Don’t try to please everyone - setting priorities is absolutely essential
We all know those really busy times on our life, where we feel like everything is coming together and every single person on the planet seems to want something from us. I am currently in one of those phases. Everything happening is very exciting and enjoyable, but the intensity and pace can just be overwhelming sometimes. The only thing that helps in those situations is to rigorously set priorities and stick to them.
We don’t have to be perfect. This is something I have learned very quickly within motherhood. You very often feel your day does not have enough hours for the things you want to do, so the only option really is to understand and make piece with the fact that there are days when not everything in your list will be done or ticked off.
The first step in dealing with that ongoing anxiety of having to just function, is to refocus and revisit your own expectations against yourself. Ask yourself the question is it really others who have those high expectations of me or is it more myself and therefore myself stressing me about doing everything perfectly at the same time? Usually it’s the latter. We then need to refocus and make clear to ourselves what really matters to us and is important of those tasks on our list and which ones can wait. Most importantly however, we have to accept the fact that we cannot be perfect in everything that is required from us. We need to start setting priorities and enforcing them.
Once we have identified what in our day is important, this already takes us to the start of priority setting. How do we best divided our time in tasks that are important? Everyone has to set priorities and I have learned mothers even more. It is like we assign a scoring system to the tasks at hand, and understand that maybe the last two that are least important we simply cannot or will not do .
Priority setting and focusing on essential tasks helps us in busy times to focus and have guidance on how to best stay on top of things. What also helps is planning and organisation in general in order to plan our time ahead.
Everyone is going through busy times. In order to not get overwhelmed, focusing on what is essential as well as setting priorities and accepting the fact that we simply cannot be perfect in everything we do will help us cope. Don’t forget to also plan in some downtime or me time in order to achieve balance. Every busy time should also be followed by some relaxing time in order to recharge batteries.
