The Only Thing I'm Trying To Change Is How I Think About Myself

Spring is a powerful season. Mother nature reawakens. What you thought was dead is reborn. The sun shines a little brighter, the flowers bloom, and you experience the liveliness of the Earth. Spring is also the perfect time to recreate and reawaken yourself.

Every year, I make big goals for myself. Every year, I fail terribly and I beat myself up for it. The truth is, I don’t put as much effort as I should into achieving these goals so I shouldn’t be shocked when I don’t achieve the results I want.

So this year, I don’t have any big plans to change myself or to change anything about me. I’m sick of disappointing myself year after year. As the flowers start to bloom and the grass turns from brown to green, I will be organizing my life by refocusing on the things that matter to me and practice acceptance for what I have and what I lack.

If I want to organize my life, I need to work on the inside before I can even think about cleaning up the outside.

Be okay with not accomplishing anything

I recently hurt my back and I’ve been couch-ridden for the past 3 days. For the first 2 days, I did nothing but watch Netflix. I was guilt ridden that I wasn’t doing anything productive even though I physically couldn’t stand or sit up.

I felt so guilty because I was taught to feel guilty. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with total strangers.

I went down that productivity road and I almost got a stomach ulcer because of that path. I worked at least 12 hours a day with different managers and partners breathing down my back plus assignments to get my CPA designation after that. I can’t even remember how many times I stayed past midnight in my 4x4 cubicle.

Trying to keep up with all the productive articles, and the success advice out has led me to either burning out or feeling like a complete failure. I doubt that either of those results are the purpose of those articles.

Productivity is a lie that everyone believes they can achieve but nobody can. The standards are too high for anyone to feel accomplished and productive. Not accomplishing anything is in essence accomplishing something - it means you’re appreciating the present instead of always looking towards the future.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up. It means that if there are ever days where I can’t do anything but watch Netflix, I’m not going to beat myself up for it anymore.

Respect my comfort zone

There is always talk about a better person and creating a life you love but nobody relishes the joy of simply being satisfied and happy with the life you built for yourself.

I love my comfort zone

My life is not at the edge of my comfort zone much to the despair of the gurus and influencers who preach it. My life is where I choose for it to be.

There are millions of articles telling me that the only way to succeed in life is to get out of my comfort zone. Well, you know what? I worked damn hard for my comfort zone. My comfort zone is where I can recharge and refocus my life. It’s the place where I feel safe. I don’t want to live in fear and anxiety every day. I like being and feeling secure and safe.

Is that so wrong?

I’ve travelled extensively over the years, switched jobs, pushed myself at work to the point of almost having an ulcer just to get out of my comfort zone. I’ve stayed in bug infested hotels and slept in a literal treehouse to prove something to myself (or maybe it was for other people) and I am past all that. I want to stay in nice hotels with clean sheets from now on.

Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is over romanticized. Respecting your comfort zone means knowing your boundaries. It means respecting yourself enough to not feel the need to prove anything to anyone.

Write to appreciate myself

More than being grateful for the life I created, I need to learn to be grateful for myself. This wasn’t always the case. I used to want to change everything about my life. I used to want to be a completely different person because I didn’t think I was good enough. I no longer want that or believe that.

What changed was I started writing.

You live in a society where your success is dependent on how well you meet other people’s expectations. Meeting expectations is how you govern your life. Writing was just for me. It gave me the strength to pull myself together and realize how lucky I am. Some people journal and keep their thoughts private but it’s cathartic for me to make my thoughts public for the world to see - to say, “Actually, this is who I am.”

Stop regretting the choices I made and forgive myself

I tortured myself for years because I kept replaying one of the most toxic relationships I had in my head. I wasted years being mad at myself, at him, and tore myself apart for what I said, didn’t say, and put up with.

It really tore me up because I was constantly wallowing in the past. I was so angry with myself and it took me a long time to get over it. Not because I was still in love with this horrible person, but because I couldn’t forgive myself.

Remorse and anger became a habit - one I couldn’t shake for a long time. The one thing that helped me let go was to write about the toxicity I experienced. Nobody really knew what happened and the only way I was able to rebuild myself was to write about it and let it go. Writing about it and releasing it felt like I finally told the world what happened and that was the key to my freedom.

If I didn’t write about it, I would probably still be replaying those 2 years in my head.

Focusing on the past takes time away from my family and everything else that’s important to me. It takes me away from the present. At the end of the day, the only thing I would regret is to constantly regret my choices.

Acceptance for what I have and for what I lack

My life is a mess:

• There are toys in every single corner and every single floor of the house.
• I have drafts upon drafts of unwritten stories waiting for me
• There is little to no room to move up at my job and there's been a pay freeze for the last 6 years.
• I have a son who just turned 2 who, unfortunately takes after his mother, is stubborn as hell.

And you know what?

I'm happy with the life I created.

Reorganizing my life means accepting myself for who I am and for the qualities I lack. Only then can I realize what I’m okay with and what I want to change. Bettering my life isn’t about always focusing on the bad. I have to remember the good parts about my life too. If I look around my house and take a snapshot of my life, I instantly know I want to focus on my writing and my family. The strewn about toys and dusty blinds can wait.

It’s cleansing to think about all the things you can change around you but the real change happens when you start accepting and appreciating yourself first.