What have you had enough of?

Pressing Pause Podcast episode 64 What have you had enough of?

Music

Welcome to Pressing Pause. I’m Gabrielle Treanor, a coach and writer, and I’m here to share with you ideas, inspiration and actions to empower you to overcome your overwhelm so you can feel calm, confident and in control.

Music

Hello and welcome to episode 64. In the previous episode 63 I explain about the long break I took from the podcast and what to expect in these new episodes so if you haven’t listened yet do hop back and check it out.

Before we get going I also wanted to let you know that I have an overwhelm guide on my website that is completely free for you to download. It’s called the 7 Steps to Overcome Introvert Overwhelm guide and you can find it at gabrielletreanor.com, I’ll include a link in the show notes. I give you straight forward, practical ideas for what you can do when you’re feeling frazzled and worn out and it’s free so get your guide from gabrielletreanor.com.

Now, during this month of September, even if it’s years, decades, since you were in education, we can still get that new term feeling. We’re in the last third of the year and thinking about what we want to or need to do with the remaining months. I think it’s even more pronounced this year because 2020 has been nothing like any of us thought it would be. Spending months in lockdown, changing how we live, work and socialise, it’s been a colossal shift in how we go about our everyday lives. Plans we had made or simply hopes we had at the start of the year have had to be put on hold or shelved until who knows when. 

While this time may have come with added stress, busyness and having to completely rethink how to do things that we took for granted, it’s also prompted reflection. It’s helped us to notice what hasn’t been working in the past, what about the way we were going about our lives wasn’t serving us in the pre-pandemic world. 

And it can feel a little daunting to realise that the way you’ve gone along with what everyone else wants rather than speaking up for what you need, the job you’ve been doing, the always saying yes because you dare not say no, the sheer amount of time you spent feeling overwhelmed, even the habits that you barely noticed because you’re on autopilot, are not only not how you want to be living your life but are making your life harder and less enjoyable.

What was being tolerated before, what was being put up with before, the grit your teeth and go with it attitude is becoming intolerable. And with just over three months of 2020 left I’m hearing people say that they’ve had enough. They’re just done with it.

It’s in social media posts I read, in emails I receive, in conversations I’m having – this feeling of finally having your fill of something that may have slowly been grinding on you or that this year has brought into the light and you can no longer ignore it.

What ‘it’ is varies and is completely dependent on you the individual and what you’re experiencing. It’s having no time to catch your breath, it’s everyday sexism, it’s a friend assuming you’ll go along with their plans, it’s institutionalised racism, it’s juggling 427 balls without ever dropping one, it’s saying yes when you want to say no, it’s a bad habit, it’s being taken for granted… it’s whatever you feel is not serving you, it’s not how you want to be, it’s not what you want for you or the world and it’s not what you’re prepared to go along with any more.

Realising you’re at the point where you’re just done with something is both exhilarating and frankly, pretty scary! You’ve reached the line in the sand and finally you’re saying enough is enough. And it feels good to make that declaration! But, also, yikes! What do you do now? What does saying you’re no longer putting up with this actually mean?

Well, that’s up to you. Perhaps just saying to yourself, ‘I’m done with…’ is enough of a step for you right now. Maybe it’s declaring it to another person – saying it out loud with a witness makes it feel more real and strengthens your resolve. It may be something you’ve said to yourself before, words alone won’t bring about change, they need to be followed by action. That doesn’t mean it needs to be anything big and dramatic though.

Perhaps it’s doing one thing differently, so if you’ve had enough of feeling taken for granted then the next time you’re asked to do something you don’t want to you’ll give a kind and firm no. 

Taking a stand against what you’ve had enough of may be changing your internal response rather than something external. So instead of seething inside at a comment from a thoughtless relative you smile to yourself and imagine their words as a wisp of cloud blowing away from you.

It may be that you don’t know what to do next, how to move forward on your own. You know you’ve had enough of something, you know you don’t want to feel this way, you don’t want to keep going down this path or putting up with this behaviour, you want to make changes but you don’t know how. So perhaps you look for who you can talk to and get support from.

When someone contacts me to talk about coaching it’s often because they’ve reached a point where they’ve had enough of feeling overwhelmed, of being spread too thin, of trying to please everyone but themselves and of having no time. They’re done with worrying about what everyone else thinks or doubting themselves. They know they don’t want to feel like this any more and they want to make changes, so they come to me for support and empowerment to move forward on the path they want to be on. And that’s what we do, together.

So what is it you’ve had enough of? What are you done with? Making a declaration doesn’t instantly fix the issue or make it disappear but it certainly moves you a step closer to tackling it.

Deciding that you’ve had enough, declaring what you’re done with may not feel easy (it depends just how cheesed off you are), and you may wonder what on earth to do next, but right there in that moment allow yourself to feel the control you’re taking back. To be empowered by this act of bravery (that’s what it is, even if you don’t feel brave, you are) and share it with someone you trust and feel comfortable with. If you want to share it with me I’d be honoured to hear what you are done with. 

You can find me through my website gabrielletreanor.com or on Instagram where I’m @gabrielletreanor. 

Thanks for listening, until next time, lovely people.

Music