Overwhelmed? Step back, then scale back.

May 30, 2013 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

So I spent the last three days trying to write a blog post. Now, I happen to truly enjoy writing blog posts. I look forward to writing them. They are fun and exciting for me, because I’m always discovering something about myself while I write them. Discovery! So much a “why” for me when it comes to writing.

And usually I can sit down and write a rough draft of a post in about an hour or so. The process doesn’t always work that way. But often, it does.

This week, however, it didn’t. I arrived at the computer determined to work on a blog post and I couldn’t manage to crank out more than a paragraph or two. And then I got frustrated. And then I got angry. And this happened three days in a row.

I said to my boyfriend, “Maybe I’ve said all I want to say in my blog posts already. Maybe that’s it.”

“No way,” he said. “I don’t believe that.”

And I didn’t believe it either. But something was off, very off, and it made me panicky.

And I’ve been here before — maybe not recently in relation to blog posts, but in relation to other things. Like my novels. Like my relationships. Like cleaning the house, or taking that trip I’d planned. That place where I think that something is supposed to be happening and it shouldn’t be so hard, but it’s terribly, terribly hard. It’s a feeling of spinning my wheels in mud and just getting further entrenched. A feeling of doing and doing and nothing actually getting done.

I call it “the spin cycle.”

I found myself staring out the window instead of looking at the computer screen as I tried to write the blog post, and I realized my body, in its infinite wisdom, was pointing me to the fact that it was not time to write, it was time to be. Regardless of how “behind schedule” I was.

So, I went to the sofa and I lay down, staring at the ceiling for a while. And I began to relax. And I began to get it.

This time around in the spin cycle, here’s what I’ve learned:

1) When I feel this way, more often than not there is some type of resistance going on. Resistance to what is: a sure route to insanity. What have I been resisting this week? What’s the reality of this week?

Well, my parents came to visit one week ago and left today. And I had a freelance project I was working on in addition to my usual daily routine.

But I didn’t factor any of this in and kept right on with my “usual” schedule. I didn’t factor in the fact that I’m an introvert and I need alone time to recharge and I wasn’t getting much of it this week. I didn’t factor in the extra hours and toll on my energy the freelance project took.

The reality of my personal energy: I am a finite being with limited energy, much as I fantasize about being able to “do it all,” seamlessly.

The reality of time: There are 24 hours in a day.

2) When something that is usually enjoyable and do-able feels really hard, it is not a sign to step it up and push it harder. It is a sign to step back and ease up and ask what is going on.

But my mind will tell me I need to keep pushing and that easing up is a sign of weakness and a lack of discipline and commitment. This is what my mind does, and how it thwarts my need for self-care. But it is a lie.

How do I know it’s a lie? Because of the way it feels. If stepping it up and pushing harder were the truth in this case, it would feel challenging but expansive, like doing it was helping me grow. But that’s not how it felt. It felt like pushing myself to do it was diminishing me. (Interestingly, I kept getting an image of myself writing on a tiny notebook with a tiny flashlight inside of a tiny black tent, my legs bursting out of the flaps like Alice in Wonderland after she drank the potion that turned her into a giant.)

So, after I lay on the couch for half an hour or so, allowing myself to space out (and giving myself full permission NOT to write the blog post), I realized that writing just one paragraph of a blog post would actually feel good. And so what if I am “usually” able to write more than that? Different week, different guidelines. I went to the computer, wrote one paragraph, and then, as it turned out, I wrote the whole darned thing.

Which brings me to the third thing I learned, this time around in the spin cycle:

3) When I keep trying to get something done and it’s just not happening, it may be because I’ve lost my connection with why I’m doing it at all.

“Because it’s time to publish a blog post” was not enough motivation for me to write one when my creative well was empty and I was in spin. When I’m in that space, I’m like a ship without a rudder. Doing for the sake of doing is meaningless if I’m totally out of touch with why I’m doing it. My “why” is what propels me into inspired action.

As it turned out, giving myself what I really needed — a time-out — connected me back to my “why”. And my “why” led me right back to writing the blog post that had felt so impossible to write only hours earlier.

What are your ways of dealing with “the spin cycle”? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Work With Me: Do you need some support in practicing better self-care? I’d love to help. See if we might be a good fit, here.

Image is “Outlook” © Guyerwood | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Making it ridiculously easy

May 15, 2013 / Jill Winski / 9 Comments

When I went through life coach training with the wonderful Martha Beck, I learned about what Martha calls “turtle steps.” Turtle steps are teeny-tiny increments that help us reach a goal. The main thing about a turtle step is it has to feel do-able. It has to feel, as Martha puts it, ridiculously easy.

