Day 14: How can you support yourself even more?

I have already touched on some strategies to cope with the feeling of being overwhelmed in the past, so I will make it short today. 

Source: https://casv.org.au/self-care/

Like I wrote before, I realize timing my work, regardless of whether I manage to stay within the limit in the end, helps me kick start it more easily. Hence I will create this sense of pseudo-urgency to help me overcome the initial feeling being overwhelmed. Exercising regularly also makes me feel great. Also I will try meditation in the future as well.

The second strategy is to break down a seemingly monumental undertaking into many concrete, minute tasks so each single step seems effortless enough to complete. I manage to use this technique to overcome my reluctance to do stretching at night - because the session involves around 20 minutes of tiring, painful exercise, I was tempted many times to put off the ordeal. Yet by focusing only on the imminent posture, followed by another at a time, I am able to edge myself through it. I shall employ this strategy in other areas as well.   

Yet perhaps most importantly, I realize once I get into a prolonged task I will automatically set the bar higher and higher. For example, while I started the first journal with a relatively free-writing mood, as the blog goes on I become more strict, demanding myself to write longer and better which eventually leads to burnout. While I can understand my desire to improve on any recurring task, this mindset also makes the task increasingly stressful and hard to finish. When this happens, I need to tell myself to lean back a bit. I am take things too seriously in life, I have been told several times. I am not intending to refute it.

This is also why I am calling it short today.