Give Yourself a Break

Post written by Sherri Kruger. Follow me on Twitter.

There was an interesting theme amongst the responses to the quick survey I did a couple of weeks ago – (thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the survey and if you would still like to have a say it’s not too late, you can still find it here).

There were a lot of people who felt they were struggling with organization, time management, and just generally keeping it all together.

Reading these responses I could feel the anxiety, stress and, to a certain extent, despair coming from a lot of you. One thing is for certain.

None of you are alone.

When I was younger I started out trying to uphold an image. This image was one of perfection, intelligence, and in general just having everything together … all the time. Some people who know me well may be thinking “Really? well you didn’t do a very good job”. Others that didn’t know me as well may have thought differently.

Truth is, it’s exhausting! It’s exhausting to pretend to be something you’re not and living to an imaginary standard that you think “everyone else” is holding you to is crazy.

No one that matters will think any less of you if you forget things occasionally, have a pile of unfolded laundry in the corner or a bunch of kids toys strewn about your living room.

No one that matters really and truly cares if you have a fancy car, big house, fancy clothes or make a gazillion dollars a year.

No one that matters will think you’re not quite good enough.

Give some quality thought towards appreciating who you are and what you bring to the table in every aspect of what you do. Even if it’s something that a million other people can do, how do you do it differently, better or with more pizazz?

Give yourself permission to give yourself a break, even a little one. Who’s standards are you really trying to live up to? Who is it you’re trying to impress? When you’re saying yes to all of these things you “need” to be doing what or who are you saying no to?

I’m still sorting through the results of the survey but I will post a summary here and address some specific concerns when I’ve made a little more sense of the data. Thanks again everyone! You all rock!