Tag: to-do lists

I don’t hate myself and I don’t want to die…

“I hate myself and I want to die.” Nirvana

I remember listening to Kurt Cobain sing that lyric during my teenage rebellious stage. My parents hated Nirvana. I loved the band – and not just because I liked their songs but because the lyrics spoke to me in a way that made me realise I wasn’t alone or weird in feeling how I felt.

But breaking it down into pieces; I don’t want to die, at times I hate where my life has taken me, but do I hate myself? Hate is such a strong word. I’ll go with dislike for the time being.

Image from themamahood.com

So as I’ve written about in previous blog posts I’m trying to practice self love. Not easy. Recently I took a piece of paper and split it down the middle. On the left: things I like about myself and my life. On the right: The things I don’t.

The left was longer.

I don’t mean to reel off a sob story – in fact I hate pity – but I suppose I’m having a bit of a pity party of my own. Learning to love yourself is hard work! Especially when Facebook shows you memories from however many years ago looking fantastic and having a wonderful time with the friends you’ve since pushed away. – NB at the time I hated every photograph of myself. Now I look back and realise they weren’t all so bad.

So I looked for some tips and I found this online, on the The Cabin Chiangmai blog:

How to Love Yourself during Recovery from Addiction

  • Understand the disease of addiction. …
  • Understand that your past actions do not define you. …
  • Make amends with the people you hurt. …
  • Take care of yourself. …
  • Plan your future. …
  • Fake it ‘ till you make it. …
  • Always remember that You are Worth It.

I know I can’t fix myself in a day. I’m as impatient as it gets. Anything I want to have achieve I want to have achieved yesterday. If that makes sense.

I struggle with the idea of addiction being a disease. You can’t catch it – or can you? hmm… Past actions, well I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes but I’ve also achieved a lot.

I have endless to-do lists but that doesn’t really count as planning for the future – right now none of it seems or is possible.

I think the first one I need to work on is remembering that I am worth it. I’m not sure what ‘it’ is at the moment but it’s something. Perhaps it’s just being alive, or actually maybe it’s giving myself another chance. If I listed the things I want to do and then put a line through all the ones I’m afraid of I’d be left with nothing.

I’m trying to make amends – it’s not easy when I’m so ashamed of myself – and I’m pretty damn stubborn. But to anyone reading this who I’ve hurt, I am so sorry. And I know I’m being a tremendous wimp by not apologising in person – part of writing this blog is because I’m trying to build my confidence back up and then maybe I’ll be ready for such confrontations.

Right now I know I’m faking it a lot of the time. For me it’s easier to do the whole British stiff upper lip thing and act like everything is just hunky dory. I know that in the long run that’s not going to help me – tell a doctor you’re ok and they happily tick you off their list.

Catch my drift?

So here goes… my goal for this week is to try to be more honest about how I feel and stop resisting help because I fear it makes me appear weak.

What to do when there’s too much to do?

Photo from http://www.notesonproductivity.com

A very wise therapist once told me to always make my bed in the morning because at least then I’ve achieved something that day.

It’s said that recovery is about going back to basics and re-learning how to live. It’s why, I guess, in rehab they had us do things like make gratitude lists, set goals and do different (if seemingly unproductive) activities like art and walking.

I don’t know about anyone else but I really struggle with not doing anything that feels productive. So in early recovery, as soon as I start to feel the slightest bit better I start trying to find things to do/clean around the house, reasons to go out, just something to do. Then I wear myself out and guilt trip myself over not being able to do more.

My to-do lists are endless and scattered. One of them even has ‘find last weeks to-do list’ on it. How ridiculous is that?! But it can be really overwhelming at times, and off-putting (here comes the guilt trip again) to stare and a long old list and try to even crack the surface.

I saw a journal the other day and I really should have got it. It had space for three ‘to-do’s’ on each page, ranked by priority and then space fore a few lines on what went well for you that day.

Keeping things simple.. What MUST be done, followed by what COULD be done…

It makes sense to have all the to-do’s in one place, and prioritising is key, as I recently read online in a post by software designer Burak Bilgin.

He writes….

It doesn’t matter how many tasks you start, neither how many tasks you carry out in parallel. What counts is how many tasks you finish.

Bilgin advises:

  • Write down all the tasks that need to be completed.
  • Start with the most important and urgent task at hand.
  • Focus on a single task at a time.
  • Assign a duration to the task and challenge yourself to complete it within that duration.
  • Promise yourself some downtime.
  • If you feel like procrastinating, break that feeling by completing a small task.

And his page also includes this really interesting diagram, which admittedly took me a while to get my head around but I think I get the general gist!

https://ideavisionaction.com/personal-development/how-to-deal-with-an-overwhelming-to-do-list-and-overcome-procrastination/