What if Well Being Was This Simple?

I’ve noticed in myself, my friends, and my community a benign tendency towards wellness initiatives that quickly veers into optimization and then overwhelm.

An example of this is the morning routine I designed for myself a few years ago that consisted of no less than seven ten-minute increments of different healthy habits. (And probably didn’t even last a week.)

It’s the friend who is so focused on checking off all the tick marks on her well-being to-do list in the hopes that it will keep her safe that she doesn’t really feel well. And in fact goes through repeated cycles of effort and then total rebellion.

It’s the health focused media we consume that always seems to have yet another set of five-minute activities that we should be doing to be feeling our best. (Hey facial yoga, I see you!)

I don’t know about you, but these things rarely leave me feeling better. They make me feel stressed and like I’m falling short. Like I'm not taking the best care of myself. It’s daunting to expect myself to be so on the ball. 

And then there’s this place my brain can get to where I get so focused on the tracking that I lose all enjoyment in whatever I’m doing. I’m no longer going for a walk or reading because it’s fun and I want to do it. I’m going for a walk or reading for ten minutes a day to demonstrate that I’ve completed the task. I want to get the activity over with so that I can check it off and pretty much miss the moment entirely.

This can also bleed into turning our metrics into morality. Like it was a good day, or I was a good person today, if I got my 10,000 steps in. And conversely, I must’ve had a bad day or maybe I’m not a good person if I didn’t. It can really play into perfectionism.

I’d like to propose that we take a different approach.

Because these prescriptions and metrics miss being attuned to the moment that we’re in with kindness.

Our systems are more rhythmic than linear.

So being able to pay attention to and honor our energy, our interests, and our needs in any given moment is going to give us better data around what to do than an impartial prescription that misses what’s actually going on for us.

You might be in a push season at work or at home where the thing you’re most needing is compensatory downtime and rest. So instead of doing anything that requires extra effort you’re just curling up and lying down whenever you can.

Or you might be in a transition period with a lot of free time and long, wandering walks are appropriate to the moment. You’ve got the time and the space and you’re enjoying seeing all the greenery and helping to generate new ideas through with movement.

If we look at our systems not as something to perfectly optimize, but as things to work with and to be kind to, I think we get a lot farther in terms of our good feelings about life.

Because then instead of living life with a perpetually unsatisfied taskmaster in our heads, we can live with a kind voice that is gently encouraging us to be in reality and to honor our basic needs as best we can in any given life situation.

Of course, there are choices that are going to be better for us than others and aiming in the general direction of good habits is fantastic.

But underneath all of those healthy habits if we can try to be kind and compassionate with ourselves we’re going to be doing so much more for our well-being.

Remember, it’s ok to be imperfect. It’s ok for you to have different bandwidths for things at different points in your life. It’s ok to rest when you’re tired. It’s ok to be human. Maybe the thing to do is less pushing and more accepting.