You’re Gonna Feel Stuck Until You Respect Where You Are

You are gonna feel stuck every day until you start respecting yourself for where you are rather than where you think you ought to be.

You’re not respecting your bandwidth for where it is. You’re not taking it seriously. You keep saying, “It should be this. It should be that.”

Well, it’s not, diva!

You keep making plans with imaginary resources. You assign yourself the time, energy, focus, and discipline you believe you should have. When the person living your life cannot carry out the plan, you treat the gap as a character flaw. Then you make another plan for the same imaginary person.

Of course you feel stuck. Your solutions were designed for different circumstances.

Your bandwidth is information. If you have two hours, plan for two hours. Asking six hours of yourself creates a plan that begins by asking you to fail.

The same thing happens with energy. You decide what a capable person would be able to handle, then judge yourself against that picture. You fill the calendar according to the picture. You accept another obligation because the picture can manage it. Your real life eventually collects the bill.

Your current limits can change. Respect begins with an accurate place on the map.

You’re in a holding pattern because you don’t know where you are. There seems to be a worm in your brain that’s causing you to think about this version of you that exists, but it’s not reality!

Maybe that version wakes up early every morning. They answer every message, keep the house clean, cook every meal, exercise on schedule, and finish the important work before they get tired. You keep handing them your problems. They keep solving them beautifully because they never have to live your day.

Meanwhile, the person who exists has a different amount of attention available. That person may need a later start, a smaller project, fewer commitments, or more help. Those adjustments can feel embarrassing when you have confused self-respect with meeting an imagined standard. They are often the first useful decisions you have made in a while.

Taking yourself seriously means building from what is available. Reduce the scope until you can finish. Recovery may need space on the calendar. Sometimes the honest plan begins with cancelling something you had every intention of doing.

This requires more than knowing your limits intellectually. You have to stop arguing with them long enough to make a decision. The argument burns bandwidth too. Every day spent resenting your capacity is another day organized around a person who is not coming.

You keep recreating the same problems because you’re solving problems for a version of you that doesn’t exist.

Start with the person who is here. Take their bandwidth seriously. You can move once your plans are made for the life you have.