Gray days are my favorite. I always feel less guilty for staying inside all day if rain is imminent, and any situation in which I feel less guilty instead of more guilty is a situation I enjoy.

I have an awful lot of guilt, especially for someone who wasn’t raised Catholic.

Sometimes I attribute this to my empathic nature - I’m sponging up everybody else’s guilt! - and while this may be part of it, mostly I just need to be firmer with myself.

Be the gentle observer of my thoughts, rather than the stern and temperamental disciplinarian. Watch instead of flagellate.

It sounds obvious, right? WHEN IN FACT IT IS VERY DIFFICULT. I could indulge in my usual rant on how we’ve been trained by society to be brutally tough on ourselves or I could just talk about how I’m doing my utmost to send my brain in the direction I want to go, rather than following its programmed whims to their unsatisfactory conclusion.

Therefore!

Here’s how I’m learning to be a gentle observer (as opposed to the brutal dictator):

Notice what’s going on internally without judging my thoughts, my feelings, myself, or anyone else’s self.
Remind myself twenty-seven times a day that I haven’t done anything wrong, that I’m doing enough, that I am enough, that everything is okay, that everything is - in fact - working out for my good.
Breathe through anything that gets triggered or kicked up internally.
If breathing doesn’t work and I find myself in a serious spin, do something to come back to neutral - like go for a walk or read a favorite book or watch something nourishing on Netflix.
Once I’ve returned to neutral, do my best to identify the truth underneath the brain chatter.

What our brains spit out at us isn’t usually true, and it takes some investigative digging to move below the programmed responses and into the wiser self / still small voice / intuitive understanding / real-ass truth.

As an example, here is a thought I think almost daily: “I should have done more.”

On the surface it sounds very true, but that’s mostly because the world enjoys shouting about productivity and I eagerly sucked up all that shouting along with a number of How To Be Better Than You Are articles. (Sigh.)

Rule #1: Whenever a thought doesn’t feel good, that thought probably isn’t true. (Your soul is using your emotional GPS to steer you away from said untrue thought, because your soul is good at this stuff.)

So I dig a little deeper, because that “You didn’t do enough today!” thought doesn’t feel good and so, as per Rule #1, I do my best to question it before going too far down the Not Enough rabbit hole. “Is it really true that I should have gotten more done today?”

Rule #2: Anything your brain says you “should” do needs to be investigated further. Should is a bullshit word that should be eliminated from the English language. (Heh.)

When I go deeper than my brain’s basic trigger responses, I start to tap into my smarter self, who says something like, “That arbitrary number you’ve determined will make you worthy is not the thing that makes you worthy. You are enough when you believe you’re enough. You’ve done enough when you believe you’ve done enough.”

Uh, okay. Great. So how do I do that?

“Celebrate what you have done.”

Sounds great.

Hereby celebrating what I have done (please feel free to join me):

Got up this morning and put on socks. Cue Kool and the Gang singing Celebration!

Wrangled a gnarly-feeling financial issue. Good job, Amber!

Ate delicious roast beef sandwich while my boyfriend ate hot pastrami at a deli with peeling green paint and ridged tin siding that’s been open since 1947, facts that don’t matter but that I enjoyed. Well done, us!

Bought thank-you cards, an errand I have been unsuccessfully attempting for over a week now. Check!

Cat curled up next to me for a whole three minutes. Glory be!

Wrote this blog post to help myself remember all the things I already know (a more challenging task than it might sound) and also because I have a Write Every Day Because You Are A Goddamn Writer plan. Woohoo!

Made healthy lentil soup for dinner. It might even taste good!

I might do some yoga after this, which my body would really appreciate. Smug city!

To sum up, catch the mean thoughts, the thoughts that don’t feel good, the thoughts that are perpetuating cycles that we are all so goddamn over, and question their veracity. When they have been identified as Wholly Untrue, check into what is true. With a side order of celebrating what we did do. Because celebrating oneself is a darn good idea, whether the sun is shining or not.