I woke up, and as I lay in bed, my mind immediately went to a state of stress. My to-do list popped into my mind’s eye clear as day. A slight panic arose as I realized I was behind on several deliverables to my assistant and that I needed to find creative time in my schedule to explore some exciting opportunities I’d stumbled upon.
I knew this was not how I wanted to start my day. I took a few deep breaths and reflected.
I quickly realized that while my life was going well, I had taken my foot off the gas and coasted. I stopped my weekly planning; I let my to-do list get out of control; I stopped approaching my life from a results standpoint and had started to narrow my focus to small, menial tasks. My energy plummeted because I wasn’t paying any attention to my diet—even my trainer was texting me wondering if I’d fallen off the face of the earth!
While it is nice to coast for a bit and reap the rewards of our hard work, it is also essential to know the difference between enjoying our success in reaching goals and procrastinating to reach our next big goal. As Gay Hendricks describes in his book, The Big Leap, we tend to “Upper Limit” ourselves throughout our life. The concept of the upper limit is that we all have a limited tolerance for feeling good or having things go our way or achieving certain success. When we hit this upper limit that we have constructed, we manufacture thoughts or actions that stop our positive forward trajectory.
By upper limiting myself, I was feeling a bit like an imposter. After all, for most of my physician clients who come to me feeling overwhelmed we first focus on a plan to create space and time to think, strategize, and to get the important things done. So many tools, concepts, and mindset shifts that I coach, I suddenly found myself not practicing in my day to day life.
Feeling like an imposter led to some self-judgment and, quite frankly, projection of my stress onto those closest to me (sorry to my husband)!!
Enough was enough. It was time I exercised the most important and impactful leadership skill of all: the power of choice. I realized where I was upper limiting myself and made a choice to break through that imaginary glass ceiling I created for myself.
Here are four key ways to get back on track if you feel like you are falling off the rails and diving straight into overwhelm.
Start with the end in mind. Know what you are trying to achieve and then work backward to get it. If you want a promotion, a big project to come to completion or even create a certain amount of wealth for yourself, reverse engineer a plan to get there.
Plan ahead but be reasonable. Planning is important when our priorities fall off the rails because often our automatic response is to try to do everything at once since everything seems urgent and important. And in the end, nothing seems done well or completely.
I’ve tried several different planning systems and journals and here is what I’ve come to realize: There is no one-size-fits-all planning solution. Some of us like a ton of structure to our life and day. Some of us reject structure like the plague. Find what works for you and keep in mind the primary purpose of planning, which is to get stuff out of your brain and onto paper (or into your phone or computer). By doing so, you won’t take up precious brain power trying to remember everything that you must do. It also gives you the advantage of seeing the big picture and how your small tasks roll up into the big picture. This often leads to delegation and the realization that a task might not be important right now.
Know your big rocks. Each week, identify the three big things you need to accomplish in your week, and the one thing you need to accomplish in the day to move the needle on making the “end” defined above a reality.
Ask yourself:
What are the three things that if I accomplished them this week, everything else would fall into place?
What is the one thing I will accomplish today that will keep the momentum going (or restart the momentum)?
Know the real obstacles standing in your way and develop an if-then plan. Obstacles can be externally driven like inefficiencies in the system or internally driven like being a people-pleaser or a perfectionist. Be honest with yourself about the specific obstacles standing in your way and develop an if-then plan by simply writing down, “If this obstacle occurs, then I will do/say/think this.”
Peter Gollwitzer, the psychologist who first studied if-then planning, describes the process as a way to express and implement your intentions, so you can significantly improve execution. If-then plans work because contingencies are built into our brains that trigger action.
For example, say you have a habit of taking on too much and tend to offer to do a task that you know you can do well. Your goal is to gain more control of your schedule and focus on what’s most important, so this habit is in direct conflict with reaching that goal.
To execute on the intention of focusing on what’s most important, you develop an if/then plan for when a meeting you are leading concludes and it is time to set accountabilities for deliverables. When there is silence after you ask for volunteers, you develop a plan to further describe the deliverable and what it will entail. This plan will prevent you from your automatic response to uncomfortable silence, which is to offer to take on the task yourself.
Carrie Koh is an Interpersonal Efficiency Leadership coach, consultant, and former healthcare administrator with a passion for enhancing the way we connect to one another in healthcare to ensure efficient and innovative results and greater fulfillment along the way. She would love to connect at www.carriekoh.com
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