Does self-kindless equal self-indulgence?
Short answer? No.
Hey, Runners!
Does the idea of being kind to yourself and allowing yourself to have off-days feel frightening?
If you answered yes… oh, baby. You are not alone.
A neurodivergent caveat
Before we get into all of the reasons why practicing self-kindness and compassion is the best and most efficient path to better work, I want to acknowledge my neurodivergent lovelies out there and say… I see you.
If you have ADD/ADHD or similar neurodivergences that effect your ability to write and do other tasks, I understand that getting started can be a struggle, and sometimes you feel like you must slam yourself to bits or you’ll never get anything done.
I recommend the How to ADHD YouTube channel in general, but very specifically, I recommend these two episodes for everyone, not just writers with ADHD.
Wall of Awful Pt 1: Why Is It So Hard to Do Something That Should Be Easy?
Wall of Awful Pt 2: How to Do Something That Should Be Easy (But...Is...Not)
The Wall of Awful is something everyone deals with from time to time, but creative people are especially susceptible to it. I frequently utilize strategies designed for people with ADD/ADHD in my workshops, as I find them helpful for everyone.
That said, writers with ADD/ADHD may have additional struggles getting started, and I hope that the community support and these strategies being folded into the challenge makes things a little easier for you.
Today’s Comments Assignment:
Do you think it’s possible to be too kind to yourself?
Why being kind to yourself feels so scary
Because you believe that if you aren’t hard on yourself, you’ll never do the work, or you’ll do bad work. You’ll be embarrassed by how bad a writer you are. You’ll be vulnerable in front of the world, a Bad Writer, a Hack. And the only way to prevent this outcome is by aspiring to a standard of excellence so high that reaching it means you will be protected from failure, public embarrassment, and disappointment.
None of that is true.
You will still work hard if you are kind to yourself. You can still climb the Wall of Awful while being kind to yourself. You will still be as good a writer as you are capable of being whether you’re terrible or kind to yourself.
Additionally, being terrible to yourself drains your energy, so it’ll end up taking you more time to get less done.
I’m going to explain this borrowing a term from disability advocate and writer Christine Miserandino, who coined the term “spoon” as a unit of energy.
You have a finite number of spoons in a day, right? Getting out of bed and getting ready for the day—that’s a spoon.
Making breakfast—spoon.
Heading to work. Being at work. Coming home from work.
Spoon, spoon, spoon.
Taking care of the kids, paying bills, doing the dishes, getting ready for bed.
SPOONSPOONSPOONSPOONSPOONSPOON.
So you’ve got a spoon budget, and that’s all you get in a day. If you experience disability or neurodivergency or are ill, that may also negatively effect your spoon budget.
Now, you want to write.
Welllll…. writing takes up spoons. Beating yourself up about your writing also takes up spoons.
Being kind to yourself? Takes no spoons.1
As a matter of fact, being kind to yourself can sometimes generate more spoons.
Seems to me like this is one of them no-brainer choices.
Look. If you believe that you will genuinely not write—or that you will write but with poorer overall quality—if you don’t hold yourself to a high (some might say unachievable) standard and beat yourself up about it, I have to believe you.
You know yourself better than I ever can, and you know what works for you.
But, if you can, take a moment and imagine the possibility that you’re wrong.
Imagine a world in which being kind to yourself will help you write with less emotional strain, leaving you with more emotional energy to put into your writing.
Imagine a world in which you don’t have to try to be a better writer than you are, but you just get better as a natural result of having the energy to write more.
It’d be pretty great to live in that world, wouldn’t it?
Trust me when I say… it is.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. When you stress about the possible consequences of being kind to yourself, that’ll cost you some spoons. But being kind in and of itself? No spoons.
I don’t think it’s possible to be too kind to ourselves. It would feel almost like saying that we don’t deserve unconditional love from ourselves.
I’ve very recently been trying to circle back to me after noticing being particularly unkind or hard on myself. To the point of saying out loud, “I’m so sorry for the way I talked to you back there. I’m working on it. I want better for you than what you got in that moment”. It feels healing. And like I’m cleaning up a mess I made with myself.
You cannot be too kind to yourself. I do not like the term nice that equals (for me) giving too much of myself to others and not being able to say no, but kind is good. Kind can mean me saying no to others and yes to myself. Kind can be a nap or coloring or finding all sorts of ways to fill my well.