It's been a busy few weeks.
I know that simply by saying that 'we are sooo busy', can often make life seem like there is just to much do to, no time to do it in and leaves us feeling as if we are so over-whelmed by our own creation and labelling of 'busy', that we then start placing extra pressure on ourselves to do everything, 'yesterday' and to a level only a perfectionist would understand.
When we let ourselves 'slip' and do not get something done that we planned to (which let me tell you, was always going to happen in my past few weeks because I decided it would be most beneficial to do everything, that in hindsight no human man or woman would ever be able to do without having a meltdown - which I did, numerous times!!), we punish ourselves and start blaming it on who we are. We start thinking 'Oh - I should've done this instead', or 'this would've worked if I had been more focussed, smarter or faster at doing it'.
The thing is though - this thought process is self defeating. It sends us into a spiral of guilt, a feeling of unworthiness, a 'punch in the face' to our confidence levels and we start to feel in a world of 'stuck' where we don't know how to move forward.
I spoke to a friend recently, who is also a Health Coach about this very issue that kept popping up in many of my clients, and we started thinking about how to we could really start tapping into our clients, to open them up to being aware of this often over-powering 'perfectionist' and 'high-achieving' mindset that was so dominant in their lives.
Let's imagine that you are a Teacher. You want to take your cheery, bouncy and incredibly excited group of 10 year old students out on an excursion to the Zoo. To do this, you need to gain permission from their parents.
Why couldn't this idea work on ourselves?
Sometimes we need to give ourselves the permission to do less, to push less, to allow more ease and flow into our life. And since we’re usually the ones pushing ourselves so hard, we’re also usually the only ones who can slow the pace.
Sometimes we want to give ourselves permission to do something new, something different, in a calmer and more relaxed way, in a way that feels more “us”, more aligned with who we are or who we think we could be, or should be, or would be… yet when it comes down to it, we still push and force.
We still think we wouldn’t have to it “this way” (the way that creates tension, tightness and fatigue) if things were different, if we were “more” (smarter, better, faster, more focused), if only we seemed more competent (or felt it), if only we were more noticed and acknowledged.
But thinking like that doesn’t get us very far; it keeps us trapped in cycles of limited thinking, on the verge of burn out, always reeling in our perfectionism and feeling … stuck.
If you’re tired of pushing, give yourself permission to stop
If your ‘permission slip’ to do better is seeped in guilt, or camouflaged by perfectionism, you’re not really giving yourself permission to be your true self because you’re covering it up in shame, blame and exhaustion.
Here are a few examples I have used in the past to get you thinking.....
I could be aligned with who I am, and who I want to be.
I could be aligned to where I want my business to go and how it will feel where I get there.
I could work just enough, and that would be okay.
I could feel more than competent today.
I could recognise herself, now, in this moment.
What will also be super important in ensuring that this permission slip becomes something of REAL help to your life is THEN - writing a permission slip, “It’s okay to treat this as an exercise and not an assignment” – after all, I’m not being examined or marked for it.'
Extra reading - Cassie Mendoza-Jones.
No comments:
Post a Comment