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missmentelle · 5 years

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This might sound very silly but I just don't know how to be more proactive. I've been very passive all this years until this point where I feel like I can't anymore. I wish I could be more hardworking for the things I want but I get all overwhelmed and don't even know how other people have the energy or the motivation. People think Im just lazy. I don't have almost any skills let alone any that I can monetize, I feel like Im going to be a looser forever.

I think this is a problem that a lot of people - especially younger people - are struggling with right now. We want to achieve great things, and we feel like we should be achieving great things, but many of us are so paralyzed by doubt/anxiety/apathy/uncertainty that we have a hard time mustering up the motivation to run basic errands, let alone chase our dreams. I’ve certainly spent more than my fair share of time beating myself up for the countless days that I’ve fucked around on Reddit all day instead of actually achieving anything, even when I was fully aware that I was sabotaging my own dreams and goals by doing so. I just couldn’t always muster up the ability to care about the things I needed to be doing, even if there were dire consequences for not doing them. The good news is, there are definitely ways to overcome this issue, and reach a point where you are happier with your progress and your life. To get started, I recommend:

Decide what it is you actually want. Telling yourself to “be more proactive”, “work harder” or “have a better life” is not helpful if you don’t actually have specific goals that you’re working towards. It is very, very easy to find ways to be “busy” for 8 hours per day - but being busy doesn’t necessarily mean progress. Take some time, and think about some rough goals that you’d like to actually work towards. Don’t worry about how much work or effort it would be to achieve those goals, just start thinking about what you want in life, and what’s the most important to you. Think about the kind of life that you would like to have someday, and start figuring out the steps you need to take in order to get yourself from your current life to the life that you envision. It’s okay if those things are very far apart - the point is not for you to get overwhelmed, but for you to have something to be proactive about.

Start slowly. You cannot go from “spending 8 hours per day mindlessly browsing the internet amidst a pile of old take-out containers” to “running 5 miles every morning before making art for 8 hours in a spotless apartment with a fridge full of vegetables” overnight. Trying to change your routine too drastically and too quickly will lead to you burning out in a couple of days and going right back to your old ways, with an added dose of self-hatred because you tried and failed. Trying to be more productive and more functional is a process, and a long one at that. It’s not at all unusual or abnormal to take several years of work before you get your life to where you want it to be. Start slow. Start with incredibly tiny changes, and slowly build up those changes over time. If you currently live on a diet of fast food and candy, and you want to be a shredded, clean-eating fitness guru, you can’t rush into that all at once. Start by swapping out full-sugar pop for diet pop for the first month, and trying to drink more water. That’s it. Don’t make any other changes. Then the second month, switch out diet pop for flavored water. And so on. Change only sticks when it’s gradual.

Focus on one thing at a time. Again, trying to do too much, too soon is a recipe for fast burnout and self-hatred. Start by trying to change one area of your life, and one area of your life alone. Once you feel like you have a pretty solid handle on that part of your life and you have established some new habits, then you can add on a second area of focus. Spend some time, and really think about which area of your life is the most important for you to change, and which area of focus will improve your life the most. If it helps, envision your problems as rocks that you are carrying around in a backpack with you at all times. What’s the heaviest rock in your backpack? If you are overweight, unhappily single, making no progress building your YouTube channel and failing out of college, then your college grades are probably the thing causing you the most stress in your life, and they’re your most urgent concern - focus on that, and give yourself permission to let the rest of it sit on the back burner until you have boosted your GPA. Only then will you be ready to start changing something else.

Go easy on yourself. I think one of the pitfalls that many young people face these days is that they absolutely crush themselves with unrealistic expectations of what they “should” be doing with their lives; it’s hard to get up the motivation to do anything when you’ve convinced yourself that the bare minimum for success is an impossible ideal. I have friends with master’s degrees who still consider themselves failures that haven’t done anything in life. Remember that you are not a machine. Even at your most successful and high-functional, you will not be perfect and productive 100% of the time. You will still have lazy days where you don’t get much done. You will still occasionally order takeout instead of making a home-cooked meal. You will still occasionally procrastinate. Don’t set yourself up for failure by comparing yourself to an unattainable ideal - just aim to be a slightly better version of what you are right now.

