A lot of self-help advice is good advice. And a lot of it involves major lifestyle changes.
What I don’t see a lot talk about is the need to first get to a point where those changes can be made. A lot of us are stressed to the gills, overworked, underpaid, lonely, sedentary, doing nothing for pleasure, etc.
A lot of self-help focuses on directly changing those things, often in a piecemeal format. And that’s fine, and it can work.
But if you’re anything like me, by the time you started paying attention to self-help advice, you were already kind of at a point where incorporating it seemed just like another task for the list, a list that, AT THAT MOMENT couldn’t really be cut down.
Like for example if you’re working two jobs and going to school, okay you need the money. You need to stay in school (if that’s an important thing to you, as it was to me). You can’t afford time for this or that, and you also can’t afford money for all these other things. You’re already stressed and trying to fit in ten minute workouts isn’t going to work because it’s another task and when you can’t manage it, you just feel even worse about yourself.
Right? It’s not useful. No matter how good a workout would make you feel, at the moment, trying to plan workouts is actually making it all worse.
More self-help needs to address the need to first get to a space where self-help will work, where you have the mental space to deal with it. This isn’t exactly the same as thinking long-term (because that can be difficult when you’re in this place that self-help advice can’t quite reach.)
Maybe it’s as simple as “next term, less classes.” Like you still need to finish the term. But next term will actually be different. Maybe it’s setting a firm no to future projects or getting out of projects you’re already in, no matter how these projects are being pitched to you.
It won’t fix things right away. In fact, it won’t really fix anything, except that it’ll get you, eventually, to a place where you can START to fix things, finally. And goddamn, that is worth something.
Just. It’s a process. Make sure you have the tools before you start trying to fix something. Otherwise you’re just screaming and whacking a nail with your fist wondering why it’s just hurting you instead of building something nice.
romaincrisis
