It's NOT Your Endless To Do List & Busyness That's The Problem

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back, you've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it, and what to do next. Before we start by one request, if any new insights or awareness land with you, during this episode, please send me an email at info at the Ian Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this work, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

You know that endless to do lists that you have, whether it's for work or personal or around the stuff around the house, maybe haven't even written it down, it's just swimming around in your head. But that's not the problem. And trying to fit so much into your day and get so much done. And then not really getting where where you wanted or expected to is not the problem either. It's actually a gift for you to be able to hold that much information and be aware of so many different things and being so yeah, so self aware and aware of your surroundings and need to have things sorted. It's actually the guilt and the shame, and the frustration and the overwhelm. When you feel like you haven't done enough that's actually causing the problem. That's what's keeping you stuck. That that endless feeling of like, there's still more to do, even when you have a quite a satisfying result. And you get a heap done. And you know that feeling you get when you when you complete a task, whether it's something around the house simple as putting up a picture on the wall or, or something that's, that's more major, that feeling of satisfaction you get? And then how often do you quickly turn in your thoughts to Yeah, but this morning, there's still this, there's still that. So you have this eternal feeling of never really quite satisfied. Now, well, I do subscribe to We should never be fully satisfied and be satisfied with where you're at. But never fully satisfied, you want to keep extending yourself, it is important to be able to pause and acknowledge where you've come to, to celebrate that even if it's just a very small celebration. And be okay with that. Give yourself space to be able to switch off then not feel like you have to then go to the next thing. The next thing the next thing, particularly in your mind, which is good enough going on. So that is the task, not trying to necessarily whittle down your list, getting these early heads important. And not necessarily trying to slow down your day either. Because, you know, it's like when you go on too busy and and you're gonna take a whole lot of things off the table and, and then suddenly, you've got all this spare time and your productivity just plummets. And you're like, hang on, that doesn't work. It's because you're the sort of person that thrives when you've got it a lot on your thrive when you are occupied when you are engaged. And there's stuff to do. Like I said, that's a gift that ran away from that. Instead, it's how do we remove those feelings of guilt, overwhelmed frustration, all of those different things. So you can probably switch off in your downtime, and you can separate the downtime and they're doing time. I love a full day when I've had things on and I felt productive and I've got things done, but I hate then getting to the the switch off time later that night and I'm still trying to process and I'm thinking I just hate it. What I love is when I've got myself organized. I've got everything out of my head. I've journaled and I'm just okay just to go call of this rest. I don't have to worry about all the different things that I need to do because they're not that important anyway, at this moment in time. Even last year, there was times where I got allowed myself to get pulled in too many different directions. Now I've still got an endless to do list. But I know what the main focus is at the moment. And I know that trying to engage in any more than what the main My main task and some necessary tasks that need to be done in the outside of that is going to distract me and slow me down in the long term. So if you've recently gone to my website and got an error, that's one of the projects at the moments, the main project, doing a full rebuild, like full rebuild close to one down, new new provider, everything going through all of their content. The same time, I'm doing a speaking gig tonight, which I need to prepare for. So Well, the main focus is the website. And of course recording podcast for you guys, I will need to dedicate time for that. Preparing for the speaking gig. But then at least strike back to the website stuff until it's completed. And there's probably people who need my time and want my time and even just ran family. And there'll be different times allocated to that during the day. But outside of that I've got to, I've got to be focused. And I can do that without the guilt. I can do that. Without allowing myself to get down on myself. That doesn't mean I still don't have feelings of obviously get more of that done. I wish I could get that I wish I could get that. But I'm able to make the decision. I'm not, I'm not doing that. I I'd love to focus there as well. But there's only so many times, there's only so many hours in the day. I've been to burnout too many times, and I won't get back there. So embrace your ability to do a lot. That's a good thing. But also embrace your ability to be able to leave things. Give yourself space. Acknowledge that you can only do the things that you can do. Focus on the top end of that list, what's most important to go through your list your score at all, what what is actually the most important, not always the most urgent, but the most important. And you start there and everything else list can wait. What generally happens is that other things on the list just take care of themselves, or the someone else does it or solution shows up where you don't have to do anything. Or just buy the day to day actions of your day, something's popped up. And you actually have to address some of those things for the analyst, immediately just out of urgency. But you didn't have to decide it was urgent that might have just come to you over the course of the day or the week. So keep moving forward. Keep finding ways to make peace with whatever that old pattern is that says you're not enough. That says you should be doing more. Maybe someone called you lazy. Maybe you felt lazy. Maybe you had unrealistic expectations placed upon you by parents or friends or siblings. And that pattern still playing out to change those patterns. Give yourself that freedom. But still, of course operate as the high performer that you are.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief. Let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform