I’m someone you’d call a healthy type B personality. I’ve always been envious of people who have a busy day filled with plans and stuff to do. I have never been someone who can call herself a workaholic no matter how hard I try. I’m unsure if that’s a good or bad thing. Initially, I didn’t allow myself to bother with this. I always got things done on time and managed time beautifully for things that mattered to me.
However, lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m playing catch up on a lot of things. I feel as though I’m stagnant and life is just passing by. I feel like I have a lot to do and I feel left behind. I feel overwhelmed way too often and the more ambitious people I meet, the more I feel as though I’ll never really get there. There’s an unnecessary sense of competition. If there’s ever a slow moment, I feel like I could be doing something. If I’m just sitting and relaxing there’s an inner voice that constantly tells me that I’m just wasting time.
Have you felt this way?
I’m aware that we now live in a culture that happens to talk a lot about productivity. Busyness is not only important but also essential. I’m constantly worried that I’ll be judged if I say that I don’t have plans or that I’m just going to see how the day goes, especially when I’m not working. Because I run my own show, none of my days are similar and typically scheduled.
I was asked recently, ‘how on earth do you find so much free time?’ and I started spiraling about that way too much than I should have. I started asking myself if I should be doing more and started pushing myself way too much about having so much ‘free’ time.
And that caused me nothing but anxiety. A lot of anxiety. I started getting nightmares and my body started feeling the pressure. I was trying to find a way to find the balance between what feels essential to me and letting go of the guilt of constantly doing something when I came across these two simple words – Pace yourself!
I found myself relaxing a little. This relief allowed me to pause and reflect a lot more rationally about what busy means to me, not the world, but to me.
Say, if I take a few minutes to listen to an audiobook instead of doing session after session, I feel calmer. I find that taking time out to listen to an audiobook is important and essential to me. While someone else may want to schedule session after session because that is important to them. I slowly started allowing myself to understand that there’s no judgement here. Everyone has different priorities and needs based on what feels important to them.
I’ve often experienced that the women I tend to work with also face similar confusions and dilemmas. It’s difficult to choose what feels important, to let go of that feeling of competitiveness and guilt. The need to play catch-up can be overwhelming. The more I’ve discussed these feelings the more I’ve noticed that a different perspective has always made a huge difference in their energies both physically and emotionally.
That being said, these kinds of feelings do tend to step up from time to time and it can take a little bit of introspection and brainstorming to realign and feel back to what one can assume as normal and self-paced.
If this is something you tend to get caught up with too, I’d like to share a few points/ideas that have helped me and my clients.
Collaboration over Competition – I’ve always believed that there’s a place for everyone here. We’re all here to play a part and fulfill some purpose. Even if we’re on the same path, our perspectives and experiences are usually different and very unique. With competitiveness, we slowly start to follow a crowd and lose our uniqueness and our individuality, even if we don’t think so at that moment. We’re very creative as human beings irrespective of the kind of careers and passions we pursue and due to that we start to become competitive. But what if, we could collaborate? Find a way to inspire one another instead of choosing to prove our efficiency. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful experience to consider a collaboration instead? I’ve noticed that when we feel envious of another person it’s our creative side nudging us to explore further. Understand what’s truly missing from our lives and try to see if it’s something we’d really enjoy or if it’s just a phase.
Journal – Is there a way we can truly find a way to collaborate in some capacity about all that you feel passionate about or envious about? What is this competitiveness in you trying to actually tell you?
Create more than you consume – With the internet buzzing with creatives creating so much every minute, we tend to consume a lot of new information. Sometimes that information is useful and required; most of the time, it’s unnecessary information that tends to deplete our energy. Especially as creatives, we want to learn as much as possible and stay updated. If we start to think about it and analyze it, we’d be surprised to learn that we can save so much of our time if we cut the unnecessary noise around us. I’ve been practicing the concept of essentialism for a while and it has allowed me to enjoy with less. Whether it’s information or people, it has allowed me to focus on the things that truly matter and let go without any guilt for things that don’t. I’ve realized that when I filter out all that I’m consuming, not just on the internet but also socially, I have a lot of time to stay focused and feel internally energized to connect with people I love spending time with or create content that makes me happy. That effortless energy feels very satisfying.
Journal – What have you been consuming way too much in your life right now? What do you think you might need to filter out? What do you feel like creating right now that will give you joy and peace?
