Each season of life requires personal life adjustments. It requires each of us to adjust our schedules, our diets, our sleep routines, our social lives, our finances, our goals. My life in my mid-40's looks completely different from the life of my mid-20's. How and where I spend my time, who I spend my time with, how I spend my money, how much I sleep, what I eat, what I read, and what I listen to are all different. My life will look completely different in another 20 years. On some level, we all understand that our different phases of life will require change and adjustments, but we don't often give ourselves grace in real time when we are trying to do all the things all the time. It is far easier to clearly see the temporary struggles of a friend and have the perspective to know it is not a reflection of the person him/herself.
High achieving people tend to catastrophize when it comes to not performing up to their expectations. Our lives are greatly improved from goal-setting, self reflection, and continued self-expansion. But this process should include room for consideration of the "problems of now." Problems of now are the things that we struggle with over a given period of time that are secondary to the phase of life we are in, other obligations on our time during that period, or our level of capacity (emotional, financial, skill-level, time, etc) at that time.
Here are a couple examples. A med student who was a high school and college athlete is now not regularly going to the gym, and is very discouraged by this. From the outside looking in we all can see that this is likely a temporary situation and is secondary to the intense requirements of med school. To the student, however, he may be continuously beating himself up wondering if he now has become lazy and undisciplined. He may start to tell himself he is no longer an athlete. He makes the problem of now become a problem about himself.
The second example is a new mother who looks around and sees a sink full of dirty dishes, a pile of laundry, and an empty pizza box in her kitchen, and feels totally defeated by it. We all can see that this is perfectly normal and is temporary. We want to reach into this situation and give the new mom a whole lot of grace. This mom, who has always prided herself on being totally on top of things, is now struggling with the thoughts that she can't handle it. She is wondering if she is not cut out to be a mom and also manage her household. She makes a problem of now-simply a situational trial- a problem about herself.
We can all think of large or small examples in our own lives. Poor eating habits on vacation. A missed deadline during an illness. Inability to travel due to a change in financial obligations.
As soon as we don't live up to our own expectations (which are often hefty), we start to make it mean all sorts of things about our very inept little inner selves. Simply ask yourself this question: Is this a larger problem, or just a problem of now? How would I look at this problem if my friend was going through it? Zoom out and assess the larger picture.
What is your current "problem of now?" How problematic is it? Is it something that you are simply reassured to know means nothing about you constitutionally, and is only a temporary product of your set of circumstances? Or would you like to work towards resolution of the problem? If so, can you adjust, even by a tiny amount, any of your circumstances to make it more likely you can dedicate more time and attention to this area? You must free up some capacity in order to give this problem more attention. Where can you free up some time, or give yourself back some energy or mental space in order to better address this? What changes do you need to make in your larger set of circumstances to loosen up those areas?
Keep in mind your effort to results graph for each area of your life. If you are putting in maximum effort during medical training to achieve the result of passing grades and matching in residency, you will not have the time or mental capacity to put in a high level of effort in pretty much any other area of your life. This is temporary. During the first few months of an infant's life, new parents are putting in an intense level of effort to care for that little one. There will be no energy, time, or emotional capacity for other endeavors. Give yourself grace and make the mental adjustments to account for this.
Recognize that as time goes on and we are lucky enough to experience new phases of life, there will be new problems of now. Keep them in healthy perspective. Make adjustments. Don't catastrophize. Don't internalize the situational struggle and make it mean something about you. Put your efforts where they are most needed. Imagine your life like a stovetop in a busy restaurant. There may be four things going at the same time, but only one is getting the primary attention from the chef at any given time. Just keep shifting your pots and letting some things simmer in the way that feels manageable and best to you.
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