Get used to tracking, even without making changes. It’s hard to set goals for improvement if you don’t have a solid idea of what you’re actually doing right now. Telling yourself things like “stop being so lazy and do more things” is setting yourself up for a spiral of self-loathing if you don’t actually track what you’re doing, because you won’t be able to see the small, gradual progress that you’re making. Being able to actually see yourself taking baby steps toward your goal is important for keeping you motivated, and keeping you from beating yourself up. Don’t track absolutely everything in your life - that becomes obsessive after a while - but keep an eye on some of the major things that you might want to change in the future. Install apps on your phone and laptop that track how much time you spend doing what. Set up the step tracker on your phone. If you want to eat better in the future, start tracking roughly what you eat now. I’m a pretty avid bullet journaler, I track a lot of my daily habits. Keeping track of the things you do, even if you’re not proud of them, and even before you start to work on them, gives you a baseline to work with, so you can establish how bad the problem is and see when you’re heading in the right direction.

Forget the obsession with monetizing. A lot of us have gotten this idea in our heads that we need to find ways to monetize everything that we’re even remotely good at, or doing that thing is somehow a waste of our time. I don’t want to generalize about millennials and gen z too much, but I do feel like our generation was raised on the belief that “doing what you love” is the most important thing in life; I personally have many friends that are obsessed with monetizing, to the point that they no longer do anything unless they can find some way to funnel it into advancing their blogger/influencer/creator career. I think this is a mistake. When you monetize something that you love doing, you turn it from a hobby into a job, with all the stress that comes with that, and I think it’s important for everyone to have at least one thing in their life that they do just for the joy of it. It’s okay to let work be work, and play just be play. And I say this as a person who has monetized one of my hobbies; I love true crime and forensic psychology, and I co-host a true crime podcast that has recently had a huge surge of popularity and is on the cusp of being monetized. I could write an entire post about the mental health side of being a creator with a public online presence, but in a nutshell, turning my podcast from a hobby into a business has required me to take it a lot more seriously, and it now falls more into the category of “work” than it does “fun”. My enjoyment of life requires that some of my other hobbies - like playing music - just stay un-monetized hobbies. Let yourself create and do things that don’t have economic value.

Don’t compare yourself to what you see on social media. I have had both personal friends and followers on this blog tell me that they feel bad about themselves because their life doesn’t measure up to what they see on Instagram, or because they feel that their own lives would not be worthy of posting online. This is a toxic mindset to get into. The things you see on social media are not reality, no matter how much they appear to be - people put incredible amounts of effort into carefully cultivating an online persona that makes them look more productive and accomplished than they actually are. I have a brother who who is a somewhat successful Instagram “influencer”, alongside his more successful girlfriend, and I could write an entire post about the lengths they go to to fake having perfect lives on Instagram, and the toll that their Insta careers are having on their mental health. If you are looking to be a more productive version of yourself, it’s best to steer clear of “motivation” from people who are paid to pretend to be successful online.

Set measurable, achievable goals. Goals like “be healthier” and “do more stuff” won’t get you anywhere - they are so vague that it’s not possible to tell when you’ve actually achieved them, or how much progress you’ve made. If you want to be more productive and feel like you’re getting more done, you need to set goals that can actually be worked towards and checked off when they are done. Instead of “go to the gym more”, aim for “go to the gym 5 days per week” as your end goal, and start with a solid couple of months with “go to the gym at least once per week”, and slowly increase from there. If you’re aiming for something big like “have an awesome job”, break that down into medium-sized goals like “finish an undergrad degree”, and then break that goal down even further into “hand in all my assignments on time this semester”, and break that down further into “write the first 10 pages of my paper by the end of the week”. Set tiny goals for yourself that you can easily achieve, and that will gradually accumulate into big accomplishments.

