STEP OFF YOUR TIMELINE, BECAUSE IT DOESN'T EXIST!

Lately I’ve been taking some time to myself. Trying to connect inwardly, and what I’ve been really feeling I need to work on is patience. Not really the patience I have for others, but patience towards myself and my own life.

I can be a pretty impatient person when it comes to my own needs, because I’d just rather have things sorted out immediately. A “Why get it later, when I can have it now?” Kind of mentality. What I’ve come to realise, is that this mentality can actually be harmful towards my mental health. This is because I always just want to move onto the next chapter, before I even consider finishing the one that I am currently on. Which, I am realising is just crazy! I mean, it really does not make sense at all, because it means I never get to enjoy the chapter of life that I’m currently on. I just always want the next one. and I want it right now!

Anyway, I’m coming to the realisation that this being impatient thing clearly isn’t the best practice. At least not for me. I also think that it only got worse with social media, and our technology that is just ever improving. If things seem to buffer for even a minute, it doesn’t take me long to start complaining. And with everyone’s lives shared all over social media, seeing people my own age being seemingly ten steps ahead of me, isn’t the best feeling. It’s not their fault that I feel bad about it, they are not the ones making me feel bad. I am the one making me feel bad. By comparing my life to theirs, and being impatient with how ‘slow’ my life is going, compared to theirs.

So, once I picked up on this. A lightbulb came over my head, and my index finger shot up in the air and I said, ‘Okay, it is time I start working on my patience.’ It was a whole epiphany I had, that caused me to wake up in the middle of the night with a gasp… Alright, it didn’t happen exactly like that but you get the basic gist of it. I was like, “damn, I gotta work on myself.”

I decided to start small, by choosing three-to-five-day delivery instead of next day delivery when online shopping. For example. Or choosing to work on a creative piece for longer instead of rushing or giving up at the end simply because, I couldn’t be bothered anymore. As much as I love the act of creativity. I do have to admit, at the end I usually do lose patience, and do f**k all, because I just want to be done with it! Doing jigsaw puzzles helps, and I genuinely like jigsaw puzzles too, so there’s that too. I even started going on walks! It’s not an everyday thing, but it definitely happens more than it ever did before. I did these things, just to start with improving my levels of patience in my day-to-day life.

Anyway, starting out small made it much less intimidating to begin to tackle it inwardly. So, soon enough I started having thoughts, you know those sitting late at night thoughts. And really just started to wonder, why I was rushing myself to get these fictional deadlines I had placed on my mind. Fictional because other than in my mind, they don’t exist.

It’s so bad, that anytime I reach a point of stagnancy I get frustrated and stressed. Rather than allowing it to be a checkpoint maybe. A metaphor could be like, a pit stop at a car race. Instead of having that moment to stop, check for any damage, fix or work on what needs to be fixed or worked on. I just want to go go go, until I swerve out of control, crash into a wall, and with my head down have to go get my car fixed. And even then, I sit with my arms crossed, and a frown waiting for repairs to be over and done with. Just terrible.

I just feel like time is a wasting and I need to get a move on, so that this can happen by this age, or date, or year, or whatever!

So, to start with working on my patience inwardly, since it had already improved in an outward sense. I started to force myself to dwell in moments of calm. Which is not easy for me. My mind is constantly moving, and I want to constantly be working on something. Just to keep myself busy.

Then I started to ask myself "why?".

Why do I need this to happen now?

Why do I need to be this age when I get this thing? Why do I need this done by a certain year? Why? Why? Why?

My answer, a simple "I don't know".

Do I have some sort of fetish for stress?

No.

There is no real reason, nothing more other than I guess the shallow satisfaction of just being able to say, I completed the deadline I had set up in my life.

This is not to say I don't set goals anymore. I absolutely do. I can't live without some sort of goal I'm trying to achieve. I'm just saying, that there is no real reason I should give myself anxiety, by trying to achieve some crazy life goal by a strict deadline. That no one else is expecting me to complete other than me, because I want to impress other people. That's just crazy thinking.

For the longest time I didn't realise the unnecessary stress I was giving to myself. I won't lie, for a split second when I did begin to realise, I still carried on WILLINGLY. I mean, I'm insane. I think.

But now I'm stepping off my imaginary treadmill, with a carrot hanging in front of it. And things just seem a lot calmer, not in a boring way, but in a… this is kind of nice, I never realised flowers were so beautiful, kind of way. Get it? Because I'm stopping to look at the flowers. Of course, all my worries and anxieties didn't disappear, but I definitely do feel much better.

I couldn't believe I had the nerve to ask myself why I was so stressed.

Like… girl, you were trying to outrun your life… DUH!

I also realised that, keeping up with that timeline would not actually cause me any satisfaction. Because even if I point at it to show other people, the only person that can really see it, is me. That just makes it less impressive. To me anyway.

So why should I let it have any weight over me at all?

It all seemed so simple.

This isn't to say I won't be stressed about life ever again, or have any anxiety about my future. Because, well it's normal to feel that way, and I am a perfectionist, unfortunately, but also fortunately. It's a double-edged sword. And I am also very ambitious. But I just have to make it a habit to remind myself, "Hey Mahalia, step off the timeline. It doesn't exist, you're literally worried about dust.".

It's a reminder we all could use from time to time. Obviously using your own name. Push yourself back to reality every once in a while, and take a second to just breathe, and live within your present moment. You might find something you actually really admire, or something that can help.

But also, I'm only nineteen, so what do I know? Not much yet.

But I'll learn as the time is right. By natures accord, and not my own. My timeline doesn't exist :).

Mahalia Otshudy

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