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Lent 2021: Being Kind to Myself

The kids having a go at my jigsaw
These reflection prompts are from Rachel Macy Stafford's Soul Shift Lift Course, which I'm using to work at becoming more present, more intentional, and softer in my relationship with my children and husband. Highly recommend it.

How often do you nourish yourself with necessities like plenty of water, rest, exercise, nutritious food, or by engaging in a hobby? Is this enough or not? How do you know? 

Having given it a bit of thought, I think my tendency can be to go overboard one way or the other. I mean, my food is taken care of and is in its place, thank you God for Greysheet, so nutritionally I lack nothing and I'm not using food as a reward. It's just food.

But I wouldn't need the Greysheet if my tendency wasn't naturally towards gluttony. It may not look like it from the outside, but I am deeply lazy. I don't exercise. If I can avoid doing a chore, I will. If I can do something at less effort, I will. I got through school with medium grades because that didn't take any effort... if grades got too low I'd put a little bit of effort in, just to stop any hassle, but I never went beyond what was absolutely necessary.

This applies to things I don't love doing, of course. On the other hand, I can be terribly obsessive about stuff I get into. I bought the kids a jigsaw over Christmas and got into it so much that I then bought a 1000-piece jigsaw for myself, and now I'm on my second one. And I question if I should be doing this: it's not productive, it's a waste of time really, but I can easily start and stop it which is the advantage over, say, painting or sewing which I also like but needs a certain amount of setup before I can get started and isn't so easy to leave in the middle of it. 

I'm not into pampering myself either. A bath every so often is as far as it goes, I don't do mani / pedicures or anything like that - and I wouldn't find those relaxing or rewarding to do either. 

I guess the way I know whether it's enough is whether I can function happily. If I get emotionally out of whack, angry and easily irritated, something needs to shift. But, to be fair, with enough sunshine (especially relevant at this time of year!) and thanks to the food being in its place, all the other "hobby" stuff is just added icing on the cake, so to speak. Not necessary.

Describe your inner voice in a couple of words. Would you want your child or loved one to have an inner voice with those same qualities? 

Clinical. Detatched. Analytical. 

There is no compassion, let alone love, in my inner voice. It isn't mean, as such - I never "put myself down" mentally or call myself stupid as I have read of others doing... my inner voice is just totally clinical. If I ever spoke that way to my children, I think they would break down in tears: they are used to love from me, it would be a huge shock to their system.

I do look at others that way naturally; it's a process, and has been for many years, to develop a habit of choosing compassion when looking at others. Funnily enough I've never had an issue with this with the kids, although I do occasionally look at them with that detatched clinical eye - but that is the exception, not the norm. 

The way I kind of think of it is that I need to wear glasses of love. My natural gaze, the one I default to, is clinical and detatched and analytical, without love or compassion. And like my natural eyes, it needs correcting. My natural eyes are so bad that I can't function without vision correction; and really my inner gaze is the same. It is dangerously distorted. Somehow, with my children, the glasses of love are firmly fixed most of the time; with others, I am consciously working on wearing them more; with myself, that hadn't really occurred to me. I always took my inner voice as something fixed, something I can choose to listen to or not but thoughts come without bidding and I can't un-think them. So perhaps there's a point in working on wearing those glasses for myself as well.

Do you think having a more positive inner voice could improve your everyday life or your relationship with a specific person? Please elaborate.

Again, my inner voice isn't negative as such, it's just devoid of love. My family relationships are naturally different, and somehow always have been by the grace of God. But others - I have been consciously working on developing compassion in how I look at people, to bring that tint of love into the cold-white analytical gaze... it's a work in progress. It comes more naturally with some than with others. This has been a good reminder to think through.
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