Your Best Self, Covered in Rhinestones

How many of you are silencing your own thoughts to “get ahead”? How many of you are waiting for that Publishing Clearinghouse check to roll in so you can finally quit your job? Counting down the work hours until you can be free to do whatever you want.

“Do What You Love” Doesn’t Always Work

Not everyone is privileged enough to quote DO WHAT YOU LOVE or EAT PRAY LOVE or whatever it is that they’re telling you to do, but we can all award ourselves five freaking seconds of peace to ask ourselves “Am I handling this in the way that my best self wants?”

Whenever I picture my best self, it’s me, but covered in rhinestones. Queen Kallie, what’s happenin’? But the thing of it is, the real “best version of myself” is actually me, but it’s the me that responds when I’m acting out of love instead of fear.

I know, ya’ll are probably gagging right now about this idea, and I was too. Honestly, I can’t stand the self-help bullshit that tells us to quit our jobs, take a solo vacation to Greece, and take the leap we’ve been waiting for. For many of us, that’s not possible.

There are kids to feed.

There are too many bills to pay.

And hey, that’s okay.

And there’s a whole ‘nother set of people who simply are uninterested in that life. Some people hate traveling. They don’t want to leave their belongings and go on the “adventure of a lifetime.”

They don’t want to quit their jobs in search of “eternal freedom” or whatever it is that self-help “gurus” think is behind that self-imposed door.

Will Work for Happiness

Some of you are happy to go to your job and work hard and come home and handle your business. Good on you. But I’m talking about how we respond to situations.

Why do we say “yes” to things when we really mean “no”?

Why do we keep driving our kids to school when we want our husband to do it?

Why do we give up on what we want just to cater to the needs of others, and, more importantly, what we do expect in return?

The thanks, notice, or appreciation that you’re working toward isn’t going to come from outside. Your kids aren’t going to wake up and appreciate “all you’ve given up.” Your partner might not even notice that you’ve been waking up 20 minutes earlier to make everyone lunch.

And hell, your friends might not notice that you’re blowing off things you’d rather be doing (hallo, beautiful soft bed and Dateline) to hang out and listen to them complain about their most recent workplace conundrum.

Maybe We’re Doing It Wrong

But you do it and you keep doing it. I want you to take a moment right here and ask yourself which of these things you want to keep giving a f**k about. And all the other things? Take a piece out of Sarah Knight’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k and simply stop giving a f**k about that thing.

Why are you grinding through a routine that you don’t even enjoy? And worse, why are you waiting for someone out there to give you something in return?

Damn, give that to yourself. I think you deserve that.