Making A Change Is HARD | Give Yourself A Break

A lot of the posts I publish on this blog are written in ‘high’ moments – as in, the times when I am feeling good about myself, motivation about my ideas and plans, or perhaps after some form of success.

While I do feel like I get good content out of these moments, I also am acutely aware of how damaging it can be to only show a highlight reel of your life.

I want this blog to be a positive space and the ideas I put out on here are the way I want to behave and act 24/7, but that’s just not the case and that’s not who I am (yet).

The whole theme of this blog is ‘becoming better’ and the key word in that statement is ‘becoming’.

Becoming is a verb, a doing word, which indicates that something is currently in motion.

I never want to come at you like I’m higher than or better than. I’m just a standard, twenty-something lass who is super interested in self development and is making changes to her life for the better.

These blog posts are an outlet for my own journey in self-development and they’re a way for me to connect with those of you who also have the same mindset.

I know I’ve learnt so much from other people, seeing how they do things and learning from their behaviours, which is something I want to replicate here for us all.

Now with that being said, I want to remain as honest and open as possible when I write posts. Which is why I wanted to take a moment today to address how hard making changes to your life is.

NOTHING WORTH HAVING WILL BE EASY…?

Some of the changes that I’ve talked about recently on this blog include quitting shopping, cutting down drinking, and reducing overeating.

I spend a lot of time, both on this blog and in ‘real life’, talking about the things I want to change.

But then I run out of steam, or I fail, or I get bored. Eventually I’ll stop doing what I wanted to do because I can’t see progress quick enough or – this is a big one – because it’s too hard.

Then I’ll move onto something else to distract me, before the cycle begins again.

This is perhaps why I rarely see success in the things I want to achieve (like the habits mentioned above) – I don’t give myself time to work through anything, and just want instant results then and there otherwise I get bored.

It’s a case of instant gratification gone rouge.

I think I’ll dig deeper into this topic another day, but the gist of things is that when I realise that it’s going to take some time for me to get what I want, I stop. I just stop taking any action towards the things I want to achieve because they feel so far away and too hard to do.

It can be difficult in this world of social media and constantly being in the pockets of other people to work on yourself. We see other people succeeding and reaching milestones every minute of the day, yet when we look into our own lives things have flatlined.

(This could also be a reason why I suffer from overwhelm a lot, which is something I talked about here. Yet another revelation I’ll have to explore further)

The reason we think we’re failing when we see what other people are doing is down to the fact that, most of the time, people are coming from a place closer to the end of their journey then the start.

Hardly anyone records the bad times, the low times, or even the first times because they’re not ‘marketable’.

There’s nothing glamourous about the first day of a new routine, or the moment when you realise you might have a problem that you need to work on.

While there is some brilliant content out there and some wonderfully helpful resources from people who have achieved their goals, hardly anyone comes from the middle of a journey and shares their story.

Why? Because making change is really hard.

As I said, there’s nothing fun or glamourous about fighting bad habits, going against your old ways, and constantly working on your mindset. The results will be brilliant, I’m sure, but it’s so hard to stay on track and to keep going with it all when you’ve just begun or are still no where near ‘success’.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

I’m trying to make quite significant changes to my life at the moment, and it’s so hard.

I’m barely passed day one of each of these new ideas and I’m already faltering.

As a response to things being hard, my brain and body are desperately craving comfort which has resulted in me eating a lot of sweets and chocolate, falling into shopping behaviours, and spending money on ‘acceptable’ items according to my no buy rules.

To be honest with you, it feels like I’ve taken more steps backwards than I have forward.

Which is why today I have literally done nothing. And believe me when I say, nothing.

This blog post is the first active thing I’ve done all day, unless you count making my bed which is an automatic habit at this point.

It’s been glorious wasting time on YouTube, where I’ve used drama videos and true crime content as an escape. It’s perhaps not the healthiest way to spend a full day, but it has been brilliant to get out of my own head and not beat myself up for my lack of progress for once.

While taking this break, I’ve realised that I can get back on ‘it’ – whatever it is, and whatever thing I’m trying to change – again tomorrow.

At the end of the day, all we can do is our best and I don’t think we really value what our best is at the time.

Someone is always going to be doing better than you, that’s just a fact. You and me both need to stop letting what other people are doing get in the way of our own stuff.

Everyone has days off now and then, but it’s probably not something that they’ll share online or that you’ll ever get to see.

Give yourself a break – after all, you’re doing these things for yourself! The changes you’re making are for you, and the time off you have is for you so don’t be so hard on yourself about it.

Social media makes us think that our lives need to be pulicised every minute of the day, but that’s not the case for most of us. Even people who make a living from sharing their lives have moments that they’ll never share online, and it’s normally the ‘bad’ stuff you berate yourself for doing too!

So please, give yourself a break – and take a literal break if needs be! You can always try again tomorrow.

Speak soon,

Rachael.

Photo by Daniel Hansen on Unsplash