microdosing on appreciation
digital overwhelm, perfectionism, procrastination and cultivating generosity
I’ve been blogging, writing, creating digital expressions and managing a webshop for about seven years now, which means I have the privilege of having accumulated enough testimonials, kind words and sweet messages to pick me up through at least 30 bad days.
My level of organization with these testimonials is having saved most of them on an Instagram highlight for future customers to gain trust by.
But today, after a heartwarming conversation with a community member on IG, I realised that I’ve been planning to use these tiny doses of appreciation as a magical tool for my own nourishment, creativity and self care since forever, but never got around to actually doing it.
You and I have both come across this wellness tip many a times by now, I’m sure - save the kind words from friends, customers and supporters in a folder somewhere. Print out a tiny note of appreciation from someone and hang it at your work desk to stay anchored to your purpose. Have a diary with printouts, or a digital folder saved somewhere, where you can go and re-read all the appreciation you’ve ever received on those dark days when you feel like there’s no point to anything you’re doing.
The perfectionist within me has envisioned this task for more than a year now - one day, I’ll print out all the testimonials, cut them into perfect squares, buy a special notebook for them, stick them in there, and then open them every morning. Step one is to clear out my overwhelmingly huge screenshots folder - prune out the appreciation testimonials. But then, if you’re like me, your screenshots folder must have some amount of drama. We gotta discuss with the girlfriends what the boyfriend said and how he said it and such. I get swept away, lost, confused, distracted by funny (and painful) memories and ultimately never got to doing this at all.
One of my favourite learnings from over a year of restorative yoga, gentler living, soft business teachings and so much more within The Daily Rest Studio (cannot recommend enough) is that sometimes, five minutes of the practice is as medicinal as the whole practice. Sometimes, the tiny, effortless, silly, 5% chunk of doing the Big Thing is still better than tackling the whole thing at once. Even if my brain convinces me that doing so little is stupid, and not enough, and I might as well do nothing.
The trap of my perfectionist inner voice is to delay things until I find the perfect time to do them in the exact, perfect, elaborate way that I have imagined they should be done. It tells me to delay it until I can do the WHOLE thing at once and immediately enjoy a perfect, finished outcome. I still, sometimes, accidentally believe in this mythical oasis that my toxic perfectionism inner voice suggests is possible, lol. It’s a mirage.
If I could just switch off my should-ing, my typical feminine guilt over everything within and beyond my control at all times, the constant inner nagging of not enoughness, boy, the things I would achieve. In the kookiest, silliest, most imperfect ways - but they would be achieved. Because they would, at least, start. An imperfect process is the best process.
So, today, I decided that I’ll open that screenshots folder, and save just ten appreciation messages to a different folder. I’ll delete at least 10-20 gunk screenshots that are no longer useful (such as me bitching about my ex months ago) and that’s it. Ten minutes. And maybe I’ll do this every day, or just until the end of December, or just thrice a week. If I can mindlessly scroll for 4h a day if left unsupervised, I sure can devote time to this (my recent explorations of making my social media use more intentional and mindful shall come in another post soon).
And I felt called to writing about this to you too - because most of us are smartphone-addled, overwhelmed, ignoring digital gunk, and putting off wellness plans for the perfect ritual done later rather than the silly, quick, imperfect five minutes right now that can transform our everyday gently, meaningfully and beautifully over time.
If you have a small business that has only 8 followers and like 5 customers, could you place just one word of kindness from one of them on your desk or desktop and glance at it daily?
When I started blogging, and selling on my webshop, every thing I put out there was put out with the bitchiest people from my school in mind. I don’t even talk to any of them, but I was acutely aware of them watching me (nobody honestly even thinks about you that much, but you know how we are when it comes to people from our school). I was constantly projecting what they must be saying about what I do. I filtered every post with them in mind, and they weren’t even my target audience or potential customers. This was before we had all this knowledge about running a social media business easily available to us - I started in a time when Valencia filters were what the cool girls did (I just felt like a very wise old crone, saying that).
I learnt along the way, with beautiful advice from fellow travellers of this path, to blog/create/sell/post for that one follower who always sends you the sweetest replies (I’m hoping that Pri from Kolkata is reading this newsletter, you’re her for me). Or for that one customer who said something that made you feel warm and fuzzy. Everytime you share your art, keep them in mind. Make for them, post for them. It will make you magnetic to a hundred more like them.
Trust that I know small businesses with just a thousand or less followers that make more sales, more money and more consistent orders than me at 46k on Instagram. The numbers mean nothing, sometimes. It’s who and what you anchor yourself to energetically that can mean so much. It’s the depth you go into with the community you already have.
Anchoring your creativity to something or someone positive is a thousand times more potent, fruitful and productive than anchoring to that “I’ll SHOW them” energy. As someone who’s done a lot of the revenge success, proving myself to people I shouldn’t even give thought space to and “I’ll shut down the haters with my achievements” stuff, take it from me. Yes, spite is wonderful fuel, but it can be so depleting.
Waking up, creating and sharing in devotion to that one sweet follower, that one kind customer, or even to a friend/family member who appreciated you if that’s all you have right now is what soooo many of us need in this wild journey.
When you can’t think of what to post next, or what to make next, think of that one person who appreciated you and make something for them.
Wake up and see their message every day before you start your workday, or during.
Really. I think we all need a little folder of appreciation, or even just a little note, that we connect with almost every day. We really need to remind ourselves more of everything that we already have put out there, instead of always being in the energy of what we haven’t done yet and what we wish for the future.
I am so grateful for the immense generosity of people who actually take the time to write something kind to me, because I know that there are so many people that I myself deeply admire, but never found the time to actually write my appreciation to. There are articles I’ve shared to five friends at once with utter admiration, but didn’t comment on. There are podcasts, videos and posts whose captions have transformed the way I live my life, but I might have never actually told that person about it. It’s overwhelming. We are consuming more content per day than people in the Shakespearean era consumed in their entire lifetimes. We don’t always have the bandwidth to comment on everything that moves us, I never hold it against people because I understand this myself, deeply. If you’re a creator of any kind, know that you have so many silent fans who DEEPLY enjoyed what you shared and whose lives are gently transformed by you, and you don’t even know it.
As an act of giving back - an imperfect, silly, not enough act that I’m going to do anyway - I’ve set an intention that whenever I’m on social media, I’ll drop at least one message of appreciation towards someone I genuinely admire. Even if it’s just a sentence. I may not be able to shop from every artist ever, I may not be able to write essays of love to every creator ever, but even one moment of generosity a day is a precious use of my energy. The generosity of others messages, comments and replies to my little blog still nourishes me YEARS after I’ve received them. This is the kind of generosity that costs me nothing to give out, and I’m so here for practicing more of it.
Love always,
O
Loving your blogs SO much and you’re exactly right that there’s so much great art and wisdom that impacts us greatly but we never let that creator know. For example, have been meaning to comment on your post about the Venusian rituals (pussyfication rituals me thinks hehe) because that inspired me so much!! Please keep sharing your words with us, I love your point of view on everything 🌹🌹🌹
Oh and god knows we need moree of this generosity 💖💖💖