Be gentle with yourself.

Hi everyone,

It's been a while.

This post is going to be a little more personal than my previous posts.

The past couple of weeks have been emotionally hard for me. I've had some things happen with family members and have been feeling pretty worried and helpless. My motivation decreased and my sense of apathy increased.

I've found myself backsliding into old habits I thought I had moved on from. Instead of exercising, meditating, and eating healthy, I found myself napping more, eating less, and avoiding responsibilities.

It's really easy for me to justify in my head that I'm just "doing self-care" when really oversleeping and not eating is not taking care of myself. And then I feel guilty for not taking care of myself. And then I want to avoid feeling guilty, so I sleep some more, feel more guilty...

The cycle can be neverending.

There can be a fine line between self-care and overindulging. Sometimes napping is self-care. If you haven't been getting enough sleep or have been overworking yourself, rest can be what the doctor ordered. But if you're sleeping to avoid feelings or responsibilities, it's not self-care.

Backsliding into old habits is normal during times of stress. You know, like a pandemic. Why is that?

Imagine a field of tall grass. If you walk a straight line through that grass once and look back, you likely won't see the path of where you just came from.

However, if you keep walking that same straight line in the grass over and over again, eventually when you look back you will see a well-worn pathway.

Your brain kind of works the same way. When you are learning something new (let's say how to write with a pencil), at first your brain has not established this pathway. You're not sure how to hold your pencil at first, you've gotta adjust it a lot...basically it takes a lot of thought and energy to even try to write a line. But with practice, that pathway gets more and more established until you don't even have to think about it when you pick up a pencil to write something.

Old habits can be imagined as very well worn, established paths in the grass. New habits...you may be able to see the pathway in the grass at this point, but it's definitely not as solid as the habit you learned 10 years ago.

During times of stress - it's going to be easier for your brain to find those older, more worn paths than it is for it to remember that you haven't been using those paths anymore and that it needs to be looking for the newer paths.

And that's why my reminder to both myself and everyone else reading this is to be gentle with yourself. Times are hard right now, we don't need to be even harder on ourselves.

Have a good cry, oversleep if that's where you're at right now. But just because you find yourself on an old path doesn't mean you have to stay there forever.

My intention for this week is to find those newer paths and start walking on them again.

Be well,

Taylor