Here’s 5 Steps to Help You Slow Down
Do you feel like no matter how much you have accomplished, you need to do more? Not because you're power or money hungry, but rather because you are afraid if you don't keep working, you'll somehow lose it all? Or you'll become irrelevant?
Photo by Eberhard Grossgasteiger
There is a great advantage to this mindset. It has certainly gotten you to the level of success you're at today. No matter what milestone you hit, you always went for one more.
Even though this mindset is actually the secret to your success, there have probably been times when it became too much. It's a very helpful mindset, but an exhausting one too. It's like the work never ends, we never truly let ourselves enjoy what we've achieved.
Constantly needing to push out content, promote your products, come up with something new that's helpful to others. These are all great, necessary things. We don't want to change that. We just want to change the *why* behind these beneficial, value-add actions.
We want to be excited to share more of our business, instead of fearful that if we don't, everything we've worked for will disappear.
The first part of that process is to be aware that this is going on within us. We often forget that fear is driving a lot of the behaviors that run us ragged.
The second part to remember is that we've already put content out there. Videos, blog posts, podcasts.
If you stopped for a few days or a week, or two weeks, the hard work you've created won't vanish. It will still be there for new clients to find and connect with. And if they see your content, fall in love with it, but notice you haven't been posting in a while, they will visit your website, find your other platforms, and try to find some way to get in touch with you anyways.
I just had a coaching call with a client who found me 7 years ago when I was working on my first business. Even though I moved on to other projects and "disappeared," he looked me up, found my latest business page and scheduled his first call to work with me.
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The third part to remember is that our loyal fans and followers adore you. That's why they follow you. They want you to be well and happy, just as you want that for them.
Your connection with them is a real relationship. Even if you don't know each one personally, they feel like they know you personally. They will happily support you in taking a break, or reducing the frequency of your posts if needed.
If you need to drop off completely for a little while, let them know in advance and when you expect to be back. Then when you come back, wow them with something special so it was worth the wait.
At the core, it's about friendships. Just last night I had dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in over 10 years. We weren't upset we had lost touch. We were much more interested in catching up and seeing how we could help one another now.
When fear drives your need to produce, think about your friendship with your audience. You will be a lot more excited to create for your friends then for what you, in a way, see as task masters. And excitement is what you want the emotional basis of your content to be anyways, at the end of the day :)
The fourth part is to remind yourself that you are the CEO. While you should do your best to accommodate your audience, you ultimately make the decisions of what your schedule looks like.
The final part is to have some phrases you know to be true that set you at ease when you stress about not doing enough. Here are two you may find useful:
"More isn't always better"
"Sometimes less is more"
Do you struggle with the fear of vanishing unless you keep giving? What do you do to ease your mind?
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