Latest / Good Morning From The Chicken Coop! / Season 4 - Episode 106 - A full plate, overwhelm and regaining your sanity

Transcript

Season 4 - Episode 106 - A full plate, overwhelm and regaining your sanity · Good Morning From The Chicken Coop!

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome to the good Morning from the Chicken
• 0:04
  Coop podcast. My name is Kim Johnson and I am
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  a mastermindset coach, creative strategist, and also happen to
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  be a farmer. This is my Chicken coop and I
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  come out here every day to record a podcast.
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  To. Teach distinctions,
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  possibilities, new ways of thinking, and just bring some
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  joy into the world. So welcome to the coop and let's
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  start your day off in a fantastic way.
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  Hey everybody, good morning. OK, so let's talk today about
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  putting too much on our plate. I am a self-proclaimed person
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  who puts too much on her plate. I know I do that sometimes, like
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  there's no question about it. However, over the years I have
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  learned to manage it in a much different, much better way.
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  So when I was younger, I would readily put too much on my
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  plate. I would take on as many projects
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  as I could. I would almost pig pile stuff on
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  top of myself to make myself feel.
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  At the time I didn't realize it, but really it was all about
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  making myself feel like I was making progress.
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  And I did that by putting too much on my plate just so I would
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  be, you know, productive, or so I thought because I really
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  wasn't productive. What I was doing was just
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  putting myself in such a state of overwhelm all the time.
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  It wasn't true productivity. What it was is chaos.
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  And I kept entertaining the chaos over and over and over
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  again. And people would talk to me
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  about, oh, some people would give me accolades for being so,
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  you know, into so many different things.
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  Some people would say to me, I don't know how you manage it.
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  Some people would make comments about how I had a, you know,
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  this too varied of a palette, let's say, of things that I was
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  interested in and I should cut it back.
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  I should focus on one thing which was never going to happen.
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  But all that doesn't matter. What matters is my strategy was
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  to let myself feel busy. If I was busy, then I was good.
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  Meaning I was making progress, but the progress was shattered a
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  lot of the times because I could not, I could not under any
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  circumstances keep up with everything that I had on my
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  plate at a high level. Could I keep up with it overall?
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  Sure. But was everything getting, you
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  know, diluted, so to speak, where I was?
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  I'm working on things, yes, but I'm I'm not doing anything.
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  Well, so it's that whole, you know, if you, if you have your,
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  if you're in the process of recognizing how much you are,
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  you get distracted and we talk about, you know, give yourself
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  focus, put your intention on something.
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  Don't multitask. You understand, you've heard
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  somebody, no doubt, maybe me say when you multitask, you're only
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  giving each element of what you're multitasking on a
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  fraction of your attention. Therefore, nothing is going to
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  be great. Yet we all continue to do it
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  because we think we have to get so much done and we live in this
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  hyper OverDrive society that puts this belief system on us
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  that we have to do all these different things.
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  Now, it could be that reason. It could also be a reason like
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  what I suffered from. Part of it was not that I had
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  the pressure from the society, but I had so many different
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  things I wanted to do and I didn't want to give anyone of
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  them up. Like I genuinely wanted to be
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  like a very creative person doing all kinds of projects,
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  whatever they may be. Gardening projects, art
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  projects, writing projects, photography projects, it didn't
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  matter. I wanted to be creative and I
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  was going to go to the NTH degree to be creative at the
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  same time. I was building a business at the
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  same time, I was working a job at the same time.
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  I had a family at the same time. My child was, you know, young at
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  the time and I was just, Oh my gosh, this is, this is insane.
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  And even before I had my daughter at the time, it was
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  just my daughter at even before I had her, I would do this to
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  myself where I would take all these things on.
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  And I was, I was so excited to take them on.
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  So they, it felt like it was the right thing to do.
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  But when I got older and I started to really pay attention
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  to this, I recognized that what I was doing was not only
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  destroying how I how I was productive, because it really
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  was destroying productivity. Because what I thought was being
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  productive was not being productive.
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  It was actually breaking down productivity because I wasn't
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  giving anything the right amount of attention.
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  But what it was doing, it was fractionalizing everything in my
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  head so that I felt like I had to give small amounts of time to
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  each thing instead of saying, you know what, what, what do I
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  really want? What do I really want to put my
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  attention and focus on by simply asking those questions by by
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  stopping and pausing and saying, OK, let me do a brain dump.
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  Let me get all of this out of my head.
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  Let me see where all these spots are that are pulling me.
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  Like really put it on paper, map it out, say these are all the
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  things that are pulling me and which ones do I want to give
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  attention to? Which ones do?
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  And, and, and sometimes you look at it and you go, I want to give
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  attention to all of them. And that's probably true, but
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  you have to actually give a rating to each one of them in a,
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  in a hierarchy. You have to sit down and say, is
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  this more important than that? One of the most important tools
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  I ever learned in my life was, is this more important than
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  that? And so when you're feeling the
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  overwhelm and you start to look at everything like it's all
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  coming at you at once and you know you have control because no
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  one can make you do things you don't want to do.
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  You're taking on too much. You understand?
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  You can say no, You can say, oh, I can't do that.
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  But if someone might say, oh, Kim, no, I have to.
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  I can't give up any opportunities.
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  OK, that may feel like it's the case, but you can.
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  You can say I can do it, but not right now.
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  That's one of the things that I learned to do.
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  I just said that to somebody yesterday.
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  I can do it for you, but I can't do it right now.
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  And in the process of doing that, you start to empower
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  yourself again. You start to feel like you gain
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  something back. So just remember, we do have
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  choices, but you may have to go to that, that strategy of
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  actually sitting down and rating each thing and deciding what
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  level it should be given in your life.
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  Because otherwise you continue to do this and you split
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  everything and fractionalize it and nothing, nothing ends up
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  working out well when you do that.
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  All right, my friends, I hope you have a blessed day and I
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  will see you tomorrow. Bye.