Go Team 2023: Cut Yourself Some Slack

My last two posts have been really introspective and reflective as I slowly adjust to a world without my Dad in it. I have really appreciated your supportive comments and your messages via email and Facebook.

I have lots more to say about grief and movement and mindfulness but I haven’t gotten those thoughts into shareable form yet.

So, instead, I am falling back on a Go Team post:

My dear Team, please, please please, cut yourself some slack.

Nobody feels on top of things.

Everyone I know is feeling overwhelmed.

Just about every conversation I hear is full of apologies, full of explanations of delays, and descriptions of things people intended to do but didn’t quite get to.

And while I appreciate the fact that we all feel the need to explain, I would love to see us all recognize the fact that everyone is doing their best with the time, energy, and resources that they have.

We are all dealing with a lot of expectations from ourselves and from other people and often those expectations aren’t particularly reasonable.

There is NOTHING to be gained by being hard on ourselves about the ways that we fall short.

Instead, we need to be kinder to ourselves.

And not just when we fall short of expectations. We need to be kinder to ourselves when we are making plans or creating expectations in the first place.

We need to give ourselves a break.

We’re just a bunch of humans who are, frankly, poorly trained for the world we are living in and we are doing our best to respond appropriately to a variety of pressures.

Sure, there are ways we can improve those responses and there are ways to ensure that our actions align more closely with our values but those changes can only come from a place of self-compassion.

Like all of those memes say – if self-judgement worked, we’d all be perfect by now.

So let’s pour some energy into self-compassion, hey?

Here’s your gold star for your efforts to cut yourself some slack today.