I’m always so tired. From when I wake up to when I go to bed, I am tired. Due to this exhaustion, it feels like I can never achieve what others can achieve in a day, so I’m hardly ever productive and I beat myself up for it. But I must remember that we all have unique limitations. My limitation is constant tiredness and a productive person’s limitation could be stress or a need to rest that they always ignore. We all need to work with what we got, because our successes are always different to others’. We also need to acknowledge that people often present only their best selves and therefore hide their true life or limitations to the public, especially on social media.
We need to accept ourselves and alter what we perceive as successful or productive. We have to change our goals to be more realistic and not judge ourselves for that. Because my disabilities mean I stay home a lot, I’ve made a change to my unrealistic to-do list. My main goal at the moment is to develop a routine in my life – wake up earlier, make the bed, eat three meals a day and go to bed earlier too. A good idea is to implement our reasonable goals in stages. When making a change in your life as a person with limitations, things are a lot harder than it seems to others. Celebrate your successes and progress, no matter how small they are. Break down the real value of each achievement without judgement or comparing to others.
A goal of mine is to go out at least once a week. That might seem ridiculously small to people with a job or those who love or need to go outside, but it’s a big deal to me due to a mix of conditions I have. For one, it drains my energy twice as much than when I’m at home. These little victories can have great benefits for your mental and physical health, and our relationships with people and the world. When I wake up early (for me) I will have more time in the day to be my kind of productive. When I read every night it will inspire me to be creative and allow me to use my brain. If I eat three meals a day (even if it is microwavable, if you can’t cook like me) I will have more energy and it will stop me from snacking. If I do some kind of art often, then it will really help with my mental health, skill improvement and journey to become a professional artist. Introduce new goals at a slow pace, because that way you will be less likely to become overwhelmed if you expect yourself to do too many things at once. Once again, don’t judge your own capabilities and your speed towards all of your goals. You are successful as you are.
What I did to work out what to do was writing in my journal all of my short term goals. Then I highlighted the goals that are reasonable to introduce now or soon. Bonus points if they are beneficial to you or others. Write down all the highlighted goals again, then repeat the highlighting and making a new list process until you have one to three reasonable goals. The hope is to not completely give up, but to also remember that it’s okay to not perfectly do everything and have a break. And celebrate starting a goal and being in the process of making it a part of your routine (if it is reoccurring) or completing it (if it’s a one off goal). And only when you are ready to add a new goal, look at your reasonable goals list again and start one to three new ones, depending on how big they are.
Be kind to yourself! Having limitations, whatever they may be, is completely normal and fully okay. Most if not all people who seem successful struggle too. Your life is yours, so comparing yourself to others is not helpful. We are all successes, just our own success is unique.
Here’s to reasonable goals!
The Wonder Witch 