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Self-care and self-improvement have always been tricky topics for me. As someone who has struggled with both anxiety and depression since childhood, I feel like I could always be taking better care of myself. And as a member of that special cohort of high-achieving children who become average to less-than-average achieving adults, I feel like I could always just be doing better. This toxic combination of nature and nurture let me to spend much of my early 20s searching in vain for a way to live my life that would make me both happy and productive.
Suffice it to say, many of these strategies and methods simply did not work for me. And every time I tried implementing one of these methods and failed, I felt the doom and gloom set in. It took me too long to learn that not everything is for everybody, and just because something worked for someone else does not mean that it would work for me.
It can be really hard to read about how a certain organizational method or habit-forming strategy worked out wonderfully for someone else while it is simultaneously failing you. It’s also difficult when the methods described require amounts of time or other resources you just don’t have. And yet another layer of pressure is added when you’re not just reading about self-improvement from a book you can stop reading at any time, but you have unsolicited advice coming from everyone in your life. I want to detail some of the self-help and self-improvement strategies that did not work for me, so that if anyone else out there find some selves in a similar situation they know they are not alone.
“Just do” or “Just don’t do” [Insert Good or Bad Thing Here]: My contention with pronouncements like these goes all the way back to when people, including my parents, would tell me as a depressed 10-year-old to “just be happy.” Now, as an adult who does not easily establish or keep routines, I simply ignore any piece of advice that begins with those words. The key to happiness may very well be exercising every single day without fail or never looking at my phone at work again. But I know that I can’t “just do” anything. I need instruction on how to start a routine and, when I inevitably break it, how to restart a routine without shaming myself out of trying all together. Included in this category are things like “just let it go,” “just don’t take it personally,” “just stop looking at distracting websites,” etc.
Many Workplace Self-Care Initiatives I want to be clear, I’m not talking about EAPs here. Those can be a great resource. I’m talking about the “do this three minute desk yoga video and don’t say we don’t look out for you!” kind of thing. Taking care of yourself should not come with any outside expectations. You are the most qualified to evaluate your own needs and establish your own goals for yourself, whether your goal is to be more active, better rested, something else. This is not to say you cannot take advantage of an employer sponsored program if it aligns with your personal goals, just throw out any messaging about how it will help your productivity. Remember you are doing this for you, not them. Don’t do anything that would put more of a burden on you than your employer already has.
Self-Help Books I tried reading books like Gretchen Rubin’s Better than Before, which breaks people down into four basic personality types and provides tips and tricks for each of these for forming healthy habits. She begins the book with the caveat that those suffering from a variety of mental illnesses or mental health issues would likely not be able to follow her strategies. I soldiered on anyway, and found that she had the least amount of helpful advice for my personality type, often following her advice for the other three types by saying “well this probably won’t work for you.” If things change to later in the book I don’t know I stopped reading.
Cal Newport’s Deep Work is another book I gave up on about halfway through. I started it hoping that it would help me focus at work, but the his advice does not work for someone who’s job is almost entirely distractions.
I think it’s great that these people have figured out what works for them. And I’m not writing off the above books. They might work for you, they just didn’t work for me. So, if you’re also in some kind of slump, whether it’s depression, a dead-end job, or anything else, take care of yourself. Don’t expect one meditation or one candle-lit bath to solve everything. And don’t give into the sunk cost fallacy. If you’re trying something that’s supposed to make you feel better, and it’s just making you miserable, stop. Try something else. There are so many ways to get the same result, and you need to find the one that works for you. Don’t waste valuable time on the ones that don’t.
-Erica
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