to just accept that maybe I'll just get one of those pieces done instead of eight and in doing so that's a step forward, and just to be proud of myself with everything else that's going on, that I've made a step forward. So I just felt like that was quite relevant, and this is from Morgan Harper Nichols, who is an author that I just love because she's great at making people feel feel better and to put things in perspective, and I think I talked about her on the podcast the other day and I was looking through the book.
Speaker 1:
Her book was still sitting on the the coffee table in the living room and I opened it in search actually for myself to, because I knew that there was something in there that would make me feel at peace with how little or how much I'm doing, and I think it might help you. There is a time for everything under the Sun, a time for everything. So let Ecclesiast sing in the middle of the night, in the wild, in the cold, in the back of your mind, to you, my friend, for all the time there will be a time for everything. I am going to leave it at that today. I just think that's a important message and I hope it helps, and I will see you on the next episode, so take care for now.