I have a question. When you’re trying to accomplish something, whether it be personal, work related or whatever… do you find yourself taking waaaay too much time finishing it? Do you finally complete the task at hand only to see something just a little bit off and so you start tweaking at it trying to get it just right and in the process mess it up even more so you end up having to start all over again? URGGG!!
Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com
Anyway, I know I do this at least once a day. And usually it some small non important thing that turns me into some overly obsessed nut job, ranting and raving at… opps… that’s just way too much info about me… more than I want to share right now dahlink’s. But you get the gist.
But I will share what I’ve learned to do when I get this way. When I get “this way” it’s usually because I am aiming for perfection. Yes, I admit it. I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times.
When I find myself needlessly stressing out about something so small it that barely registers in the broad scheme of it all I have learned that it’s best to stop and walk away. Just walk away. Breathe dammit! Move on to something else, take a walk, have a drink of water or wine, or bourbon, etc… ok just kidding (or am I?)
Perfection is something that I find is never quite obtainable because it is such a moving target, especially if when we make the mistake of striving to be perfect for the benefit of someone other than ourselves.
That’s used to be me being swallowed alive in a whirlpool of perfection!
I know that if I don’t stop and walk away from it there’s a strong possibility I’ll risk wasting precious time, energy and bits of my sanity manically searching the illusive goal of perfection.
I’ll find myself hours later not having completed anything I had intended for the day, and all because I got so sidetracked with trying to… I don’t know… trying to make the roll up blind in my bathroom window hang evenly.
In the past, for me perfection sometimes had its roots in what I felt would please others. But trying to achieve perfection for the approval of someone other than myself is a detriment to my own self worth and not in alignment with living my best life. I’ve learned that instead of aiming for perfection my goal is to aim for what makes me happy.
So today I posted a couple of videos on Instagram and Facebook about something that has been in my heart for a couple of days… and in doing so it got me thinking that maybe I’ll try my hand at posting a short video every Wednesday entitled, “Wellness Wednesdays”.
Anyway, my first video today is about our thoughts and how a lot of them are really not of our own making… not initially anyway… especially the negative thoughts we tend to replay over and over again in our heads that can become detrimental to our wellbeing if we allow them to take root.
If we are not careful we start to believe in all the negative things that we’ve heard about ourselves throughout our lives and those negative thoughts can very quickly become the your story we believe we are.
Hopefully in this day and age we all know that telling a child they are bad or evil when they act out or telling them they are stupid or useless when they make a mistake are terrible things to say to them. Doing this causes a child to grow up with confusing images of themselves and low or no self esteem.
But we still do these things as adults to other adults. We judge each other sometimes verbally and at times can be very cruel in our criticism for simply having an opposing point of view on a subject… and sometimes for even something as petty as a movie we might like, fashion sense or choice of hairstyle.
Well… Here’s the two part video. So… what are your thoughts? 😉
We live in a society where to do as much as we can in the shortest amount of time is glorified. To always appear busy is a sign of success… The person that professes to being super busy all of the time is looked upon as a go getter, they are in control and handling business. They rarely go out to eat lunch but instead opp to sit at their desks (if they are fortunate to have a desk) and scarf down whatever they can, usually something unhealthy, in ten to fifteen minutes while they try to chisel through their ever growing mountain of assignments.
On the other hand, society tends to look down on people who take a more laid back approach to life… Those who prefer to do one thing at a time. People that like to take a determined amount of time to finish one task at a time instead of jumping back and forth from one thing to the next is at times seen as lacking ambition, not a hard worker and sometimes even lazy.
Even our children’s schedules are so overbooked they seem to forget that some of the activities they are involved in are supposed to be fun. School and learning new ideas and ways of thinking should be fun for children! But where’s the fun when a teacher (who is most likely being pressured to get as many subjects and test in as she/he can in a weeks time) is rushing every child along at the same pace? Most extra curricular activities like art, music and even outdoor recess has been taken out of schools or so limited that they may as well not exist. The one size fits all approach to learning often places children who learn in a different way at risk of missing out. Everyone shouldn’t be expected to learn at the same pace.
Photo by ( Joe Digital & Co ) on Pexels.com
Some employers, for what ever reasons, insist on adding more and more projects for their employees to be completed during work hours. Before an employee can finish one task, three more are placed in front of them. Depending on the workplace, (e.g. retail) sometimes these employees are dealing with coworkers and customers while trying to finish their own designated tasks… small wonder why people are physically and mentally stressed to the breaking point! And business owners are left to wonder why moral is low, people call in sick and productivity is slacking off… REALLY?