Recognize your Inner Critic – I’m not good enough, do I really think this is possible for me, this is certainly not my cup of tea, I think I’d rather quit while I’m ahead, I’m not cut out for this, this is how our inner critic shows up in our lives. I recently came across this notion that our inner critic in its own way tends to behave like our protector, kind of signaling us about what we might perceive as a danger before we even think about taking a risk. Our inner critic is essentially our own limiting belief that results due to unpleasant experiences from the past. Therefore, it pops up to remind us that this is something that’s already happened it would be ideal not to do it in order to save ourselves from reliving that trauma, pain, fear, anxiety, and danger. Our inner critic pretends to appear confident because we succumb to it each time it surfaces instead of trying to understand it and reason with it. When we allow ourselves to challenge our inner critic, we get a different perspective on that particular danger. We can then allow ourselves to take small steps to overcome that fear. So, the inner critic is not to be feared but nurtured in the right direction.
Journal – Which incident or phase of your life is this inner critic stemming from? How can you challenge this inner critic in a healthy way? How can you now overcome this particular challenge that your inner critic is pointing toward?
Encourage your Inner mentor – Your inner mentor does show up when you truly need that boost of confidence, however, it has a very low voice. If you miss listening to the inner mentor, it takes a while to get back to it. Your inner mentor needs a lot of encouragement in the form of positive affirmations, meditation, and evidence that perhaps your inner critic is wrong. It doesn’t pop up as often as our inner critic, therefore it requires a lot of nurturing and compassion not to mention patience. Over time, with a lot of practice and patience, we build the kind of confidence that allows us to then do all that we desired and wanted all along. The sound of our inner mentor doesn’t necessarily have to be our sound. It can be the sound of our well-wishers, people of support like friends and family members, the sound of praises and compliments that we receive from strangers, acquaintances, etc., What’s really necessary and the trickiest part is that we may need to calm down the noise to allow these mentors to surface. That’s when tools like journaling and meditation can be extremely helpful.
Journal – Who can be your potential inner mentors? In which areas of your life do you think you need them right now? What do you think you’d like them to tell you? How would you then feel about yourself once your mentors guide you?
Keep your eye on the big picture – It’s honestly easier said than done. Distractions are inevitable and can keep happening. A lot of the time, our limiting beliefs get in the way of our big picture. Our inner critic also causes big distractions. Often, we tend to get depleted and give up altogether when we start to pay too much attention to our distractions. Even though it’s pretty normal to feel that way, it’s important to take a little bit of a break, recharge and come to things slowly. We often forget that we’re allowed to take a minute before we give up altogether. Distractions could be in the form of failure, people, negative mind chatter, overthinking, perfectionism, lack of action, fear, shame, guilt and so much more. The reason we tend to stumble so often is that we’re not aware of our potential distractors. It usually helps to make a list of all that could potentially distract us. Being prepared can be very beneficial in the long run and can help us from spiraling which could lead to procrastination and eventually giving up.
Journal – What tends to distract you easily? How long does it take for you to then bounce back to work on your big picture? What are your distractions actually trying to tell you? What can motivate you to stay in alignment with the big picture?
Recentre your focus – So how can we potentially stay focused once we realize our distractions? One of the strategies that could work in our favour when it comes to focusing is our intention or our reason to get started in the first place. Our intention to do anything needs to be clear and on point. It helps us stay in alignment with our big picture and anytime there’s a distraction we can remind ourselves of the intention we’ve set for ourselves. These intentions need to be personal and meaningful to us. There’s no judgement about what our intentions need to be. They could be simple and straightforward or something that carries a deeper meaning. As long as these intentions help us bounce back to our big picture. Intentions are truly motivating and therefore it helps when we can stick them onto places we happen to look to frequently like mirrors, our work desk, the fridge, a post-it on the laptop, etc., we can get creative with this one. Intentions or our why can truly help motivate us and discipline us as and when we feel we’re losing our vision.
Journal – What intentions got you started in the first place? What is your why? Where would you like to keep this why so you can see it as many times as you require?
Consistency over perfection – Most of the time most of us feel truly left behind because we aren’t very consistent with our activities and tasks. We tend to fall prey to perfection which leads to inconsistency and because of that we lose our focus and the circle continues. We fear failure and succumb to the fear of failure way too often. We want to be prepared for everything just so our journey is smooth and easy. However, if we think about it practically it’s pretty much impossible to have it all figured out all at once. Once we get started, we learn and understand along the way. When we try to figure it all out, we tend to rob ourselves of the experience that could create an impact on our growth and our creativity. Perfection is a good attribute because it’s a form of discipline that helps us fine-tune our skills in a lot of ways, however, that is possible when we also allow mistakes and failure to happen and we aren’t way too hard on ourselves. When we let go of the need to be perfect, consistency takes place. Consistency takes away the pressure of getting it right all the time and we can show up a little more easily and enthusiastically. Consistency becomes difficult because we’re focused on getting it just right and not focused on the experience. We want to focus on the experience more than the outcome.
