Got broken agreements?
I’ve noticed that for many of us much of our stress is not coming from too much to do, but from broken agreements with ourselves. We want things done, but don’t want to do them.
When we tell ourselves we ought to do something, and we don’t do it, we suffer the slings and arrows of self-doubt, frustration, depression, and the fatigue of overwhelm.
So…if that’s true, how can we get rid of the stress?
Here’s three options:
- Don’t make agreements we don’t want to make or won’t be able to keep. Are we saying yes to more than we can realistically complete? We’d lighten up a ton if we’d just lower our standards! We might even consider saying “no” more often.
2. Complete our agreements. Just think of how we’d feel if we totally finished our list of to-do’s. (Though within 3 days we may well have a bigger list because of all our energy and enthusiasm from finishing the current one!)
3. Renogotiate our agreements. I think this is a master key for personal sanity. A renegotiated agreement is not a broken agreement–it’s going back to course correct when our priorities, interests, and commitments have changed.
We can keep our lists and look at them as often as we need to. But…not so that we have to do everything. On the contrary, it’s so we don’t have to do everything. We can only do one thing at a time. We can either feel good about what we are doing, or awful about all the things we’re not.
Our choice!
So…what do YOU think?