Wherein I Air More of My Flaws

I’d really like to be one of those people who sends a Christmas card to everyone I’ve ever known. I love sending handwritten notes to people and I love making cards. This year was pretty much an epic fail as far as that goes, thanks to chronic procrastination, an inability to say “no” to anything, and because I allow my work life to mentally drain me.

At work, there is a motivational poster that says:

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do.
It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.

The poster is meant to help people who are trying to get healthy by eating right and exercising, but every time I see it, I think about overcoming the mental challenges in my life.

Perhaps “psychological challenges” might be a better way to put it. I’m talking about these preconceived notions I have (and presumably everyone else has too) that often hold me back from being my best self. Some of them are engrained from childhood. Maybe they’re even inherited. Others, I’ve picked up along the way.

Probably the biggest mental block for me right now is the idea that I am never going to get my procrastination issues under control. I look back over the majority of my adult life and I see it – the ugly beast that is procrastination. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, my brain will tell me that I should be doing something else instead. Or perhaps I will have several goals to accomplish and this invisible force will compel me to check my email and Facebook 47,000 times instead of simply focusing on the task at hand. Before Facebook, it was MySpace, and before that it was LiveJournal and Xanga and AIM and ICQ.

I’ve taken some steps to eliminate the temptation to procrastinate from my life. I no longer play any smartphone games. I turn off most of the notifications on my phone, so if someone sneezes on Facebook, I remain blissfully unaware. I know I could take it further by shutting down my Facebook account entirely and by only checking my email from home, but I think I should be able to learn not to give into temptation so easily.

Like the little engine that could, it’s all about thinking you can, right?

In other news, I got my hair cut last night:

Sometimes overcoming a challenge is simply about doing that which makes you uncomfortable. I used to be afraid of going into hair salons because I believed that I wasn’t attractive enough to be in that kind of environment. (It sounds absolutely ridiculous as I type it!). I was also afraid to try things with my hair because I didn’t want it looking any worse than it already did. But once I got up the courage to go, I learned that they could do some amazing things with my hair and no one ever said I had to leave because I was ugly.

If I don’t post again before Christmas, I hope you all have a beautiful holiday with loved ones and a safe and happy new year.

xx