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Kindle Notes & Highlights
being overwhelmed is not a personal failure,
You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.
Internalizing this belief will help you a) shift your perspective of care tasks from a moral obligation to a functional errand, b) see what changes you actually want to make, and c) weave them into your life with minimal effort, relying not on self-loathing but on self-compassion.
When I viewed getting my life together as a way for trying to atone for the sin of falling apart, I stayed stuck in a shame-fueled cycle of performance, perfectionism, and failure.
There is a big difference between being on a journey of worthiness and being on a journey of care.
care tasks are morally neutral
When you view care tasks as moral, the motivation for completing them is often shame. When everything is in place, you don’t feel like a failure; when it’s messy or untidy, you do.
If you are completing care tasks from a motivation of shame, you are probably also relaxing in shame too—because care tasks never end and you view rest as a reward
Care tasks are morally neutral. Being good or bad at them has nothing to do with being a good person, parent, man, woman, spouse, friend. Literally nothing. You are not a failure because you can’t keep up with laundry. Laundry is morally neutral.
No one ever shamed themselves into better mental health.
In addiction recovery, as in most of life, success depends not on having strong willpower, but in developing mental and emotional tools to help you experience the world differently.
What you say to yourself when your house is clean fuels what you say to yourself when it’s dirty.
It’s easier to tolerate the repetitive nature of care tasks if we let go of moral messages and isolate the functional reason for doing them.
The next time the bully starts talking and the little self starts shrinking, you can call on your compassionate observer self.
organization is functional, and you deserve to function. How would your approach to functional organization change if you threw pretty out the window?
It’s rarely about who is trying harder or who is a better person but instead about individual capacity.
One thing I know is that if I keep the shame removed I can keep the on-ramp open.
But remember that upgrading your laundry system can only increase your functioning, not your worth.
No person can do all the good things all the time and expecting yourself to just sets up an oppressive perfectionism to which no one can live up. Imperfection is required for a good life.
The truth is that it’s not waste if you are using something to function.
Perfectionism is debilitating. I want you to embrace adaptive imperfection. We aren’t settling for less; we are engaging in adaptive routines that help us live and function and thrive.
And that’s the funny thing about doing your best; it never feels like your best at the time. In fact, it almost always feels like failing when you’re in it.
Whether it’s hiring a cleaning service, meal delivery, curbside groceries, or using a wash and fold, as long as you treat people with respect and pay them what they are worth, it’s all morally neutral.
When did movement lose its pleasure? When did my adult life stop including activities that made movement joyful?
Healthy is a wholistic state of being that requires more than just knowing the amount and type of nutrients in the food you are eating. Being kind to yourself while eating ice cream is healthier than hating yourself while eating a salad. Anxiety and perfectionism are not good for your health. At the end of the day, your relationship to food is as much a factor in your health as fueling your body in a way that makes you feel good is.
Meal planning is not a thing people who have it all together do. Meal planning exists to make it easier for you to eat and buy groceries. That is the function.
Framing it as kindness instead of failure was the key to being able to wake up and choose to get things done the next day.
Care tasks exist for one reason only… to make your body and space functional enough for you to easily experience the joy this world has to offer.
