I DON’T DO OVERWHELM

A few weeks ago I went to an event here in St. Louis…and every time I leave an event, I have these very introspective timeframes where I’m doing a lot of reflection and just kind of looking at things really introspectively.  It always brings beautiful things to light for me, personally, and within my business.

So, this kind of flowed out of me the other morning, and it said, “There’s a time in your life where pressure can serve as a motivator, at least that’s been the case for me.  I would create spots for pressure that would keep me on track, keep me climbing, keep me producing higher than anyone else I knew.  And I use it to leverage myself.  Until at one point, it stopped being a force for good and started to be a source of evil.  In my world, it stopped my focus and began working against me, I would find myself frozen, overwhelmed, never enough.  Nothing was ever enough.”

I lost my power in that space of constantly putting pressure on myself.

That’s what I really want to bring to your attention here, life is very cyclical.

Things that work for us don’t work for us in every season of what we’re going through, every season of the year, every season of life, every season of our business.  There are certain things that are ideal to utilize at the beginning of the season or the beginning of the year, but don’t work well for you during the summer, whatever your industry is, or whatever your personal lifestyle is, or whatever it might be, you know.

These are just things that we have to be realistic about. And the more we start to notice our own patterns, which I’ve done a couple of podcasts about where we talk about pattern recognition, the more able we are to create all of these things that I talked about, you can use them to become more successful, more profitable, more productive, all of these things.

I would tell the girls at work for me, “hey, this is the project I want you to work on, you’re going to need a XYZ thing for me in order to do it,” it would then put pressure on me to follow through on that thing. If I would hire a personal trainer at the gym, I would put that pressure on myself to show up there no matter what, because I don’t like to waste people’s time. And I don’t like to waste my own money -disrespecting people’s time is one of my biggest pet peeves. 

In those moments, those were healthy ways for me to create pressure on myself to keep me on track, keep me growing, constantly building. I would make challenges for myself in my groups, or with my coach or the coaching group I was in as a student, where I would say that I was going to go live every day for a month or I was going to post every day on Snapchat for a year on my stories back when Snapchat was brand new. But I’m glad that I did that everyday, for a year, I posted on Snapchat stories because it got me really, really comfortable with video. And I didn’t care nearly as much about what I looked like or what I was doing and all of those things. 

So in those ways, the pressure was healthy. And I’m sure there’s a million other examples…

The next thing is, there are sneaky, sneaky ways that I was realizing that the pressure was no longer good. For the last couple of months, I’ve really been doing my best to release that constant, this isn’t enough, you need to do more, what didn’t you do?!…blah, blah, blah, because what that would do is it would cause anxiety, it would cause self doubt, it would cause the things that do not attract nor produce the desired outcome that I’m looking for. 

We do this in a form of self sabotage, we do this without realizing we’re doing it sometimes. I was realizing where that was happening in some things with the business. But what I wasn’t doing was realizing where I was still doing it to myself. 

So, I wanted to explain what I was speaking with my therapist about, like a week ago, and she started laughing and I went, “why are you laughing?” And she was like, “because isn’t it so funny, the way our brain works, the way our brain will stack these habits to keep us in a place that it feels safe”…or whatever. I don’t remember the exact terminology she used at that point. But it was funny because it was these sneaky little things that I discovered were putting this abnormal amount of pressure on myself, too.

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In the past that was a good motivator for me. It kept me focused and growing. And now it was causing me to freeze and I just kept telling her about this feeling where I would just freeze. And then you know, of course people who aren’t in my head and that don’t know me are like, “Oh my god, are you comparing yourself to other people? Is it like paralysis by analysis? Are you being a perfectionist?” And it’s like, actually, no, I’m not a perfectionist at all, to a fault, to the extent of where people are like, “Oh my God, did you even read what you wrote?” And like? No. I did not, did it not make sense? Because I didn’t read it? 

I won’t over analyze my shit. If I do, I wouldn’t put anything out there. Right? I learned that very early on thank you to California or at the Katrina Ruth Show. 

Your message is not supposed to be perfect. That’s the whole point right? In the perfectionist game, and the truth is, anybody who’s looking for perfection, isn’t my client anyways, isn’t somebody who should be working with me – I’m a human and I speak the way I speak. Am I very effective and efficient with my language and my actions? Absolutely. Is there perfectionism involved in it? No. So the outside voices are like, that’s what’s happening. Maybe that’s what’s causing you to freeze and it’s like, no, man, it’s something more than that. And so I couldn’t put my finger on it. But I finally did and it’s this pressure to be this “certain thing.”

