Pre-winter brain fog. Is this a thing for anyone else? When the leaves go from red bright and crispy to soggy brown and dead. Right when winter begins to make her entrance, my mind becomes hazy with the end of the year review that is dooming my internal dialogue.
My response to this? Reading. Will Smith published his memoir this year and it arrived in my lap the second that I needed it. Year in review gives me this uneasy feeling of never feeling like I accomplished enough. Despite moving, breaking into tech, sitting into my passions, and blossoming so many important friendships, stagnation plagues me and how I view my world.
I have a suggestion. Read Will Smith’s memoir. This is the second post I mention it and now that I finished it, I seriously recommend everyone to read it. I remember when Michelle Obama published hers and it was the MUST read of the year. 2019 if I remember correctly. I read it in January 2019 in about a week…because I was unemployed and scared to look up from the pages into the reality of my world of income-less existence. Yet, I am grateful of this avoidance tactic because it allowed me to finish the book and relate to Michelle on so many grounds. I was employed by February.
Will Smith’s book gave me the same feeling, but in a different way. Sometimes we forget how human we are compared to each other. Our own humanity feels complicated and time consuming, yet when we think of how we relate to each other, the standards become higher. We expect people to understand their own humanity and act accordingly.
We choose the behaviors that we believe will deliver us safety, stability, and love. And we repeat them, over and over again. In the movies, we call it a character; in real life, we call it personality.
Will Smith
We are all a combination of decision making processes to ensure our safety and comfort. Our existence is merely learned patterns and habits. Whether you’re the conversation starter, the life of the party, the introvert with insightful things to say, or the one who stays home all together: our priorities are protecting ourselves. That’s okay. That is humanity. What I am fighting through is understanding that of myself and on the everyday basis when someone pisses me off. It’s a journey, ya’ll.
This book reminded me of not only my humanity, but of my magic. Our world is so advanced and extraordinary is so normalized that the standards we hold ourselves to on an EVERYDAY basis are absolutely absurd. We set timelines and deadlines for our output based on the 24 hours in a day that Beyoncé has. At some point, she sat in her room and wondered who she was relatively to someone else. At some point, she too looked into a mirror and decided for herself that she would one day become great. Respect where you are. Reset. Here I talk about some reset tools that I use when I clearly have chaos up there.
I think there’s a clear conflict with how I view success and how I view my magic as a human. I know that to achieve somethings, I need to do somethings. To grow a dump truck and a lean physique, I have to go to the gym. Yet, the concept of hard work and determination exhaust me because the way I view it now doesn’t allow acceptance for moments like this when my brain is fogged.
A productivity centered world is just as meaningless as a lazy one. All opinions are my own, and I said what I said. Constantly setting expectations for yourself, constantly working, living hour by hour being “productive” mostly does yield RESULTS. But, when you are sitting still, how do you feel? Are you beating yourself up for a moment of what you perceive as laziness? Or are you appreciating the work you poured into making the life that you have and allowing yourself to love where you are.
Balance, huh.
