You are probably pretty hard on yourself if you are anything like me.  I think most people are.  It’s not that we mean to be, but we just learn to criticize our abilities somewhere in our childhood.  Maybe it was a loved one projecting their insecurities on us or internally just not feeling good enough.  We take these feelings into adulthood, and if we don’t learn to silence them, it can run how we live our lives.  I struggle with guilt.  The idea is that I have time to achieve any goal I want, yet I don’t use my time wisely enough.  If I am enjoying an activity, there is always a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I should be doing something more productive.  I read through old journals, and I was surprised to find that I complain about not spending a day off in a constructive way.  Why must we always be productive? 

I sometimes envy people who seem only to live to have fun; do they not have thoughts of achievement and productivity?  Do they not care about achieving success or even about the small mundane things in life, like finishing the household chores, balancing their budget, or preparing for their workweek?  Do many adults simply do what feels comfortable to them at the moment?  I don’t want to abandon all sense of responsibility and control, but how can I shut down the feelings that I must do more in life and just enjoy living?  I don’t want to spend the remainder of my time on earth in pursuit of accomplishments that do not really mean anything.  It’s hard to change one’s view of life as something to be conquered through successes instead of something to be lived and enjoyed. 

Judgment of oneself is the worst kind because only we can control it, but sometimes, we just do not know how.  It is hard to let go of a lifetime of feeling you can do better.  But maybe if we just stop believing that things should be any different than they actually are in our lives, it would free up some space to do something a little differently.  Letting go of what should be may leave room to believe and pursue what can be.  Remove the pressure from your own demands.  I think most people will find that they apply the most pressure to their own lives.  We believe it comes from outside sources, but it mostly comes from within or what we think others feel about us.  We fall into the spiral of believing we are not enough.  I, like you, are more than enough, just as we are.  There is no reason to spend your life trying to become an ideal of what you think you should be instead of simply being.  With the change of a new year and hopefully new thoughts, I hope that we all learn how to not be so hard on ourselves, and may we all enjoy a little more of our lives in 2022.

Happy New Year!