Body and mind — out of sync!

Here’s to all of us creative types! You know when your brain is running a million miles a minute and you have so many ideas that you want to do RIGHT NOW?! Well, fortunately we are not machines and cannot do everything right now! Yes, I said fortunately! Who wants to live like a robot?!

Lately I have been feeling like a robot! I have had so many amazing ideas and I want to put them all into action right this second. 

I have my long list of “to-dos” and it’s like I jump from thing to thing without stopping. Then, when I do finally get a pause my head is still spinning because my brain is thinking of the to-dos that I want to accomplish that are incomplete. And the kicker: in my mind I would have finished the to-dos weeks ago! This becomes oh-so-very overwhelming and I end up totally shutting down.

Why am I telling you all this? Wellllll a really cool thing about my school is that we practice coach with our classmates! I was the client today (my classmate was coaching me).

My poor classmate was coaching me on something that I wasn’t even really clear on! I went into the call saying that I wanted to work on:

“finding something that I can say to myself to let myself know that it’s okay not to accomplish all of my to-dos and that I am not a machine”.

Her second question to me was “what is the outcome that I wanted regarding letting myself know that it’s okay not to accomplish all of my to-dos and that I am not a machine”

This is why I felt bad, this was not an “easy” coaching conversation! I had noooo idea what the outcome was that I wanted because I had never actually come up with a solution for this issue that I was having.

My classmate was really amazing and dove down with me to try and figure out what exactly it was that I needed to get me through this complication regarding treating myself like I’m a machine.

Here are the results that I feel SO happy and liberated with:

I was feeling like my body and mind were out of sync.

–> The most important piece out of it all was that I was feeling that my body and mind were out of sync because I EXPECTED my body and actions to be able to keep up with my thoughts and ideas.

Let me just repeat that again because it is so important! I expected my body and actions to be able to keep up with my thoughts and ideas. 

I am actually laughing at the thought of this because if you spent two minutes inside my head, you would laugh at the insanity of how fast my creative thoughts move!! How can my actions possibly move as fast as my thoughts?! My expectations were extremely unrealistic and were an extremely large hinderance to my well-being.

A side note about myself is I am super big on HARMONY. I like everything to be in balance and when something feels out of sync I get totally out of whack; I am a libra after all! So when my body/actions cannot keep up with my brain and ideas I get totally out of harmony and I become highly uncomfortable and overwhelmed. Now that I am aware that it was really my expectations that were getting in my way, I have a game plan!

My game plan: 

• Remind myself that I am not a machine 
  • I now have an understanding that my brain cannot possibly move as fast as my actions and the expectations that I had placed on myself. These expectations were insanely unrealistic!! Now that I am reading this and it is as clear as day, I am laughing at myself and wondering how I ever thought that the expectations I had put on myself were even possible! With this in mind, I will be able to remind myself that I AM NOT A MACHINE.
• Use my Time Timer to slow my brain down! 
  • I even talk about the solution in the Time Timer video that I made! I will set chunks of time for my “to-dos”. When I find myself in a block of time where I have not assigned myself something to complete, I will do something relaxing and enjoyable and remind myself that I AM NOT A MACHINE.
  • I bet you’re wondering “but how does the Time Timer slow down her brain”? When I decide ahead of time that I will be doing “such an such to-do” from 10-11am, I set my Time Timer for one hour and I know that it’s the only task that I am to be doing. This works so well because when a thought about another to-do pops into my head I can literally say to that thought “nope! Right now I am concentrating on such and such task. “

(Jump to 1minute in to skip to the part where I start talking about the Time Timer)

Do you have high expectations of yourself? Do you ever wonder where they come from? Sometimes I notice that the voice of the expectations aren’t actually my own, but that of my parents!

p.s. Do you notice the reoccurring theme here?!