You Can't Do It All - Enduring All Things

I’ve been going to counseling for about 3 months now. Wow! I can’t believe it’s been that long! I only go every other week to help with cost. It’s been very eye opening for sure. I thought I was going to go in there and be able to tell you everything the counselor was going to say before she said it. But there have been some surprises for sure.

We mostly talk about social anxiety, but we’ve discussed some other topics too. Some topics we’ve touched on are how my opinions matter, my self-worth, and overworking myself.

Now, lately I feel like I haven’t overworked myself at all. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. I used to be a yes girl and I’d fill up my schedule so much in college that I literally had no time to relax, sleep, or even watch TV or read. Now, I do nothing but watch TV, read, and sleep. Oh I work too. But I haven’t been blogging much and I feel like I never get enough housework done. I’ve been pretty depressed for a while and have no energy and just don’t ever what to do anything.

But, as we talked about in my last session, sometimes when we put too much on our own plate, we feel like it’s all or nothing. When I have a to-do list a mile long (read: everyday), it’s easier to just shut down and not do anything rather than try to tackle the list and not be able to finish it.

That’s my problem. My planner is FULL of stuff I need to do. And I put it all on one day and simply move the things that I don’t get done to the next day. Which is usually all of it. When I get home from work, instead of pulling out my planner and going down the list, I just turn on the TV and relax. There’s really nothing wrong with that, to an extent, but the problem is when I don’t accomplish my “goals” for the day, I get really down on myself. Like, really down.

Here is an example of a to-do list from my planner. Yes this was all on one Monday a few weeks ago.

go grocery shopping
walk the dog
workout
do the dishes
make dinner
write a blog post
apply for sponsored posts
manage our budget
unpack our suitcases
do laundry
charge my fitbit

Oh and I should add that I don’t like to do any of these types of things when Pearson is home because I like to spend time with him. And he’s been getting home earlier lately. So on this particular day, I was wanting to get all that done between 5:30 when I got home and 7:00 when Pearson got home.

Now, as I mentioned above, I knew realistically that I wouldn’t get all that done in one night. I usually number my to do list with the intention of doing things in that order. But I think the sheer number of things on the list just subconsciously makes me want to abandon the whole thing.

Oh and also, I always set way too many monthly goals. And then I never even look at my goals throughout the month and most of them I just forget about. Then when I write my goals post for the next month, I get all down on myself again.

So, this month I set fewer goals. I let go of some that I just don’t really care to accomplish. They just weren’t that important to me. And I feel much better about that.

Likewise, I’ve been scheduling my to-dos better and using weekends more.

It’s ultimately a mindset change. I need to know that I’m not going to accomplish everything. I can’t do it all. And I need to be okay with that. Oh and I need to prioritize self-care and me time too.

Do you try to do it all? How have you stopped expecting so much of yourself and being so hard on yourself?

Thanks for reading!