Be Kind To Yourself

 It is really important that at this busy time of year, you are kind to yourself.

This year I set a goal to walk/ride X amount of kilometres and signed up to Conqueror challenges to ensure I got a medal for my efforts. This would be the 3rd year running (pardon the pun) and every year I've increased the goal a little bit further. Last term, I didn't keep a daily record to keep myself accountable and quite frankly used every excuse I could to excuse my 'slack weeks'. Accordingly, towards the end of Term 3 when I updated my records, I realised how far behind I was and subsequently, had to work hard to get back on track. According to Conqueror records, I am now 40kms ahead of what I would need to be at this point, to reach my end of year goal.

For the past 5 or so weeks, I have been getting up at least 30 minutes earlier to go for a morning walk and get my steps up at the start of the day. While this is beneficial for my mental physical health, it had its drawbacks too. The last couple of weeks have been very busy at school yet, despite being very tired and getting to bed late at night, I still got up early in the mornings and pushed myself to get everything done before I fell exhausted into bed at the end of the day.

Last night as I was going to bed I gave my 'routine and lack of sleep' some serious evaluation. I told myself I will still set the alarm early but choose whether to stay in bed for another half an hour when I woke up.  This morning the alarm went off, I reset it and got up half an hour later.

As I showered and got ready for school, I began scolding myself for my laziness and not getting up early enough to go for a walk. I did this for quite some time and then I stopped and had an epiphany.

I need to be kind to myself.

If I was talking to a friend in the same situation as me, I would advise them to be kind to themselves and not push themselves too hard at this time of year. I need to be kind to myself.

I need to remember that this is an extremely busy time of year, I am ahead in my distances and I don't have to push myself so much.

There is only one week to go before I am on a break so I need to be kind to myself. I need to pace myself to make it in one piece at the end. There are some things I can catch up on after this week.

I need to be kind to myself so that I can be kind to others. When I am tired, stressed and pushing myself, I can be less tolerant and gracious than usual and more sensitive when others are speaking to me.

I need to be kind to myself so that I can be kind to others.

Be kind to yourself.