As I often say “all work is self-work”! We have a lot more control over our lives than we realize. We are also the only ones that can be responsible for our own happiness. We must take responsibility for our own lives and our own happiness and what better place to start than to become aware of our own limitations? It’s an essential piece to work on.
When walking through life in this fast-paced world with a million things to do, we have a tendency to do, do and do until we get stopped. Getting stopped can take many looks. Some of them are: sickness, injury, accidents, emotional overwhelm, roadblocks, nothing seeming to work, etc. When working with clients, talking with friends or looking at my own life I can almost always draw a line between doing too much and something negative happening.
We can learn to pay attention to our thoughts and our moods. Our internal dialogue will tell us where our limitations are. If we’re more focused on finishing so we can do something else than doing what we’re doing, that’s a problem. If we’re irritable, overwhelmed, angry, etc., these are all symptoms of doing too much.
Unconsciously there’s often a belief that we have to finish everything. Unless we slow down enough to really look at this we don’t even know it’s there but we will try to unconsciously accomplish it. We can NEVER accomplish everything, we’re not supposed to. Life is an ongoing process. Once you’re done eating, you’ll have to eventually eat again. If you do all the laundry in the house and you’re standing there in front of the washing machine in your underwear, guess what…the underwear needs to be cleaned, so you have to start all over again! It NEVER ends, but that’s not the problem. The problem is us thinking it’s supposed to.
Since we never get everything done, we have to monitor ourselves and know our limits. You can stop and check in with yourself, see how you’re doing. When you’re still you can actually ask yourself if you need a break or if you’ve been doing too much. Although if you’re still you probably won’t even have to ask, you’ll know, lol! This is quite often why people fall asleep when they try to meditate. Not always but often we’re buzzing around on nervous energy and when we slow down and get still, we fall asleep because we’re exhausted!
It’s important to learn to stop and assess. Successful business owners know to do this on a regular basis and we need to do it in our own lives. Stop, assess, see how you’re doing, do you need a break? Then take one, it’s no one’s responsibility but yours.
Sometimes it can be 5 minutes in the bathroom just to reset, sometimes it’s taking a mental-health day off of work, going to bed early, a vacation, etc. It also can be allowing dishes to sit in the sink…overnight!!! OMG, can you imagine??? It’s okay, no one will die, the laundry can wait, you can have peanut butter sandwiches for dinner instead of going shopping today. Cut yourself a break! It never gets all done anyway so stop trying.
Care for yourself, take time to enjoy your life even when the kids are young so when they get older, they won’t be burning the candle at both ends thinking that’s what life is like because that’s what was modeled for them. Let them see you take a break, care for yourself so they can know that it’s important to do when life gets busy. If you don’t have kids, you still matter! Care for yourself anyway. Life is what happens when you’re busy doing other things. Slow down, interact with life, enjoy it! It’s actually fun!