Okay, I want to preface this post with a disclaimer – it’s a bit heavy, but it’s tied to organizing and productivity, I promise!

One thing I’ve encountered over the past several months is how hard we can be on ourselves, and how it affects our interactions with the world.

Even being surrounded by a network of loving friends and family, community and colleagues, or a healthy partner, if we don’t take the time to slow down and be accepting, patient, graceful, curious, and loving toward ourselves, we can still end up losing our sense of security in everyday interactions. Each person on this planet has emotions and struggles on some level, and that’s what connects us as humans.

Once we start to gently and curiously peel back the layers of where an emotion originates and the story we tell ourselves about it, we get invaluable insights.

There’s a whole lifetime of experience that informs our emotions. Often, they can dictate our behavior when we let those feelings guide us without pausing to examine them first. Why do we feel an intense “need” to purchase things that don’t bring us true joy, or keep saying “yes” when we don’t have the capacity? Why don’t we speak up for ourselves when we’re treated unkindly? Why can’t we say, “Thank you, I’ll think about it,” instead of making excuses and apologizing? You don’t need to beat yourself up over any of this behavior. We’ve been programmed to act this way, but we can change that!

I’ve read numerous articles about self-love, and thought I had grasped the concept, but I was still trying to put on a show.

I had a very positive mindset. I was a confident person with great boundaries and resilience, and behaved authentically, never holding back my personality and quirks. But I didn’t get the full picture about self-love until last year. It took the unconditional love of a supportive partner who held up a “mirror” to my behavior – without judgment – for me to see how I showed up for myself. I know logically that perfection doesn’t exist, and I don’t demand it of others. So why did I demand it of myself?

My mind was blown when I realized I was still performing on some level.

I had an image of perfection I subconsciously presented to the world. Once I came to terms with this, I could stop getting frustrated and start getting curious. I stopped getting angry at myself over mistakes. I stopped holding in or shoving down my feelings and began to express myself clearly and kindly. If I felt upset, I could say why (without pointing fingers) and discuss how we could interact going forward, rather than fighting. I could stop expecting people to read my mind and could prevent the inevitable resentment that would ensue.

The biggest part of feeling safe to express yourself depends on how those around you “hold space” for you.

If you’re used to being criticized, shamed, judged, guilt-tripped, misunderstood, teased, being given unsolicited “advice” – or having your boundaries violated when you say “no,” it can feel very difficult to practice authenticity. One may even ask, why do I allow people into my life who act this way? But I digress… It takes a lot of self-awareness and courage to practice self-love in the face of unsupportive people, but it can be done! And it feels amazing once you can let that fear go and just BE YOU.

This doesn’t mean you have free rein to be a jerk and claim you’re “just being authentic.” It doesn’t mean you should “cancel” everyone immediately (they’re going through issues too), but instead take a moment to think about what boundaries you need to set for yourself and your interactions with them that feel comfortable to you.

The most important takeaway for me? Be curious, not judgmental.

When I stripped away judgment and comparison, it allowed me to stay kind and observant. It gave me space to give myself and others grace and compassion. It helped me drop the emotional armor and self-defense tactics, stop the self-sabotage, stop avoiding hard conversations, and stop being guarded or push people away. It allowed me to better advocate for myself and connect deeply with others.

We always have a choice. We get to decide what brings us joy, we get to dictate how we spend our time and money, how we use the space in our home, how we define our values, who we allow into our inner circle, and how we interact with the world around us.

How does this tie into organizing and productivity, you say?

It has everything to do with it. When you don’t feel confident to say “no” to overloading your schedule, when you want to keep up with appearances, or you spend hours online shopping out of boredom or compulsion, when you worry about what others think or feel about you, or you work a job that destroys your capacity for joy to make enough money to pay for the excess, you can end up in a hard place. The list goes on and on.

All of this weighs heavily on your emotional health, your sense of self, and ultimately your behavior and its repercussions.

Something doesn’t feel right, maybe you can’t put your finger on it at first. You’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or unsure if you’re making the right decisions, perhaps. We are all experiencing this heaviness on some level. Even when we’ve done the work, uncomfortable emotions and behaviors will continue to surface as life’s variables change. But we learn to name them and understand they don’t need to control us.

We learn to work through our issues graciously — alongside our partners, friends, and family. It feels so good to know we’re all in this together. In my experience, taking the time to reflect can have a deeply positive impact on how we move through life.