Do it for the right reason

hello dear, how are you? miss you.

Today is Monday and as I expected, I am a bit overwhelmed by returning from a vacation and starting a new week. But instead of feeling depressed or drowned, I am feeling a bit unusually “hyper”. I think it is actually my anxiety building up, and the “hyper” tendency comes from me feeling stressed and scared about all the things that will happen this coming week.

My parents will be back to HK on Friday morning. I feel nervous about them coming back because I will likely have to adjust my lifestyle with my parents being here again living together. I also plan to pick them up at the airport, but they land at 6:55am and I am a bit stressed about how early it is. As for work, Vincent is back from the US and I will need to have several meetings with him this week, one being at 8am which is again so early for me. Lastly, my friend’s funeral will be held on Saturday. I am a bit anxious about attending it because I worried I would feel very triggered again emotionally being in that atmosphere.

So overall, I am just feeling quite overwhelmed when I think about what’s ahead of this week.

As I was thinking about these things on my bus ride to my weekly chinese doctor appointment this morning and started to feel stressed and worried that I won’t be able to manage all the these things well, I thought about these words that I remembered from the church online playback I listened to last night.

It reminded us rather than being so focused on setting goals to do the “right” things or say the “right” things, more importantly we should always begin with looking within ourselves and the motives behind our actions and words, even behind those that are seen as “good”. I especially remember these words that he said: “Do all the good things that you’d always do, but do them for the right reasons.”

I think it is a really good and timely reminder for me as this hectic and challenging week approaches. You know Hannah well enough that I always strive to do my best whenever I’m being put in a high stress situation. But sometimes I get lost in pushing myself so hard, and I end up being so swamped by the stress, and anxiety becomes my motivation to do better and achieve better.

But perhaps the more sustainable and even stronger motivation for me is the “right” reasons behind all these, rather than the anxiety. For example, I stress out about having to go pick up my parents at the airport at 7am because it is so early for me and I worry I will struggle to get up. But rather than pushing myself by thinking about it as an obligation that I must do, the reason that I wanted to pick them up was actually because from my own experience, I understand how tired it can feel after taking a long haul flight, and how much more “welcomed” it would feel to come home with someone waiting for you. Plus I don’t want my parents to have to carry all the large luggage by themselves even though they said they can do it.

It makes me feel lighter when I think about it this way and I wouldn’t feel that suffocating even when I imagine myself failing, because I know even if I fail, I can probably use other ways to achieve the same goal, to make my parents feel welcomed. So perhaps sitting back to remind myself of the “right” reasons for doing all the different things I expect from myself in the coming week is what I need from time to time to manage my anxiety and stress.

Sorry that this is a long post. I might not be able to write a lot of long posts like this for the coming week. But I hope you know I am always eager to share with you all these big and small things in my life.

Love you and miss you 🤍

PS I think I gained some weight 🥲