Category: Uncategorized

If Not Now, When?

March 3rd, 2023

The hardest part of making any change is starting. Many people struggle with the idea of just getting started, but that truly is the secret to growth. You just have to start.

If you’re that person that likes to wait until you feel like doing something or will get to it “later,” let me tell you now: You will never feel like it! You won’t do it later. Just get to it now. Because if not now, when?

When will you clean your house? When will you start eating better? When will you start doing that thing you keep telling yourself you want to do, but put off for the 100th time? When??

If you’re anything like me, that last paragraph probably stressed you out and caused some shame and guilt to build up inside you, right? Trust me, I get it. I also fall into that spiral more often than I like to admit.

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I get incredibly overwhelmed by cleaning my house. I had a very negative relationship with cleaning so I hated it. When I did clean, it was usually in a frenzied state one day a month when things got embarrassingly bad. I was happier and more productive that first week after my cleaning frenzy and would slowly become more depressed and lethargic the dirtier it got. I knew this, but would still let my space become unbearably messy until I would snap and clean it all in one day because of how negatively I viewed cleaning. If I wanted to avoid the slump that came from a messy house, I realized I had to work on my relationship with cleaning to get myself do it more often.

I was deeply rooted in my “I’ll do it later” way of existing and knew I what I should do. I should clean throughout the month breaking down the tasks into bite size pieces. I tried that, but felt like I was constantly cleaning, which again, I hated. So I tried breaking it down into each room would be one day a month, but that still wasn’t truly manageable or as clean as I’d have liked. “I needed to get over myself,” I thought many times over, but bullying myself didn’t help either. What I really needed was to desensitize cleaning from being a negative thing to something I was indifferent about. A miracle would have to happen for me to actually enjoy cleaning, so I set the bar at indifference.

What changed the game was a little art print with the quote, “If not now, when?” I was always a big fan of quotes that resonated with me or put me in a goal mindset. With this little print, a lightbulb went off. I bought it and hung it above my kitchen sink. Everyday I would look at this little sign asking myself, “if not now, when?” over and over and over again. Soon, it started to pop up in my head right behind “I’ll do it later.”

It would happen like this: I’d think: “I need to put that dish in the sink–ehhh I’ll do it later..IF NOT NOW WHEN!” So then I’d do it.

It makes me laugh looking back because it sounds absolutely bonkers writing it out. But it worked. I stopped avoiding the little tidying tasks and started silencing that procrastinating voice in my head. I’d ask myself “What am I doing now that is so important I can’t walk a dish to the sink?” Nothing except that I don’t want to do it, and that wasn’t a good enough answer. Eventually, doing these little tasks made not only my monthly cleaning days less overwhelming, but I began to feel indifferent about doing the little tasks that I’d otherwise avoided. They just weren’t that big of a deal anymore.

This is where Newton’s first Law of Productivity comes in. While going down my to-do lists of tasks, I kept reminding myself, “an object in motion stays in motion.” If I just got started, I could build momentum to complete other tasks I had been putting off. Completing tasks is not done through sheer will. It’s a continuous build up doing a task, feeling good about getting it done (a dopamine hit), and using that good feeling as momentum to complete another task. Getting started may always be a struggle, and for me, it still is. But once I get going, I keep rolling for awhile.

This idea of creating momentum paid off and I started to branch out and do previously avoided tasks like cleaning the dishes right after dinner instead of letting them pile up for 2 weeks. I’d take ten minutes a day and tidy up the room, putting things in their place because I liked having a clean room. I cleaned the ceiling fan that I hadn’t cleaned in over a year because I wanted that satisfied feeling of having a clean fan. My roommate and I have even played off each other’s momentum because we both struggle with procrastination. We celebrate each other doing the tasks we dislike doing around the house because those small victories create the momentum to accomplish other things.

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While your issue may not be cleaning, the issue of procrastination is common for many of us. Many of us are overwhelmed and frozen by the size of the goals or to-dos we have and that stops us from starting altogether. I had tried bullying myself into better cleaning habits, but nothing truly changed until I changed my mindset around it and worked on it being an indifferent experience instead of a negative one. I even would celebrate completing tasks with my friends.

I started applying “If not now, when” to almost every part of my life:

I want to make personal changes to be better. If not now, when?

I want to build a life I love. If not now, when?

I want to work on becoming financially stable. If not now, when?

Then question isn’t whether or not you can. It’s when are you going to start?

Love and Light,

B
Personal growth is…well…personal.

February 2nd, 2023

In my last post, I said that rebellions are messy. But how? How can working on myself be messy? Content creators make it look like this beautiful experience. It is. But remember that you are not always privy to their most vulnerable, challenging moments.