Next, two things happened.  One, I read a post online that Chris Winfield said, “My friend Marie Forleo said something that changed my life. I don’t do overwhelm.” And I thought, well, isn’t that special?!

I believe that where words carry merit, words matter. Words are heavy, if you want them to be, and they pack a punch. And I believe in my brain because I have rewired my brain to allow myself to live a life like I live it that I didn’t even know is a possibility. I do believe that our words can rewire our thought processes. And I do believe that when we decide no more, I’m not doing that anymore. We mean it.

So I believe there’s a place where we can say I’m done. Or I’m no longer dancing like that, or that’s never happening again, or whatever it may be. And we have the power to put our foot down, plant our flag in that sand. And that’s that, as human beings, we have the power to do that. We just don’t always do it because of obvious reasons, right? Because it’s hard. And other things happen. And maybe we don’t always feel so strongly about something, that that’s what we need to do. 

I don’t do overwhelm. And that hit me a couple of weeks before this conference. I went to this conference that was all about women in business, it was all about getting shit done. It was all about being effective and efficient and true to yourself and real…with no fluffy bullshit in between. A couple weeks before this conference, I started thinking I don’t deserve, I don’t do overwhelm. Yep.

One of these ways was that I was constantly thinking if it wasn’t one thing, it was the other and that I allowed that to become this big pressure instead of trusting myself. Because one thing, I guarantee, there’s one thing you can say that you know about yourself to be true. One thing I know about myself to be true is that I always do what I say I’m going to do, which is where that pressure thing would come into practice. 

…and it would catch me up, because I would promise all this shit that I shouldn’t be promising. I was causing this anxiety to be bigger and heavier and heavier. And I was letting myself wake up in the morning and focus on tasks. What didn’t you do? What do you need to do? Oh, my God, you’re behind? What if this person thinks you didn’t do this thing…but what I know to be true is that I always do what I say I’m going to do for people, I don’t let people down. In my business specifically, that doesn’t happen, right? They get what they ask for and I over-deliver.

These timelines in my brain are no one else’s timelines besides mine. 

I don’t do overwhelm. Right. So I took it off the table. And I told myself, every morning, I’m working on myself, my energy, because my health is so important, and it does get pushed to the wayside. It’s the constant battle that I that I fight, because I want to ignore the fact that I don’t feel well. And then I ignore it. And if you’re worse, it’s great time. Just kidding. We’re working on it. That’s not what we’re doing anymore. 

So what I do in the morning, now in my mind, would immediately want to grab my phone and do the things. And what’s funny is I got really good about never grabbing my phone for years now I don’t grab my phone in the morning, and start looking at work stuff. Or social media even because it’s blocked in an app that blocked it. But I would start doing it in my head. And so I started to realize, “okay, we’re not going to do that anymore, Jamie, it’s not what we’re doing.” So when my brain would go there, I’d say “you’ll get it done. Not now.” And then I do. How are you feeling? Your body will get you. It’s gonna be a great day. And I’d start thinking about my intentions for the day versus writing them. So what do I do? I shifted it because it was no longer working for me, it had run its cycle and it was time for me to do something else. And so the pressure of “I didn’t do, I didn’t do, I didn’t do, you better remember, you better remember,” came from me not trusting me. 

I have lists. I have a team, I have a project management system. I have two planners. I have all these tools. So why in the hell am I putting pressure on myself? As though I don’t have tools to track my shit? It’s a game. This is a game. Why are you doing this to yourself? It was that simple. 

The truth is, you probably already have a lot of these things in place. 

You just need to slow down, look at them, make them more simple.

And trust it. Let it work. 

I always think hearing something you already know, or you already do, or you used to do, most importantly, come out of someone else’s mouth is always powerful. And so that’s what happened at that conference. 

When I recognized what I was doing this to myself, and then I realized the reason why. Because the reason why is very pure and beautiful. It’s not like a mean, I have a mean asshole voice in my head that she is something else, right? This isn’t her. The pressure of this isn’t her. So when I can shift into something that feels good, and it feels fulfilling, and matters to me. That’s beautiful. And the other part is, does that mean I’m going to be perfect at this? No pressure? No overwhelm? No, absolutely not. None of us are perfect at anything ever. Especially not all of the time. But does it mean that I’m able to be lightweight? 

I don’t do overwhelm. 

Does that mean when I start to notice that feeling that I’ve identified of that pressure inside of me that I can control? I can feel it coming and I can identify it? What? What can I change? How can I shift out of this quicker. 

And that’s the beauty. That’s what I love about this work.

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