Last month, I made a goal to reduce my screen time. I promised myself that I’d be more mindful of how much time I was spending on my phone and watching YouTube.
This past Sunday, I wrote a post about how goals can sometimes be harmful. I discussed my often problematic relationship with goals, without explicitly sharing that some inspiration for that post drew from my WIP Wednesday series.
This series has become unproductive for me.
To start the year off, I made it my goal to practice positive self-talk in the month of January. I wanted to begin 2019 with the mindset that I am beautiful, I can be who I want to, and I choose faith over fear. I aimed to pay more attention to what I was saying about myself to myself and replace any negativity with these positive phrases I had chosen.
To be perfectly honest, it was hard for me to stay mindful of that. While January was a wonderful month of Jake and I staying home and just enjoying life together in our house and our city, this quiet somehow muffled my self-talk.
This month’s goal is related to something that we all do: talk to ourselves. I don’t care if you don’t like to admit it, we all talk to ourselves. And sometimes we don’t say the nicest things. Often, we say things to ourselves that we’d never say about other people. So why is it ok for me to tear myself down when I’d never do that to someone I love?
How you talk to (and about) yourself is a great barometer for how much self-love you’re in need of. I’m not someone who constantly insults myself and has trouble saying anything positive, but I know that the things I say when no one else is around could use some tuning. And I’ll bet that once I really start paying attention to what I’m telling myself that I’ll realize I say worse things than I thought.
Once again, I feel that I’m standing in front of a learning experience I didn’t expect to have. What I learned this November is that you don’t need to make a measurable change in order for you to see the change. I’m someone who is constantly striving for self-improvement, always looking for goals to set myself, and often belittling my own accomplishments.
This November, I’d say that I achieved my goal. I made gratitude a part of my everyday life. But I still feel like I didn’t make an “improvement.” Why? Because I didn’t learn some new skill or some other demonstrable factor. I’m having one of those moments where I wish I could step outside of myself and say, “Christine–you realize that because of your goal, your entire mood changed last month, right?” Yes. I realize that. And I’m, well, grateful for that. But I feel as though I didn’t accomplish much.
For years, failure has been my greatest fear, so to admit to you that I did not succeed in reading two books last month is not easy for me. A few years ago, I probably would’ve just lied and written this post about how satisfying it was to improve myself by reaching my goal. Instead, I’m writing a post about why failure is ok and how I learned more about improving myself from not succeeding this past month.
Remember when I said that I’d be posting on Sunday mornings? I’ve already lied to you. It’s Wednesday, and here’s another new post for you.
I want to introduce you to a project I’m starting, and even though this is a life project, I can’t seem to separate it from a crochet metaphor in my mind. It goes like this:
If you’re a yarn crafter, you know how tempting it can be to gather patterns for projects you would love to make. You may even go so far as to buy the yarn, but let’s face it, some projects never get started.Even more projects never get finished. My life feels kind of like my yarn stash right now. It’s a mix of exciting possibilities, overwhelming potential, and a bit of guilt for letting some endeavors sit for so long. (I’m thinking of you, granny square blanket that I started in 2015).
being mrs. benedict 