This made my friend (and me) crash. Stop doing this!
So many people have the same thing in common — the need to control.
Do you want to control…
Your daily to-do list?
What your children accomplish and what they’re doing with their time?
How much you should be able fit into a week?
How perfect you do things?
How helpful and accommodating you are to co-workers, family and friends?
If so, your life probably feels…
fast-paced yet lacks enough time to accomplish everything you have to do
ironically out of control despite your effort to control everything and everyone
stressful because of the self-imposed pressure you put on yourself and what it means about you if you don’t get everything on your to-do list done, have your kids involved in all the things, don’t do everything right or aren’t helpful enough, etc.
Interesting, right? We feel the need to control yet feel out of control.
This used to be me and then I crashed.
It’s a lot of self-imposed pressure to control so much for so long.
And it’s just a matter of time before we do crash.
I have a friend who wouldn’t listen to me or other loved ones telling her to slow down, delegate, and let go of control.
She was too caught up in the frenzy of being beyond great at her job, accommodating everyone’s needs and requests, and putting self-imposed pressure on herself to never stop no matter if she was tired because there was always so much to do.
Guess what?
She crashed.
She ended up leaving her job and literally dropped out of sight for nearly a year because she was that burned out.
I met with her recently and she’s doing great. She’s working a fraction of hours in a job she loves and is making her mental health top priority.
Insight: She loved her first job too, the one she quit. She simply didn’t have the right tools back then to effectively manage herself in that job by setting boundaries, quitting at 5pm and leaving work at work, etc.
She is able to look back on her life with clarity and see that she needed to control, people please, and be a perfectionist (top Inner Critic behaviors by the way) to feel useful, needed, and worthy.
Her Inner Critic made sure she didn’t stop because stopping was for losers and what would people think about her if she said no or put herself first? Her Inner Critic said that people would see her as a selfish, terrible person.
She sees now that the opposite behaviors of trusting, flowing, doing her best, setting boundaries, and making herself a priority are the most important ingredients to a fulfilling and happy life. Everything her Inner Critic said wouldn’t work (your Inner Critic is always a liar, BTW).
This pandemic is forcing all of us to slow down, delegate, and let go of control.
And for many this feels awful, especially if control has been the way you roll.
I encourage you to be grateful for this time in the slow lane. I hope you’re learning from it and see that perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.
What strict and controlling patterns are still causing you anxiety during this pandemic?
That you can’t get everything done?
That your kids are messing up the house quicker than you can clean it up?
That you should be more productive now that you have the time?
That you should be more organized, helpful, or useful?
When you let go of control and start applying self-compassion you move into the beauty of what it feels like to trust and flow. Instead of focusing on everything you lack, aren’t doing, and what’s wrong, you are able to let go.
And letting go is not the same as giving up or not caring.
Letting go frees up your mind and energy to stay in your lane. The lane where you trust that you’re doing your best, delegating what makes sense, and letting go of self-imposed pressures.
The beauty of this is that it actually makes you MORE productive and feel MORE in charge.
Post pandemic, when you get back to life outside of your home, having these better tools will pay off. Moving through life with more ease will help you see that control was really holding you back from your next level of awesome!
Slowing down and learning to trust and flow keeps you…
from crashing
now (in the present)
productive and doing your best
happy
relaxed
living with gusto and without self-imposed pressures
empowered and in command
from over-thinking, worrying, and stressing (all Inner Critic behaviors)
Can I help?
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I am great at helping putting things into perspective and sending you on your way feeling empowered to implement a workable plan.
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