I'm being a bit cryptic with the title of this blog post, but the main theme is to have only one goal, and that's NO deadlines.
When you have ME/CFS the last thing you need is pressure. Pressure creates stress, and stress exacerbates ME/CFS.
Ninety nine percent of my time before I got ill was spent making lists of things to do, things I needed to buy-for example food shopping-or places I needed to go. And then doing ALL those things in very short spaces of time.
I no longer have the energy to do all these things, and on bad days it's as hard to simply make food for myself, as it is to walk to the shops on a relatively good day.
I was a good few months into my recovery before I decided that the solution to a large part of my previous lifestyle stresses was to eliminate deadlines from my life.
For example if my mum asked me if I wanted to go out for the day, the day before I would have to tell her "I'll have to see how I feel in the morning", whereas previously it had always been me telling her where I needed to go and what I wanted to do.
For a perfectionist personality like myself, eliminating deadlines has been hard, and has meant a couple of major lifestyle changes which have taken some coming to terms with. On the whole though, as I have come to accept my new way of life, I have become more content with living in the moment, one day at a time.
If you live with chronic illness, how do you go about setting goals for yourself, or structuring your days? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
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Monday, 21 May 2012
Goals 1 : Deadlines 0
I'm being a bit cryptic with the title of this blog post, but the main theme is to have only one goal, and that's NO deadlines.
When you have ME/CFS the last thing you need is pressure. Pressure creates stress, and stress exacerbates ME/CFS.
Ninety nine percent of my time before I got ill was spent making lists of things to do, things I needed to buy-for example food shopping-or places I needed to go. And then doing ALL those things in very short spaces of time.
I no longer have the energy to do all these things, and on bad days it's as hard to simply make food for myself, as it is to walk to the shops on a relatively good day.
I was a good few months into my recovery before I decided that the solution to a large part of my previous lifestyle stresses was to eliminate deadlines from my life.
For example if my mum asked me if I wanted to go out for the day, the day before I would have to tell her "I'll have to see how I feel in the morning", whereas previously it had always been me telling her where I needed to go and what I wanted to do.
For a perfectionist personality like myself, eliminating deadlines has been hard, and has meant a couple of major lifestyle changes which have taken some coming to terms with. On the whole though, as I have come to accept my new way of life, I have become more content with living in the moment, one day at a time.
If you live with chronic illness, how do you go about setting goals for yourself, or structuring your days? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
When you have ME/CFS the last thing you need is pressure. Pressure creates stress, and stress exacerbates ME/CFS.
Ninety nine percent of my time before I got ill was spent making lists of things to do, things I needed to buy-for example food shopping-or places I needed to go. And then doing ALL those things in very short spaces of time.
I no longer have the energy to do all these things, and on bad days it's as hard to simply make food for myself, as it is to walk to the shops on a relatively good day.
I was a good few months into my recovery before I decided that the solution to a large part of my previous lifestyle stresses was to eliminate deadlines from my life.
For example if my mum asked me if I wanted to go out for the day, the day before I would have to tell her "I'll have to see how I feel in the morning", whereas previously it had always been me telling her where I needed to go and what I wanted to do.
For a perfectionist personality like myself, eliminating deadlines has been hard, and has meant a couple of major lifestyle changes which have taken some coming to terms with. On the whole though, as I have come to accept my new way of life, I have become more content with living in the moment, one day at a time.
If you live with chronic illness, how do you go about setting goals for yourself, or structuring your days? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
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