26 Aug THE TRICK TO GETTING IT ALL DONE

Do you get through the day in a rush? A little bit frantic? Pushing hard to get one thing done so you can get to the next thing? Yet it seems that no matter how hard you go, you can never get it all done. There’s always something else and it’s the same deal the next day and the next after that.

You’re exasperated with how to make your schedule work when you have so many things to do and always wondering, when is it going to get easier? The hamster wheel never slows down.

Living in this constant state of doing and rushing and pushing means that even if you try and stop for a break, you still can’t relax.

What if your life is like this forever? What if you’re always chasing time, what if you start paying attention to the fact that you’re missing out on enjoying your life? What if you get to the end and still have a long to-do list, what was the point of it all?

Imagine having a life where you pull back, schedule a 20 minute nap in for yourself each day, take the pressure off and let go of all the ‘other’ things you should be doing.

This is true self care.

I worked with a client who jam-packed her calendar each day but was unable to complete all tasks. She went over time on each task, didn’t stick to timeframes, procrastinated and interrupted herself constantly.  It’s like she was deliberately screwing up her schedule.

She was punishing herself with her own schedule.

She was doing this in two ways. Firstly, she was punishing herself with having too much on it to begin with and then also punishing herself by screwing it up even more.

Let’s use an analogy…imagine the story of a little girl. She’s a new orphan in an orphanage. It’s not a very nice place. She’s been given so many chores to do for the day and she’s struggling with them all. She’s got chickens to feed, straw to distribute, a vegetable garden to tend to. While she’s trying to get all her jobs done, the meanest orphan in the pack comes over to her, calls her names, then pushes her in the mud and let’s all the chickens out. The new orphan girl is screwed now. There’s no way she’ll get it all done after having to clean up and go on a chicken hunt (the chicken hunt is the Google, Facebook or Netflix rabbit hole you go down every day to procrastinate). So you know what happens to the little girl then right? The matron tells her off and she goes to bed without any supper.

That matron is you. That mean little orphan is you. And that little girl trying to get it all done without a hope of getting it done, is you. How does that feel?

You are punishing yourself with your own schedule. Punishing yourself with an overloaded calendar when you know it’s not possible.

Let go of the punishment, let go of the hustle.

Be selective with what you do. Refine and be realistic with your day and what you can get through.

When you pull right back for yourself, you sink into love, because you’re only giving yourself what you know you can do. When you start working and coming from a place of love, it becomes easy, when it becomes easy, you get more done, you take care of yourself and start trusting yourself. You start enjoying and sensing the balance of self-care and doing the work.

The hustle is only inside of you. The list of items on your to-do list are not creating the hustle. It’s your own pushing to get more done when in reality, it is not possible.

It is an act of self-love to only put on your schedule what you can do.

If you do that, there will be no opportunity to mess it up.

This is how it really works. Don’t pile it all up on yourself. You don’t need to be doing a billion things. You can’t. You only need to be doing a few.

Don’t set yourself up day after day to chase after the chickens and fall in the mud.

Instead, give yourself the gift of being realistic and being ok with that.