And I Need To Be Doing More
When I started running this business early this year, I had this nagging voice that said, “You are not doing enough.” “You should be doing more.”
This voice dialled in volume as I finished working on my website and sat waiting for clients. I had put the word out in my network but hardly had any leads.
The voice started screaming, “This is not for you.”“You are not putting yourself out there.” “You should be working hard.”
At one point, I noticed that the voice reduced in volume if I worked long hours and over the weekend. Even if I wasn’t working, my mind was constantly churning out ideas, projects and future projections on where I should look for a job if this business did not take off.
So, I was constantly working. These thoughts intruded into my meditation and tai-chi practice as well. There was no respite from these thoughts. It was either the inner voice criticising me or the mind voice coming up with various plans to ward off disasters.
It was exhausting.
One day, I woke up and did not want to get out of bed. I figured I needed to put an end to this charade in my mind, which wasn’t giving me a moment’s peace.
So I picked one thought, “You should be doing more”, and looked at it closely. I wondered what it meant. The thought is just so vague, without any specifics. I did not even pause to clarify what it meant for me, and I had been doing a lot of “busy work” because I should have been doing more.
So I asked myself, “What do I need to be doing more?” “When do I need to do more?”
I wasn’t getting any clear answers. No wonder I was going behind chasing every shiny new idea coming into my head because I needed to do more.
I instituted a 28-day incubation period for following through on new ideas—no matter how big or small, easy or difficult they are to implement. I wrote down the idea and its date of birth and put a check-in date 28 days later. Only if I remained excited and curious about the idea 28 days later would I pursue it.
To my great surprise, many ideas died silent deaths in the 28-day incubation period. Writing down the ideas and carefully evaluating them paradoxically silenced the voice, “You should be doing more.”
Then I examined the thought, “You are not doing enough.” This very familiar voice in my head cuts through various aspects of life – relationships, physical exercise, meditation, eating, resting, reading and working.
Since the beginning of my business, I have had a list of tasks that I wanted to work on, and I steadily kept crossing them out as I completed each one. They were all in different places. I pulled all the tasks into a single spreadsheet. I was astounded at what I saw. At the time of writing this newsletter, I had over 1,000 tasks in the spreadsheets, and many of them were single-line items but done five times a week.
Keeping a record of what I’ve done has been very helpful in countering the voice that says, “You are not doing enough.” I simply open the spreadsheet and look at it with amazement and relief, knowing that I have been doing what I can.
Communication is essential in both the professional and personal aspects of our lives. We all know this. We put in a lot of effort to communicate and express ourselves with others.
But most of us suck at communicating with ourselves.
We speak to ourselves only in the most critical and harsh voices. We pick these voices up in childhood from our environment, caregivers, parents, teachers, friends, and media. These voices have become a part of our being and are so pervasive that we don’t even know they exist, like how the fish doesn’t think about the water in which it lives.
Identifying these voices, looking at them with curiosity, understanding and acknowledging them, and gently questioning them can make a world of difference in our lives. It is radical.
This is the critical work we do in the coaching process. I facilitate the process of bringing to awareness these inner voices that are not letting my clients move ahead. We bring out the voice, hear it, acknowledge it, understand it, and gently challenge it. We keep challenging it until it recedes in the background and replace it with new voices and thoughts that are helpful and supportive.
As for myself, I now work four days a week, take the weekend off completely, and lounge in bed and read. I love it.
What are your inner voices that give you no respite? Which of those voices is the loudest, and what does it say?
💌Siri
P.S. When this email lands in your inbox, I will be in a silent meditation retreat. No reading, writing, caffeine, mobile phones. It is a complete stimulation detox in nature, contemplating the teachings of Ramana Maharishi and walking in the forest.
