Clinging on till Christmas

If there’s one thing you could do to be kind to yourself right now, at this very moment, would be to stop outsourcing your well being to the future.

This time of year is the worst for this.  It starts around mid November.  I’m sure, (if you’re in a country whose winter schedule is shaped around Christmas) that you will have had a conversation with someone which goes a bit like this:

You: How are you?

Other person: Oh you know, clinging on till the holidays!

I’ve heard this from nearly everyone I’ve spoken to in the last couple of weeks and I’m going to make a stand here.  This is not OK.  

We’re deceiving ourselves that we can ignore self care, compassion and all round well being for a whole month, just because it’s busy.  It feels contagious too; if you’re surrounded by stressed, tired, on-the-verge-of-burnout people with the looming pressure of Christmas and the need for it to be utterly magical and perfect being the main reason for those feelings, then you’re going to start feeling it too.  Whilst it might feel somewhat inescapable though, you don’t have to fall for the hype.

Yes, admit it’s a busy time of year which sits at odds with the seasons and a general desire to hibernate.  But postpone all forms of looking after yourself until the 19th/20th/21st… whenever you stop work/schools break up round your way is doing yourself a massive disservice.

Just clinging on is not thriving.  It’s not nurturing yourself to be the best you can be, quite the opposite.  Also, if your immune system is anything like mine, if you run on empty for a prolonged period, especially in winter, then the minute you stop you get some sort of virus.  So here’s a seasonal plea: what can you do today that is good for your wellbeing?  Doesn’t need to be massive; a small baby step will do, but do something.  Stop putting it all off until you finish up. 

This seasonal outsourcing of your wellbeing to the future is part of what I call “When I finally…” thinking.  It can show up in all aspects of our lives: when I finally get a job I love I will feel successful then, when I finally lose weight, I’ll be happy with my body, when I finally win the lottery… when I finally finish this project… and so on and so on.

That postponement is a way of saying to ourselves it’s OK to not take care of ourselves or work towards our goals just now, because we will do it, when the timing suits us better, but for now, we will make poor choices which do nothing to further our dreams

Why we feel like this is often not our fault.  Capitalism and consumerism are built around us all feeling like our current state is not good enough but the promise of a better future holds the keys to happiness, success, fulfilment and joy.

But we have a choice in whether we give in to that messaging.  We can choose to be aware of when we’re doing it and we can choose to disrupt our own patterns of behaviour which lead us to outsource the important stuff to the future.  This doesn’t need some sort of seismic, bold New Year’s resolution type change.  It can be a simple as noticing when you start to do it and to question that.  Before long you’ll start to see habitual change and you will find yourself asking what you can do today to achieve what you want.

The deepest, most effectual change happens at the micro level, one baby step at a time and the key to it all is consistency.  Which, before you shudder at the mere mention of the c word, doesn’t need to be boring and mundane.  Check out my Cartographer’s Compass course, for example - that is designed to help you be more consistent in a creative, novel yet powerful way.  

I challenge you to firstly, as mentioned above, see what you can do for your own wellbeing today and also try to spot when you’re falling into “When I finally” thinking in other ways and ask yourself, what can I do now that will further my plans?

If you want a sturdy framework of accountability around this, come talk to me.  Either the Compass or maybe my Coaching with Sarah programme is just what you might need.