It is easy to get caught up in the world of growth and development and feel like you just cannot measure up. You can start following particular people who really inspire you to begin with but might function a lot different to what you do and eventually you feel like you really cannot keep up. There seems to be a growing notion in the coaching industry that unless you are doing it all then you are not living your life to the fullest. It is a lot of pressure for people to live up to.
One of the things I deal with most in my coaching practice is overwhelm. People are just so overwhelmed with their to-do lists, with everything they are trying to accomplish, with keeping up with all the things they feel like they “should” be doing to be living up to expectation. Overwhelm can be debilitating, I would put it down to one of the biggest causes of self-sabotage or procrastination.
It is like Kristin Neff talks about in her book Self-Compassion, everyone is striving to be above average but if we are all trying to be above average where does that leave our average? There is no room to just live a simple life anymore, you must be striving to be the best and do the best. And if you are not living your life to the fullest according to someone else’s standards then you aren’t doing it right.
I always come back to one thing, this life is your life, your choices are about what is going to make you feel great in your life. What you think is absolutely spectacular, someone else might think is incredibly boring. And what they think is amazing, you might think sounds like an absolute nightmare. We are all wired so differently yet we are all trying to live to the same standards of what a life should look like.
Do you ever give yourself the time to just sit and ask what is it that you actually want? What does a satisfying life look like to you? What would light your soul up and give you that kick of fulfillment? This is not going to be the same as everyone around you, it is going to be different for each of us. Do you allow yourself the space to stop and reflect and realise you are probably doing pretty well as you are right now?
People are often trying to fix things as if they are going about with the impression that they are broken and need all of the solutions to help get them on the right track. Before you go thinking you are broken, first, you are not. Also, perhaps you just are not following the path that is right for you and you have been putting outside pressures on yourself.
How can you step back this week and reflect on where you are putting way too much pressure on yourself? What areas in your life are you approaching from the perspective that you are broken? How can you now start to shift that?