Hey there,
It's Christine Collins.
And I wanted to talk today about a trend that I see happening and notice it happening even for me as well.
And so I'm hoping that this will be relevant for you.
There's a lot of material and content and information around the realm of things like productivity and procrastination and how we use our time.
And I want to start by saying that I think it is very,
Very useful to evaluate the way that you spend your time and to make sure that it is in ways that feel good to you to continuously reassess your processes and the way that you do things for efficiency and usefulness and all of that sort of thing.
But the caveat that I see is that there's a lot of messaging around things like wasting your time doing things like watching a TV show or Netflix or playing with an app like Canva or other creativity related things and there's a lot of stereotyping about why people do certain things like that and what it means.
And I don't think that it's problematic to have that conversation.
What I think is problematic is when it begins to dip into the realm of robbing someone of a sense of self-worth or self-esteem to the extent that they end up believing that they are less than or less constructive,
Less productive,
Less focused,
Less motivated,
Than someone else who isn't doing those things.
What I want to start by saying there is that boiling it down to a term like self-sabotage is extremely limiting and also presents some barriers to the truth.
Human consciousness is very complicated and our psyche and our subconscious and our desires and our behaviors are layered,
Complicated,
And variable.
Also dynamic and not static,
Meaning that they do change over time and even day to day.
And it is not a personality flaw if someone has slipped into a space of time where they are less productive,
Less efficient,
Or something like that.
It does not mean that they don't actually want success.
It does not mean that they are sabotaging themselves or their success.
It does not mean that they are lazy.
Does not mean that they aren't hungry enough.
It can mean many things,
Including many things related to mental health and wellness.
There are a variety of things that can happen in terms of various mood disorders that can dramatically influence and impact our choices and our behaviors.
And to some extent,
Some of those phenomena that do occur actually limit freedom of choice.
Ways make choices for us.
What I don't like seeing is people berating themselves,
Beating up on themselves,
Shaming themselves because they haven't been productive enough for a variety of reasons.
There are health issues,
There are mental health issues,
There is fatigue and exhaustion that is not always physical.
And I think another piece that is underpinning a lot of this is that human beings have needs that go beyond food,
Clothing,
Shelter,
Water,
That are needs that are often,
I think,
Repressed in many circles and in society in general.
Needs around creativity,
Needs around fun,
Needs around sensuality,
Needs around rest and leisure and relaxation.
And we are often encouraged to forego those needs.
Someone who is desperate need of a break or some rest is often condemned when instead of doing more work they take a nap,
They fall down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos,
Or they start playing around with an app like Canva or some of the other more creatively aligned types of apps,
Or they zombie out into a Netflix series.
Those things are often really frowned on and I think that it undermines the understanding that those needs are equally valid and that when we continue to push,
Push,
Push ourselves and push through the exhaustion and push through the need to take a break and to zone out and to just forget about problems for a while.
And I do believe that most of what I'm describing is along the lines of needing to forget about problems for a while.
It is a mental reprieve.
It is a from the day-to-day troubles and worries and fears and anxieties and responsibilities that everyone carries.
It also undermines that individual's capability of understanding their own energetic capacity and making an assumption that all people have the same energetic capacity and that's not the case.
Not all people are doing the same things,
Not all people have the same bodies,
Not all people are working with the same minds or the same neurophysiology and neurochemistry,
They are all different.
And when someone is mentally exhausted,
Their neurophysiology is quite different from someone who is not.
So all I can really say is to encourage you to be reflective and mindful of your own situation,
Of your own needs,
And to pay the most attention to that over and above the noise.
Self-shaming,
Condemnation,
Being self-effacing,
And putting oneself down because of feeling like you're less productive than other people that you're seeing is actually not constructive or helpful.
And other people putting you down is also not constructive or helpful,
Nor is it even the first step in changing that if it is indeed something that needs or wishes to be changed.
And actually,
I kind of think that in the moments where things are feeling hard,
That that's a great time to do more daydreaming,
To do more visualizing.
While that may feel counterintuitive and there may be pressure on you to just take action instead,
It's actually a lot more constructive to identify first where you would like to go,
What you would like to have,
Who you would like to be.
And the interesting thing about visualizing those things is that the visualization is recorded by brains in a very similar way to memory.
Now,
It's not identical,
But it does expose the brain to the emotional and sensory experience of having that thing,
Becoming that thing,
Moving in that direction.
And we often create things in our mind before they ever become tangible reality.
And we don't clearly understand all the ways in which this very usefully and effectively helps us to move closer towards our dreams and goals.
In many ways,
When things are feeling like a struggle,
It is the best time to engage in daydreaming and sculpting that clay and starting to take those little steps towards something else that you want.
Because being in a survival mode can really siphon creativity,
Can suck all of the ideas and the innovation out of our flow and make things feel and look really stark and impossible.
In touch with the belief in things being possible,
Becoming possible for us,
Is tremendously powerful in being able to move forward.
And taking that first step with a little bit of fantasy,
Daydreaming,
Creativity,
Imagination can go a long way.
And I think sometimes some of those things that we are seeing being talked down as time wasters are actually that person's avenue into dreaming about something else,
Thinking about something else,
Getting that mental break and that mental reprieve from whatever is happening in their world or in their mental world.
And it could even be that spark of creativity that incites something new for that person where they're perhaps introduced to a new idea,
A new concept that they had not yet considered.
Being able to create something,
No matter how useful or not useful,
It is the act of that is incredibly powerful for our mindset.
And not everything that we create needs to be for business.
Not everything that we design needs to have a money-making goal.
Not everything that we spend time on needs to be productive.
In fact,
I would argue that some percentage of time must be non-productive,
Must be not an end to a means or a means to an end.
Must be sheerly for the sake of creating,
Sheerly for the sake of leisure,
Sheerly for the sake of exploring your own talents or gifts or just capacity to have fun.
It doesn't have to be good.
But a lot of times we assume that it has to have a purpose and sometimes not all purposes are known.
There have been times when I've just randomly played around with like a new platform or software and didn't really have a specific intention with it.
Three months later turned out that I really needed that thing and the time that I spent learning it was actually useful to me.
Now that's not to say that everything ultimately has to become useful either,
But sometimes it does and sometimes we don't know that in the moment.
So you don't have to go into every activity with a specific plan and purpose as to its usefulness.
It's okay to F around sometimes and to just play and at the same time to be mindful of how you're feeling as you're doing those things.
Is it something that's enjoyable?
Is it something that's feeling like a burden?
Is it something that's feeling like it's taking more of your time than what you would ideally like?
And then you have an opportunity to look at that situation and decide if you want to change something with it.
But regardless of whether you choose to change it or not,
Self-shaming and being shamed by others will not be useful or helpful in making that decision or in making that change.
And until we connect again,
I wish you the most magical and creative rest of your day.
