Grow Your Self Worth | Motivation with Chronic Pain
Do you have chronic pain or chronic illness, and struggle with self-worth and motivation? By the end of this video if you don't feel better about yourself and feel motivated, I'm not doing my job right.
Either watch the video below, or read on for the transcription.
Hi. I'm Cassie Winter. For the best advice on getting unstuck, being productive, and living your best life with chronic illness and mental illness, subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when i publish a new video every Tuesday. I run a coaching membership called Accountability Muse designed to help people go from stuck to consistently taking action toward their goals every single day. Now it's your turn to discover some of the magic that goes on inside my membership.
We're going to start with some simple mindset shifts, and then go on to some practical tips.
First and foremost, it's really important to understand that regardless of your circumstances but especially if you suffer from chronic illness or chronic pain, your productivity does NOT dictate your value. Whether you're uber productive or not productive at all, that has no effect on your value. You are valuable simply because you exist. You've probably heard this a million times, but it's true. Please believe me when I say that your worth does not come from how productive you are.
Now I want to get into the concept of usable hours. This is similar to the spoon theory, but I feel like it's more readily understandable by everybody. There are lots of wonderful videos on the spoon theory on YouTube and articles online that you can search for, but I'm going to talk about usable hours.
As someone with multiple chronic illnesses, I have maybe four to six usable hours on a good day, and those are four to six hours that I have to spend on everything that requires energy: so not just work, not just filming videos, coaching clients. I also have to spend those hours on cooking my meals, on doing chores, on anything that takes my energy. Those are the hours I have to spend toward them. The rest of the time I genuinely need to rest for my body to be able to survive.
So if you are someone who deals with chronic illness and chronic pain know that you are not alone, and however many usable hours you have in a day (whether it's four to six like me, or maybe one to two), it doesn't matter. Again, how productive you are does NOT dictate your worth. What's important is to understand what your natural limits are and work within them, and understand that as long as you have a consistent practice of working towards your goals, you will arrive at them. You will accomplish them. It'll simply take you longer than it would somebody who has more usable hours in the day.
(All right there was some minor excitement, as one of my lights died. So I'm back. Brain a little foggy. Not quite sure what I was talking about. Hopefully I can pull the threads back together. We'll see. 🤣)
It's really important to understand, as someone with fewer usable hours than a healthy individual (because basically, playing the comparison game between yourself and someone who is a hundred percent healthy with no chronic illnesses or invisible disabilities) is simply unfair to you. I know it's easier said than done to change your thought process around this. Lord knows it took me a long time to work on this, and I'm still working on it to be honest. I am trying to improve upon my relationship to my usable hours every day.
Making sure I am not comparing myself to someone who has more capacity than I do is super duper important. And this gets me onto the subject of how so many productive, high-performing people tout, "Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day." I always want to throttle those people because that's simply not true.
If you have chronic pain, you do NOT have all 24 hours.
You're probably having to devote a large amount of those hours to rest, to self-care, to recovery, and to also being a patient. Like, there was a large portion of my life where I spent so much time in doctor's offices that I was essentially a part-time patient. I had a part-time job, and it was BEING a medical patient. That's how much time it took from me every week. But unlike someone with a part-time job, I wasn't earning money doing it. Often I was actually PAYING money to do that, which is another topic altogether.
What I'm saying is, if you have less usable hours than a healthy person, that is 100% okay. I want you to embrace that fact about yourself, and learn to really attune to your limits so you always know when you're approaching them (and ESPECIALLY if you've crossed over them) so you can stop and take care of yourself. It's really important.
And then another thing to consider is simply because you have fewer usable hours in a day than a healthy person, does not mean you can't accomplish as much in your life as they can. I would argue that a lot of people waste time in their life, and it doesn't necessarily take as many hours to accomplish a goal as one might think. A healthy person might be putting filler in their hours.
One of the things that happens when you have fewer usable hours, and you're really conscious of it, is it encourages you and allows you to really prioritize what's important to you. And counter-intuitively you can actually end up leading a much more balanced and fulfilled life because of how strongly you have to prioritize prioritizing. Because you make sure that your usable hours are filled with things that truly matter to you and add value to your life, and help you feel better.
So, I hope if you only take one thing from this video as someone with chronic illness or chronic pain who struggles with self-worth and motivation, know that how much you can do in a day does NOT dictate your worth, and simply because you have fewer hours in the day to do things doesn't mean you're necessarily going to end up having less fulfillment in your life. It might counter-intuitively mean that you'll have MORE because you're forced to prioritize, whereas many healthy individuals aren't limited in such a way and they aren't forced into a position where they have to really reflect and prioritize what's meaningful in their life. So hopefully you're ready to stop comparing yourself to everybody else in your life.
Comment below and let me know if there has always been one particular person in your life that you couldn't stop comparing yourself to, and trying to live up to. Please keep them anonymous. Say something like: my parent, my sibling, my cousin, my best friend, such and such a role model. But comment below and let me know who they are. Say, "I am ready to stop comparing myself to so and so." I'd love to hear from you.
So now let's talk about just a few concrete ways in which you can really prioritize and focus on what matters to you, so your usable hours are actually used for things that add value to your life.
