Are you a woman who finds yourself looking around at others and wondering, “How do they do it? How do they manage to have successful careers, perfect families, clean homes, and prepare healthy meals every single day without collapsing from fatigue or pulling their hair out?”
If you’re like most women, your days are packed with one to-do after another. Despite how much you accomplish, you feel like you are constantly playing catch up and because of this, you feel like a failure when you can’t keep up with all the things you “should” be doing.
When you do finally catch up, however, you notice that it’s not as satisfying as you thought it would be. You don’t feel complete. Perhaps you notice all the things that have yet to be done, so you try harder to do it all even though you’re worn out and ready to take a long nap.
You know deep down that your fatigue and exhaustion are signs that your soul is crying out for change. This sign is a symptom of burnout. Burnout happens when we push ourselves to achieve a real or imaginary idea of success without slowing down enough to figure out what success really means to us.
In today’s fast-paced society, it can be difficult to find the space to slow down and tune into your soul’s wisdom. With so many demands coming at you, it’s easy to get caught up in the swirl of activity and lose connection with yourself.
From a cultural standpoint, we’re rewarded for hard work. We feel we must do all the things to have the good life, so we pack our schedules to the brim so that we don’t fall behind, disappoint someone, or lose our jobs. We exhaust ourselves because externally, we feel the pressure to produce. Internally, we feel like we have no choice.
That being said, by challenging yourself to find quiet time and space, you will find more perspective on your personal values and gain more discernment about what’s important to you and how to spend your time and energy.
Stop the comparison.
Although it’s healthy to have a desire to improve yourself and your skills, this can be misinterpreted as “not being enough” and lead to negative self-talk. This kind of negative self-talk often drives anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other mental health issues that can be detrimental to your well-being. This is why it’s so important to stop the comparison and focus on living your purpose.
It’s also important to pay attention to who you’re comparing yourself to. Are they someone of a different social demographic? Are they more organized than you naturally are? Or are they someone on Instagram who’s only posting photos of their shiny lives? There are numerous ways that other people’s lives or personalities could be different from yours. Begin to notice those differences and how comparing yourself to them creates more overwhelm.
Here are 3 steps to reduce overwhelm, stop comparing yourself to others, and reduce burnout:
Recognize your success.
Everyone, including you, has a unique perspective, set of skills and experiences that make you successful and valuable just the way you are. Give yourself the gift of acknowledging your qualities and the steps you’ve already taken towards your personal success.
Write down 5 things that already make you successful and become intimate with them. Every morning, evening, and several times a day if you need to, take out your list and remind yourself of your accomplishments. You’ll be amazed how this simple act will lift your spirits and how much more confident you’ll feel during challenging moments.
One thing to be aware of: your inner critic will try to convince you that those things don’t matter. Acknowledge her AND mentally give her a cup of lavender tea to keep her occupied.
Redefine your success.
Your parents’ ideas of success are different from your boss’s idea of success which is also different from your idea of success. That is if you take the time to redefine what success means to you.
Also, keep in mind that the conventional models of success are attainable more easily by some people more than others. Comparing yourself unfavorably to those folks will leave you feeling discouraged and hopeless.
Even in this day and age, women have a steeper hill to climb than men and for minority women, the hill is even steeper. Acknowledging this fact is critical to how you define success. The models held out for you are not the only ones to strive for. You can decide what you want to achieve and how successful you are when you’ve achieved it. Instead of trying to fit into a broken model and blaming yourself when you don’t, create a model that’s grounded in the powerful knowing of who you are.
Remind yourself that:
- Success is not all about accumulating material things.
- Your sense of peace, spaciousness, and fulfillment is wealth.
- Self-care is important and valuable to nourish your soul.
Redefining success means finding different and unique situations to reward yourself. In other words, when you exercise or meditate in the morning, do you consider this a success? When you follow through with dinner plans with an old friend, do you congratulate yourself for getting out of the house? When you complete simple tasks like washing the dishes and watering the plants, do you tell yourself that this is valuable time well spent?
Rewarding yourself in these types of situations is a reminder that sometimes the little things in life are our biggest successes. How you feel about success is personal to you. When you redefine success, you’re breaking free of the values others have imposed on you that no longer serve. You’re demonstrating your power to decide for yourself.
Find time for success.
As I previously mentioned, today’s fast-paced environment fueled by distracting technologies doesn’t leave much room for us to contemplate what we think about success. It’s crucial for you to create time and space where you can gain perspective on your current situation and see that you are already enough and you are already successful. Can you put ten minutes aside to meditate, journal, or reflect on what success means to you?
If you create mental space for yourself you can create mental clarity. Mental clarity will help you to see the bigger picture. When you see the bigger picture, you realize that your time on this earth is finite and how you live today is a true measure of your success.
Try to remember, right now, what is really important to you. Try to find your inner truth. Is it money? Is it a big house? Is it traveling? Or is it happiness? Is it inner peace? Is it spaciousness? The answer to this question will help you step off the hamster wheel of comparison, busyness, and burnout and on your journey towards satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment.
