One Habit to Ditch If You Want to Be More Productive

Last week I missed an appointment with a coaching client.

My phone crashed twice this month and apparently my calendar didn't get fully synced back up. So this client called while I was with another, and I realized immediately I must have inadvertently double booked myself.And I definitely had a twinge of "F*, I must have missed something..."

But what didn't happen was my mind didn't dog pile a bunch of self-punishing stories on top of what was actually happening.

Voices in my head didn’t berate me for being stupid or irresponsible (like they definitely would have years ago).

I didn't spend the entire rest of my day feeling like a bad person or incompetent coach or unworthy human being.

This is where the rubber meets the road with our spiritual / self-development / mindfulness practices.

We don't do all this inner work to escape the realities of life. We do it to engage more fully in life.

Practicing mindfulness and meditating and doing yoga and going through coaching and reading spiritual books and repeating supportive mantras doesn't stop us from experiencing moments of pain.

But what those practices do do is help us stop adding (so much) unnecessary suffering to our pain.

Our mindfulness muscle lets us add less insult to injury.

You start to be able to experience moments of pain — fear, resistance, guilt, attachment, loneliness, disappointment — without making them mean something about you.

But one fear that often holds us back from extending compassion to ourselves rather than being harsh with ourselves when we're in a tough spot is the fear that if we stop beating ourselves up, we'll stop getting things done.

Maybe the perfectionist in you believes you need to be tough on yourself or you'll become some lazy hippy wandering aimlessly through your life with a stoned-looking grin on your face.

But let's get real for a minute:

Is telling yourself, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm so stupid!!" when you have a human moment (because that's what those "mistakes" actually are — simply evidence that you're a human being) actually helping you get more done?

The truth is, beating yourself up all day isn’t actually making you more productive.

The habit of beating yourself up as an attempt at motivation is actually likely damming your flow up way more than you realize.

The idea that being a jerk to yourself is helping you become the loving, creative, inspired human being you want to be just doesn’t actually make much logical sense, does it?

How could being cruel to yourself help you be kinder to other people?

Whatever you focus on you get more of.

So if you're an a**hole to yourself all day long, you can be sure that stuff is leaking out onto the people around you.

Beating yourself up is not you taking useful action.

It may feel like you're taking control in some way (like guilt can feel); but actually, it's you giving away your control.

So yah, I missed an appointment and it didn't feel good. I apologized earnestly to the client, offered her a free session in gratitude for her understanding, and I'll be especially mindful to make sure my scheduling and technological ducks are in a row moving forward.

But that was it.

I didn't have to carry a bunch of useless guilt around all day or waste a ton of energy feeling bad without doing anything about it.

That's how it goes.

The more you do this inner "work", the faster you get to set down the loads you're lugging around from the past and the more effortlessly you get to become present again.

The more attentively you attend to each moment of your life, the more compassionate you naturally become to yourself and others.

The more you practice mindfulness, the more you get to let go and enjoy where you are in this moment (and now this one ... and now this one ...).

And the more we let go, the more peace we get to experience.

It's a lifelong practice, letting go of what's already done and being present with and enjoying what actually is.

But it's one that sure is worth the effort, isn't it?

Lots of Love,  

Melissa

PS - If you enjoyed this post, thanks for passing it along to someone who might get a boost from it!