Right now my husband and I are transferring my website over to a new server. (I think I may have mentioned this before.) Anyway, one project I’m having to accomplish is the re-doing of my recipes, putting them into the new recipe plugin. (I may have mentioned this, too.) Honestly! What a pain! It’s very hard to get all ginned up about re-doing stuff when it’s much more fun to do new stuff. So I’ll say, or put on my to-do list, “I’m going to re-do six recipes today.” And then I get involved in checking my e-mail, or reading yet another political article, or whatever, and
then the day has ended and I’ve done maybe two or three. (In addition to a few other things, mind you.) And so I berate myself: “You’ve got to stay focused! You’ve got to set goals!” I’m upset and angry with myself, which is not a happy feeling.
But I do find that when I encourage myself to just go ahead and start on another recipe, just encourage myself instead of berating myself, that often I get interested in the process and really get to work. I spend the time that’s needed in re-writing the directions and checking out the ingredients. Yesterday I got all involved in fixing a very simple recipe, one for tabbouleh, and it interested me enough that I decided to make a batch. Guess what? My ingredient amounts were wrong for the water and bulgur: there wasn’t enough water and the bulgur was unpleasantly crunchy. It needed another whole cup of boiling water and then it was perfect. (I never quite got the salad made, but I’ll get to it)
As I’ve said, ad infinitum and ad nauseam, I am a complete and total obliger personality type, which means that I have a terrible time meeting expectations that I set for myself. It’s all very well and good for me to say that I’m going to do something, but if the only person I’m accountable to is myself, well, that just doesn’t work very well.
So here are several things I’m going to try to put in place:
1. Try yet another Gretchen Rubin/Liz Craft idea, that of thinking in terms of your “future self.” That self can represent an outer expectation, if I’ll push myself to think that way. I’ve tried in the past to imagine how I would feel about my actions when I look at them later, but using the actual words “future self” will be very helpful—I hope.
2. Talk to myself encouragingly. Think of how I would talk to another actual person. I (probably) wouldn’t stand over someone else and shake my finger at him/her.
3. Use whatever tools I can, in particular my phone timer and my Swipes app, which I quite like. The problem with tools is, once again—you have to use them.
4. Most importantly, to continually bring my day and my struggles before God in prayer, If you read this blog very much at all you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’m a Christian; I believe that I can come before the throne of God and make my requests known to Him. Let’s say I’m lying in bed in the morning and I know I’m not going to get back to sleep. That happened this morning, as a matter of fact. So, for once, I actually took my own advice. I spoke (well, thought) encouragingly to myself. And then I prayed, “Lord, help me to get up and do the things I really want to do.” The thing of it is, it’s pretty much impossible to stay in bed at that point—it’d be so hypocritical! So here I am, sitting at the kitchen table at 5:40 AM, finishing up this post. It’s great.
So today, once my wonderful Bible study is over, I have two days to work. Every Wednesday around noon as I get back home from BSF I think, ”Wow, I have so much time to get stuff done the rest of the week!” Suddenly it’s Sunday night and I wonder where that last half of the week went. I don’t want that to happen this week. I will have from around noon today until about 3:00 on Friday afternoon, when I’m leaving for a weekend retreat. So less time than usual. I have some goals I want to meet. Will I do so? The suspense is mounting!
How could you encourage yourself today?