how not to be hard on yourself 🍵 design tea #28

practicing soft discipline

I am so hard on myself.

So I am writing this one for you, but more for me.

Okay so here’s what happens. I will come with all these cool ideas I wanna do. But then life happens - a full time job, daily life admin stuff, trip etc etc.

It eats into my creation time. I get overwhelmed by all these cool ideas that I never got around building. I get into my head and be super hard on myself. I end up killing the initial joy I had when I came up with the idea.😭

Can you relate?

You tell yourself you’ll do something > You don’t do it > You lose self-confidence > You don’t do it even more

Arrghhhh.

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I have realized it’s not a trait I want to have. I don’t want to be hard on myself.

The world gives you enough hard time as it is, you don’t need to bully yourself further.

Over the past few months, I have slowly been dismantling this narrative in my head. Finding that balance of holding myself accountable, yet holding myself kindly.

Here are few new narratives I have been teaching my brain.

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Practice soft discipline

Burnout happens when you are forced to do things at a time you don’t want to do.

If you don’t want to design or write and you are being forced to do it because of deadlines or for income, you are likely to do it in a very bad mood. Doing it again and again when you don’t want to do a thing will make you lose interest in that thing completely.

But then, how do you make time and habit of pursuing an idea or a hobby?

This is where soft discipline comes in.

You are disciplined enough to hold yourself accountable to your commitments and deadlines, but loose enough to do it in a way that serves you better.

• Don’t micro-manage yourself. So instead of going “I will write 1000 words everyday between 5-6 PM”, be like “I want to have 3x writing sessions this week and write approx 5000 words”

• Give yourself space to change your mind. If you wake up excited about learning something new rather than writing, take your time to learn. Match your energy to tasks and that’s likely to have higher returns.

• Set deadlines for things that are important to you. And then manage yourself to deliver on those deadlines.

• If you tell yourself you’ll do something, do it. Don’t tell yourself you will do 1000 things, pick wisely.

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Consistency looks different on different days

Expanding your definition of consistency helps you show up for yourself in a more sustainable way.

Give yourself permission to be bad at things if that means you show up.

You learn to not be hard on yourself for not giving your 100% to all the things in your life on all the days.

This is one of my favorite images, I think of it when I just do a light stretch and call it my workout of the day. 💪

Self-talk

Your brain can’t distinguish between what’s real and imaginary. (Okay that’s debatable, but I believe the few TikToks I saw.)

Don’t annoy your brain with constant annoying nagging negative talk. It will give up and start believing it too. Here are ways I snap out of it.

• As soon as I realize I am being negative, I try and change my environment. I will walk to a different room or just keep my phone down. Or take a shower depending on how intense my thoughts were.

• I am a fan of Mel Robbin’s 5 seconds rule. You back count 5 and then do the task you’ve been avoiding. 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 -1. Get up from bed. Hit publish.

Like I said at the start - the world can be hard enough, you don’t need to be hard on yourself. Be nice to yourself.💛

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🍵 my favorites this week 🍵

📝 Stepping into your power by

Kasra

My favourite line from his writing “fearlessness is a learned skill”. He nudged me to think, why am I scared of success as much I am scared of failure.

🧃 Printernet
They send your digital reading list as a printed booklet. I would personally not pay for it, but I still loved the idea. It’s cute.

📝 Dark side of Influence by

Deb Liu

I need to frame this.

📺 Made in Heaven S2
Sorry but I gave in to the hype, and though not as scintillating as season 1, it’s still a good watch.

🎧 Summer I Turned Pretty S2 Soundtrack
We will talk about the season itself next time, but this edition was written using this playlist.

Talk next week, Chhavi x

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