You’ll often feel like you’re a pendulum swinging from one extreme to another. You go hard, you’re reading Atomic Habits, you’re eating the organic veggies for lunch AND dinner, the apartment is immaculate, you look and feel great…until…until quite literally the opposite. Washing your hair becomes a chore, you’re in a mood with the dog and your organised healthy eating has now become something you have to do, and in turn tastes like crappy vegetables with no soul or life. Why has self love become such an uphill effort?

This is because you’ve focused on the doing. The joy of self love has been missing, yes you can meditate for 40 days. Yes, you can go for runs throughout the week, but where is your joy? When is your inner child getting play? As important as the reading, the pilates classes, the podcasts are. You need joy. And this is why you rebel. You want to scroll on your phone instead of reading that book, you want to make something quick because you’re not in the mood to cook the Ottelenghi recipe or make the seed cycling crackers. Because adulting 247 is not fun. You need variety, play, laughter. When did life become so serious? Understand that you need a break from cooking, a takeout once a week is a healthy balance. Watching a movie during the week is not a sin, and it doesn’t need to be on Gaia. The self development books are great, but so is fiction and a little fantasy. Disciplined mornings are life changing, but so is sleeping in on Sunday, and having no set regiment. Balance is key, and not having balance is the reason why self love is starting to feel like a chore. So take some time to reflect on your ‘level up regiment’ and throw some balance in to the mix, adding some play, and a sprinkle of laughter. What you’ll start to see is that the swinging pendulum finds some middle ground and self love is really in the sweet spot called balance.