I've been wondering lately why I seem to avoid meditation and my daily nap, despite the fact that they are on my self-care
roster as daily activities. There are days when I skip one of both of them. The
plain truth is that it’s boring. There’s an opportunity cost in that I’m not
learning, growing, advancing towards something. I suppose one could argue that
the nap and the meditation speed up my recovery but it just feels boring to
think of nothing and to sleep. At the end of each day I like to feel as if I’m
closer to a goal or improving myself. But I suppose the reality is that I need a lot of days with nothing but rest in order to restore myself to full health.
And as usual for me, when there’s a problem, I need to find
a solution. I’m doing well on my roster in that I’m ticking off the occasional
responsibility item such as children dentist trips. But it does get monotonous.
And I have read that any happiness-inducing strategy needs to change
occasionally if you want to retain its effectiveness. It’s easy to get bored of
scheduled acts of kindness and gratitude journaling. So today’s task is to plan
for the next month as well as to get started on my book.
As I've mentioned in my post about goals, it’s important to
set deadlines and to create sub-goals. I've created a rough outline of chapters
for my book and have given myself a month on each chapter and a month to edit.
So chapter one is due in a few weeks and it will be something new for me to
tackle. As mentioned, one of my focus areas is to find flow activities and
writing is certainly one of them. Any flow activity, by definition, needs to
include a challenge that is slightly greater than skill, in order to keep your
attention and to challenge you. It will be a difficult exercise to structure my
ideas into a set of chapters that work well together.
I also realised that I’d like to inject some fun or
creativity into my life. I've heard of an online course where you can learn to
draw. I've signed up for a women’s retreat in May that should be an opportunity
to be creative, meet other people and of course, to escape my children. And I
think it’s really positive to be taking a step that puts my well-being first.
As I mentioned in my last post, I need to speak up about the things I want to
do and not to just let everyone else decide my activities for me.
The organiser is Taryn Harris, who also suffered from a
stress-related condition and changed her life as a result. She is really
inspiring to me and I’m so looking forward to meeting her and understanding the
insights she can share.
A batch of books arrived today which always cheers me up.
For a change, they are not related to happiness or self-help but are around
rediscovering your creativity. This is just the catalyst I needed to shake
things up and find a little optimism in the drudgery of rest. And yes, I will
most certainly do my meditation and my nap today.
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