How To Avoid Groundhog Day
My heart hurt for her.
As our conversation unfolded she explained how her business functioned.
“I give up my life from October through December. That’s just the nature of the beast.”
“Every day I get up at 5:00 am. I do my morning routine, and head to the office until 10:30pm. I try to hit the sack as soon as I can, because I know I will do it all over again in the morning.”
Me: “Ugh! That’s a lot. How are you actually able to keep up that pace?”
“I check out on weekends. I know it’s not the best for me, but I don’t have anything left in the tank for my passions. All I can manage to do is mindlessly watch Netflix or scroll through Instagram.”
I speak to women everyday and they have similar stories of an unrelenting work load, overwhelmingly heavy responsibilities and complete exhaustion.
Here’s a conversation I had last week.
“Every day is Groundhog Day. I get up exhausted. I go to work. I come home. I scarf down dinner. And then I head to bed, so that I can get up early and do it all over again.”
“I feel so alone in the responsibility of it all. I’m the one keeping it all together. No one understands just how underwater I am.”
This is no way to live.
And I know we can do better!!!
When we're living an autopilot life,
we aren’t able to give our best...
to our families, to our partners, to ourselves.
And when that happens,
our communities suffer.
And because I want better for you, and honestly, for our communities at large, I'm sharing one of the ways I got myself out of autopilot living.
I call this tool the DUMP AND FILTER. Perhaps by giving it a try, you can avoid your own version of Groundhog Day.
First: Dump. Set a timer for 10 minutes. On a sheet of paper, in no particular order, list all of your tasks, obligations, chores and to-dos. Once the timer goes off, circle the items that only YOU can do. Be ruthlessly honest with this. (Yes, no one does it as well as you do. But, suck it up, let them do it.)
Second: Filter. For every uncircled item from your list, you’re going to assign it an A, B or C.
A: ASSIGN this to someone else.
B: BUNDLE this with other similar tasks to either make it go faster or at least more fun. For example, I don’t like doing laundry, but I DO like the scent of lavender. So, when I use my favorite lavender scented laundry soap, in essence bundling my love for lavender with my disdain of laundry, I at least hate doing laundry a little less.
C: CAN this. ie; Put it in the trash can. Toss it out. Delete it. Remove it from your list. There’s a good chance that this item hung out on your to-do list long past its expiration date.
If you do decide to give the DUMP AND FILTER tool a try, I’d love to know how it goes for you.
Email me at lisa@livingfullybalanced and tell me what you experienced. You and I can tweak and customize it for your life right now.
I don’t know what you think of the actor Bill Murray. Truth be told… I’m not a fan.
And watching his movie, “Groundhog Day”, was almost as life sucking for me as living on autopilot.
With some intention, I believe we can avoid both.
Here's to living a life of intention!
Hugs,
Lisa