Becoming a business owner and being an entrepreneur, it's the biggest life-changing moment. As you're moving into that space you start to see all your insecurities highlighted in bigger and brighter ways than you could've imagined. It's like neon signs are everywhere and you have to address every single one because they ALL will sabotage your goals and dreams.
A couple of big self-sabotages of mine have been OVERWHELM and ANXIETY. While at first, these things felt like they would keep me from doing the things I had to do, how I learned to manage this is through meditation and yoga. Overwhelm is something that happens in the body. It's a trigger response to situations and it's NOT a real emotion, but rather a physiological response to having shit to do. This happens to us based on the fact that we are seeing tons of things that we need to get done and not doing them! It's not having a plan to take action on what's coming your way.
Guess who causes that issue?
Yep. You guessed it. We cause this overwhelming situation for our own selves!. We just aren't getting shit done and see a to-do list as "too much" which means either the things we have to do aren't in line with our values and what we WANT to be doing, or we're not carving out time to do it (or asking for help when that's an option)!
I saw a great quote by Peter Shallard that said,
Overwhelm isn’t an emotion. It’s the habit of not separating planning from action. When you lump overwhelm into the “negative emotion” box (along with frustration and fear), it becomes something to avoid. We’re culturally and behaviorally conditioned to avoid emotional pain – negative emotion is bad and we must run away from it.
- Peter Shallard
Yep. He speaks some truth right there! This is why emotions like frustration and fear result in procrastination and self-sabotage time and time again. They're great ways to strategize how to avoid things, and the longer we realize that we're just not acting upon our needs, then we never do the things we fear. It becomes too comfy to be able to placate to that "I am too busy" or the "I don't have time" thing that way too many people say today.
We have the time for things that are super important. And, a to-do list is always important so that means a better plan and action time needs to be strategized.
But, here are some other realities about why we humans just don't get shit done. We continue to shuffle around our to-do lists and that's exactly how imbalance seeps into our lives. This is when old habits (aka programs) take over and we work on this repeating cycle. Repeating patterns that do NOT SERVE US anymore.
When we’re not creating from our own WISHES and DESIRES then we’re just living on old habits, a lot like old computer programs that just take over. When life isn't working, it's habits, OLD PROGRAMMING, that has to die.
As Dr. Bruce Lipton always says (and one of my favorite humans on this planet), "Stop the program and change your life."
Tired of self-sabotage?
Here's a super simple way to manage right now. Remember, overwhelm isn’t an emotion so stop, take a collection of your to-do list, set up your calendar to appropriately answer those to-do's, and DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL YOU ARE CLEAR.
If you hate all the to-do's on your list, then what program do you have to stop right now?!