Are You Doing Too Much? aka How I Fell Off a Log

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And now, on with the post…

If you follow me on Twitter, you might’ve noticed that I was curiously quiet over the weekend – I was away on retreat, at the Sisters of St Andrew Centre in Edenbridge, Kent (in the UK).

I could tell you about the wonderful Sisters there, the quiet, the lovely grounds, the labyrinth, how blessed I felt to have other people looking after me and preparing my meals … but I reckon you’d rather have the story of how I fell off a log.

Actually, “log” glorifies it a bit. It was a tree-stump, out in the grounds of the centre. I went out for a walk on Saturday morning, once the overnight rain had mostly blown away. It was windy, but not too cold, and I felt a lot freer and happier than I have in a while.

So when I came across four tree-stumps, standing in a tempting little clump, I figured I’d hop up onto one of them and step between them. It was an easy step from the first one to the second, then from the second to the third.
There was a bigger gap between the third and the fourth.

In a moment that I regret to say is a little typical of me, I looked at this gap and thought, “That’s quite a big gap. Hmm… I can make it, if I just lean forwards and sort of fall into it…”

Approximately two seconds later, I was picking myself up from the ground, and hoping that none of the other residents (a Quaker group) were watching out of their windows.

(Disclaimer: Quakers are seriously nice people, but in all honesty, I’d have laughed at me.)

As I examined the bruise developing on my knee, I had a somewhat rueful lightbulb moment. This was a rather painful example of where things go wrong in my life in general. All too often, I look at a challenge and think Yeah! I can do that! And, all too often, I come a cropper.

I suspect that you might be the same. So here are my thoughts on not just falling off logs, but on why you might want to start scaling down your expectations of yourself in general.

Think About Your Personal Limits

I’m five foot two. I’m also fairly crap at anything involving physical co-ordination. I’m definitely not cut out for death defying leaps between tree stumps.

You, too, have limits. Maybe you get ill easily, and need to preserve your energy. Maybe you’ve got a day job, and only have evenings and weekends to devote to all your other projects. Your limits might be financial. Perhaps you have an anxiety disorder, a social phobia, or maybe you just can’t hold a tune.

I’m not suggesting that you should let limitations prevent you from chasing your dreams. However, you might need to be realistic. Don’t get hung up on what other people are doing: their circumstances – and their limits – are probably very different from yours.

Think About Environmental Factors

If I’d stopped to think for a minute before attempting to jump between tree stumps, it might’ve occurred to me that it had been raining all night, and that the stump was going to be slippery.

There are a ton of factors outside your control, or only partially in your control, which affect your chances of success. They don’t have anything to do with you as a person, but you need to take them into account all the same.

The economy’s in a recession. Your kid is sick. Your small business is hyper-local, but in competition with five other established businesses in your home town. You have to travel for three weeks in December. All of these are going to affect your ability to succeed – it’s not a case of you simply trying harder.

Set Yourself Up For Success, Not Failure

It’s discouraging to fail. When you’ve set your mind on a goal – whether it’s “win NaNoWriMo” or “run five miles without stopping” or “get out of debt by next summer” or “lose 10lbs this month” – it’s frustrating not to make it.

And if you keep on and on setting goals that are way too ambitious, you keep failing. That little voice in your head tells you that you’re a failure. You blame yourself, blame the world, and – quite possibly – give up altogether.

Maybe you once tried getting up at 6am every day … and quit after a miserable week. Maybe you gave up caffeine or smoking for a couple of days … and then cracked. Maybe you promised yourself that you’d write in your journal every single day without fail … and stopped after a week.

When you set yourself a target, you see it as all-or-nothing: either you succeed, or you fail. And when you fail, you decide that you might as well give up.

If that sounds like you, try setting much smaller targets. A hundred successful baby steps will get you there: one giant leap that lands you flat on your face won’t.

Some practical ways might be:

• Write in your journal just once a week. If you can do that for several weeks running, make it twice a week, then three times, and so on.
• Set your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier this week. Next week, set it back another 15 minutes, and so on.
• If you’re drinking four cups of coffee a day, cut it to three. After a week or two, cut back a little more.

Don’t Knock Yourself Back

Only my knee and my pride were bruised when I fell off that log. It could’ve been worse.

Hurling yourself at an unattainable target can lead to more than discouragement. You could knock yourself away from achieving your goal.

If you’ve got a physical target – such as losing weight or getting fit – going at it too hard and too fast could leave you injured. You’re not going to be winning any marathons if you manage to tear a muscle. Losing weight rapidly on a starvation diet means you lose muscle not fat (and you’ll pack it straight back on once you start eating normally).

Getting by on too little sleep for too long is bad for you. So is running yourself into the ground through stress: a nervous breakdown isn’t going to help you launch your small business any sooner.

Trying to tackle too much can also hurt the project that you’re on. If you do anything creative like writing, drawing, painting, programming or composing music, you’ll know that rushing a project doesn’t result in great work. If you run a small business, trying to grow too fast can lead to customer service problems, quality control slippage, and a badly damaged reputation.

Take things one step at a time. Your own health and wellbeing is important: no goal, however exciting, is ever going to trump that.

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