Letting Ourselves Off the Hook

The world is busy, isn’t it? We rush here and there demanding perfection from ourselves and others. Demanding everything happen right now - because that’s the speed we’re used to now. I recently read an article for school that was about being in the habit of rushing, which the writer called Habit Energy. We’re s in the habit of rushing that when the opportunity arises to slow things down, we don’t actually take it! What that does to us, of course, is keep stress hormones higher and with that all of the negative effects of high stress.

I woke up late today (I love to sleep in when given the opportunity) and when I woke realized that I had forgotten to write my newsletter so it could be scheduled to send at 8:30am promptly today. My first thought was ‘oh crap! I have to get up and do that!!’ I then reminded myself of a few important things: 1) I’m not so important that people are waiting for the email to arrive and hitting their refresh button wondering why it didn’t come; 2) No one but me actually knows the schedule; 3) No one will die because I didn’t get my newsletter out; 4) This is what I can write about today. There are some others of course, but the point is, this isn’t something to cause stress - I can let myself off the hook.

How often to we do this? Set up expectations of doing something and then berating ourselves for not doing it? Has it ever been helpful to you? I know it hasn’t for me. As a matter of fact whenever I come from that place of ‘have to’ instead of sharing and compassion, I set myself up for failure.

Today is March 1. We’re getting closer to spring and the weather looks pretty decent out there (from here in my bed). How about we let ourselves off the hook today.