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My Lil red Diary
I carry around a paper diary with me, I recon it is my favourite asset, functional, reliable and bright red. It is fair to say that it nods to my preference of managing my time.
I love structure, I, like many, thrive with a daily routine. My diary is full, in university term time and in the holidays. It’s not just appointments or gym classes though, it is even plans to read, to see friends, to cook and to create. The tendency is absolutely driven by my hyper-achiever. I am uncomfortable when I don’t know what to do next, so I fill up my days weeks in advance.
Grandpa said to me the other day, “Lil, why do you always have to be doing something?” as I was sat there the morning after a big night out writing some content, before going to work a waitressing shift- as was planned in my diary.
I feel a deep sense of relief when I have a solid busy plan in place for the days coming, filled with activities, work, purpose-led things and when I don’t, I tend to be in a grump.
I do plenty of spontaneous things… so it can’t be that bad?!
I justify my schedule and diary by saying to myself that because I often say yes to things, I am spontaneous enough, I am not too rigid. But the truth is, the challenge for me is not in the spontaneous activity but in the emptiness, suggest a more fun activity than the one I have planned and thats an easy spontaneous yes please. Watch me do something that I decide is more productive than my initial plan that morning too, so spontaneous! But what you won’t see me do is leave it blank and let the time fill itself naturally.
This obviously has reproductions of over-exurstion, general pressure and lack of peace of mind but what I have noticed to be one of the more significant downfalls of this is….
my relationships pay a real price
I love a flirt, I love a deep meaningful conversation with a friend and I love going for dinner and catching up. But the thought of being in a relationship, makes me nauseous and the reality of being a good loyal and present friend seems a challenge to me. This is because of a certain rigidity I have with time, it comes from my fear of not being in control. And to boil it down, or to ‘be a bit deep’ as they say, it is really because of a fear of not being enough as I am.
And I am sure you are psychologically aware enough to realise that being unsure about your self-worth and being rigid and uptight are neither particulalry attractive features in a person. Although I am certainly aware of this being true, I continue to make use of this repelling technique because I don’t want to lose control of my schedule and feel frightened.
So help! What to do??
As ever, we start with awareness
But then awareness is useless if we then get stuck in victim or self pity “it is my bad habit to be like this- It isnt something I will ever be able to change.”
So to avoid that, we follow with empathy - patience with yourself- awareness deeper than just noticing the action. Awareness that the reason you behave like this is because you are frightened. Now you can be gentle with yourself, like you would a friend who told you they were scared.
The next is to prove the fear wrong
There are a few ways to do this-
1. Start with Empathy Once you’ve noticed the fear, if opposing it feels too big, give yourself the time and empathy to acknowledge the discomfort within yourself — and comfort yourself accordingly. This is a game changer. Not only are you less likely to act out of fear in the moment, you’re also more likely to find an alternative solution. You’re no longer stuck needing the fearful action.This isn’t a one-time fix — it takes practice and perseverance,like most tricky things. But my goodness, it helps. Even noticeably — straight away.
2. Empowering Action The second step is the best bit. Sometimes empathy can feel a little flat. When I’ve got leftover nervous energy from fear, I want to direct it into something action-based. And when I do, I aim for something that’s empowering, rather than draining or reactive. This means asking:
What gives me confidence?
What positive influence can I use to move in the direction I want?
This kind of action feels exciting. (Though it’s much harder to do if I skip the empathy part.)
These are my favourite techniques, they work with each other and interchangeably. Empathy first is always my most effective route though.
OPPOSITE ACTION –If I notice fear driving me I question it and either do what it tells me not to do or just ignore what it tells me to do. It seems that my noticing isn’t always sharp enough yet – plenty of my fear-driven action still occurs – the fear feels too big.Yet I find that often, acting on the fear doesn’t feel as reassuring as it used to. In fact, it feels threatening – sounds a lil counterintuitive. But really this is the rational wisdom peeping through once space has been cleared from the saboteurs.
ACTIVE CHALLENGES –To prove the fear wrong – setting these at the beginning of the day or week can help challenging fears feel more manageable – time to prepare yourself for them.I also like the incentive of ticking it off the list.
SEEKING PROOF OF THE IRRATIONALITY OF YOUR FEARS –This may be researching, finding real examples from other people, or listing all the alternative possibilities to the worst-case scenario you are basing your fear off.
Most of the time it is quite easy to find evidence to suggest that what you are scared of is irrational, as long as you are looking for it with an open-mind and awareness - but we have covered the latter already and if you are struggling with open-mindedness you can try this LIL MOMENT:
speak next week, love from Lil xx
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