“It’s OK... You Can STOP Now”

Many of us spend our days racing to catch up with ourselves. There are ever increasing demands being made on our time and it can be difficult to know where to turn and what to do next. As we are pulled in different directions we are also confronted with the ever-growing list of ways to communicate with our nearest and dearest, with iPhones, Blackberries, texts, and emails not to mention Facebook and other social networking sites. They all seem to accelerate our stress rather than improve the quality of our relationships. Couple this with the ambition many of us have to lead a successful life and we are well on our way to burn-out.

So what happened? When did our lives become so busy? How did we fill our days with so many things? Too much of everything is like a modern sickness, it can be distracting and put us under unnecessary amounts of pressure. Despite the fact that many of us have way too much going on in our lives, in my role as a coach I still meet people on a daily basis who want more. More freedom, more love, more confidence, more energy, more sales, more money, more time you name it... someone somewhere will want more of it. The irony is the solution to our need for more often entails doing less.

The more we have in our lives the more successful many of us think we’ll be, but the exact opposite is often true. In what has been termed the “paradox of choice” a large amount of choices can become overwhelming instead of liberating. If we have too many choices we end up feeling out of control. In order to avoid the panic of being too busy to think we need to give ourselves permission to stop. Often when we feel overwhelmed our natural instincts are to tell ourselves to try harder, “pull ourselves together” and carry on regardless. This exacerbates the problem and only makes us feel much worse. This is when we need to take a breath and stop. We need to regain our balance.

We can easily lose ourselves in all this “busy-ness”. So many people, especially women take on too much because it is an unconscious way to avoid difficult emotions. If you are always on the go, you never have to face up to the fact that your relationship or business is in trouble. For some it can even take a major life event to jolt them back into a more balanced lifestyle.

I know many entrepreneurs who are fooling themselves into thinking they are self-employed. They instantly jump to the demands made by their clients, working with anybody and everybody, 24/7 in the search for business success and financial security. They are pimping themselves out and more importantly selling themselves short. There is another way. You don’t have to be this busy and it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Believe me I learned this the hard way and I’m talking from my own painful experiences here. Working hard doesn’t naturally guarantee your success although research does suggest it may guarantee stress. Alternatively, if you can define your energetic boundaries you will sharpen your focus and accelerate your progress.

We can’t balance our energy without clear energetic boundaries, in other words we need to be clear about what we will and will not do. Our days can be ruled by random forces. If you spend all your time responding to others’ needs and crises, you’ll never get time to think about what is really important to you. Poor energetic boundaries drain your vitality.

80% of all the problems I encounter with coaching clients are connected to poor energetic boundaries. They are living up to what they think others expect of them, filled with unspoken contracts from their parents, their spouse and other influential people in their lives. They have lost their sense of self along the way. If you are busy living someone else’s life who exactly is going to live yours?

Let yourself off the hook
Give yourself a break. Allow your inner critic the night off to rediscover your true authentic self. Simply being, rather than being busy is difficult but it is rewarding. It is however, something we should aspire to every day. Once you build a relationship with your true authentic self you get in tune with your own intuitive energy system. This gateway of information which embraces so many different aspects of who you are from your personality to your values, your behaviors to your beliefs and aims to make more of your unconscious, conscious. You become clear about your energetic boundaries and able to shift into balance. This gives you the potential to keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, to keep yourself on an even keel.

Saying no
Let’s face facts, it can be challenging for most of us to say no; we would rather be nice. This is sad but true. Saying yes and then getting resentful is not good, it affects your energy and can even result in you disturbing your physical energy so much that it results in illness. I have worked with many women who struggle to say no to such an extent that their body has begun to say it for them. Limit your “yes” to occasions when you can agree wholeheartedly to do something without reservations. Simply put, if it isn’t a “Hell, yes!” then don’t do it or be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Time out
We are not designed to work in the same one dimensional way as machines, continuously running at high speeds and running multiple programs at any one time. We have to recognize that we are human and are designed to go through waves of productivity, to pulse between work and rest. We are meant to have energy peaks and energy troughs. Yet we carry on as though we can hit a high output level, maintain this level constantly and sustain it despite the fact that this is just not humanly possible. All the energy drinks, stimulants and supplements are not going to eradicate our need for rest every single day. You need to re-energize so create some space. Take a break, a long walk or even a power nap and you will come back to your life refreshed, focused and with more energy to enjoy yourself along the way.

The reason your boundaries are so important is simply this. it is a fact of life that there will always be more things to do than the energy available to do them, so you need to choose wisely. It is okay to give yourself permission to stop! Create some space, sit yourself down and find out who you are and what you want from your life. Get clear. Define your boundaries. There is a quiet unspoken confidence that comes from having your energy in balance. After all, it is this quality that makes us reliable friends, strong mothers and successful entrepreneurs.