Journal – How can I show up more consistently each day? How can consistency shape my skills/talent/growth? How can I balance consistency and perfection in my life?
Keep yourself inspired – Inspiration is so important for almost all of us. We need something to keep us going and there are times when that inspiration is just not there. We tend to experience phases of helplessness and hopelessness. We question pretty much all our choices and we’re unable to take the necessary action that could potentially help in our growth. Factors such as failure and comparison tend to overpower our confidence. Leading to guilt and shame. We tend to overcompensate by then pushing ourselves to work too much or end up spiraling too much which then leads to a lack of motivation. Inspiration can help us bounce back even if slowly to focus on what’s important. We tend to look for ways to wake up and get on with our day. Inspiration requires a little work too. Each of us is inspired in different ways. Inspiration usually is personal. It also helps when we allow exploring a little to understand how inspiration truly works for us. For some of us, art may serve as a great source of inspiration, while for some of us, it could be spending quality time in nature. Some of us feel inspired in the company of people, while some of us may find a lot of inspiration with some alone time. Inspiration is highly essential for those of us who seem to lose interest soon and tend to procrastinate way too often. When we often use phrases like, ‘I just don’t feel like’ ‘I don’t think I can do this right now’ and ‘I feel I’m not ready yet’ and a simple inspiration can change the shift in our thought. We try to take a small step and that’s all that’s required sometimes.
Journal – What are the things that inspire me? What am I usually looking forward to during the day? Where do I find joy? When I’m not working, where do I see myself spending a lot of my productive energy?
Unwind from time to time – Burnout and exhaustion can also be contributors to why we feel left behind. When we push ourselves way too much, we experience a sense of boredom and eventually lose interest in what once excited us. We avoid showing up each day because we lose touch with our intention and we don’t find the right inspiration. As creatives, we often feel guilty for taking the day off or for taking a break because we feel as if have someplace to be, and deadlines to meet, and taking a day off is just going to cause a damper on our motivation and inspiration. We realize the importance of truly taking a break when we reach a point where physically our bodies refuse to function adequately. We have no option but to take a break, however, that break often fails to enrich us because mentally we’re still thinking and worrying. We tend to cancel social events in order to keep working because when we’re overworking, we often overlook prioritizing ourselves. In order to move forward it’s important to take a step back. In order to stay focused it’s important to calm the noise. It’s necessary to take a break from time to time.
Journal – What are signs that you’re experiencing burnout? How often do you prioritize work over fun and recreation? How can you let go of the guilt that comes along with taking a break? How can you physically and mentally take a break from worrying and overthinking?
Explore More – We tend to feel left behind a lot more when we experience tunnel vision or when our state of mind tends to become a bit narrow. We see ourselves feeling frustrated and bored even when things are peaceful and going the way we’d always wanted. As creatives, we are filled with a lot of energy that requires direction and guidance. It’s not only limited to our thoughts but also our senses. We need something that can constantly make us feel motivated. However, it may not necessarily come to us, we may need to step out of our comfort zone from time to time and allow for a little exploration. When we’re in a state of stagnation, learning new things and trying out new hobbies can be extremely beneficial. It allows our thoughts, our senses, and our perceptions to grow. We are filled with newness and that helps us stay more aligned. Trying something new can also feel as if we’re straying from the big picture. And that’s understandable, however, it’s important to understand that we don’t have to or need to do something that feels pressurizing. We can easily choose the areas we’d like to explore and things where we think we can try something new.
Journal – What are the hobbies you already have that help you from time to time? Which area of interest would you like to explore a little more? What are the skills/hobbies you’ve always wanted to try? How can you make space to try these out right now? What excuses do you think you can let go of?
These are some of the most common but very effective tips and hacks that you can apply anytime you think you feel left behind. There’s no one size fits all policy when it comes to how you feel and the techniques that can truly help you. You might need to explore a bit and try to see what works for you.
Based on the years of experience I’ve had as a Coach and Therapist, these are a few tips and pointers that have helped the women I’ve worked with.
I hope these help you too!
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