Recharging your energy: Let go of guilt

To round off this series, I have a golden rule of mine that - once I started following - I became more productive and generally more at peace with myself and the world.

As a former master procrastinator, I had finely honed my skill to riddle myself with guilt about choosing not to do the things I 'needed' to get done and 'relax' instead.

After all, I'd been doing this since my early teens, so by the time I was an adult, I had gotten so good at it, I didn't even realise it was an automatic button that got pressed every time I chose to relax. After all, there's always another task on the list, something we could be doing instead of sitting down and resting; we just choose what's urgent and what can wait.

A keystone in my discovery of my own self-improvement was learning to let go of guilt and actually allow myself to do whatever it was I needed to do when I didn't feel I had the energy to get the 'important' things done.

When we're spending mental energy guilting ourselves during relaxation time, we don't really get the benefit. Therefore, we avoid our responsibilities for longer and more frequently, trying and failing to feel more energetic and ready to deal with them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's felt the drag of this and how it simply doesn't seem to work. It actually gave me such relief to enjoy my relaxation time properly, guilt-free, that I needed half as much time to relax as usual. My rebound time dropped to as little as 10 minutes on some occasions!

Afterwards, I often felt surprisingly ready to get stuck into my to-do list and meet it with more enthusiasm. As always, this is a practice and something I had to work at, but as I got better at doing it, the results were increasingly apparent! I realised it was just as important to follow this principle and allow myself the freedom of guilt-free relaxation, regardless of what was on the back burner, as it was to dedicate my time and energy to do the tasks required to keep life flowing smoothly.

Now I know what you're thinking. NO, this doesn't mean you get to bludge all the time because you feel like it. This is the shadow side of discipline that many people miss. Discipline is not just about slogging it and forcing yourself to get through something you don't want to do, pushing yourself to your limits. It's about crafting the type of mindset and lifestyle that fills all of your needs, internal and external. Making conscious choices that help you manage your energy refills and expenditures. If you genuinely need rest, create space for yourself to rest with activities that actually fill you up (doom scrolling is not on this list FYI)

When you practice something like this, you really begin to discern when you actually have some fuel left in the tank to get things done (i.e If I'm being honest, I'm not so tired I can't do this / I know getting this off my plate now will allow me to fully relax later / I may be feeling this way because I'm creating a new habit)

And when you genuinely need a break (i.e I genuinely do not have the capacity for my responsibilities today / I'm on the verge of a breakdown / I really just need an hour to relax before I get on with 'X')

This is a valuable skill that is undervalued in today's society

I have been at both ends of the spectrum. I've been a lazy procrastinator who doesn't want to have any obligations, work or otherwise, doing the bare minimum to get through my day so I could go home and take a nap.

I've also been the person who worked 4 jobs whilst simultaneously studying, maintaining a relationship, and being the sole household cleaner (with a messy partner a high-shedding dog).

Both ends of this spectrum were exhausting. I felt exhausted all the time. In fact, I think I felt exhausted for 10 years straight.

My journey out of exhaustion to the place I'm in now is down to many things, but believe me when I say, letting myself rest without guilt made a huge difference and had a profound domino effect.

I hope this series has been helpful to you and given you some new tools to work with, stirred some new thoughts or expanded your mindset on what it can look like to re-energise yourself.

With love,

Emma 🌻