Relieving the Pressure (You Put On Yourself)

by AmyDolores

Tonight carries a certain sort of mental twilight… the kind that emanates from a peaceful state of mind. It streams out of methodical, rhythmic actions, flooding the cracks and crevices of the remaining evening – all resulting in your head just falling on the pillow, feeling content, sleepy and null of those pesky anxieties that keep us from that REM sleep.

These nights rarely occur during a weekday and, knowing this, I stopped myself to put my finger on it. Why was tonight different from any other weekday? What put a subconscious halt to my eternal hamster-wheel of a brain?

I took the pressure off.

I didn’t pick up dinner ingredients. I grabbed Chipolte on the way home. I didn’t debate if I was too exhausted for the gym. I just got up and went… and worked my literal ass off to the point of looking part-radish, part-human. I didn’t force myself to be in bed early. I sat at my desk and started churning this out. 

These are not particularly ambitious or particularly indulgent things but I stopped worrying about meeting a personal quota or agenda. I simply lived and told myself, “this is enough… I am enough for today.”

Nights can’t always be this mentally calm. I will stress about that looming credit card bill or planning that weekend trip or whitening my teeth or whatever other random concoction I need to feel that buzz of stress and 5 minutes of satisfaction for getting it completed. But in this night where I simply let myself live, I’ll remember that taking the pressure off feels so much better than falling into that black hole of “you haven’t done enough.”

Those little bricks will create an eventual big house and no matter how small, they still keep you growing… that one workout, that one blog post.

Pressure off 😉

Ignore the text… this was drawn at work, on the back of a document.