Sunday is the perfect day for introverts. It can be a day to retreat from the world and spend time relaxing at home. You can spend time reading, watching a movie or spending time with your family.

Intention

Part of this requires you to make a choice that you are not going to use your Sunday’s just to catch up on everything that didn’t get done during the week. Making that choice or intention is the starting point.

You first need to allow yourself not to try to make everything perfect. Sure, it is really lovely to start the week with everything straight in the house, but not if it leaves you beginning the week feeling frazzled and worn out.

You need to choose a couple of things that would be fun for you to do on your Sunday. In the book ‘What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend,’ Laura Vanderkam explains that the most successful people do tend to apply some planning and intention to their weekend time. Without this it’s all too easy to get to Monday and then think ‘Where did the weekend go?’

Self-Care

As you allow yourself to nourish yourself mentally through reading or connecting you can also take the time to nourish yourself physically. This can be through taking a rest day if you exercise throughout the week, or to do some exercise you love if you have not made the time for it during the week.

I do ballet each day during the week so for me Sunday is my rest day. I love cooking from my ‘Deliciously Ella‘ cookbooks and often use one of her batch recipes, so that I also have enough for Monday night when my daughter has swimming lessons after school and things are more hurried.

Sad Sundays

When I was in jobs that I found stressful I sometimes felt that my Sunday evenings were marred with stresses about the week ahead and this meant that a cloud of despondency had a tendency to descend on a Sunday evening. Sunday nights were often mopey and even tear-filled.

The issue I had here was that I was not getting enough support in my life.

At the time I was earning enough to get more support, but I just didn’t see that as an option. I used to think that by going for a facial once a month I was caring of myself, and even that felt hugely indulgent.

Foundation

So there were two kinds of self-care I needed so that my Sundays didn’t nose dive.

The first was caring for myself enough during the week so that Sunday was not the only calm from the storm.

The second was that I know now that if I had worked with a coach at the time I could have been helped to see how great my work was and to be more proud of it. I would have been helped to see all the positives about the work that I was doing. I would have been helped through all the self-criticism that was going on. I would even have been helped to see that there were other options for me and would have been helped to explore them.

I would have realised that the pain I was feeling on a Sunday evening wasn’t simply about my job, it was about how I related to myself and felt about myself.

I was relying on myself to be able to fix things and make them better. I thought that if I only found the right self-help book and worked through it diligently, (like we introverts do) that I would get to where I wanted to be.

Claiming the Help you Need

I learnt that it takes much more than working through exercises in self-help books; it takes brave, bold action.

It takes self-confidence that is built over time and it takes the fundamental step of admitting to yourself that you don’t want things to continue the way you have and that you are willing to do what it takes to get something different, even if that means asking for help.

More than Manolos

I had the same attitude to coaching as I did to my monthly facial. It felt like to invest in it was a luxury or an indulgence. It felt like buying a pair of Manolos, when really I was buying a pair of walking boots for my true life path.

I do agree that it is a privileged position in life to be able to invest in yourself through coaching. I am grateful that I was in that position. I decided that I really wanted to make that investment in myself. It was only by giving myself permission to grow and develop in all the ways that I was meant to that I was able to come to this work and help those I coach and those in my community through it.

Want to chat?

If you feel ready to invest in yourself through coaching and are interested in working with me as your coach, please email me at deborah@deborahchalk.com and we can set up an initial call to find out if we are a good match.