Topping up your cup

Kashmiri chai: heaven in a mug

This is a prequel to a post about a specific event I attended with great hosting, which I'll put on The Outpost blog as good hosting has long been a theme there.

I fell into a pattern, from maybe the late autumn, as part of trying to get better, of consciously "doing something nice, for myself, each day". I plan it if I can, but if not, I make sure to recognise it.  Sometimes it's just a special coffee out, sometimes it's conversation with one of my children, a meal at home, time to read, and sometimes it's an event.  

Doing this is a combination of making sure I "feed me", which I still don't feel right saying.  Feed my soul, I suppose with nice stuff because body, mind and spirit have taken a battering over the last three years or so. We all need that, I've come to realise, not just at difficult times, but all the time. It's where play, creativity, positivity, energy and fun come from: a full cup.  And it's also about recognising what good things you have in life, where those come from, what they are, because they aren't, usually, at all, I find, costly or by any means about holidays and luxuries.

I wasn't wholly brought up like this.  I was brought up with "notice the good" and I'm grateful for that.  It wouldn't be fair to say it was framed "as a duty", but it was framed more indicatively.  I wasn't actually told "notice the good".  I was told  "look for the good", which is a more active framing.

I certainly wasn't brought up with the  - and you can hear it in the language: "indulge yourself" lesson.  Because that's how it would have been seen - even though my parents knew how to have fun and made sure they did.  Somehow I didn't learn that part so well.  I definitely imbibed the work hard / strive / achieve / success bit.  I must have thought the "make sure and fun" bit was for adults and that my main role and the main role of children was about "being good", not answering back and doing as you were told. It was also a generational thing.  I did have fun as a child.  I just missed the bit that says you're supposed to keep doing it, or rather, not let it get swamped by adult things.

In certain individuals over-adulting, over-striving, over-doing, over-conscientiousness, perfectionism is path to hyper-responsibility, burn-out, bottomless to-do lists and  procrastination from overwhelm - it's a whole world. 

Not everyone from the same family turns out the same way because they may find, as children, other ways to get what they need.  But if you do end up this way, mentally, you're never really "off-duty".   It comes partly from our culture focused on striving and "success" and in some of us it also comes from trying to get the love/attention/care we may not always have had and that is hard to come as a sensitive ten year old in boarding school in another country.

Since early December I've tried to capture some evidence of doing nice things in a snap to look back on.  It's a good habit because you capture nice moments to look back on and it reminds you to  top up of your cup.