Editor’s Note

Dear World,

The guest post that you’re about to read briefly highlights Richell Henry’s reimagined way of honouring her reliability in sticking to writing commitments. She acknowledges that there’s nothing monolithic about her life and that multiple things can be true at once. She can retain her badge of reliability and miss originally set deadlines. Those deadlines can be adjusted with a recommitment, and the issue of outliers or procrastination can rear their ugly heads. She gently points to her inner critic and the judgement of self by going against her norm.

While this is Richelle’s story to tell in as brief or expansive ways as possible, we know that a few or more of you may relate. Missing a commitment shouldn’t have much bearing on who you are in the grand scheme of things – especially if you’ve built a reputation of honouring your commitments.

The fact is that life happens in all its dynamism. What truly matters is how you adjust and ultimately do what you say you’ll do without having a consistent repetition.

The point is that reliability and consistency are not rigid. You can still demonstrate those traits despite going against the norm of how you usually operate. Indulge Richelle in this post and let’s see where you fall.

Though the messages written, edited, and shared by Suburban Guests may resonate with The Suburban Girl JA®, they are not our own and they do not necessarily reflect the thoughts and ideals we value.

Signed,

The Suburban Girl JA®

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Adjusting One’s Approach According to Life’s Realities and Honouring My Badge of Reliability

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Just so you know, you are allowed to edit the story you tell yourself. I’ve seen those words credited to Lori Gottlieb but I’ve also seen it credited to Neil Gaiman. The point is, they’re right.

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When I was asked to be a guest writer for another time, without hesitation, I said, “Yes!”

I confirmed my availability knowing that my situation can change at a moment’s notice rendering me unable to do what I originally committed to. Then there’s the issue of my procrastination and also random outliers that interrupt my life whenever they feel like.

Many things can co-exist. My “yes” can be totally valid and I can experience a writer’s block countless times. I can have the post drafted; say ‘I’ll submit soon’ (by week’s end) and still watch the days and weeks go by. Procrastination is a struggle and I’m actively working on it.

That does not suspend my “badge of reliability.” It shouldn’t. This blog’s curator and I adjusted and rewrote the rules of what reliability looked like. This has helped me to navigate unwanted creative blocks where writing is concerned.

This adjustment has reminded me that there is a quiet kind of courage in gently rewriting the rules that you live by. To emphasise, it’s not the dramatic, ‘burn-it-all-down’ kind. Rather, it’s the softer kind; the kind that notices where the inner critic has been holding the pen for too long and decides, lovingly, to take it back.

Many of us live as if our lives are a book authored by criticism: rules about who we should be by now, how much we should have achieved, and how lovable we must prove ourselves to be. Over time, these rules harden into truths that we never stop to question. However, what if love, especially self-love, invited us to revise the margins?

Not erase the past. Not deny the mistakes. Just, rewrite the rules by which we honour our badge of reliability and relax the way in which our books are authored.

Lessons in Rewriting the Rules to Honour Your Reliability

You don’t need to earn rest

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that rest is a reward for productivity. The rewrite says otherwise. Rest is not laziness; it’s maintenance. A life lived without pause eventually forgets how to listen. Choosing rest is choosing sustainability, not weakness.

With the dynamics of life paired with procrastination, rest can sometimes move from non-negotiable to negotiable as it may feel like all deadlines and commitments are haunting us. So, we lose sleep over. Often, the overwhelm in knowing there’s so much to do and so little time can also take away a few hours of rest from us.

Yes, better planning is a must, but it should not be at the price of getting rest.

Growth doesn’t have to hurt to be real

There’s a popular belief that transformation must be painful to be valid. But growth can be quiet. It can look like choosing better boundaries, softer self-talk, or walking away without explaining yourself.

In choosing better boundaries, you ought to pay attention to what you commit to and the frame of mind you’re in when you do so. In situations like mine, growth looks like the readjustment of the deadlines you give yourself and the commitments you make with others. Growth means acknowledging where you are, what you’ve missed, how to catch up, and still honour that badge of reliability.

Being consistent is more the destination than the journey

Old rules say consistency means never changing direction. The gentler truth is that clarity evolves. You are not betraying your former self by choosing differently; you are honouring what you’ve learned. It also means that honouring your word at every opportunity allows you to remain consistent. The journey to that destination may look different with the outliers, for example, but doing what you set out to do is part of that consistency.

Kindness toward yourself sets the tone for everything else

The way you speak to yourself becomes the language you use with the world. Self-compassion doesn’t make you complacent; it makes you resilient. Sometimes it looks like forgiveness. Sometimes it’s simply choosing not to be your own harshest critic.

So, you missed a deadline or two. You can’t go back in time to undo that. The next best thing is being kind to yourself and mapping your next route(s) to getting the job(s) done. If you’re so hard on yourself where you ignore the rest you need, forget that you’re growing, miss out on consistency and being unkind to yourself, then rewriting the rules by which you critique yourself and honouring the badge of reliability will be a waste.

Rewriting the rules for self is not about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to yourself, without the red ink, without the constant corrections. Page by page, gently, you get to decide what stays, what softens, and what no longer gets to define the story.

And that, in itself, is an act of love.

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Read Richelle’s previous guest post Curiosity Fuels Lifelong Learning and Impacts Growth and learn what she had to say about encouraging curiosity throughout our lifetime!

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Connect with Richelle on her blog: https://richellethenry.wordpress.com
LinkedIn: Richelle T Henry | Instagram @richelle_t_henry | Facebook @Richelle MsRoyal T. Henry