Pair #47 Hey, it's all dark in here!
The best recipe for feeling misery is to compare your insides to someone else's outsides.
These are not exactly in the words Michael Niell used when he first said this to me, but they were the words I couldn't manage to hear when I needed them. Here is my salutory tale.
I was skimming through some great blogs on Huff Post and checking out Havi's latest (on http://thefluentself.com) when my mind slumped down in the corner of my office in total misery. It said, "someone has taken my life and already written my book and is 20 thousand million times better than me and all original thoughts have already been taken" and suddenly (hardly surprisingly) all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
Funny how that is. Anyway, I chose not to sleep. Instead I went for a walk and petted a dog (I recommend that actually) and when I came home I still wanted to sleep but again I chose not to.
I decided I'd just do one thing. One mindless thing, if necessary. This is not a good time to do something hard. So I made a nice-ish dinner. Then I took one task that required zero energy and I did that. I noticed it wasn't so hard. And suddenly I was up and running again.
Sometimes, it's just taking the next step. The next mediocre, half-***, stupid step.
Seems to work.
These are not exactly in the words Michael Niell used when he first said this to me, but they were the words I couldn't manage to hear when I needed them. Here is my salutory tale.
I was skimming through some great blogs on Huff Post and checking out Havi's latest (on http://thefluentself.com) when my mind slumped down in the corner of my office in total misery. It said, "someone has taken my life and already written my book and is 20 thousand million times better than me and all original thoughts have already been taken" and suddenly (hardly surprisingly) all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
Funny how that is. Anyway, I chose not to sleep. Instead I went for a walk and petted a dog (I recommend that actually) and when I came home I still wanted to sleep but again I chose not to.
I decided I'd just do one thing. One mindless thing, if necessary. This is not a good time to do something hard. So I made a nice-ish dinner. Then I took one task that required zero energy and I did that. I noticed it wasn't so hard. And suddenly I was up and running again.
Sometimes, it's just taking the next step. The next mediocre, half-***, stupid step.
Seems to work.
© 2010 Elese Coit
If you wish to reprint, feel free, please link back here and if it's of use, include:
"Elese Coit is a leader in transformative personal change and Hosts the Radio Show A New Way To Handle Absolutely Everything. To see the world differently, reach for one of her '101 New Pairs of Glasses' each day on http://elesecoit.com"
Thank you.
If you wish to reprint, feel free, please link back here and if it's of use, include:
"Elese Coit is a leader in transformative personal change and Hosts the Radio Show A New Way To Handle Absolutely Everything. To see the world differently, reach for one of her '101 New Pairs of Glasses' each day on http://elesecoit.com"
Thank you.
