As I tried to keep myself on track, I began to set smaller goals, or „next right things” to do. 

An autotelic personality is a must these days – it always is, but now it is more important than ever. By autotelic I mean one has their own goals,
- not trying to validate themselves as good members of the society,
- not relying on someone else’s guidance all the time
- having or developing a sense of humor- like today I was wondering how strange was that, when, as a teen, I began to learn an instrument and saw people, who already could play it. And they played - literally, they had fun. That fun was backed with all the work, often dull and painful experiences, but the outcome was pure fun. And I had no clue how will I find the way to this relaxed state of mind, this competence, this self-esteem. Today I am a little closer to that state of mind, but I hadn’t had that instrument in my hand for years.

Back then I didn’t learn how to rest, instead of quit. I wanted things to work, but I had zero clues on how to make something work.
I had a surreal picture about the gifted people – in the nineties, there was a gift-cult in Eastern-Europe, everyone wanted to be a talented one, and lots of us had ourselves mind-numbed with that talent is a 99% innate stuff. That you are talented. You are sporty, you are trained. You won’t become it via work and experiences and realizations - once something clicked by itself, or you were born that way.
Meanwhile effortless does not mean actual effortlessness.
One can be effortless on a top of a hill, that they made from the aforementioned humor, resilience, self-esteem, ever-developing ability to work, and to find intrinsic goals. Practical intelligence, connections. That was the worse: I did not know, how to start and nurture relationships, I had a practical intelligence around zero – so everything was together for me to feel like I know absolutely nothing about nothing. That’s why I got stuck and numbed in that feeling I won’t go ahead as I wanted.

In fact, one of today’s favorite words: self-compassion is that. On the ground of that, you can easily be a tough one – but the first step is the exact opposite: don’t be tough on yourself. And that does not mean being overly soft, always creative to find newer and newer excuses for not doing the right thing. Only that you don’t talk to yourself like a bad parent or an unjust teacher, who does not want their students to win. You want yourself to win.