“I just feel like I’m on edge! Everything and everyone just irritates me to no end! I feel like I’m going to blow! This is the worst year!”
“You say this every May, Mike. Every year.”
“No I don’t, this year is different!”
Through chuckles, “No it’s not, you said this and were in the same state last year.”
“I’m not even doing the things I enjoy. I’m not speaking, I’m not podcasting, I’m not writing, I’m not doing anything.”
“Well, why not?”
This was a convo I had with a very good friend the other week. And she’s not wrong, I do get overwhelmed, fed up, and irritated every May while we’re trying to wind down the school year and student behavior seems to take the opposite approach and rise up. But it was the simple question she asked me, “Well, why not?” stopped me dead in my rant. Why am I not doing what I love, what helps to serve as my outlet? Why am I not being disciplined and finding the time to lift weights or run each day? Why am I not sitting down and just writing, something I used to do every day. Some days great blogs and even a book came out of it, others were just a way to escape and regroup. The answer, because taking care of ourselves, in the midst of chaos, stress, and sometimes disorder, is hard. It’s not as simple as just practicing self care. We need to have discipline to administer self care to ourselves.
To engage in activities that bring us joy, that clear our minds, and feed into a positive mindset and outlook, we need to have discipline. It almost seems counterintuitive, we need to do what we don’t want to do to feel better, to have a stronger, more positive mindset. But it’s true. To get out of a dark place we must do hard things. Hard things are the light that we are searching for. We need to do the things we don’t have the motivation for to be in a much better state physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Since that simple question was posed to me, I’ve once again begun embracing and forcing myself to do the hard things I was avoiding, knowing damn well the entire time that those “things” were what I needed. Here’s a brief breakdown:
Journal 1 page every day
Get in movement, lifting, running, or walking for 30 minutes every day
Read 10 pages a day
Write 300 words per day
Submit proposals for speaking opportunities at upcoming educational conferences
These simple things, while looking at them seem easy and don’t require a lot of effort, actually do. When we become overwhelmed, stressed, and frustrated, these simple tasks are nearly impossible to do. It’s much easier to not put forth the effort, the discipline, to complete them and instead resort to bingeing television, eating crappy foods, having a few too many alcoholic beverages, and not doing anything to work towards truly taking care of ourselves.
What I can tell you, from personal experience, is that when we put forth the discipline to complete the tasks and activities we know we should to take care of ourselves, something shifts inside of us. Some of those feelings of despair, they leave, and instead pride, confidence, and hope begin to set in. The key is, in order to keep those positive feelings in place, we need to be disciplined to continue, each and every day, to complete those self-care tasks. When we do, productivity will rise and opportunities we were not even expecting will be present.
I know it’s hard, trust me I know. I’ve been there, more times than I’d like to admit. But also trust me on knowing that it will be worth it. I’m putting discipline over motivation going forward, come along, we got this.
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