The reason you keep feeling like you are burnout and don't have enough time to do everything is because you don't know how to say no
Reclaim your life back
I have a terrible truth to tell you. The reason why you feel like you are constantly behind on things (such as replying to your text messages, or working on your next blog post) and feel exhausted, is because you are weak. BUT not because you should be able to do it all, rather, because you are uncomfortable coming to terms with what your priorities are.
And you might say “but I WANT to be able to do it all!!!”; I think that all the time as well, I really do. But it isn’t true that we want to do it all.
First of all, a lot of the time, what we think we want is really a distraction to avoid what we don’t want (e.g. I want to meet up with this friend actually means I want to avoid the discomfort of telling them I’m too busy and risking them not liking me anymore).
That’s how coerced we are. Fuck,,,
Second of all, sometimes, we think we want something because we USED to want it. Just out of habit. For example, a year ago I moved to San Francisco and I really wanted to meet more people. Nowadays I have too many friends and I’m actually craving more alone time. But because I didn’t realize my life and desires had changed, I kept accepting to meet new people for coffee or drinks for a while, thinking “that’s what I want, right? Uhhh why do I feel weird”.
Third and final, sometimes there are things we do want that comes from pure self-actualized intentions, and it’s just that we don’t want them enough compared to the other things. And yeah, you sometimes have to sacrifice those projects/ relationships, just for the sake of your sanity. It would suck to be drained by those side quests when it’s time to slay the actual dragon (read: your greatest object of desire).
When it comes to being sovereign of your own life, your emotional self and your mind will do little to help you. All they want is for you to avoid feeling like shit or being disliked by others. Your intuition is a much more accurate compass: it’s the language of what you want in your guts. It’s a real practice to learn to listen to it, and feel comfortable following it even if your mind and emotions haven’t caught up yet.
My life has become greater and richer in many ways as I’ve become an adult, which means that there are way too many opportunities falling into my lap than what I have the time to pay attention to. I meet too many potential collaborators and friends, I’m invited to too many wonderful dinners and special events. I receive well-written cold emails from young people wanting my advice all the time.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” Steve Jobs
^ had to put this one somewhere
I think being scared of people not liking me is the leading cause of why I struggle to say no. Falling behind on replying to text messages is a really good example of how it can show up: a lot of people around me (including myself) feel guilty about forgetting to reply to texts. But the guilt is distracting us from the fact that there is a good reason we aren’t replying: our priorities are elsewhere! I literally never forget to reply to my mom. That’s one of the places my attention is. There’s nothing I can do about it; when I try to force myself to care about replying to someone, that’s when I feel the guilt. The thing is, it is much much worse to ghost someone rather than saying that you are too busy to entertain the conversation/ give them what they want. So just say it and relieve yourself from the emotional burden ghosting entails on both sides.
I meet INCREDIBLE people all the time who would be nice to hang with or jam on something. But there are other things I want more. So I’ve been practicing saying it right away. And it is a great filter too, because if I do have the opportunity to meet someone again in a few months (for example because they followed-up), then it might mean this encounter deserves my attention.
There is this famous adage that every time you say yes to something, you say no to something else. It is critically important that you stop saying yes out of habit/ fear and start reflecting on what you’re saying no to before saying that yes. Are you saying no to a writing session that you’ve been craving by giving time away to that old friend that you don’t super care about, just to be nice?
It might sound brutal, but you have to be for real and stop believing that “you can’t” say no to things or to people. This is YOUR life, stop handing it away!
Once you start practicing prioritizing doing the things you genuinely desire, you’ll feel this incredible energy life force coming back to your body. It’ll be incredibly easier to get up in the morning, and go through the motion of your day.
Women, we need to pay an even greater attention to this, because we tend to be less forgiven for being seen as disagreeable than men are. There are tons of examples of powerful men known to be disagreeable who are still widely celebrated (quoted one of them in this post!). The only female equivalent I can think of, Anna Wintour, got an entire movie made up about her depicting her as someone selfish, cruel and with no morals. It’s just good to be aware this is a dynamic at play that can influence us; it makes it easier to be intentional about our behavior.
Our intuition is our ally; when we start listening to it, it becomes very clear what to make up of our precious time. Everything else should be a wholehearted no, even at the risk of being seen as disagreeable or of people saying, “Who does she think she is?”.