When I coached my very first client, I suggested she break that overwhelming goal down into turtle steps, and she said, “Turtle steps sound great, but I’m forty-five years old. I don’t have time to move that slowly.”

The coaching session came — for a moment — to a screeching halt. She’d triggered one of my own big fears. She’s right! I thought. At the time, I had two unfinished novel drafts and an image of them sitting in the corner of my office flanked by dust bunnies and cat hair popped into my mind. If I use turtle steps with my novels, I’ll be ninety before I finish them!

Luckily, by then I had enough evidence from the experiences of Martha and my fellow coaches to know that turtle steps worked. In fact, the more ridiculously easy they felt, the better they worked.

My client wasn’t ready to try turtle steps — yet. A month later, when she’d done nothing to move her goal forward because she kept approaching it with her familiar “bite off more than I can chew” method, she showed up for a session and said, “I think I’m ready to try out turtle steps.”

That’s the funny thing about the way our minds tend to work: We’d rather hold on to the idea of taking giant leaps forward that only exist in our fantasies than take smaller, less glamorous steps that we actually do complete.

If you have a tenacious inner perfectionist (as I do), know that you are probably going to have a tough time accepting the idea of turtle steps.

When I was an undergraduate in college, literally every semester I signed up for five or six classes, even though by my third semester it became blatantly obvious that I could not take on more than four classes without feeling overwhelmed and scattered. My inner perfectionist (who is best friends with my “social self”) loved the idea that I was tackling a huge course load — and besides, other people took six classes and aced them all, so why couldn’t I?

Almost every semester I ended up withdrawing from a class or two at the last minute because I felt completely overwhelmed. Twice, I withdrew past the deadline and therefore received a grade of a big fat F. Twice. The person who couldn’t stand the thought of getting less than an A+ actually ended up with F’s on her transcripts simply because she voluntarily took on too much.

The idea that we can take small, easy steps is anathema to the perfectionist, whose identity is formed out of the belief that if she can take on more than is necessary and excel at it, she will finally be worthy, and therefore, loved.

But it doesn’t work this way, my sweet little inner perfectionist is slowly discovering. She is loved, deeply, simply for existing and for being who she is. And she does not get more accomplished when she takes on more — she actually accomplishes less that way.

Back to my two unfinished novels: they have long since stopped communing with the dust bunnies in the corner of my office. They’re up and dancing around now, dust-free and shiny. How did this miracle happen? Since September of 2011, I’ve been taking ridiculously easy steps, on a regular basis, to finish my novels. (Read more about how I’ve done that at the end of this post.)

Yes, sometimes that means I write for fifteen minutes a day. Yes, sometimes that means I write one sentence. And no, I do not write every single day. But I’ve completed two novel drafts and I’m 240 pages into a third.

The key is making it ridiculously easy, step by teeny-tiny step. Any step can feel ridiculously easy if it is small enough.

Ridiculously easy isn’t as easy as it could be, though, because we live in a culture that tells us that for something to have value, it has to feel impossibly hard. And so we take on enormous “to-do” steps like “write novel” or “get new job” or “lose twenty pounds.” Seriously! These are actual items I’ve seen on clients’ to-do lists. But they’re not action steps, they’re long-term goals. In fact, I’m loath to call them goals — they’re actually processes, ways of life, daily habits we develop.

So a huge part of all this is allowing ourselves to do what feels ridiculously easy. That might mean a daily goal of “write one paragraph” rather than “write ten pages.” But it’s one paragraph that gets written, rather then ten pages that don’t.

Often our minds won’t allow us to embrace ridiculously easy. It’s a total shift for most of us, right? If it feels easy — or, at the very least, not hard, we don’t trust it. “But life isn’t easy!” we think. And that is certainly true. But we don’t need to add hard to the hard.

This is one of my favorite beliefs to challenge with my clients. When we make the shift from “It has to be hard” to “I can allow it to be easier,” amazing things happen. Believe me. I’ve seen it.

If you need support in allowing your process to feel easier, I’d love to help. See if we might be a good fit, here.

And: One of the biggest reasons I’ve moved forward with my novels is due to my participation in Jenna Avery’s Writer’s Circle. This is where I’ve put my writing turtle steps into action. This group offers me daily support, accountability and community around my writing. The last day to register for the next session of the Writer’s Circle is tomorrow, May 16. Check it out, here!

Image is Sharpened Pencil © Uschi Hering | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Pausing is not the same as stopping

May 6, 2013 / Jill Winski / 9 Comments

Sometimes it is incredibly, excruciatingly hard for me to step away from something, when stepping away is exactly what I need to do.

