How to do less (someone please tell me)

"Anything less than your everything is not good enough"

Is a lesson that's unfortunately very deeply engrained into my head.

That I have to work as hard as I physically can at everything I do.

That anything less is cheating or failure or "not good enough"

That anything less than complete burnout is a failure.

. . .

I wish it wasn't.

I want to write about why and how I think I can move forward.

Why (easy)

There's the easy answer that it's what capitalist society pushes for.

"Always be productive"

"Increase value in the world"

"Always be working as hard as you can"

The society we live in just inherently pushes people as far as they can go for the sake of increasing "value".

It sucks for everyone and we all hate it.

Rewarded

However.

If you do work very hard, you get rewarded immensely.

Having a strong work ethic has gotten me very very far in life.

I've had immense success in part because I always work very hard at everything that I do.

It's hard to unlearn something when it's been so deeply rewarded my entire life.

From getting good grades in elementary school and being rewarded by my peers and my parents.

To getting into good universities based on my highschool grades.

To getting scholarships based on my university grades.

To getting an excellent job based on my personal projects.

To getting raises at said job based on my performance.

Every step of the way, I've been rewarded for my hard work.

Which makes sense, hard work should pay off.

But what it's taught me is that "going as hard as possible is a good thing"

I've never been taught the opposite.

I've never been told that the opposite was even okay.

No one has ever taught me how to slow down.

Why (medium)

My dad taught me a lot of things.

Like literally, in sports and in math, he taught me a lot of stuff.

But also figuratively, in life.

He taught me how to teach, which is now how I write.

He taught me how to be a good person, which I carry on with me through life.

And relevantly for this post, he taught me to work hard.

He worked extremely hard.

Extremely hard.

I saw his work ethic and it taught me that it was what was normal.

To work long long hours and always put your full 100% into each work day.

That's just what I saw and what I internalized and what I learned.

It's what I was taught.

Why (hard)

There's one final "why" for why I believe I have to work myself to the point of physically not being able to continue.

And that's a lack of self worth.

I always come back to this idea of self worth.

I see my anxious attachment style and I see the root cause as a lack of self worth.

I see my past self living in shame and I see her immense lack of self worth.

And I see my overworking habits now as another way that my lack of self worth manifests in my day to day life.

I am not worth anything if I'm not productive.

Like Brennan in this clip, I've always thought that I'm only worth something if I'm useful.

Let's backtrack.

The idea that I'm worth something is something that I've been able to cultivate and build for myself.

I have a strong sense of self worth nowadays.

I am insightful, intelligent, kind, helpful, etc etc

I have value in who I am as a person.

However a lot of that value is derived from how hard I work.

I work hard at being insightful for my friends and peers.

I'm not just smart, I work hard to cultivate that intelligence.

I work hard to be a kind person.

I try very hard to be as helpful as possible.

I have value because of how hard I work.

The idea that I could have value as a person, just by being myself, without having to try?

That I don't believe, yet, not even a little bit.

And so I fall into my usual cycles.

I work too hard, burn myself out, and then work harder to try to "cure" my burnout.

Until I mentally crash and feel suicidal and become completely unable to do anything.

It's a vicious cycle and one that I haven't figured out a way out of.

Cultivating self worth

In order to stop this cycle I have to figure out how to cultivate a sense of self worth that isn't tied to my productivity.

Something that isn't tied to my efforts or my work, but rather something tied to how I intrinsically am as a person.

Something that stuck out to me during my residential was the idea that, "you are worthy, intrinsically, unchangably".

I want to believe that.

That I am worth something, intrinsically, as a person.

Not because of my producitivity. Not because my work. Not because of how useful I am to someone.

That I am worth something to myself and to others just by being a person.

I don't believe that yet.

. . .

But I want to.

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