Residual beneficiary

The residual beneficiary is who’s left when everyone else has been taken care of. One of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of us making is that in our lives, the residual beneficiary is us!

We’ll take care of our boss’s needs, customer needs, employee needs, family needs, and then finally what’s left (if there is anything left!) we’ll maybe take care of our needs.

Your mental health is not an afterthought. It’s not something to devote some time too only when everything else is in order. The counter intuitive thing to do when there’s overwhelming demands on you is to satisfy your own needs first. When your mental health is sufficiently topped up, you’re going to be able to deliver your best.

If you were looking for permission to take some time to top yourself up, this is it. Your mental well-being is not a luxury, it’s priority number one.

Doing The Right Thing / Tough Self Love

Being compassionate towards yourself doesn’t mean that you take the easy road. In fact, there’s times when compassion can be considered tough love.

If we take the easy choice, we may avoid temporary discomfort, and we’ll replace it with long term resentment or dissatisfaction.

To build ourselves up, we ask ourselves what would be the right thing, what has the best long term payoff for everyone, and what would I be proud of doing today?

This, coupled with an understanding that it may be difficult or uncomfortable in the moment, and encouraging ourselves like we would our best friend or our child, is what leads to self satisfaction and a happy, calm mind.

Day by day, by committing to repeated small acts that you deem worthy and important, AND following through with them, we become someone we’re proud of being.

It is NOT about being tough

The first problem with the idea of toughness is when tend to think of it as a fixed trait. You either have it or you don’t. And the opposite of toughness is weakness, right? So if you’re not tough you’re weak. Which means anytime our attempts to be tough fail, and they inevitable always will with enough stress, we’re left being inadequate.

Secondly there’s little to no evidence toughness leads to a better performance or improved mental health. So we’re working hard at building a mental trait we don’t really believe to possible to build, and one that doesn’t give us the payoff we’re hoping for!

So what’s the alternative? Compassion! It seems counter intuitive but gentle encouragement combined with empathy of the struggle you’re facing will lead to a more enjoyable effort and a better outcome.

If you’ve been trying tough it out and it hasn’t worked so far, why not try a compassionate approach and see how it works for you?

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You can’t change your mind if you don’t know your mind

Taking daily quiet time is the fundamental practice of mindset change because it allows us to build awareness. We humans are the only species capable of knowing that we’re thinking and experiencing.

Most of the time we’re on autopilot, with our environment and old routines determining our habits. When we take some time each day, and it doesn’t have to be much, we can step back and see what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing with a little more objectivity.

We start with it in a formal practice like taking your mindful minute with your morning coffee. This allows us to build the skill in a deliberate fashion.

Then we’ll start to be more aware throughout the day, starting with low pressure situations and as we develop we’ll be able to stay aware and present in times of higher stress. The awareness allows us to see if our course of actions and habits of thinking are helpful or unhelpful. But before we can do that, we have to invest the time to become aware of it.

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Why I didn’t work on myself sooner

When I was younger, I didn’t work on myself because I held the believe that I was either whole and worthy, or broken and somehow wrong. This prevented me from doing the necessary work on me with a professional that would heal my mental wounds.

I didn’t see a psychologist because if I did, my ego told me I was broken and weak. So I tried to ignore any pain or negative feelings, deny them and bury them.

It was only when I realised that you can be both worthy and a work in progress that I could do any meaningful work on my mental state. That it’s not an either you’re sick or you’re healthy, but it’s a continuing process of self discovery and self improvement.

It’s possible that you, your job, your relationships, your fitness, your finances, etc etc are good AND can be improved. When we adopt this mindset we can let go of any shame associated around getting help and looking for a better way.

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You need to know how you’re feeling

None of us would like to think we’re being controlled by someone else. We’d fight back against it and we’d be right to rebel.

This is why it’s so important to know how you’re feeling and understand your behaviours so you’re not being controlled by your past self.

Your past self did things because it was the best strategy at the time. Now, however, it may not be the best thing for you.

The first step is to give yourself enough stillness that you can begin to objectively see your behaviour. Ryan Holiday wrote a whole book on this, but you really only need a few minute long breaks throughout your day to build clarity to reflect on your behaviours.

The more you notice your actions the more you can uncover the motives behind them. When we know this we can ask if this is really the best way to get our needs met?

