Hey Annabelle!
I’m glad you took a break and came back to the content! Not only is that the best remedy for overwhelm, like you experienced, it allowed you time to integrate what you’ve been processing, and you were able to come back to it with a different perspective–one where you gave yourself credit for all the progress you’ve clearly made, which is awesome! 🙂
I love the idea of you challenging your limiting beliefs regularly as equivalent to “doing the dishes.” Yep, that’s so true! It’s one of those routine chores we need to do regularly in order to keep things tidy and healthy.
And as to your last point, it sounds like you’re discovering the value of both/and thinking! As in, the solution doesn’t have to be one or the other–either keep things the same and prioritize stability, or flip things on their head and decide to pursue novelty and variety, instead. Why not both? A lot of the time we don’t consider the nuanced option, because it’s usually way more complicated than just choosing “this or that.” But the stark either/or choice is almost never fulfilling! We need to honor both/all sides of who we are, which can take more time and energy and intention up front, but is infinitely more rewarding on the back end.
And the great thing about deciding that, “I get to have both! Now, how to make that work?” is that, once you declare it’s a possibility, you’ll start to see opportunities where you once might have missed them, because you weren’t open enough to them yet. It can become a fun challenge for you to solve, rather than an impossible task!