Blog Post

A theme that comes up frequently among many of my high-achieving clients is their belief that if they can do a thing, they should do that thing. Many of these people are pretty competent at a wide variety of things, so they literally don’t have time to do everything they are capable of doing. The antidote to this, of course, is prioritizing. Prioritizing can bring up feelings of guilt if you’ve learned to think you need to meet everyone else’s needs all the time. But it is not a bad thing to prioritize; in fact, it is necessary. Think ahead of time about what is important to you and what you can reasonably contribute, and then stick to that. If something comes up that you could technically do, but it falls outside of your “important” or “reasonably contribute” guidelines, then don’t do it. Develop ways to say no. “I don’t have the bandwidth” is a true statement even if you technically have the time or ability to do something.

Your time, attention, and energy are finite resources. You cannot give them out endlessly. It is a zero sum game. The time, attention, and energy you give to one thing is, by definition, not given to another thing. And one thing you must include in that equation in order to generate the attention and energy you need for everything else is time for yourself, in whatever form that takes. It is a required part of your schedule. When you are depleted, your ability to do things goes down. Some of my clients run at a deficit for a long time until they finally realize they are anxious and depressed and not sure why they’re doing all the things in the first place. When we start to unpack this belief, some of them essentially tell me they are willing to be miserable as long as they’re taking care of everyone else. What, I wonder, makes everyone else so much more important than you? Why are you buying their happiness with your misery? Why is that a fair trade-off?

Many people who believe this is a fair trade-off grew up in families where their parents’ needs were prioritized over their own, so they learned that to survive and receive love they should degrade their own needs and elevate others’. This is usually a survival strategy learned from managing emotionally immature parents, but it is not a helpful way to live your adult life. There is room in a healthy system for everyone’s feelings, and for everyone to have a shot at happiness. It can be very uncomfortable for that child part of you—who learned to be safe by denying their own feelings—to watch the adult version of you validate and respond lovingly to your own needs. But it’s also a wonderful learning opportunity for your inner child to see you treat yourself with love and respect.

So this week I want you to think about saying no to one low-priority thing you could technically do, but a better use of your time would be going for a walk or listening to the birds chirp or filling your own bucket in whatever way works best for you.