Self-Compassion
Sometimes, you do everything right.
You exercise. No caffeine after 3PM. Have a hard end of the work day at 5PM. Eat a leisurely supper with your spouse, followed by a quiet night of reading a physical book on the couch, next to a fat tabby cat who snores as he sleeps. Finally, at 9:30, you take melatonin, and begin to get ready for bed. By 10:15, you are sound asleep. The end of the day couldn’t have gone more perfectly.
Which is why it’s frustrating that you are staring at the dark ceiling in your bedroom at 2AM later that night, and have been doing so for the last 30 minutes. Your brain is racing, creating worse case scenarios. Sleep is nowhere in sight. Eventually you surrender and get up, eat a bowl of cereal and read more of your book, waiting for any signal at all that you will be able to sleep again.
Finally, around 4:30, less than an hour before your alarm is set to go off, you pad back through the dark house and climb in bed, and your brain begins to shut down. But before it does, you move the alarm from 5 AM, which is the time you normally get up and write, to 7:30 AM, which is the latest you can get up and be on time for your commitments.
This was me this morning. My life is pretty chaotic right now, and if I don’t write at 5AM, it just won’t happen. (I’m only able to write this because a lunch meeting was canceled). In the old days, I would have gotten up at 5 anyway, and just gutted through it. Or maybe 6, if I was feeling particularly generous.
But instead, I gave myself permission to sleep in. These days, I’m wanting to be who younger versions of me needed, and what that younger version of me needed the most was someone who looked out for him, who told him it was OK to put his needs first, that advocated for him when he was afraid, or unable, to do so.
These days, I’m working on embodying the truth that if my compassion for the world does not include me, then it is incomplete.
So, I slept in. I got the rest I need. And the writing didn’t happen. My goal slipped a bit. But I’m OK with that, because when I had the chance to sacrifice myself and my health in order to be productive, I chose to rest instead.
Thirty year old Hugh would not have done that. Truth be told, Fifty one year old Hugh almost didn’t do it. It seemed wrong. It seemed lazy. It seemed slothful.
But I did it – kicking and screaming, but I did it. And in the end, we are judged not by our thoughts, but by our actions. And this time, I chose to be kind to me.
