Where are you putting too much pressure on yourself?
We're all guilty of this and one point or another
Before she said it to me, I knew it was becoming a thing.
On Wednesday this week, I joined a group EFT & energy healing call with my mindset coach. Each session, we have the opportunity to volunteer and talk about what’s going on for us in our life and/or business so we can clear the energy and move forward.
Something that came up for me this week was my breakup and how frustrating it is that I’m still not fully over it almost 3 years on.
“Why can’t I just be done with it now? I’m so sick of still thinking about him and I’m so annoyed that he just moved on with his life yet I’m still getting upset about it.”
Trauma.
Past trauma that’s lived in my body for years was part of the answer.
And my coach reminded me that I need to have compassion for myself and stop putting so much pressure on myself to do things on a certain timeline.
It got me thinking about the other ways I’ve been piling on the pressure lately.
I recently picked up my microphone again and made a promise to myself to get back on track with regular episodes of The Confidence Show, my self improvement podcast.
The idea of focusing a large percentage of my time and energy on the podcast filled me with excitement. I love the show, I love creating the show and I love the impact the show is having.
But as soon as I made myself commit to being consistent again, I noticed something.
Despite over 100 topic ideas (yes, really), I felt uninspired and when it came to sitting down to record, I lost my mojo.
I realised I was putting so much pressure on myself to make every episode perfect that it was causing me to stress out. Instead of it feeling fun, exciting and expansive, it felt like a chore and I begun beating myself up for feeling that way.
Why we put so much pressure on ourselves
There are 3 key reasons I believe we pile on the pressure:
We want to be perfect
We compare ourselves to others
We don’t feel like we’re enough unless we overachieve
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is something we can all be affected by at various times in our life or in particular environments.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do an incredible job — in fact, it can often help us stand out in our work roles, as online business owners or even as writers.
But trying to achieve perfection, more often than not, holds us back from actually doing the thing. It stops you from taking a leap of faith.
Putting pressure on yourself to do everything perfectly and be the perfect person is stopping you from being where you want to be. It’s also completely unrealistic.
There’s no such thing as perfection. Everything can be improved and that’s absolutely ok.
Imperfection is beautiful and often allows you to learn an important lesson.
Comparison
When we spend a lot of time on social media or checking in with what our friends, family or peers are doing, it can be easy to compare our lives, our successes, our achievements to theirs.
The more we compare ourselves to others, the more pressure we put on ourselves to achieve more, be more, have more.
Comparison can be good in small doses.
It can be the fuel that fires us up, motivates us and inspires us to take action.
It can be the proof that our desires are possible.
It can be the kick we need to get back on the horse after a failure.
But it can also be damaging when we do it from a place of lack, a place of ‘I don’t have what they have’ or ‘I’m not as good as them’.
If you are going to compare yourself, try to do it in a healthy way that propels you forward.
Not enoughness
Throughout our lives we’re often taught to strive for the best. In school we have to sit exams and are graded based on our academic knowledge. We’re told how good we are based on those letters or numbers.
What then happens is the people who scored the highest scores on the tests, get praised, celebrated and talked about positively. Which is great, don’t get me wrong.
But if you don’t fit into that category or if you’re someone who wasn’t academic and was therefore never praised, you can feel like you’re not enough.
This leads to the belief that unless you overachieve in life, you won’t be celebrated and therefore you are not enough as you are.
The truth is, we are always enough. Even in this moment, no matter what your life currently looks like, you are enough for who you are.
The greater our not enoughness, the more pressure we’re likely to put ourselves under because we want the recognition, the validation, the praise from those we love.
When you work on feeling enough as you are, you’re less likely to pile on the pressure.
Journal prompts for pressure piling
Where am I putting too much pressure on myself right now?
Why am I putting this pressure on myself?
If I were to stop putting so much pressure on myself, what would the positive outcome(s) be?
If I were to stop putting so much pressure on myself, what would the negative outcome(s) be?
Now that I am choosing to stop putting so much pressure on myself, how do I feel?
What could I do for myself to ensure I’m taking the action I need to to achieve my goals without putting so much pressure on myself?
Rebecca Hawkes is a Confidence & Life Coach. Listen to The Confidence Show podcast here. For help increasing your confidence 1:1, book a session at the Confidence Clinic. Visit Rebecca’s website here and follow her on Twitter here. Enjoying Rebecca’s content but don’t want to commit to a monthly subscription? You can buy her a cocktail to show your support here 🍸