Are You Doing Too Much?

So many people feel like they are stressed out at the moment. Could it be that they are trying to fit too much into their lives? Do you relate? Are you doing too much? Please, keep reading!

We talk so much about sustainability in this day and age. It’s been shown time and again that we need to make changes for the planet to survive. Well, how about on a personal level. How sustainable is your life’s pace? Do you see yourself being able to keep your pace up long term? If not, what changes can we make to get to a pace that is sustainable for us?

Assessment

If you read my blog regularly you will see that virtually every solution I present starts with the same first step — Awareness. It’s the same here, we need to first of all establish some awareness of what’s happening with our pace. So let me pose some prompt questions to see if you can get the juices flowing of whether we might fall into that group of doing too much..

• Do I regularly feel exhausted?
• Do I often feel that I lack balance?
• Do I feel like relationships are suffering?
• Do I get overwhelmed on a regular basis?
• Do I feel I get no time to myself?
• Do I get the sense that I just have to keep going?
• Do I think responsibilities are getting neglected?

The reasons why

Another step beyond knowing what is happening is to know why it is happening. So, let’s take a dive together and figure out what is driving us to pile our life up with an unsustainable amount of activities.

It could be that we are losing sight of our boundaries. It can happen that we end up saying yes to things we don’t want to do, because we feel an obligation or responsibility towards doing them.

It could be that we are losing sight of our priorities. This will result in us just going with the flow and doing things as per what is in front of us at that moment.

It could be that we are losing sight of our personal limitations. This means that we forget that we can only do so much, instead we seem to somehow believe we can be superhuman.

Maybe you will be able to think about it and come up some different reasons, but these are some basic ones to get us going. So let’s now look at how to do a life reset..

Doing a life reset

Let’s take each of the reasons I mentioned and look at how we can do a reset for each one.

BOUNDARIES — If we have gotten into the habit of being a ‘yes’ person, what can we do? Well, it’s time to go to your happy place. Hit the pause button, head somewhere you feel you have time and space to breathe, somewhere that you will be able to gain some clarity. Now, take that time to connect back with yourself, recognise that other people can manage. In fact, if you say no, maybe you will be giving someone an opportunity for growth themselves. Get a sense again of what is truly your responsibility and what responsibilities you can give back to others.

It is worth mentioning that sometimes the ‘no’ might be also needed for ourselves. Maybe we need to say ‘no’ to finishing reading the whole book, in order to get a good night’s sleep and be ready for work tomorrow. Boundaries can be physical, emotional and mental, so really figure out where in our life we are saying ‘yes’ where ‘no’ would actually serve us better.

PRIORITIES — This is one that might just need a pen and paper. If you wrote all your activities down on paper, I’m sure that would be a long list. Now, take your pen and mark the ones that are needs and the ones that are wants. The needs are actually very few. You might say — I need to work full time. Yet there are many people who work part time, simply because they have chosen to have fewer possessions and keep life simpler. So be really honest about what is your choice to do.

When you have realised what is your choice, it might become a bit more clear how to determine what is important for us, what do we value? Cleaning is not a priority for me, so why would I buy loads of knick knacks that I would end up spending time dusting? Realising the things that are important to us will influence our choices. We actually have a lot more freedom of choice than we realise sometimes.

PERSONAL LIMITATIONS — This is an ego kind of issue. We are over confident about our abilities. We don’t respect the time and limitations that we have. Maybe for example, as we get older, we are not able to do as much as we used to do. This message might not have gotten into our subconscious yet, so we plan and imagine we can do what we used to do. Maybe we are not taking into account stress, and the toll that takes on our body.

The solution is to start getting really humbly honest. If nan asks us to paint her whole house for her, maybe don’t tell her that you will be there tomorrow, if you already have a full day’s work planned. Start recognising the actual time things take. Respect the process of activities, give them the full focus they deserve and try not to be mentally always moving on to the next thing.

Let’s face it…We are only human, and we only have so much time in any given day.

In summary, to do a life’s reset, it’s important to recognise what is our responsibility and limit how many extra ones we take on. It’s important to recognise our choice of values, what’s priority to us and limit doing things that are not important. Finally, it’s important to see what we are truly honestly capable of, not setting ourselves up for failure by ambition.

I hope you found something in here helpful. I truly hope you are able to create a pace of life that is both sustainable and enjoyable. Let me know if you have any thoughts around what was mentioned in this article. Thanks for reading bujoplanner friends.