👌🏻🙌🏻 Who else feels the stain to strive? And the pressure to go go go. But I’ve learnt the hard way that exhaustion DOES NOT prove your passion but that your priorities out of whack.
I used to push till I had nothing left - to the point of getting shingles and then a few years later, adrenal fatigue 🤦♀️ (still struggling with this one).
I was doing it from a place of passion and persistence, just wanting to make a difference in the lives of others...
BUT I wasn’t valuing myself.
I wasn’t seeing that for me to GIVE the best of me, I needed to BE the best of me - and that required REST and prioritising myself too.
There is no shame here.
We’re all figuring out how to give from a place of being full not empty.
And how to forge our own path, instead of following the destructive burnt out path of our culture.
Exhaustion is not something to strive for. It is NOT a badge of success.
Rest and fun are essential to living well. They were not meant to be added luxuries, but core building blocks to a healthy life.
👉🏻 How can you redefine what success looks like?
👉🏻 Are your priorities out of whack? How can you prioritize rest and play in your life?
👉🏻 Have you been neglecting yourself? Remember, we can’t give out of an empty bucket.
Let’s be courageous to go against the grain and live full lives marked with rest and play.
💜Ruth x
Have you heard of kintsugi? It’s the art of repairing broken pottery with gold. This process beautifies the breakage and treats it as an important part of the object’s history, therefore valuing fractures instead of disguising them or glossing over them. The process typically results in something far more beautiful and stronger than the original.
We’ve got to be really selective about what voices we listen to and hold onto. Not just rejecting the negative ones, but sometimes people are trying to help with their advice and opinion and it’s totally ok to thank them but know that it’s just an opinion, and you need to listen louder to the still quiet voice within.
My friend Nicola said the other day to a group of us on zoom, “you don’t need to thrive right now, just survive. You don’t need to have it all sorted or tick all the boxes, this is all new and challenging and something we’ve never faced before, just take it one day at a time”.
I think sometimes we expect too much of ourselves - like we should know how to deal with something we’ve never faced before, or we should be doing this or not that or start this.
But I think now is the perfect time to really practice grace and kindness.
If you don’t have much capacity or motivation right now, you are not alone. Can I encourage you to give yourself permission not to strive for productivity and pivot, but pause, rest, retreat, refill, slow down. That is a totally valid and helpful response too.
Corona seems to be amplifying many people’s struggles, especially loneliness, fear, comparison, burn out, etc.
Let’s take it one day at a time. Add one extra step each day. We’re all figuring it out on the way.
We need kindness now more than ever - to each other AND ourselves.
👉🏻 What’s one way you can show kindness?
💜Ruth x
📸 @karma_collective
