I want to do my coursework! This is weird...

You might have noticed that I skipped a week between posts recently. Well, I'm human, it was my birthday, stuff was going on, I got distracted. I beat myself up about it for a bit and then realised that at this point only my immediate family, if that, read this blog so it really does not matter! I have forgiven myself, which is nice :)

Another thing I noticed was that I'd stopped wanting to do my coaching coursework. Now this was weird for two reasons:
1) I realised that I'd actually really been enjoying doing my coursework.
2) I wasn't feeling the same things that I usually do when I give up on something.

I am a typical magpie, I find something fun and shiny, become obsessed with it for a while and then get distracted by the next shiny thing and lose interest in the first thing. Sometimes I may return to the first thing later, other times it may be gone for good.

Happily, as I said, this time feels different. I've built some sustainable habits (hello 615 days since I last used a streak freeze on Duolingo!), I've changed the way I think about things and I have bedded in reasons for wanting to keep going.  Now when I stop doing something, it's temporary and it tells me something about how I'm feeling. And right now, I'm feeling tired.

I am feeling tired because my job search is finally over. Having accepted a new role, resigned from the old one, sorted out contracts, leave dates, start dates, remaining annual leave, arguing with HR, pensions, salary, handovers blah blah blah blah blah I'm tired! I'm finishing work I'm not really interested in anymore to handover things which I will no longer care about in a few weeks. It's harsh but it's also true.

I am back to feeling similarly about work as I did towards the end of last year - disengaged and disinterested. The difference this time is, I have a light at the end of the tunnel that grows bigger each day as I get closer to leaving my current company. So I can keep going, without much interest because I know this time, it's definitely temporary. And not only that, it has a very solid time limit!

By realising this and making peace with it and noticing my energy levels, I'm OK with the fact that I don't feel like doing my coursework at the moment. Energy is cyclical in its nature, and right now, I'm in an ebb. I know my energy will flow back because I'm still running, still doing yoga, still walking and eating properly and sleeping as well as I can.

And that is the difference: this time, the embedded habits are pulling me through. rather than me forcing myself onwards, the things that replenish my energy are the things that I'm focusing on to get back to a point where I can want to do my coursework and other things again. Like blogging! I had a week off and now I've written something to post. Little things to keep ticking over and keep Chatty Brain at bay.

That's another difference. Before I began building sustainable habits and managing my energy, Chatty Brain would be allowed to berate me for anything and everything all the time. Now if I have a week off from a blog and she tells me I'm a terrible person, I say "no I'm not, I'm human and I'm tired". Chatty Brain is quietly in the background all the time, but now I'm in control and managing my energy, she's not allowed to run the show anymore.

Having time to do things is definitely not the same thing as having the energy to do something. If you have time and no energy, everything feels like a slog. If you have energy and no time, everything feels rushed. If you can learn to balance time and energy and recognise its cycles then you can achieve far more than you ever think possible without dragging yourself through everything. This is the ideal!

My coursework taught me this and it has been a gamechanger. Without it, I wouldn't have had the confidence or energy to change jobs and I probably would have spiralled back to the place I was in towards the end of last year. Instead, I can recognise that there are times to work and times to rest, times to use energy and times to replenish it. Without the balance, we, by definition, go from one extreme to the other one and spend our lives seesawing and exhausted.

Happily, I can feel my energy coming back, and with it a desire to get back to my coursework and keep learning. I have found a good balance and it is sustainable. Dear Reader, I hope this sparks a thought for you too, where could you find balance? Where do you use energy and how do you replenish it?

See you next time!