Dear Felix,

You’ve been through a lot, you’ve faced major setbacks, you even had to battle cancer. You’re tired and exhausted (no wonder!), but you feel you cannot give yourself a break, you must be 100% disciplined and focused on staying healthy. You say your every day is scheduled and there’s no time for fooling around. Everything you do, every minute of your day, has to be purposeful and well spent. You say you feel like a robot and this regime actually makes you feel exhausted, but you believe you have to continue in order to stay healthy.

Dear Felix, you actually need to give yourself a break! Because in order to stay healthy, we need balance, and without fun and joy and relaxation, we aren’t in balance. Right now, you’re pushing yourself to be “perfect” in every sense, as a compensation for all the mistakes you made in the last 15 years. You feel you’ve messed up, and now you have to make up for it. That’s fine, it’s okay if we suddenly wake up and realize we haven’t lived our lives in the best possible way, and now we want to do things differently. However, we cannot go on without self-compassion. We cannot go on in a healthy, balanced, sustainable way.

So instead of pushing yourself to the limits and living like a stoic, I’d suggest introducing a bit more joy and fun in your healthy lifestyle. Pamper yourself a bit more. It doesn’t need to be self-indulgent, but simply nurturing, enjoyable, something that recharges your batteries instead of depleting them.

It takes a shift in perspective – from self-condemnation to self-compassion. Forgive yourself for your past mistakes. We all make mistakes, and we often don’t change until life forces us to. Life did force you, but you’ve learned your lessons, you’ve changed course. Now you can relax a bit and stop to smell the roses, as they say 😊

Good luck!