So something that I know I have always struggled with (I know it's a really common thing for a lot of people to struggle with) is struggling with instant gratification in the moment. As in, "I don't feel like doing this thing, so I'm gonna do this thing over here that gives me quote unquote instant gratification." It's just a natural human tendency, and that's okay.
A lot of the common advice is to be like, "Okay just do a favor for your future self. What would your future self ask you to do?" But even that feels like a...a responsibility. And I don't like that. I don't find that motivating. Instead I like thinking about what would be fulfilling in the moment. And I'm going to give you an example actually.
Today, as I'm filming this video and a few other videos, I have actually had a bit of a tough day. I was extremely triggered earlier and it almost derailed my filming schedule. And considering I don't have that many usable hours in the day, and how much I have on my plate right now (like today was the day to get all this filming done so my life is going to be easier in the future), there was a part of me that was kind of forcing myself to work even though that wasn't necessarily the kindest way to treat myself. I was like, "Oh I have to get this done, or else I'm going to be miserable next week."
But what really helps me to be sitting here talking to you right now is that this is fulfilling work for me.
Helping others with things that I have gone through... Sharing information that I wish someone had told me years ago... That is deeply meaningful to me.
And even though no one is gonna see at least this video for a few days, and nobody's gonna see the other videos for weeks. When I am done filming I'm gonna feel fulfilled. Because the purpose, the why behind why I'm doing this is really valuable to me.
So when you are sitting with yourself, and you have choices before you of what you can do, and it's during one of your usable hours for the day, and you know you quote unquote "should" be using those hours for something meaningful, take away the should and think about something that you could do that would feel really meaningful and fulfilling IN the moment. Don't think about it as something that will be fulfilling down the road. Try to find something that sates your curiosity and creates fulfillment now.
And here's the kicker with that. Things that are meaningful and fulfilling tend to be scary, terrifying even, but please hear me when I say this. You can do hard things. You can do things that scare you. I know because I have been terrified by things in my life, and I have done them anyway. So if I can do it, you can do it.
All right, the uh... The sappy pep talk is over.
Now I've got a couple of fun little hacks for you. One is to create a doable scale. So kind of like your pain scale: 0 being no pain, 10 being, "I should have been at the ER last week." You create a doable scale of all of the projects and tasks that are meaningful to you, that you want to be spending your usable hours on, and associate them with your level of capacity.
So for example, because today was a good day for me I was able to follow through with my plan of filming three videos at once. If today had been a bad day, if I had woken up with a migraine... Been unable to eat... Just been unable to move... Like... Migraines are the worst because you can't even enjoy reading, because looking (even at a kindle) hurts. 😭
So have an actual plan of what you are capable of doing based on what your capacity or pain scale is at any given time.
So if it's a high pain day, have a list of things that you could do that would not only add value and fulfillment to that day but would also help give you progress towards your goals. If you're having a low pain day, have a list of things that you can do when you have less pain and you have more capacity.
But! (And this is the huge butt.) Make sure you don't burn yourself out on that one glorious day. We've all been there. I've done it a million times. Still have limits, even on your low pain days, so the next day isn't a high pain day. You know what I'm talking about.
And then the last tip, and this is like... I don't know why I had to be told this. It seems quite logical when you think about it. But making sure you have lots of different setups to do your work so you can be physically comfortable while you work.
For example, I have one of those great IKEA POÄNG... (Is that how you pronounce it? I don't know.) ...chairs, like recliner chair with an ottoman, and a lap desk, and a laptop. So some days I'll do my work and my writing all cozied up in that chair with my feet elevated, and reclining, and typing away, and it feels great. And then I have my big desk, which is... Hello, this is my desk area. And because of my Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), I cannot survive with my feet on the floor very long without experiencing a lot of discomfort, so I actually have this thing under my desk that I can put my feet on, and I can move my feet a lot. And I also am just like, really aware when I need to go into the living room and lie down.
Think of things that you can do to modify the environment in which you are doing whatever it is you want to be doing, to make yourself that much more comfortable.
Would you be more comfortable reclining on the couch and working from a laptop?
Would you be more comfortable kind of like in a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor?
Would you enjoy having active noise cancelling headphones? (I love mine. They're wonderful.)
What kind of snacks or drinks could you have to be like sipping on or chewing on to kind of like... If you have digestive issues, just keep the system moving by eating and drinking small things over the course of the day.
And then also what limits around your time could you put in. So let's say you've got like four hours to use today. Don't use all four of them on one project. No. Take breaks. Put limits around your time. I actually talked a lot about that in this video. So go ahead and check that out later.
Putting limits around how much time you spend on any given thing, on any given day... Super important. Super helpful.
So there you have it: a couple of mindset shifts and a couple of hacks to help you with your self-worth and motivation if you suffer from chronic illness and chronic pain.
If you want to dive deeper with me into these concepts (especially the one around limiting how much time you devote to anything on any given day) I highly recommend checking out my masterclass on what I call Butt In Chair Time. And you can get a copy of the replay for free by signing up here.
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[OUTTAKES: Fizz! Fizz, there's no bed right there for you right now. I have a cat behind the camera. I have a camera cat. 🤣😻 Kayla says, "Hi!"]