235: Why You're Always Exhausted: How to Stop Overcommitting (Creating a Margin of Safety)

Have you ever said yes to so many things that you eventually found yourself wondering, why did I agree to do all of this? Maybe you're rushing from one thing to another, running late, feeling overwhelmed, and basically just wondering why you can't seem to keep up with everything that you've committed to.

And the worst part is you know that you're the one that said yes to doing all of this.

Now, one of the biggest challenges of being an over giver is believing that we can do it all.

And then we end up biting off more than we can chew.

Oh, you need me to pick up your kid from the other side of town? Yeah, sure.

You've got it.

Want to start working out together every weekday? Of course.

Oh, you need me to help out with that fundraiser, make something tasty for the book club, and prepare a meal for that family going through a hard time? Absolutely.

I am happy to help.

And maybe you really can do all of those things for a little while.

But it's kind of like starting a marathon as if it was a short distance sprint.

You might start off strong.

You feel good.

You've totally got this until you don't.

And then eventually you might realize that you have bitten off more than you can chew.

And when you finally reach your breaking point, then generally one of two things happen.

Either you beat yourself up thinking, well, I should be able to do this.

Other people seem to manage to do it all.

Why can't I do it? Or you hit a wall.

You're so exhausted, overwhelmed or burned out that you suddenly can't do all the things that you used to be able to do.

But what if the problem isn't that you're incapable of doing it all? What if the problem is believing that you should be able to do it all? Just because you technically can do something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should do something.

And just because you have space on your calendar and another 20 minute gap, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to cram up full of something else.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you actually have the time, the energy, or the emotional bandwidth to spend time doing that thing for somebody else.

In other words, an empty spot on your calendar, it's not the only factor to take into account when somebody makes a request of you.

So today we're going to be talking about how to stop treating ourselves like a math problem and shift from, oh, let me say exactly how many free minutes I have and instead start treating ourselves like human, where we actually have a different energy level and different capacity from day to day.