The little things

Each time I accomplish something, no matter how small I am learning to celebrate it.  Because no matter how small that thing is, I did it and it is a part of a progression of that small thing turning into something bigger.

It has been said in my blog before that I am a huge fan of a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins and currently I am reading her book “The high five habit” and though I am not seeing massive results three days into forming this habit.  I did notice today a small, very faint in fact, smile on my face when I went to the mirror this morning.

I’m not presuming you know what “The high five habit” is all about, so I shall tell you.

Mel Robbins suggests that each morning you high five yourself in the mirror in order to acknowledge yourself, try not to criticise yourself the first thing in the morning – self-love is key to making solid foundations in other relationships, if you don’t love yourself or take care of yourself enough, you can’t do that for other people, can you? 

Why? 

Because you will feel depleted in yourself and you won’t give it your best shot. 

Many people feel that high fiving themselves in the mirror daily boosted their esteem and performance throughout the day.

Why? 

Because a high five is a positive reinforcement and it makes you feel you have value.

Three days, that’s all I’ve done so far, though when this post goes out it will really be five days, because I am posting this to schedule.

I have barely done any writing since September 2023 but I am celebrating any writing I do even if it’s only a small sentence now. 

Why?

Because I am feeling depleted and I don’t like it and it was with Mel Robbins that I learned I felt depleted in so many different areas in my life through a free course I finished last week ran by her.

https://www.melrobbins.com/takecontrolthanks

I learned all these tiny little areas of my life built up and gradually I became overwhelmed and because my social circle died around four years ago – I never found a way through other people to pick myself up again.  It’s all self-reliance only, 100% pure self-reliance and most people can’t pick themselves up when they are being 100% self-reliant, but I have no choice right now so any little thing is going to be great progress for me right now!

Today I have written two poems, this blog post and approximately 1600 words towards my vampire project, not a lot really – not for me and how I used to write several years ago!  But I am learning to be kind to myself, not to whip myself so much because I have learned recently I am an incredibly mean slave driver to myself and a tyrannical bully – as I always felt I was so darn lazy, yet I wasn’t.

In the scheme of thing, in the law of averages I wasn’t.

I’ve been working under overwhelming conditions for a decade and didn’t realise it and the more I was putting onto myself the harder and harder I would beat myself up about it.

No wonder I struggled with suicidal thoughts for so long, no wonder I had no drive and energy to get out of bed and try harder.

I was beaten, purely by myself – no one else did that to me!

I escaped abusive relationships and I became free from all of that and I became my own abuser, pushing myself constantly, being hard on myself for the smallest thing and mistake, because that’s how I was trained by people from my past and I was carrying over in my head, their idealism of what I should be doing and putting it on myself. 

Effectively I escaped abuse from other people but replaced it with me abusing myself in the same way they did to me.

It takes something like doing a course by someone like Mel Robbins or reading their books to really get deep inside of yourself to realise these things are happening to you, because of you.

What’s more, these things can change because of you too – only you can save yourself from yourself!

It’s a weird world, but it’s true for all of us!

You don’t need someone else to get things to happen in your life, you do it for yourself.  Letting someone else hand things to you;

A; is very unusual to find someone who will do that to you anyway and…

B; handing your power over to them, thus disempowering your own potential!

If you feel you need to rely on someone for ANYTHING then you have chosen to be at another person’s mercy.

Now for me, to a certain extent this is fine for me, because I am happy to have some direction from others. 

But most people want to master themselves fully and that’s fine too.

However, even the most ambitious people can often fall into the trap of disempowerment because of their reliance on another person and they will become frustrated and even vicious with that person if that person doesn’t live up to their expectations to receive what they want from them.

Some people do this in romantic relationships, in fact a lot of people do.  They mistake their need for love with a need for resource and often confuse the two.

If you love someone, you don’t use them – you love them, you care about them, their happiness if your happiness and you will protect that the best you can… if that’s not true in your relationship, then there is something seriously wrong with the relationships foundation and it will fail.

Do you know how rare it is to find someone who will love you selflessly?  It’s actually very special and many relationships fail because one or even the both of them fail to look at the relationship from a selfless perspective.

Now this wasn’t something Mel Robbins said, this is me talking now.  This is what I have experienced – I am not perfect, I’ve done the same in my past too and it’s not right and it’s not fair!

Where am I going with this?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But then again, nobody really knows what’s going on in their lives do they, let’s be honest?  We’re all just learning as we plod along, doing our thing. 

So, today I’ve done 1600 words towards my vampires – I celebrate that!

I did three lessons on DuoLingo for Italian – I celebrate that!

I wrote two poems – I celebrate that!

I read several pages of a book and magazine – I celebrate that!

I managed to eat a breakfast which is rare for me!  – I celebrated that too!

All these micro things are a progression to something bigger – foundations of something that will be big for my future.

The little things count, because doing nothing doesn’t.

Sitting back and thinking doesn’t count as productive time, because you’re not doing anything in action, you’re just thinking!

Anyone can think!

Anyone can waste oodles of time just sitting back doing nothing but plan everything to the letter!

But action brings things into motion, action is progress, no matter how small – it counts, it’s a manifestation, it is beyond thought, action is tangible, thought is not.

So when you write 50 words towards your novel and other writers laugh at your dreams of being a writer, remember this… you wrote 50 words, you didn’t just think them and that counts towards creating a book.  Sitting back and thinking about 50 words and not writing them, doesn’t make you a writer, it makes you a thinker!

Honestly how many writers out there think away hundreds of words per day but fail to write them down because they weren’t confident about it, didn’t trust the process and felt they needed those words to be absolutely perfect before they wrote them?

Also, how many days go by, weeks, months, years even because of the same thing?  Because of writers block?  That doesn’t exist actually; writer’s perfection does and guess what?  It doesn’t have to be perfect until you send it off to be published and even then it won’t be!

Just get the thing written, because you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, so why waste time trying to be the impossible?

Nobody is perfect!

Not even the bestsellers, it doesn’t exist because perfection can’t be defined as everyone has a different idea of what that means to them!

So what you find as perfect is somebody else’s trash, basically.

Cold hard truth and I am not sorry for saying it.

The only successful people in the world are the people doing the things they want to do – doing, not thinking, not waiting on a hand out, not sitting back a dreaming – doing!

So celebrate the little things you actually do, not the great ideas you thought about and didn’t do anything with!

Thanks for reading!