Crushed or crushing it? You need to know.
There’s something I need to share before we start.
I will never write an article inviting you to
PUSH
GRIND
HUSTLE
GET UP AT 4AM, WORKOUT THEN WORK WORK WORK
If that’s your style, great but it’s not for everyone. And not for me.
I can get up at 4 am to take an overseas phone call or to catch a plane, but I don’t naturally do my best work at 4 am. If you’re the same, I understand!
How do you know when it’s exhaustion not a struggle to get motivated?
What makes burnout, or being crushed rather than crushing is so insidious, is that it often happens just as the success you’ve dreamed about begins to show up in reality. I’ve seen entrepreneurs working incredible hours, pitching constantly, reinventing themselves over and over but then lose momentum just as success starts to appear.
What are the three signs that you are just pushing yourself way too hard?
The first sign When you stop enjoying doing something you have previously loved, something that used to get you early and keep you up late but now it’s not as appealing.
The second sign This is a tricky one because you may think this sign is an achievement, not something that needs to be treated carefully. The sign is, have you made a breakthrough recently? It doesn’t have to be a huge breakthrough, maybe you’ve got to the next stage in your project or you’ve conquered a problem so you can move forward faster. Why is this one of the signs? Because it’s nearly impossible to realise the emotional effort you have made to achieve something that’s been hard to do. Others around you can often see the toll taken on you to make that breakthrough, that strategic step forward.
The third sign Are you being crushed by a cascade of recent changes? It doesn’t have to be massive change; several smaller changes can have more impact that one major change. Like have you changed the amount of sleep you’re getting? Have you changed your diet? Are you working in a different location? Maybe you’ve had a fallout with a friend or there’s some challenges in your personal life.
What is so powerful about these three signs is that it creates an opportunity to check in with yourself whether you’re procrastinating because it’s hard, or you need to take a break. These three signs were useful for me recently when I thought I wasn’t being motivated enough when I just needed to hit the pause button.
Recently I’ve undergone a massive amount of change in lots of small ways. In the last few months, I’ve moved my office, I pivoted the direction of a manuscript I’ve just finished. I’ve been invited to join a US based as the personal reinvention coach for their team and lots of other exciting ventures. Plus of course, there’s was domestic stuff because your personal life never takes a pause, right?
I didn’t realise this was adding up to ‘too much’ until I was sitting in my co-working space and started to panic, for no obvious reason. The only thing I’d done was to book an evening yoga class at a new studio that just opened close to home.
As the day wore on, I was getting lots done, but I felt more and more stressed about this yoga class. It got to the point where all I could feel was anxiety and tension bubbling up inside me. And I thought why am I like this? Why am I stressing about a yoga class when everything’s going so well, plus I’ve done yoga so many times before?
Then I went through the three signs exactly as I’ve just shared with you and I thought okay,I get it. I’ve made all these changes to my physical environment. Plus, I’ve really ramped up my exercise to train for a big race. It was only when I was struggling to complete a task I would normally fly through and really enjoy, I could step back and see it was a combination of events relatable to these three signs which meant I was feeling crushed.
So, I rescheduled the yoga for 3 days later and felt a little lighter straight away. I cut my ‘must do’ list in half for the rest of the week and got more sleep.
I find these 3 signs so impactful as an early warning system, a check in if I start to lose momentum. When you’re a creator, an entrepreneur, an executive juggling roles and deadlines, it’s so easy to berate yourself for not working harder when your body and spirit start to flag.
There’s only a fine line between crushing it and crushing ourselves.
