Too Many Irons in the Fire
Good Morning!
It's 9:45am here. It's a very stormy morning. The thunder is rumbling and the rain is pouring. I woke up at 6:30 this morning when Leiana was outside crying to come in. Her usual routine. But this morning after giving her breakfast, I felt shaky tired. So I decided to get another 30 minutes. I slept until 9am!
I'm giving myself the grace today because I've been working really hard these past week. Not only professionally but also emotionally. It's been taking a lot of my energy.
Last week I decided, it's enough now! I need to change my approach. I knew something wasn't working. I knew the way I was working was the road to burn out. Why? Because I've been down this path before. Taking on too many different things at once and feeling immense pressure and overwhelm to get it all done. So I decided to take a step back, reflect, revaluate and change course.
To explain, I have had too many irons in the fire; too many passions. I've been asking myself this for a while now: "shall I dabble in everything or focus on one or two things for now?" I've decided that the answer is the latter. But I'm met with feelings of resistance! So I dug deeper into these feelings of resistance instead of allowing them to decide for me.
Turns out the resistance was coming from thoughts like, "you don't know how long you'll be able to have this freedom to create daily, things could change then you'll never have the chance to explore all your passions," and "don't pigeon hole yourself, you don't want be known as just a photographer." Even just writing this I can immediately recognise these thoughts for what they are: FEAR!
These fear-based thoughts are not productive and if this was my friend or higher ideal self saying these things I would respond by saying, "it's going to take longer to succeed at all your passions if you do all of them at the same time," and "you are more likely to excel quicker if you focus on 2-3 projects at a time. It might feel like a sacrifice right now, but long term you will arrive where you dream of being."
Last night I watched a YouTube video where he explains how successful entrepreneurs are able to succeed at many different things. It's because of the timing of taking off their projects and goals. He uses the plane runaway as an analogy. Entrepreneurs don't take off their planes at the same time, they do one at a time so they don't burn out.
The same theory applies to New Years resolutions. The reason why they don't work is because we have too many in January and we burn out in February. So they don't stick.
With all of that said, I have decided to discipline myself and only focus on few things. I think I have this thought that my YouTube videos will be boring because there won't be much going on. I'm sure that's true to some extent, but I will just have to get creative with the time and energy I have. Maybe it will also send a positive message to others to slow down and focus on fewer things. I choose to see this as a form of self care. I will probably post a YouTube video about this to reach my audience there. I see that not everyone are readers.
Anyway, just some words from me this morning.
I hope you have a beautiful and productive Monday. Feel free to share in the comments what your number one focus will be this week!
Lots of love to you,
Annika