Episode 3: Meet Yourself Where You Are

Happy Thursday, friends! It’s funny that this podcast is going to drop on a Thursday, actually, because I used to hate Thursdays. So, I think we all probably have a day of the week that’s kind of like our nemesis, right? There’s one day a week where you’re just like, “Ugh, I just always struggle on that particular day of the week,” and, for me, that day used to be Thursdays.

So, I would go into every Thursday thinking to myself, “Oh, yeah, this is gonna be great. I’m gonna make it work this time.” I tried a variety of different time management techniques to make Thursdays better. But Thursdays always were this day where I really struggled to self-regulate and I really, really struggled to make the behaviors happen that I wanted to happen.

I’m telling you this because, obviously, each day I am dropping a new episode this week, and these episodes are sort of framed around lessons that I have learned in my first 29 years of life, the ones that stuck with me the most. One of the lessons that I have learned is that, oftentimes, it is way more effective to meet yourself where you are at than it is to plan a better version of yourself to exist, okay? Don’t get me wrong. I’m obviously the compassion-first change gal, right? I am so, so, so dedicated to personal development. But I think what a lot of people miss about personal development is that it starts with a foundation of acceptance, and in order to change your behavior in the future, your best bet is actually to start by accepting and understanding your behavior as it is right now.

So, going back to Karin’s case of the Thursdays, after months and months and months of time-blocking and calendaring and trying different schedules and trying to force myself into stuff, I decided to make a shift and just meet myself where I was at. And so, what that looked like was instead of trying to force myself into a workout, I switched my workouts so that Thursday was my rest day. Instead of trying to get myself to wake up early when I knew I was always tired from the past three days of the week, I just let myself sleep in on Thursdays, and I built a new calendar around this schedule where I got to sleep in a little bit, I woke up, I typically ordered Starbucks or made fancy coffee. I did something on Thursday morning that made me happy, and then, for most of the day on Thursday, I actually scheduled meetings. The reason I scheduled meetings is because, for me, showing up to a meeting takes very little self-regulation. I know it’s on my calendar. I‘m going to show up. I don’t have to really try to get my behavior to follow that calendar.

So, that completely transformed my experience with Thursdays, to the point where I don’t have any drama with Thursdays anymore, and I don’t even have that schedule anymore. That only happened because, instead of trying to change my thoughts about Thursdays or change my mindset about Thursdays or drastically shift all this stuff so that I could be doing what my perfectionistic brain wanted to do, instead, I chose to meet myself where I was at.

And so, that’s what I really want you to think about today. I want you to think about the battles you are having with yourself over your own behavior. Maybe it’s waking up early. Maybe it’s unloading the dishwasher at night. Maybe it’s getting a workout in on a specific day a week. And I want you to ask yourself: “Is this really a battle worth fighting? Or can I meet myself where I am at right now? Is there a way that I can accommodate the natural fluctuations of my human brain better rather than expecting myself to be at 100% all the time?”

One of the things we work on in Alliance Coaching with clients quite a bit is time management and, particularly, what we call compassionate calendaring. So, realistic management of your time and calendar in a way that actually supports you. I point that out because what I see from a lot of our clients is you are trying to get yourself to focus for, like, eight hours a day, and you’re doing all of these techniques, and you’re using these focus tactics, and you’re trying to adjust your schedule. You’re going full-force forward trying to get yourself to work eight hours a day when, in reality, maybe you only have six hours of attention span. And so, by actually adjusting your life as much as possible and meeting yourself where you’re at, you’re actually going to have a way better and more supportive experience when you’re in that situation in the future.

So, that is the episode for today. That is what I want you to think about. Meet yourself where you’re at instead of constantly being on this treadmill of trying to achieve a goal that maybe just isn’t right for you.

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So, check that out, and I will see you back here tomorrow for the next and last birthday lesson of the week. Thank you for listening!