This simple phrase at once cunning and compelling is a perversion of our ancient lizard brains’ risk management system.

Is it familiar to you? Or any of its variations?

“Must learn more, try harder, be quicker, smarter, better, more on the case”

It seems so plausible, so true, especially when we have practised it for decades. It goes unnoticed.

In times like these, with ramping external challenges, unmanaged, this little phrase gets bigger louder and more ferocious. Demanding an individual remedy to external global problems.

A good example is my client blaming the £0.8M drop in turnover since this time pre-COVID on his own laziness and incompetence. In the grips of “I’m not doing enough” he’s convinced it's because he's not putting enough effort in.

That sneaky little phrase is like the drug dealer pushing him to take more and more of the same poison.

The truth is he has successfully led his company for 10 years. Grown, stabilised, and developed from an inauspicious start.

In the last 2.5 years which hit his industry hard, he has navigated a path that not only has them still profitable and still here, but which protected jobs, acquired new business, and has the company in a strong position approaching 2023!

Like him (and me sometimes) you may be susceptible to believing those sneaky pernicious words too. As Gabor Mate says in ‘The Myth of Normal’:

“That conviction of one's inadequacy has fuelled a great many glittering careers and instigated many instances of illness, often both in the same individual.”

If “I’m not doing enough” is familiar in your thoughts, to avoid burnout or worse this winter, and to escape the never-ending cycle of push/overwhelm/achievement/disappointment (it is possible), my strong advice to you is 3-fold:

Be on the lookout for those phrases. Notice. When they crop up question their validity.
Make a point of regularly appreciating yourself for what you do. The actions you take. The tasks you work on. The projects you nudge forward. The time you take to look after yourself and enjoy life.
Invest in what supports you to feel like the strong, capable, brilliant person you actually are.

If you are reading and relating to this article, I can pretty much guarantee you are up to your neck in commitments and responsibilities, exhausted and overwhelmed, and just hanging on to get to Christmas.

There’s no slack in your system to start on a course of action that will turn this thing around.

That’s exactly what perpetuates the vicious cycle.

So, to help you commit to yourself and to creating your new future in 2023, I am offering one place on my New Chapter Transformation programme with 30% discount when you sign up and pay by 14th December 2022.

After Christmas, I will help you re-find the joy and meaning in life so you can get more done, enjoy it, and still have time and energy for yourself.

All it takes right now is to schedule a no-obligation conversation to invest one hour in yourself and your future so that you can break this cycle and have a very different 2023!

Invest one hour in yourself and your future here.

“Sadly, this was a very common part of my internal narrative. These days, thanks to coaching, that once familiar thought - ‘I’m not doing enough’ – barely comes up.” - Response to this blog from a coaching client 6 months after completing their coaching programme.

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