Hello mental health champions, how are you doing?
It has been a couple weeks since my last blog post and I am sorry about that. I have been the busiest I have probably ever been in my life. For those who know me, you know that I am a busy bee and tend to thrive in chaos, but lately I have been so busy it feels like my eyes are crossing! In this blog today, I wanted to just give a life update and share some of the pearls of wisdom I have learned recently.
I first want to start off by talking about how our society sometimes tends to praise overworking and the “hustle”. And let me tell you, I love the hustle and the grind and hard work. However, I have learned that when I overwork myself, it leads to way worse consequences. I am one of those people who can sometimes throw my angst and sadness into working because I truly am someone who enjoys working. But, it can also be a distraction and a trauma coping mechanism. It can be hard to know when I am crossing the boundary of working at a good pace and overworking. And I also think this generation tries to make overworking so glorified. And like I said, there is nothing wrong with working hard- but overworking to the point of sickness and low quality of life is NOT “it”. I have been trying to teach myself this very thing. I am trying to work on compartmentalizing and making sure to tell the people around me when there is too much going on and I can’t keep up. I don’t like to admit when I need help because I have so enjoyed trying to figure things out myself. However, it is OKAY to ask for help and realize that you may not know everything. I also started this job in June of this year. In these three months, I have grown tremendously and a lot of that was from making a mistake and then applying the knowledge from that mistake to be better moving forward.
I am sure someone can relate when I say that I used to be so hard on myself. I wasn’t receptive to constructive criticism because I immediately heard that as “you’re just not good enough” and “you just fuck up everything”. I think there are misconceptions sometimes about constructive criticism. Most people just assume that people who can’t take criticism are just too cocky and think they’re perfect. Well in my case, it was by far the opposite. Constructive criticism made me feel like I was unworthy of anything, like I was and always would be a failure, like everything I did was wrong, and that no one valued me. It took me a long time to stop the extremes and to realize that constructive criticism is supposed to help and develop your skill set, not hinder you and make you feel worse. Even now when I make mistakes, I take ownership and apply the knowledge to my next project. It can be hard to sort your trauma from your work life but when you try to make the effort to do so, it will feel so much better and you won’t feel like you’re walking on eggshells at your job.
Another thing that I have been actively trying to do in order to lessen my stress is related to organization, and man do I love me some organizing! LOL! I have recently started to make daily to-do lists for the three areas of my life that are taking up the most time currently. In case you don’t already know- Love-Brain, my full-time job, and school. I find that doing this first thing in the morning or right before bed the night prior have been the best times to do this. I will do it at night if I start to go over the to-do list in my head and I can’t sleep. I know it will keep me up and instead of laying there and festering, I get up and write the list so that it is out of my mind. If I am not too worried at night, I will do it first thing in the morning. I write all the things I want to accomplish and I am realistic about it. Some items I will write on my list but know that they can be pushed back until the next day if need be. Something is so pleasing to me about crossing things off of a list. I also have to recommend finding a cute to-do list legal pad to inspire you. I found mine at TJ Maxx and it was a two pack of a cute legal pad for notes and then a to-do list that has a date row, task, and done. Then at the bottom there are two spots for notes and extra to-dos. These notes made me want to be more organized and were worth every penny! When it comes to organization, everyone has different methods. Something I am also utilizing when it comes to school is google sheets. I made an effort to make a spreadsheet of all my due dates in order and color coded to the class. I know that this will also help me stay organized and will in turn make it easier to structure my to-do list for that day!
I am all ears when it comes to organization tips, so if any of you have a great token of knowledge, please leave it below in the comments! I hope this blog post was helpful to you in one way or another, but sometimes we just need a recap on the things going on right now!
Talk to you soon brain battlers, Gracie <3
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https://love-brain.com/blogs/brain-battle-blog-with-gracie/a-letter-for-those-in-their-twenties
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