When I first blogged about capacity, I thought I had my shiz together. Mostly. The universe had other plans and I let something I care about slip through my fingers. Boy, does that send this recovering perfectionist into a spiral. Fortunately, I’ve learned a lot about how to be both accountable to others and have compassion for myself. So, I apologized for letting people down and did my best to move on, trying not to attach stories to the mistake about how other people were judging me because here’s the thing, one, people aren’t thinking that much about me and, two, if they are judging me, that’s on them, not on me.
But the incident got me thinking about how I approach capacity, boundaries and how I manage my energy. I came across a quote from a book I just finished that really resonated for me.
“Balance your body, mind, and soul. Without a balance, you may become unhappy. Spend time doing things related to all these three aspects of you. For your body, take care of it, have fun with it, enjoy it, use it, exercise it, feed it well, rest it. For your mind, continuously feed it with new knowledge, exercise it, think properly and deliberately, rest it. For your spirit, learn about it, exercise it, meditate and get in contact with it. And for all three, listen to them and honor what they tell you, and love them.” David Cameron Gikandi, Happy Pocket Full of Money
This hit hard because being balanced, centered, and rooted is how I manage my energy and how I navigated the incident I mentioned above. Journaling, meditating, movement, nourishment and creativity are some of my favorite energy management tools. My intention is to always plan meals, move, incorporate good, solid habits into my life and use the present moment to make choices that will set me up for success in the future. That’s how I exercise my ability to hold things, to grow my capacity without shortchanging my soul and my relationships. Sometimes everything goes according to plan and works out perfectly.
And sometimes I fall on my face.
That’s when healthy compassion comes in because failure is a part of growing, learning and living and the only way to avoid it is to avoid life.
As my school career comes to a close and an exciting new chapter unfolds, I am going to have to exercise those self-compassion muscles because I KNOW I am going to make mistakes and fall on my face. I KNOW people will make snap judgements about what I write, how I disseminate that writing, where my career is at and the choices I make. Their judgement is not my concern. Mistakes and failures are not my concern. My only concern is living my own life according to my values of creativity, community and connection and that is where my energy and my capacity live.
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