This is part 2 in the Indulgent Emotions series.
I cannot tell you how many times clients have told me they are too busy to make any changes or do anything new. They just feel maxed-out, unable to take any risks or sit down to do anything creative. But I’m here to tell you it’s just a feeling (that comes from our thoughts)—another indulgent emotion.
Another version of this is the feeling of being “too tired to do anything else”...feeling exhausted. We really like to revel in this one, and at its core, it’s just self-pity.
You can most certainly do a lot more than you’re doing right now. I promise you.
And I’m not saying there aren’t overworked people out there that need to take better care of themselves. I just think that we fall into the I’m-too-busy-or-tired trap by using it as an excuse and not even knowing that we’re doing it.
An excuse to be comfortable, to keep things “under control,” to keep playing small, not because you want to do that consciously necessarily, but because your mind is not managed. There are a million ways we limit our potential with these thoughts that are really just excuses, that keep us stuck. Time to learn how to manage your mind.
What I see so often is people getting lost in the busy work to avoid their deeper desires. Don’t do that to yourself. You deserve for your dreams to come true. No one else will do it for you. You have to take the first steps and override the fear.
Remember we talked about recently, if we’re not proactively managing our time (managing our minds), we can spend a lot of our hours doing things that are unproductive. I know of a situation where one client was spending up to 7 hours a day on social media. I know it’s tempting right now, but that will not help you feel better, in fact, it will make you feel worse.
If you are spending 7 hours on social media, or more than you would like to, you can get that under control and you are the only one who can set those limits for yourself. Those 7 hours make up an entire workday. You wouldn’t believe how 5 minutes here and 20 minutes there add up.
Are you guilty of that too? Using the excuse that you’re too busy to really concentrate on the business you want to start, when the truth was she was prioritizing her time on Instagram and Facebook.
She wasn’t too busy! She just filled her time with unproductive things and therefore didn’t accomplish the things she said she really wanted to. This is key, not top beat yourself up, that will do no good. But to become aware. We can’t change something we are not aware of.
My challenge to her was to reframe her thinking on being too busy. It just wasn’t serving her. I asked her to spin it into a positive—look how much I did today, even though I spent more time than I would’ve liked on the internet. I got her to thinking about how much more productive she could be if she set time limits on her scrolling.
You can also reframe the thought that you’re too tired.
Many of us are “tired” because we work hard in our heads—worrying, doubting, creating confusion. It can all be exhausting with no tangible product to show for it.
But what if we woke up and really went after it? Like really took charge of our day? We would feel tired at the end, but really fulfilled. We’d be proud of what we managed to accomplish.
I’d like to challenge you this week to not accept excuses from yourself. Go about your life as if you didn’t feel too busy or tired. Avoid wallowing in self-pity and really focus on getting important things done. I promise it will feel great!