Step away from that phone call that is not going anywhere and sucking up a lot of time.

Step away from my novel when I keep forcing it even though I’m beyond frustrated and realize I have gotten so far away from the heart of the story that I have no investment in what I’m writing.

Step away from the problem I’m desperately trying to solve (when it’s becoming more and more obvious that the mind that created the problem is not the one that can solve it).

Step away from the internet. Because, it’s the internet. And I need sizeable breaks from it if I’m going to remain sane.

I think one of the reasons it’s hard for me to step away is because of the idea that I am supposed to tackle things. Take control of them, wrestle them to the ground, and force them to cry uncle. This is the way I was taught to solve problems when I was very small, and, even though I’ve never been very good at it, it’s deeply engrained in me.

Only, sometimes — often — it just isn’t effective. There’s a point where I’m trying so hard to control the outcome of something that I am way too emotional to be effective. It’s at this point that pressing the pause button can be so essential.

But there’s another reason it’s hard for me to step away. It’s because of trust, or the lack of it. Allowing myself to step away means I am trusting that I will get back to whatever it is I’m struggling with — whether it’s a phone conversation or a tough scene in my novel.

And this kind of trust takes some practice to cultivate. I’ve been working with this for years and yet I can still go way too far out of fear.

We can never solve an internal problem by changing an external circumstance. If something within me feels out of control, no amount of controlling the external world will change that. This is the recipe for compulsion and, eventually, addiction. I’ve got to get back into balance within myself before I meet the world again.

This is why I suggest to my coaching clients that they not make huge decisions when they’re feeling intense emotions. We don’t know what the truth is for us until we come back to center. Our emotions are messengers, but they’re often not the message. (Extreme anger at your boss may just be saying, hey, let’s take a look at what’s happening here, not hey, let’s quit!)

So we’ve got to make it okay for ourselves to step away when we’re getting into a place that feels out of balance — no matter how important we’re making what we’re doing. Stepping away for now does not mean stopping altogether — in fact, it can mean letting another part of us — our subconscious — take the wheel for a while.

So, how do we do this?

1) If you’re struggling with something you’re creating (a painting, a novel, a website) and you’re ready to take a knife to the canvas or put your fist through the computer screen, know you’ve reached that point where you need a little less perspiration and a little more inspiration.

I know, I know, there’s that awful saying about how creating is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration. Please. I don’t believe we need to feel inspired all the time to create — inspiration often comes in the course of creating, and some days it doesn’t come at all — but if, in the long haul, you’re only feeling one-percent inspired, you need more inspiration. If the whole thing feels like a struggle every step of the way, you’re forgetting how important it is to fill your creative well.

2) If you’re having a really hard time in several areas of your life (if you’re in what we Martha Beck life coaches refer to as “Square One”, where you’re going through a massive identity shift and you don’t know what the hell is happening), realize you may need to move much more slowly.

You may need to take more time-outs. You need to practice really good self-care during these times. If you’re in Square One, the question is never “how can I get out of Square One?” but “how can I make it okay to go slow?” (I love Kristin Neff’s guided meditations on self-compassion for these times, and all times, really.)

3) Know the point at which you are getting in your own way. See if you can step outside of your emotional self and be the observer. What do you look like when you’re in need of pressing the pause button? What happens with your body, your behavior?

A few years ago, I was walking home in a seriously foul mood, and a car rolled through the stop instead of letting me cross the street. I actually reached out and hit the back of the car as I walked behind it. Feeling the sting of the hot metal on my fingers (it was like a 100-degree day, which was part of why I was ready to maim), I knew I’d crossed one of my personal boundaries into nutso territory, territory I did not want to stay in. It was time for me to stop wrestling and take a time out. Know these places in yourself, and find ways to clue yourself in to when you’re getting into this territory. Hopefully you will not have to slap a defenseless Honda Civic to know you’ve entered “that zone.”

4) Above all, cultivate trust in yourself. Take baby steps. If you’d normally force yourself through something to the point of frustration, try stepping back even five minutes before you usually would.

One of my clients recently made the decision, for a number of reasons, to take a month off from her artwork. (Namely, because it was feeling too much like art-WORK. She said she didn’t want to return to it until it felt like art-PLAY. I love this!) She was afraid a month was too long, but she felt like she needed it. The need for the break felt like it was coming from her intuition, not from a place of fear. It felt deeply right.

A week into the month off, she emailed me. As of today, she said, I am back to my art-PLAY. It turned out she didn’t need an entire month off after all. Something in her was more than willing to return to creating when it was ready. Now that’s self-trust.

For an article on a similar theme, check out Practicing Reverent Curiosity.