Caroline Foran: 'Yes, we can do anything, but no, we can’t do everything'
Caroline Foran. Photograph Moya Nolan
With a new year upon us, and especially given the year we’ve just come out of, you’re no doubt ready for a change. Finally, with the vaccines, we’re beginning to see light, even if we are still very much struggling with this global pandemic.
You’ll more eager than ever to do all of the things you’ve missed. You want to get things figured out and do it fast.
You want to make up for the lost time that 2020 took from you - the achievements, the career moves, the travel opportunities, the new relationship perhaps, the luxury of getting back to regular body hair removal treatments, to name but a few.
You want to do it all and do it yesterday. But before you go filling the pages of your glossy new planner with endless to-do lists and all of the Pinterest - worthy platitudes necessary to motivate you to achieve said to-do list, let’s just take a breather.
Yes, 2020 was a year that kicked us up the proverbial, but with it came some key learnings: We were reminded of what really matters. We became far more accepting of our shared vulnerability; whether it was yesterday’s knickers within view on the background of our Zoom meeting or the toddler interrupting an important call to tell us they needed to go for a poo.
We were all merely trying to get through it. We learned, and perhaps more so because we had no choice, to slow down. And hopefully, in the slower pace of pandemic life, we learned to allow ourselves to take the foot off the gas without the guilt for all the things we ‘should’ be doing. We learned the art of just being, without having to know where we were headed.
So as to ensure that 2020 wasn’t a total calamitous waste, it’s these learnings that should inform how we approach the fresh start afforded by this new year. Instead of a series of abstract January goals and monumental changes we feel we have to make, just because it’s the time of year for it, or just because it sounds good, what if we consider one small but effective change in attitude? What if we take all the lessons of 2020 in one and simply strive to bring more self-compassion into our lives? This is my goal for 2021.
On the surface it seems like no big deal - it might even seem a bit airy fairy to say ‘just be nicer to yourself!’ - but practising self-compassion alone has already had a majorly positive impact on my wellbeing and with it, I’ve had a far more pleasant experience going about the more tangible things I want to achieve.
I now take my time a bit more, making a little extra room for self compassion, where being hard on ourselves and thinking only of the end goal would usually take over. I think ‘what do I actually want to do?’ ‘Why is this a goal of mine?’ ‘How will I feel when I achieve it?’ ‘What will it cost to achieve it?’ ‘Am I doing this because it will make me happy or because I think I should be doing it?’ ‘Is this going to contribute to or detract from my well-being?’ ‘If the latter, why am I doing it?’ ‘Is this really a priority at this point in my life?’
With self-compassion we can accept the truth that yes, we can do anything but no, we can’t do everything. We don’t need to! This is far from the go-getting, high-achieving rhetoric we’re used to consuming at the turn of the year, I know, but it’s not defeatist, it’s self-compassionate. It’s realistic. It’s putting our wellbeing first. It’s letting ourselves off the hook, and having survived a pandemic, it’s everything we deserve.
If we try to take on too much, and have several plates spinning at any one time, it’s inevitable that one of them will drop. Think of all of the resolutions you’ve started with gusto only to find that after a mere fortnight, most of it has fallen by the wayside. When we go all in, we realise that eventually something’s gotta give, and usually the thing that gives is you and your wellbeing. You experience stress and anxiety, you feel that you are failing and you find that your efforts and attention are splintered across too many things, meaning you don’t get very far in any direction. So what if we allow ourselves to pare things back. We may do less, but we’ll do it better.
Self-compassion also helps to negate the nasty side effects of failure. Why?
Because with self-compassion we replace self-criticism. We tend to turn to self-criticism because we believe it will be more self-motivating and help us to achieve that which is important to us when in fact it does the opposite.
Self-criticism actually stimulates our stress response. When we are hard on ourselves, we produce more cortisol, making it difficult to achieve success - the very thing we wanted in the first place. When we opt instead for self-compassion, however, we downregulate this stress response, and as a result we have more clarity of mind when it comes to pursuing our goals. And if we don’t succeed, we soothe ourselves, enabling us to pick ourselves up and try again. We look at failures and instead of seeing them as a measure of our self-worth, we see them as opportunities for learning. With self-compassion, our self-worth is protected, and when that happens, failure becomes a far easier pill to swallow.
So what can we do? First of all, know that self-compassion is something that anyone can develop; it’s a skill, not a personality trait. But it takes time and practice. Essentially, self-compassion is allowing yourself to give yourself what you need in the moment. It might just be a cup of tea. For a busy mother whose baby won’t stop screaming, it might be two minutes to breathe or cry and tell themselves ‘it’s okay’ in a room by herself. For a freelancer with his fingers in several pies, it might be saying ‘this is the only pie I can give my focus to right now’.
We need to gently bring our awareness towards the fact that despite how things may seem on social media, everybody struggles to keep all of the plates spinning all of the time. It’s okay to put a few of them down. Instead of thinking ‘oh, you should have done this’ or ‘you should be doing more of this’, write down exactly what you would say to a friend who would say these things to you about themselves. Even go so far as to write it as a letter to a friend but then read it as if it’s for you.
How often have you told a friend ‘you have a lot on, you need some time for you’? To bring self-compassion into your own life, ask yourself questions such as ‘how can I help?’ ‘what can I do to support you?’ When you feel that you’ve failed, look for the learning that you can take from it. Notice when you go into harsh critic mode and say ‘okay, I’m turning down the volume on you now’ - or when you’re haranguing yourself for not achieving everything on your to-do list, gently switch to a more compassionate alternative. Write it down if you have to and really do it; over time you’ll start to believe it and you will positively impact the way you feel at a biological level.
For me, with self-compassion, the phrase ‘you can do anything but you can’t do everything’ becomes softer than it sounded initially; it’s like giving yourself permission to let some things go.
So by all means make your list of things to achieve in 2021 and beyond. But do so compassionately, knowing it will get you to where you want to be and do so in better shape.
Take it slowly and really think about what you want and why you want it. Lean in, but don’t lean in so far that you fall flat on your face.
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