Of course you are not being paid to sit, doodle in a notepad and daydream on your employees dime! Employers have their own crazy deadlines and quotas to meet. So what’s wrong with taking a break? Most employees fear for their jobs and risk their emotional stability when made to feel they have to be “productive” at all costs and to never let anyone see them sitting down just doing “nothing”.
And at the end of the workday the multitasking mania continues. We risk our lives and the lives of others by talking or texting on our phones as we drive through traffic. Underground we race through crowds on narrow platforms with our headphones on or earbuds in to jump on packed subways and run in front of cars trying to catch the bus before it speeds off.
We mindlessly and dangerously cross the street while reading some “Breaking News!’ on our cell phones and then stop to pick up dinner at the grocery store. Still on our phones, we zigzag through each aisle throwing what’s ever quickest to prepare in our carts. And finally make it to the checkout all the while still rudely having a loud conversation on our cell phone while searching our bags and pockets for our money or credit cards.
Finally… miraculously we make it home in one piece. We sit down in front of the television with our plates full of quickly prepared processed food, turn on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube etc… and check our Instagram and Facebook feeds and shop Amazon all at the same time.
But why is that… Why are we running around feeling the need to multitask even outside of work… trying to stuff even more into our already over stuffed lives?
We have gotten so caught up in our technological world, especially social media. The need to know how many likes, friends, comments and photos we’ve gotten since that last ten minutes we checked is instant gratification… a quick but fake escapism from our overstretched reality. With just one tap of a key, click of a link or slide of a screen we are transported to yet another stressful dimension… It’s stressful because it’s never enough. The likes, followers and virtual friends just never come fast enough to satisfy our need for right now.
Well, ironically… I say life is too damn short! Enough already!
Of course we need jobs and we do need to be productive members of society. The economy doesn’t work if everyone decides to stop and take vacation all at the same time… Right? We can’t all quit our jobs. Last week when I went to the grocery store we were still using currency in this society. And technology isn’t going anywhere either… I know this because I just read it on Google.
But there has got to be a balance. There has got to be time to just BE without fear of being looked upon as lazy, unproductive, unambitious slackers, irrelevant nobodies who are out of the loop, or just plain crazy.
We’ve got to find our own personal balance between our outside reality… the one that keeps our material world going and our other very true (and what I feel is our most important) reality. Our internal creative reality is that part of us that longs to do the things we are meant to do opposed to those things we have to do to survive in this made up society. We risk losing our creative selves when we focus too much of our time juggling the demands of what is outside of us.
“The science is unequivocal about multitasking: it’s bad for attention, memory, productivity, creativity, and happiness. We need to take matters into our own hands, and we can start by making small modifications in our day-to-day habits. Monotasking takes motivation, dedication, and continual practice, but the benefits are significant. Let’s reclaim our lives!”
– Nicola Brown, owner and principal of communication consultancy Think Forward Communication, and Editor-in-Chief at AnewTraveller.com.
I just recently came back from vacation and for some reason my creative flow has been somewhat blocked. Usually it just the opposite. So instead of writing nothing and not wanting to continue feeling guilty everyday that goes by without posting, I decided to share these delicious avocado and banana muffins I made a few months ago… let me rephrase… I don’t still have the muffins (Ewww) so I can’t actually share them with you but I will share the recipe.
If you’re like me you love a little sweet every now and then… (for me it’s more every now instead of every then… but don’t judge). Anyway, I had a few over ripe bananas lying around and a ripe avocado. I hate wasting food so I started looking for ways to use the two fruits together… yes… avocado is a fruit… a berry no less! Who knew?!
I used this recipe from http://www.allrecipes.com for the base but made a few changes. I was really surprised they came out so well… moist, not too sweet and not so bad for you either.
I cut the flour from 2 cups to 1 cup but added 1/2 cup of oats and 1/2 cup of rice flour.
I switched out the 1/2 cup milk for 1/2 cup almond milk and didn’t use as much sugar a little under a 3/4 cup of a mixture of white and brown sugar.
I also added 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of ground ginger. The recipe called for walnuts but I didn’t have any walnuts 🙂
ELLAVATE 7 