Crazy how life keeps getting in the way. It has been a few months since my last blog. Believe me, it has been on my mind, but I just could not get the time or myself to sit down and write. That being said, I’ve had a few things going on, my son’s wedding for instance, but still, it is frustrating how fast the days can go by. And once you start pushing something away, it becomes easy to keep doing it. But there is always that gnawing sensation that something still needs to get done.
We all have things that are constantly running through our heads, and if you are like me, they tend to be on the negative side. We are always hardest on ourselves. Many books I have read always say “Would you allow a friend to talk like that to themselves?” and of course our quick response is NEVER! Then why is it we allow it to continue? I’m guessing it is really the million-dollar question. If we could rid ourselves of these thoughts, can you imagine what peace of mind you would have?
Maybe, just maybe, those thoughts are there to inspire us. Inspire us to strive to be better, better to ourselves.
I think of it like this. We all have some ugly in us. Let’s be honest. Like the corners of my house that have that hard-to-reach dust in it. We all know it’s there, every once and awhile we take the time to clean those corners, but a lot of time the dust is just there because there is something more urgent to clean, like the kitchen counters. But when we let the dust sit there it accumulates more and usually that build up can lead to a bigger job to do in the end. It’s okay to make other things a priority, but in the end, we still have to take care of the dust.
The dust in the corners remind me of what it is like to have a cancer diagnosis. It is always there lurking in our thoughts. Most days we do not give it any notice, but if we don’t give it some time from time to time the “dust” or emotions accumulate. We find we can be irritable, not realizing the undercurrent of why that is happening.
Pay attention to the dust in your corners.
Sometimes all it takes is a knot forming when I’m trying to untie my tennis shoes to send me down the rabbit hole of frustration. But maybe the frustration was already there (dust!) and that knot is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Dr. Tom Pychyl said “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem.” This sheds light on a whole different story. I never thought of procrastination as a way of coping with emotions. Understanding that could force you to get to the underlining reason on why? What’s going on inside that causes things to happen on the outside? Figuring out the reason could have you back on track in no time.
I have a note on the inside of my bathroom cabinet that says “there is always another chance.” As long as we wake up for another day, we can strive to achieve something. Decide what is important to you. Think how good it will feel to accomplish something you’ve been putting off. Many times, when you finally sit down to do that certain “thing,” you find out that it really didn’t take as much time as you thought and you wonder what all the fuss was about. Either way it is always a relief to have it done so it is no longer circling in your head.
God gives you everything you need. Learn to lean on that trust. We all have what it takes to do great things, we just need to believe. Yes, there will always be dust in the corners, but if we are more aware that it is there, we can become better with how we deal with things on a day- to-day basis.