S5E50: Why your time off might not be helping you feel better

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Friday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today’s episode is a super quick reminder that doing things for you, doing things that you enjoy, that fill you up, will only work if your head is there too.  

Because I know how many of us feel so burnt out, and for some of us, it’s not initially obvious why. When we look at our last few weeks, we’ve been working hard but we’ve also watched a movie, listened to music, seen our friends, been on some walks, and we’re like… why is this not enough, what’s going wrong here?

Then we realise what the problem is. We spent the movie drawing parallels with the things that caused us anger and resentment in our own life. The time we were with friends, we were comparing our lives with theirs and we fell short on everything. The walks, we were hating where we live and telling ourselves that if only we weren’t so behind, we wouldn’t even still be living here. 

We did the thing. But we weren’t present in it. We were firmly in our own heads, with our noses pressed against the glass, knowing there was fun happening in that parallel universe on the other side of the wall.

Then we wonder why we don’t feel better afterwards and we think: self-care doesn’t work. It’s making me feel worse and further behind.

It turns out that just sitting in the mere presence of a movie, or having your daily existential crisis in a bath with lovely bubbles, actually negates the restorative benefits of those activities. Who knew?

And while we’re at it, an hour of self-care a day really doesn’t reverse the fifteen other hours you spent being mean to yourself. It’s better than nothing, but you are asking a lot from that one hour!

So, if your leisure, creative, social and spiritual activities aren’t bringing you joy right now, aren’t filling you back up, it might be worth looking to see if that’s what’s going on.

Be kind to yourselves today, language learners.