I had two conversations recently that gave me food for thought.  One day a friend said to me “I can’t help myself, I keep taking things on and it’s stressing me out.”  Then right after that, a client said “I have a hard time saying ‘no’ to everything and I’m totally stressed.”

My first thought was “Oh good, I’m not alone!” because I do the same thing.  My second thought was “Oh dear, there are others who don’t know when to say ‘when’, too.”  So I have decided to share my story with you so that if you are challenged by taking on too much too, maybe you’ll take something away from my experience to make your life better.

I have this habit of pushing myself a little too far. It shows up in ways like (and you may have the same issues):

• putting too many to dos on my to do list
• taking too many business-building classes
• saying yes way too many times

When I do this I’m always in a mode of rushing around trying to get things done.  Of course, because there is too much to get done nothing ever feels like it’s coming to an end.

I recently finished learning how to be better at social media, but wanted to learn Instagram, so I signed up for a class for that. Then I saw an ad for a class to grow my email list and that is of interest to me as well, so I signed up.  Next I stumbled across an Ed2Go class for online businesses and thought this course would fill in the missing pieces that I felt I needed – so yes, I signed on for that one, too.

Now three classes isn’t really a lot (or so I think, you may think otherwise; it’s all in the perception) but that’s if you haven’t another thing you are doing … and in my case that isn’t so.

I run two businesses — my coaching business and my fitness business.  Plus, I am part of a group coaching program (where, yes, I’m learning in that as well) and I’m also in a private program that has group components, too.  So honestly, adding on even one of the classes above (and if I’m really being honest all of them) wasn’t in my best interest.

Can you guess what happened to me? If you guessed that I had stressed myself out beyond measure, you would be correct. Now let me tell you that it’s a negative self-sabotaging pattern that leads me to defeat not victory.

Can you relate?

I’m ambitious, I like to get things done, and I like to be constantly moving forward.  Yet what I’ve done with this pattern is make myself come screeching to a halt.

And that’s when I realized that I need to know when is when – when enough is enough, when too much is too much.  So I have decided that once all of these courses are complete, the new boundary for myself is to only take ONE course and be enrolled in ONE program at a time.

Truth be told, I don’t know how I’ll do with that (I’ll let you know though), because it’s such a different behavior and way of being for me.  However, I’m game to see how my life changes because of it!  

I wanted to share my story so that you can see you aren’t alone and you can do something about it.  Stay tuned to next month’s article where I’ll give you several tips to break your patterns and start recognizing when is when.

Your turn!  Hop on over to https://www.fb.com/KimRavidaCoaching/ and share your experience, what you have done to overcome the do-itis or what you’d like to know about recognizing when is when.

And of course, if you’d like to keep it private you are welcome to email me personally at kim@kimravida.com to share.