Remember that slow progress is better than no progress. If you write one sentence per day, it is going to take you a really long time to write a novel. It will take you a whole lot less time, however, than if you get overwhelmed at the thought of writing a novel and never write at all. Sometimes you need to break goals down into steps so small that they also seem not worth doing. It can feel a little silly to congratulate yourself for things like “brushed my teeth today” and “texted someone back today”, but those are little habits that add up into bigger things, and giving yourself that positive reinforcement is important. “Greatness” and “success” are not things you achieve all at once, they are made up of tiny habits that you’ve been working on for months or years at a time.

Take care of your mental health. Not feeling the motivation to do anything, even things that you enjoy, can be a symptom of depression. Everyone beats themselves up from time to time for not being more productive, but if your brain is constantly on a feedback loop of “I’m human garbage and I’m wasting my life”, that’s a pretty serious problem, and a solid sign that it’s time to seek out some professional help. Trying to make major life improvements without addressing underlying mental health concerns is kind of like trying to drive a car without wheels - you’re just not going to get anywhere until you’ve dealt with the obvious problem.

Remember that setbacks are okay. Even the most highly proactive and high-functioning people have days where they say “fuck it” and order takeout to eat in front of the TV. Everyone occasionally misses deadlines or leaves things to the last minute when they shouldn’t. Everyone shows up late occasionally. These things happen - we are humans, and none of us are perfect. The key to long-term proactivity and productivity, though, is not to let those small setbacks define you, and not to throw away all the progress you’ve made over a bad day or a bad week. Eating healthy six days per week will put you in a much better position than deciding “fuck it, I blew it” after one bad meal and returning to eating unhealthy meals 7 days per week. As the saying goes, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good - in other words, perfection is not attainable, and getting hung up on being perfect will prevent you from achieving many things that are good. The idea is not to be perfect; it’s just to keep striving to be a slightly better version of yourself.

Best of luck to you!

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pajamaqueencooks · 5 years

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Pantry Building for Low-Spoon Food (Part 1)

Welcome to the very first post of Pajama Queen Cooks, a feminist food blog! I’m so excited to start sharing some of what I’ve learned, living and cooking with chronic illnesses, fatigue, and food intolerances, as well as recipes for plain old good food (biggest lesson: elimination diet food doesn’t have to be bland and gross! Really!!!). Seriously—even if you have no illnesses or food intolerances, these recipes are still for you! My healthy, restriction-free friends ask me to cook for them all the time, and my elimination diet never stops them asking for seconds, or for my recipes. If you’re in that group, stay tuned; crowd favorites are coming soon to a feed near you. For those of you I don’t know yet, you can see more on me here.

Those are the introductions, so, shall we?

When I got this blog set up, I thought I’d pick some marvelous recipe for my first post. Something genius. Something glamorous, but simple. Sexy, but not too complicated. Pretty on the plate, without being intimidating. Seasonal, but not generic … I think you can see where this is going. Every recipe I thought of was somehow lacking, just shy of the perfection that a first post seems to call for. First impressions are important, right?

So, I decided to start with my pantry. Sure, it’s less exciting, but doing some simple setup (in some cases, just an item or two added to the grocery list) can save you hours of work and many precious Spoons. When I first moved out, this was the hardest and most important lesson I learned. If hyper-organized Type-A meal planning sounds exhausting and/or excessive to you…. me too. Instead, my Low-Spoon-Expenditure pantry aims to set you up with all the supplies you need so that when you don’t have the time or energy to plan ahead, you’re all set to make something sustaining and tasty, fast.

Note: If you’re already a substitutions pro, most of the information in this post is likely old news to you. Please stick around! Recipes are coming soon!

When I started outlining this post, I quickly realized that I was looking at a series of posts, so, in today’s post, I’m going to cover allergy-free* cooking fats, candida-friendly sweeteners, and some odds-and-ends pantry staples. Read: non-perishable or long-lived staples that you can buy, and have kicking around for whenever you need them. Alright—let’s break it down!

