I like to fondly refer to May-December 2021 as ✨a hellscape✨ 😅 ...and time last year, I was totally stressed out. I was going through a major transition with work where I was having to learn a bunch of new skills at once, I was going through a break up, I was struggling to manage my time, I was still drinking pretty regularly after work to smooth things over, And I also felt like a fraud because, hello, the whole point of my work is to help people feel more relaxed... Meanwhile, i was feeling hidden panic most days. Looking back, I realize what I was doing differently then that has since changed a lot for me... I was starting my day running and stretching, but doing it so that I could work better I was meditating and journaling, but it was to manage my anxiety, SO I could work better It was self-care, but it wasn’t for myself It was for my productivity I thought if I could just be productive enough, i would finally be successful, and feel worthy, and feel safe. The flip-side of that was as long as I still didn’t see myself as successful, (which I was mostly judging by comparing myself to others) I felt totally UNworthy. And when you feel unworthy, you tend to unconsciously choose to create experiences that match that feeling. The positive by product of doing the self-care practices in order to try to be more productive though was that I started to just like how I felt from doing them, and somewhere along the way, i shifted into practicing forms of self-care just because it felt good for me, not because I was trying to white knuckle life trying to FORCE outcomes happen. I believe that this shift helped me to start to feel worthy of feeling good before seeing my goals come to fruition... and from a place of feeling good, ironically everything also became easier to do, because it stopped feeling so much like everything was life or death all time. Its a much more empowered place to operate from, and i have also found that being able to operate from a good-feeling place in one area of life does not mean you’ll be able to do it in all areas, all at once. It’s learning. It’s practice. it’s a way of life.🌱