In today’s episode of Creating The Path, I’m talking about giving yourself permission to let things go.
You may or may not have noticed that I didn't release a podcast episode last week. That was because I was working on a project, and I didn't anticipate how long it was going to take me to complete it.
So, I had to let things go. I had more on my plate than I could handle.
And letting things go can look like two different things, it can either look like not doing something at all or letting go of the need for it to be perfect. So, let’s talk about that.
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Topics discussed in this episode:
[00:54] Why I didn’t release a new episode last week
[03:09] Letting things go and prioritizing
[06:01] Letting go of perfectionism
[07:24] Protecting yourself and your health
Resources:
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Noteworthy Quotes:
“I realized that letting things go can look like two different things, it can either look like not doing something at all or letting go of the need for it to be perfect..”
“Letting go of things can mean learning how to accept and recognize when things are good enough. Because when you have perfection, perfectionist tendency, it's highly likely that your standards for good enough are way higher than other people.”
“Remember, it’s okay to give yourself permission to just let things go.”
Summary of the Podcast:
Creating the Path is a podcast that challenges multi-passionate entrepreneurs to achieve their goals by working less and eliminating overwhelm, so they can create their own unique pathway to a life they love. My mission is to transform hustle culture and assist others to shift away from living life on auto-pilot to living intentionally and following your own path to a life you love instead.
Host Bio:
Heather Grace Hanson is a certified positive psychology-based coach and creator of the Intentional Energy Framework, a system that empowers you to create a life and business you love without burning out. Heather is obsessed with all things personal development, running and walking in the park, interior design, salsa dancing and most importantly, spending time with her pup, Barclay.
Episode Transcript:
Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Today you have both me and Barclay at the microphone because he just keeps whining every time I try to put him down in his bed, and he just is insisting on sitting on my lap. So we're just gonna keep going and he's gonna be my little co-host today.
So today's episode is all about giving yourself permission to let things go. So you may or may not have noticed that I didn't release a podcast episode last week, and that is because I was working on a project that had a deadline and I didn't anticipate how much work I was going to end up having on my plate. I didn't anticipate how long it was going to take me to work on that project, and so I found myself in a situation where…
If you listened to my podcast episode from two podcast episodes previously I think it is now, I talked about the four states of productivity. So I found myself in the productive and stressed state. Which interestingly, I sort of realized, when you're in that state, it doesn't necessarily mean you're stressed out the whole time. It might just mean that you're working more hours than what you normally want to or what your normal capacity is, and that's kind of where I was.
There were moments of stress, but I was actually enjoying the work and it was just that I had to kind of like push myself. So that's where I found myself, and I had to let things go. I had more on my plate than I could handle, and I had to make decisions on certain things to let go of.
And I ended up deciding to not do the podcast because I realized I had two choices: I could record a quick episode and just put it out there. But I realized I just really didn't have the mental bandwidth to come up with a topic that I knew would be valuable or useful for you.
And that was that was really the deciding factor that made me decide not to do it because I realized I was okay with recording a quick episode that is not perfect, you know not scripted and just kind of doing it off the cuff. But it's really important to me to at least make sure that I'm talking about something that is going to be useful for you, and I just didn't know that I had the bandwidth to do that, so that was really the deciding factor.
I realized that letting things go can look like two different things: It can either look like not doing something at all or letting go of the need for it to be perfect. So knowing the priority of the things that you have on your plate ahead of time can really be helpful in making quick decisions on what you can cut out, in the moment, like when you find yourself in a situation where you are just overloaded with work and you hadn't anticipated it.
If you've already made those decisions ahead of time, it's really helpful to quickly be able to get things off of your plate. But even if you haven't done that you can, in the moment, look at everything that's on your plate and try to make decisions on what you need to cut out, but really knowing the priority is super helpful.
I don't know what podcast episode this was, but around the beginning of January, I did something on annual planning and I talked about how the way I do my annual planning is I come up with my overall themes for the year and those are kind of like my overarching goals. So the way that really helped me prioritize last week was because I was able to just go back to that and remember what are the just the few main things that are super important, and then coming up with just the 1 or 2 things that were like the most important that aligned with that last week. And then I was able to let go of everything else.
So that's the first thing is just being able to prioritize, and if you can plan ahead and have that priority already set, that can really help when you get stressed out or when you just get overloaded with work.
And the second thing, if you have a tendency for striving for perfection like I do, I'm constantly working on it. I'm getting better at it I think but it's something I still always have to work on. But if you also have that tendency, letting go of things can mean learning how to accept when things are good enough and also learning to recognize when things are good enough. Because when you have a perfectionist tendency, it's highly likely that your standards for good enough are way higher than other people.
And you know it's a difficult thing, and as I'm saying this, I realize that could be a good podcast episode on its own, is how to figure out when things are good enough. So maybe I'll dive into that in a future episode.
But yeah, the perfection thing is learning how to accept when things are good enough and also learning how to recognize when things are good enough.
And that's really it. You know I'm just going to keep this episode short and sweet because the main message I wanted to get across to you today was just that it's okay to give yourself permission to let things go, and you know just remember that the most important thing is to protect yourself and your health when you need to.
If you're sick or if you're in danger of burning out, that is especially a time to give yourself permission to let things go and not feel guilty about it because it's totally okay and again, the the two ways that can look like is either not doing certain things at all or allowing yourself to lower the standard on the quality.
And you know there's also that element of deciding where that level is. So going back to my example with deciding to not do the podcast episode last week. I had to make that decision of I could have released an episode but would it be at a high enough quality. Not perfect, but would it have been a high enough quality for me to feel good about putting it out there, and I decided it wouldn't, so you know, in the moment you have to make these decisions for yourself and kind of figuring out where that line is of when to cut something out, or when it's okay to lower your standards a little bit and decide if something is good enough.
And yeah, just remember it's okay to give yourself that permission to let things go. And with that, I willl see you next Tuesday.