Oils & Fats

Cooking oils and fats lend moisture, flavor and richness to your food, on top of preventing regrettable pan-scrubbing situations. Unfortunately, if you are on an elimination or otherwise limited diet, a lot of cult classics are off limits: classical cooking’s darling, butter, and the clean-eating obsession, coconut oil, are both off limits for me because I’m intolerant of both dairy and nuts. However, I’ve gotten pretty savvy at work-arounds for these! When cooking savory foods, I go simple: extra virgin olive oil, light olive oil, canola/sunflower oil, and sesame oil. For most general applications, my olive oils are the go to (EVOO for an olive-y flavor punch, and extra-light for a more delicate touch). Because olive oil is such a staple for me, I always buy the best quality I can afford—trust me when I say you’ll taste the difference if you splurge a little on some nice oil.

Extra Virgin, and Light/Cooking Olive Oils from Filippo Berio

Canola and sunflower oils are ideal candidates for my occasional deep frying needs—at preference, you could substitute peanut or corn oils; I grew up using canola, and it’s super cheap, so that’s what I gravitate towards if I’m going to be using a whole bunch of oil at once. Sesame oil, while a little pricier than some of the other oils, is concentrated in it’s rich nutty flavor—a little goes a long way, and it’s irreplaceable for Asian-inspired recipes!

Fats for baking, where texture is crucial, are a little trickier. Coconut oil is the common replacement for butter because of it’s ability to remain solid or semi-solid at room temperature. I’ve replaced it with relative success using combinations of vegetable oil, vegan butter (always check labels for other potential allergens!), and vegetable shortening.

The Sweet Stuff

Because my sensitivity to all kinds of yeast lead to candida overgrowth, the first stage of my Elimination Diet was really strict. I couldn’t have any processed sweeteners, natural sugars (maple, agave, dates, etc.), dried fruits, fruit juice, or artificial sweeteners (Splenda, Sweet’n’Lo, etc.). At that stage, baking wasn’t really an option, and if I wanted to sweeten savory foods, by best bet was to cook in fresh fruits. Note that stevia is allowed, but, because nearly all stevia products are, by volume, mostly made of other sweeteners, this wasn’t really much help.

Fortunately, now that my candida is under better control, I can make use of a select few natural and artificial sweeteners. My go-to options are Lakanto brand Golden Monkfruit. This granulated sweetener is based on erythritol, so it won’t affect blood sugar, and the golden monk fruit extract does a phenomenal job cutting the “cold” artificial taste of erythritol so that in most applications, it is hardly noticeable. For liquid sweetener, I’ve been experimenting with Smucker’s Sugar Free Syrup. And, lastly, when a truly clean sweet taste is needed, I use Splenda. It isn’t natural, and research shows that in excessive amounts it can have some weird effects on metabolism, but for my needs, it works well if used moderately.

Other Pantry Staples

This category is going to seem like a really odd-ball mix. That’s mostly because it is. Some or all of these might not fit your tastes or dietary needs, but it’s worth thinking through, what kinds of dry or long-life refrigerated staples turn into quick satisfying meals? Which are single-use, and which are more versatile?

For me, that versatility is key for putting together meals with less planning and higher quality results. So, here are a few things I like to keep on hand that don’t readily fit into any other category:

Starches

Brown rice, Gluten-free pastas (brown rice and chickpea) & instant potato flakes are all handy, versatile staples. I like the Banza brand chickpea pastas, and Bob’s Red Mill makes my favorite potato flakes, but frankly, these items are so basic that the brand you buy isn’t going to matter much.

Dry & Canned

Dry and canned beans, sunflower seeds (or, if you don’t have an issue with tree nuts, any mix of nuts and seeds that you enjoy), diced and crushed tomatoes (especially the fire-roasted kind! If you can find these, you won’t be disappointed with the flavor they add!), tomato paste and, if you’re not on the candida diet, a variety of vinegars.

Dry beans are more economical, but not much beats canned beans for fast whole foods. I usually keep chickpeas, pintos and some mix of white beans around—some combination of the above can meet the needs of nearly any Latin-style, American or Mediterranean bean recipe.

So, that’s my first installment on getting set up for Spoonie (& general) success! I hope some of this information was new or useful, and if not, I’d love to hear from you about what your kitchen quandaries and challenges are!

#Pajama Queen Cooks #Chronic Illness #Elimination Diet #food intolerance #food sensitivities #Spoonie #Pantry Staples #Cooking #Food blog #Cooking for Spoonies #Chronic Fatigue

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