Beware of repeating old patterns
/Recognizing the signs when you are falling into old habits and STOP! - by Courtney C
In life, you are to repeat the lessons you did not learn until you learn the lesson and grow.
I have found myself over the past month starting to feel out of control of things. I have even noticed my energy levels starting to deplete. It doesn’t seem to matter if I take time out, I am still feeling overwhelmed. Upon reflection I have found myself trying to squeeze too much in and please too many people to the detriment of finishing things that are important to me (like this fabulous blog for instance). I have had several events I have wanted to share with you all but found myself getting caught up in other things that consume a lot of time and aren’t really important to me.
So what has triggered this behaviour? When I stop and think about it, I haven’t been prioritising any down time, things that make me happy and activities that will help me pursue my goals. Rather I have been going on a whim and dealing with things as they arise. When I think about it, this is a bit lazy. I have not had the discipline to do the things that need to be done when I don’t want to do them and instead spent my time doing something else that has popped up. While this approach can work for some, I have found myself getting sick, left feeling drained dealing with other people’s priorities, guilty for not getting activities done when I would have liked to and annoyed at myself for not prioritising my time on my own terms.
A case in point: I found myself working late a few nights after prioritising other people’s requests during the day over my own deadlines. On another occasion, I had scheduled a catch up with an external peer to seek their perspective for a presentation I was working on. The catch up was to take place during a half day team meeting but given the insights I anticipated to gain I figured the half an hour would be better spent on this. Two days prior to the meeting our boss informed us that the first hour of our team meeting would be an update on the strategy. I now knew that this team meeting was more important than the catch up. On the day of the meeting I found myself feeling anxious about having to miss critical team information. After excusing myself at the critical point of the meeting to attend the catch up, I then sat waiting in the foyer for 15 minutes and the contact was a no show.
I was so annoyed at myself. I had missed critical insights on our team strategy and then wasted 20 minutes waiting around. If only I had prioritised things better…I should have postponed the catch up to another time allowing me to attend the whole team meeting which was of more importance. This event was a wake up call to re-assess how I was going about things. Why was I feeling frustrated that the contact didn’t turn up? The contact was extremely apologetic and had been caught up in a meeting without access to comms. My real frustration, however, was with myself. I should have postponed the meeting to a later time to prioritise what was important. After all, no one is a mind reader or knows what you have on your plate and what is the priority.
Safe to say, this week has been a big wake up call to see that I am starting to fall into old habits again (as no doubt you’ve already read in my previous blog entries). The positive thing is I have recognized it and will be turning over a new leaf tomorrow to start off the week. I stumbled across this quote and it really was an “Aha” moment for me:
“When you say ‘yes’ to others make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.”
So to shake things up this week, before saying yes to something I am going to think about what I will have to sacrifice to “say yes to something”. To kick things off I’ve noted down my must do’s for this week and scheduled in some “me” down time to look forward to from the onset of the week. This will be a real challenge for me given I have slipped into old habits again. But there is no point in beating myself up. We all make mistakes so onwards and upwards with the promise of a new week to look forward to.