I have always been an ambitious person and one who subscribed to the belief that you can achieve anything that you set your mind to. I would set myself goals and then work damn hard to achieve them.

A Perfectionist By Nature

I am a perfectionist by nature and have always been one for setting myself high standards. Even if I do something well, I will always find something I could have done better.

As you can probably imagine, when chronic illness came into my life unexpected and unwanted, I did not want to accept it. I did not want to admit that my life had to change.

I believe my first thought was “I can beat this.” There was a slight problem… okay rather big problem… with that logic however; there is no cure.

There is no beating fibromyalgia in the sense that I once hoped. My life undoubtedly had to change but it took time for me to come to terms with this.

I Tried To Push On

At first I pushed on. I wanted to continue with my life as normal in spite of illness and so I pushed myself hard to do so.

I did this day in, day out until one day my body said no more and I physically crashed. A crash that saw me become more or less bed bound and one that I am still recovering as I write this (almost a year later).

Thankfully I have seen slow and steady improvements in my health but I now believe I won’t reach the same level of fitness as I had before.

This experience forced me to come to terms with my illness on a whole new level. It made me realise that just because I might be capable of doing something, it doesn’t mean I should be doing it.

Before my crash my body was doing amazing things by allowing me to keep pushing on but it wasn’t able to sustain this. I truly believe that in order to live well with chronic illness we need to slow down and take life at a different pace.

Pushing on all of the time sadly just leads to pain and misery. It’s just a shame that I didn’t come to this realisation before I reached breaking point!

Making Progress

I’ve made a lot of progress since then, not just physically but also mentally.

Not only have I realised that I need to take life at a slower pace, I have also had the realisation that I need to recalibrate my expectations of myself.

Fibromyalgia has left me unable to do all of the things I wanted to do in life. That’s the shitty truth.

Things have definitely not panned out how I thought they would. Being a high achiever, this was (and still is) undoubtedly hard to take.

However, I now know that placing high standards on myself and setting unrealistic goals does nothing other than make me feel like a failure.

Realising I was Expecting Too Much

I came to the realisation that I had two options: continue to expect too much of myself and give myself a hard time over being unable to match those expectations or opt to move the goal posts instead.

I’ve opted for the latter.

This doesn’t mean you can’t achieve what you want to do. It just means that there may be more steps involved in getting there, it might take longer to achieve and you may have to make some accommodations.

I think the important point is to also think about things realistically. It’s easy to focus on all the things you theoretically could be doing if you weren’t ill.

Be sure to ask yourself if they are things you really want to do or if you are angry because you feel the option has been taken from you.

When I decided to put my energy towards thinking about what I could do instead of what I couldn’t and started celebrating those things, I became happier in myself.

Appreciating The Smaller Goals

If you told me before all of this happened to me that I would be over the moon to be able to wash my hair without issue, I wouldn’t have understood. Now however, the smallest of things are my biggest achievements.

The simple tasks that healthy people take for granted become cause for little celebrations for me. Each small step leads to each milestone and any forward progress is a real positive for me.

I wouldn’t say I am no longer ambitious and I can’t say that I don’t set myself goals; I still am and I still do. The difference is that I do not put pressure on myself to achieve them.

I have more realistic expectations of myself and I now also show myself self-compassion; if I am not able do something today, that’s okay. There is always tomorrow.

I have found that there is nothing to be gained from giving yourself a hard time over things that you think you should be able to do.

When you remove high standards and expectations and set your goals to be within your physical limitations, then you become much happier for it.

Life with chronic illness is unfortunately about compromise but that doesn’t mean we can’t find new ways to be productive and happy.

What do you think?

Further Reading:

• An Exciting Milestone in my Recovery from Lyme Disease, Fibromyalgia & CFS
• Supplementing With Magnesium For Fibromyalgia
• Recovering from Fibromyalgia, CFS & Chronic Lyme Disease