Giving yourself time to adjust to the progress you make

After doing my August evaluation, I felt very relieved and excited for making plans for September. I’m starting a new term at school in the new degree program I’ve chosen and realized that my career goals will also change. I had a specific job that I planned to apply for when I was in my previous program, that no longer interests me. That got me thinking about all of the changes that I’ve been going through both external and internal. I seem to move to the next thing to change rather quickly. I was thinking about how I still want to change jobs but my current job allows me a lot of freedom that I may need to adjust to where I am right now with all of this change in my life. I think I’ve worked pretty hard to create a more peaceful environment while I’m working, so that I have energy to do other things that are important. I always wanted to do my school work when I had downtime at work but didn’t think I was caught up enough. Now that I’m caught up and playing nice with management, I may finally have the opportunity to try this idea out. The question that comes up is how do I just enjoy the progress I’ve made without trying to add to it? Like, why don’t I just chill with easy work days for a while? The immediate answer that comes to mind is take advantage of the downtime! Do more! Ultimately so I can do less when I get home. But I’m just really curious about the time spent enjoying the progress I’m making. It almost seems nonexistent. How do I make space for that and not view it as sitting still to be “safe” or “comfortable”? I see how that was/is something I’ve done in the past as a stress or trauma response.

 

 

Answer:

You are an adult. You get to decide what “enjoying” means to you. The only problem I see here is you judging yourself for having the desire to do more.  Patterns that we’ve had for a long time are very likely going to at least pop their head in to say hello when there’s an opportunity. So what?  What are you making this mean?

How can you love this part of you that thinks more is more as you lean into your desire to enjoy how things are at present?