So, I'm coming to the end of my twenty-second year on planet Earth, and in the final week before my birthday, I realised something.
The realisation dawned on me after a week of feeling, well, pretty shit.
My hormones were everywhere, I was feeling a solid -4, I had written zero blog posts and put up zero videos in a long old while - and I was beating myself up over it.
Not just a little, "aw come on Alice" pep talk, I was properly going on at myself for not being bothered to open up my laptop.
But the thing is, it wasn't that I couldn't be bothered to write a blog post, it was that mentally, I felt I couldn't.
I was in an awful headspace, all I wanted to do was go for long walks by myself and sit alone in my room watching Jane the Virgin and eating crisps and dip, and tbh if I'd written a blog post, it would've been utter crap.
And my realisation, this epiphany I had during my -4 time, was that I - probably like you - am extremely hard on myself.
Any day I don't "achieve" something, I count as a day lost. A day without exercise or without leaving the house. A day where I don't get through as much as I wanted, even when I tried my best. And those days where I know I just need to put social media and the internet to the back of my mind and focus on myself.
Until recently, I counted all of those days as a loss.
But the thing is, just because you're not moving mountains whilst wearing PJs and eating Ben and Jerry's, it doesn't mean you're doing badly, it means you're concentrating on what matters most - and that, at that moment, is your mental health.
I mean, if we really want to justify it, wouldn't you agree looking after yourself is more important than that blog you wanted to write (*cough* me *cough*).
Achievements come in all shapes and sizes, and it is so so easy to feel like you don't deserve a chill-day because you've got a to-do list as long as your arm.
Trust me, I've definitely been there.
But a lot of the time, taking a bit of space from that to-do list is going to make you feel more motivated, it will give you fresh ideas and that new lease for life which only comes after spending your full day in your pj's eating Thai food.
So, don't be hard on yourself. Just be honest.
If you cba to do something and you're procrastinating, then bbygal, you need to just crack on with that.
But if you actually feel like you physically and mentally just need to take a break, sometimes it's more important to listen to your body.
The pressure in these circumstances is completely from yourself. A little pressure is good, but when it becomes all consuming and "oh my god what am I doing how can I watch a 20-minute episode of Netflix when I have SO MUCH TO DO" *cue hyperventilation*,
yeah, that is not okay.
So don't beat yourself up about it.
As I said, achieving something can mean any number of things, and the biggest achievement of all, is your happiness.
Just your mental-health-advocate signing off - happy hump day!
Love, Alice x
0 comments