What I Found When I Embraced a Lack of Discipline
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
I've been thinking a lot about self-acceptance lately, and when I returned from vacation a month ago, I decided to try something different with my writing routine.
I split my working hours between my accounting work for clients and writing. My accounting work fluctuates -- in some months I have a lot of accounting work, others a bit less. It take up from a third to half of my time. I typically try to spend half the day writing (or doing related work) and the other half doing accounting if my workload allows.
However, the words doesn't always come out consistently when I do that. My mental and emotional states affect how well I can tap into the part of me that has something to say. Sometimes I string words together, but they don't make much sense. Or I look at my notes and can't follow the train of thought I was having when I wrote them.
I've been understanding that stress and anxiety has enormous impact on how well I write, and the more I reduce stress, the more easily my words flow. I started practicing that recently when I learned to surrender what I don't have control over. Letting go of posting schedules and keeping up with social media reduced a lot of stress for me (not that I was keeping up anyway).
My self-acceptance practice goes hand-in-hand with surrender because a lot of my anxiety came from feeling like I need to prove my worth. Because I was desperate to prove myself, I felt the need to do things that other businesspeople do. But I didn't like a lot of it. I ended up feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things I had to learn. Trying to keep up with social media made me feel lost in the sea of voices jostling for attention while not understanding where I fit in. Writing turned into a chore rather than a joy.
At 41 years old, when I get anxious and self-critical, I have physiological consequences -- fatigue, brain fog, poor memory. My body no longer shrugs off the stress I put it under. My journey toward self-acceptance came out of necessity because it was affecting my quality of life.
I had to gradually accept that it's okay to be who I am, start where I am, and do what comes naturally. There are many ways to promote my work, not just through social media. And maybe I will never make much money from it, but the important thing is that my writing comes from my soul.
All of that is to say, when I finally had time to write after a busy summer, I didn't do so immediately because I didn't feel like it. I wanted time to play and relax and not schedule myself so tightly. I didn't want to return to writing because I had to, but because I wanted to.
I don't have much of a problem with discipline, but I had learned discipline through threat -- threat of punishment, threat of not getting what we want, threat of disapproval. This is what I learned from my parents and from school. We force kids to do what they don't want to by dangling rewards or threatening punishment, and a similar dynamic continues through adulthood. It shows up in how our bosses motivate us at our jobs. It shows up in the relationship between individuals and government/society. It shows up within us between ourselves and our goals. It's what we know.
I wanted to explore what would happen if I let go of that reward-punishment dynamic. What if I didn't have to be threatened and pressured into doing something? Would I still return to it? I wanted to find out what intrinsic motivations I had when I let extrinsic motivations end.
So when I didn't have accounting work, I played video games (an epic post-apocalyptic adventure called Horizon Forbidden West). I let myself get sucked in, and I loved it. Video games can be really calming for me as it allows me to shut out the world and things that cause me anxiety. It's been my longtime source of relief and escape.
After days of light work and a lot of play, I felt like writing again. The ideas started coming, and the thought of writing felt engaging and exciting. Over the next couple of weeks, I found that I naturally want to spend about a third of my time playing, doing something fun that doesn't necessarily accomplish anything. When I get enough play time, I feel happier in general, and my urge to do something meaningful returns without pressure or anxiety.
Of course, writing is something I've chosen and have been working on for several years. Sometimes we let go and find that we don't want to do it anymore, and that can be disappointing or threatening if it's something we spent a lot of time investing in or depend on for our livelihood. That's what I realized about accounting.
It doesn't always solve our problems to let go of extrinsic motivations and find out where we land. It just tells us where our truth is. Then we have to choose what to do with that truth and navigate the obstacles that may exist, and that is not always easy.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what thoughts it might have provoked for you. Let me know down below!
