The fine art of feeling good about yourself and your life.

A woman screeches into my office.

She introduces herself; she’s an elite athlete with a massive social media following and a couple of businesses running on the side.

She perches on the edge of my couch like she’s not staying long. She speaks rapidly, pausing to catch her breath; her eyes dart around the room, she keeps a hand on her knee to steady a jiggling leg.

I take a deep breath: she’s booked a therapy session for some help with her anxiety and she’s making ME nervous.

I don’t tell her this for as a psychologist I am supposed to be the epitome of calm; a person most qualified to Walk the Talk.

“How can I help you?” I say, as evenly as I can.

“I can’t relax,” she says, smiling sheepishly. “When I try to rest I freak out that I’m not doing enough. I have to be productive, to ACHIEVE things. If I don’t get heaps done, it’s a bad day for me. Really bad.”

She explains the fear that drives her to take on, and do, more than is healthy and sustainable. She’s afraid of wasting her life and her talent; that she’ll fall short of the lofty expectations she has for herself, that she won’t be Good Enough.

And those fears are slowly, methodically, eating away at her mental health.

Read also: 9 strange little tricks to creat an insanely unfair advantage

The Weirdness of a Total Productivity Ratio

Productivity, by definition, measures the efficiency of a production process. The ratio of all outputs to all inputs is called Total Productivity. But when it’s applied to human function, it all gets a bit weird.

What? You’re not doing Brain Expansion exercises at 5am? You don’t have a 7-point bulletproof morning routine? You don’t read 235 books a year? You’re not journaling and writing in your Gratitude notebook every day? You are not open to learning every second of every day?What are you thinking?

Exhausting, right?

There’s no shame in striving to be productive, to make the best use of our time, to optimise use of our skills and talents.

But life doesn’t fit inside a purpose-built framework.

For a start, we don’t know how long we’ve got. For most people, life is a longer journey than you think. And it can feel like a freaking eternity if you spend it doing the wrong things with the wrong people.

Most of us put more effort into planning our vacations than we do into our lives and relationships — which seems all wrong when Life is the longest trip we’ll ever take. And relationships are the thing that can mess us up most of all.

So instead of packing our days with activity, we need to think carefully about what makes us happy and excited, who we like to spend time with, how to have fulfilling relationships or, what brings us serenity and meaning.

Here are six tips for making the most of your life, without making it Hell for your health.

Prioritise ruthlessly

What matters to you? To you — not your neighbour or your colleague or your mother. What matters to you is personal. Rank your priorities in order (remembering to put your own health and wellbeing at the top of the list) and don’t allow things and people lower down the list to trump them — ever.

Be the tortoise, not the hare

Set your aspirations high but be methodical in the way you go about achieving them. As the Aesop’s fable goes, slow and steady wins the race. Keep the big picture in mind, but don’t try to live by it. Break it into tiny goals with tight timeframes. Then knock them off, one by one.

Put the squeeze on distractions

Distractions, in a highly distractable world, are our biggest threat. Screens, social media rabbit holes, binge-watchable TV series, pizza, beer, sex and porn, drugs, emotionally draining friends– you name it, there is an awful lot of competition for our already scattered attention. But if you can’t master your distractions, they will master you. Just saying.

Bust out the bubbles — often

Before you attack me, this is just a metaphor. It has nothing to do with using alcohol as a reward. It just means celebrate the milestones — even the tiniest ones. Celebration is a great motivator, it’ll keep you going. It’s also kind of fun.

And speaking of fun, aim to live a little more on the light side than the dark. Don’t take yourself and your dreams too seriously. It sucks the joy out of everything. Just get up, front up, do your best and bust out the bubbles to reward yourself.

Read also: 4 ways to speed up your personal growth

Drop down a gear

Consider your lifestyle. Maybe you need to slow down? It’s admirable to get lots done, to use your time well. But being able to relax, unwind and calm yourself are essential life skills too. Take time to think about what and who really matters to you, what you would like to have achieved at the end of your life.

Palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware identified the Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2011) as: (1) being true to yourself (rather than doing what others expected of you), (2) not working so hard, (3) having the courage to express feelings, (4) staying in touch with friends and (5) letting yourself be happier.

Hmm, no-one mentioned their Total Productivity ratio. I wonder why?B

Contributed by Karen Nimmo

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