Earlier this week, I encountered several opportunities where I could have said yes, which would have ended up feeling extremely overwhelmed. There was a time when I would have said yes to every opportunity that I was offered. In the past, I would have feared that if I said no, that I would regret it later because I didn’t have enough.
It’s taken some time and a lot of overwhelm and frustration to realize that I need to let go of my scarcity mindset if I wanted to maintain a healthy, positive attitude. I had to develop a stronger sense of faith that everything would be okay and that other opportunities would still present themselves to me when I needed them.
Setting yourself up for success means setting yourself up to achieve the things you want to accomplish. I’ve talked about the importance of having a manageable task list for your week so that you can accomplish the things that are on the list instead of having a lot left undone. When you review your “things to do” at the end of the week, you’ll feel better about your accomplishments when you have the majority of tasks complete, rather than having the majority of them left undone.
When you set yourself up for success, you’re celebrating your accomplishments and start wondering what else is possible. It’s all about breaking down your goals into small, manageable chunks. This way, they are easier to achieve, and a lot of small wins lead to stronger self-confidence.
When you take on too much, it can feel like nothing is getting done because there is always so much to do if you’ve found yourself in this position before, you know how self-defeating it can be. You can feel as if you’re working all the time, yet the amount of work that still needs to be done continues to grow.
When I kept getting more opportunities last week, there was a part of me that was excited about the chance to get more work under my belt. Once I gave the opportunities more thought, I realized that I would be overwhelmed and kicking myself by mid-week if I said yes to all the opportunities that I was offered last week. Since I already felt as if my time was stretched the last few weeks, I decided that now was not the time to take on more work.
Instead of worrying that saying no now meant that I might not get future opportunities offered to me, I am confident that there will be chances to take on new things in the future if I want to. I remind myself that worry is simply negative goal setting and my time is better served focusing on the things I want instead of the things I don’t.
I’ve learned that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I realize that saying yes to everything can be a challenge to turn into a successful endeavor. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t push yourself and step outside your comfort zone. It means that you want to make sure you’re stretching yourself in a way that will put you two steps forward rather than 2 steps back. Set yourself up for small wins so you can achieve the success you’re dreaming about. ♥