We want to understand ourselves and our needs so we can feel our best AND give our best. We’re going to have a much greater impact giving from a place of abundance rather than to get what you need in return or because you feel you aren’t enough.

Introspection is the best thing you can do for everyone in your life, most of all you.

I give myself permission to feel

We all engage in numbing or distracting activities some of the time. A lot of us, we do this a lot of the time.

It’s because feelings can be overwhelming, and in the past the behaviour we’re doing alleviated that feeling, or at least stopped us from feeling it for a bit.

Giving yourself permission to feel is hugely liberating. And yes, it can be a little scary (or a lot scary!) We give ourselves permission to feel when we understand that feelings are natural signals about the world, our needs and our actions. What would happen if we approached our feelings with curiosity?

We can get curious about the direct sensation of what we’re feeling - e.g. where in the body do I feel anger, happiness, shame, excitement etc.

We can also get curious about what need is generating the feeling. It’s important here to distinguish between needs and strategy. Let’s say for example we’re feeling lonely. We have a need for connection. Our strategy could be to spend time with a particular person in a particular setting. We can often get hung up on the strategy and be upset when it can’t happen. But if we step back we can look at other ways our needs can be met.

But before we get there we need to build the skill or recognising our emotions and giving ourselves permission to feel them, instead of instantly looking to satisfy or numb them.

Expecting Others to Intuit Our Feelings

One of the biggest ways we undermine our happiness is by expecting others to intuit our feelings and then being frustrated/disappointed when they don’t act in a way we hope they will.

This makes sense when we’re kids, we don’t really know our needs, or what our emotions are, so the adults in our life generally try satisfy our needs for us.

When we explain it like this we can see the trouble is we’re never really taught how to do this ourselves, and just expected to figure it out on our own. Then we grow up, expecting others to know our needs, how we feel about them, and our preferred strategy for satisfying them. The result is a whole load of anger and annoyance!

A healthier, and admittedly much harder approach, is to take full responsibility for your needs, strategies, and feelings. This takes time and effort, and doesn’t mean you have to do everything all your own. The time spent here saves us a lot of hurt as we gradually become less dependant on others to figure out what we’re feeling and what we want.

Then we’re able to communicate more clearly, enjoy healthier relationships and better peace of mind.

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A gift to your future self

A few weeks back I put out a video saying “Julia Roberts was wrong”, criticising a point a client had relayed to me from ‘Eat, Pray, Love.”

This is my apology note to Elizabeth Gilbert after listening to her on the Tim Ferriss podcast where she dropped this gem.

Very often, we avoid doing things we know our good for ourselves. Mainly because they’re not immediately fun and take some work. When Ms Gilbert is faced with one of these tasks (she names flossing as one of them) she reframes it as a gift to her future self.

Studies also show that giving and service for others can immensely boost our well-being. I never considered the ‘other’ to be your future self. This is a fantastic way to think about doing all the things we know we should do but don’t do. It has the power boost our mood in the present and making our future live better.

She also adds in that she can thank her former self for what they’ve done (like cleaning up the apartment over the weekend) and I think it’s a brilliant take on gratitude as well.

I’m going to fold both of these into my self care practice, why don’t you try it as well and let me know how it goes?

Structure For Sanity

Here’s some advice I can give you if you’re finding yourself bored, frustrated, or lacking motivation lately.

As humans we’ve some fundamental needs, and oftentimes these can be contradictory. For example we’ve a need to feel fulfilled, which we can only do if we stretch ourselves outside our comfort zone a little. But we’ve also the strong desire to conserve energy.

Creating a structure around our day gives us a sense of order, stability and security. It can help us do what we need to do in order to feel like we didn’t waste the day, and feel proud of ourselves.

But we don’t want to be so rigid that every single minute of our day is filled in, as this goes against our need for freedom and autonomy.

Create what I like to call a tentpole structure - various time slots throughout the day when you’ve schedule in the really important things: exercise, connection, and tasks that increase the quality of your life/bring you closer to your goals.

Create as many of those time slots as you need while also giving yourself as much freedom as you like. The structure allows you to feel proud of how you’ve spent while also providing you the space to enjoy your days.

If you’d like help creating your structure feel free to book a call with me. Thank you!

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