From what I’ve experienced, many of the people who begin personal growth accounts to help others seem to have made it through the messiest part of their journey and are now sharing the lessons they learned along the way. Like myself, I’m sure they made it through their “dark night of the soul” and thought, I don’t want ANYONE to have to go through this alone like I did. But that is also the caveat of personal growth– it’s personal. You will feel alone at times, and no matter how many resources you seek out, nothing will perfectly fit your unique soul. And there is nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s amazing! All the atoms and fairy dust settled together to make YOU. Of course there won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution.

This is your journey. What is so beautiful and simultaneously overwhelming is that you are fully in control of how you go about your personal growth. YOU know what your soul needs to thrive. What myself and the many other incredible creators out there have to offer are tools that have helped us and a gentle reminder that, while this is a wholly individual based experienced, you are not alone in wanting better for yourself and it is okay to want more for yourself. Nothing is wrong with you for wanting that.

But, my dear friend, you will have to push yourself to do the work. Because no one else can truly make you do the work unless you want to. You will have to wade deep into your soul and start to go through the boxes of “things not dealt with” you’ve collected. Please don’t open them all at once. Just start with the ones that look the least scary to open.

A small box I decided to open and confront was my inability to say “I’m sorry.” It was nearly impossible for me to utter those words. I didn’t grow up in a home where it was said often. It was more like stay away from each other until we chilled out; then go on like normal. This never sat well in my soul. It felt unresolved. I figured I was just being sensitive and selfish and just wanted the other person to admit they were wrong so I could be right. I quickly realized I didn’t have the tools to personally explore this. So what did I do? I sought them out.

Let’s pretend that everyone has a toolbox. My toolbox came with many wonderful skills from my loving parents and whatever life experience I had gained by 24. And just like me, you have your own tool box of skills and coping mechanisms that you pull out when you need them. Some people, unfortunately, have to build their own tool box from scratch while others may have tools, but they don’t exactly work well. My tools to properly apologize were nonexistent. What’s great, though, is that there are others out there who share their toolboxes with the world.

So I went to Google and asked “How do I apologize?” There are so many results, I instantly felt validation that I was not alone in needing to learn this skill. That’s great! I dive in and, boom, I have learned how to apologize! I know all the steps to make it sincere and concise. Easy! Or so I thought…Reading was not the same as actually putting my research to practice. Plus, as I sat with these many results and I realized I don’t actually like apologizing. But why?

MY PRIDE

This is another caveat about personal growth. You have to set your pride aside. At many of your points of personal growth, you may notice that your friend and companion, Pride, will often be in the way of whatever lesson you need to learn. Retraining yourself to be a better version is a very humbling experience. Your pride can cloud your judgement in an effort to protect yourself from feeling the shame and guilt personal growth often digs up. This was a box I didn’t mean to open, but it spilled out on its own. And that happens.

So, I take a deep breath and ask myself why I don’t like apologizing. It all came down to the fact that apologizing felt like I had done something with malicious intent or like I was admitting I had done wrong when I knew what I had done felt like the right move in the moment. Well, the chips fell as they did, and now the other party needed an apology. I needed to set my pride aside because sometimes, we are wrong, and sometimes, the best intentions can still lead to people getting hurt. Doing what you think is right at the time doesn’t mean it’s not wrong overall. These self realizations were not learned in one sitting. This was over months of encountering moments where an apology was needed, but I didn’t want to give it. Then I finally asked myself, “Was the pride of being in [what I thought was] the right worth this relationship? Was not apologizing worth the outcome?” It never was.

This small box had a lot of weight to it.

And this particular lesson stung. I knew I was better than this.

“Good,” I thought. “That means I learned something.” So now I had this new tool that I didn’t really know how to use well. But I tried.

I remember a few spats I had with my significant other where we’d do the “go cool down and pretend everything’s fine until it was” strategy. And then I thought, “I have to apologize. I want to make this better and my pride isn’t going to get in the way anymore.” So I apologized based on what I had learned online was a sincere way to apologize. Saying I was “sorry for ____ and that next time I will ____. In this instance, I had to apologize for getting ridiculously upset over something.

“I’m sorry I got upset for [this thing] and next time I’ll communicate better about what I need.”

It was clunky, uncomfortable, and I just wanted the whole thing over with and for us to be on good terms again. But I did it. I taught myself how to apologize without my pride getting in the way. **Cue video game leveling up music**

This is something I have worked on for years at this point, and now, apologizing is a lot easier. I do want to make amends when things go awry, but the act of apologizing was not natural to me. Plus, this lesson was actually a deeper, more complex issue than I thought. Like all muscles need to be exercised, the skills and tools you acquire need to be practiced and honed. This is done over time. You don’t wake up a better person, you cultivate the qualities you believe will make you a better person over time.

I don’t know what’s in your toolbox or how many boxes you have to unpack. You may not have a lot of tools, and some tools you may need to retire. You may have one box or a whole room stacked with them. But if you’re willing to do the work, pick a box and start unpacking. The tools are out there to find when you need them.

Love and Light,

B

Category: Uncategorized

If Not Now, When?

Personal growth is…well…personal.