Fretting!
I really hate the feeling of fretting; it seems I am hearing this more and more lately and feel I have been doing some of this myself. I feel fretting comes when you least want it, mainly in the middle of the night! Why do matters seem worse at night? What is it we fret about? In my experience it is the small matters that seem to cause more fretting than the big stuff. So how can we avoid this?
Talking is a magical thing, I find when I am fretting if I can talk this logically through with someone, it really helps. You don’t want them necessary to give you any opinion and or make you feel silly for fretting, but as you talk things through things seem to be clear and actually are less of a worry than your fretting was causing the concerns to be.
Recently a client of mine, experienced ‘fretting’. She has an amazing podcast, gets fantastic feedback, gets people sharing the links with others, so one would say this is highly successful. One week she forgot to do their regular outro to introduce the next speaker. My client was distraught and really beating herself up about this, but did it matter? Did anyone else notice? Having talked things through and refocusing her mind she realised this was not a great deal breaker. Living in the perfect world is impossible and even trying to be perfect a huge task to undertake and I think the fretting goes into overdrive. We certainly do beat ourselves up from trying to have everything perfect. All your ducks in a row is a great feeling but what energy did it take to get there?
Writing in a journal can also really help, you can then look back to see if there is pattern of when and what you fret about, this may make it easier to identify and try to reduce if you know a common pattern.
I have recently been keeping a journal as I found I was slipping into fretting mode, waking up in the middle of the night and the smallest worry seemed to be life threatening and so consuming of my energy, time and head space. So, the journal I have been keeping has really helped. I was ‘fretting’ about what was I doing with my working day. This could have something to be do with a few clients lately have wanted to work on time management so has this caused me to ‘fret’ about mine to much? I kept a note for two weeks about what my intentions for the day were, what my voice was saying and what I actually did. This then helped me look back on my day to see actually my ‘head’ can be calmer as I had achieved a lot in the day and even if my intention and plan for the day had not quite panned out as I wanted, that’s life. In business and life things will occur that have to take priority and being able to handle this is important. You need to be flexible for what your business needs are at the time.
My fretting also seems to be really present when I take time out of work and the guilt feeling is sometimes huge. What right has that voice in your head got to say – you can’t leave your desk; your world will fall in; your clients will disappear! Instead, surely it is good to leave your desk, have a walk, have a coffee with a friend, have some ‘you’ time. Its ok to take a break, you need it and deserve it! I always want to be fully present for my coaching clients, so I need to ensure I am in a good head space to be of service to them. How do you manage to be fully present in your working day and of service to your clients?
Fretting seems to be what a lot of people are suffering with at present as a great deal of us are still living in this uncertain world. We are now allowed to go out, but do we want to? We can meet in person, but do we want to? We can travel to meet friends and clients, but where do we find the time to allow for travel time. Is your diary overwhelming you do to the fact that we now have to find time not only to carry on with our work and social life, but we have to potentially allow for travel time, how will we manage the extra time we found not being on the road? Has this also sent ‘fretting’ into overdrive?
The last 18 months have changed some people’s way of living and working forever, and it is now adapting to a world that you want, not what you did before Covid 19. All of a sudden, our lives were put onto a full stop, diaries cleared, no travel, no visits to clients, family or friends and now this has changed again! What do we want to keep from our lessons over the last 18 months? Don’t let the last 18 months be for nothing, use the experience to really focus on what you want from your life.
Taking care of yourself. I feel is a huge message we should have learnt over the last 18 months. Do what you want to do in life and really try to not ‘sweat the small stuff’ as it really is draining and after what we have experienced over the last 18 months, we can not control some aspects of life so why waste time in fretting about things. If you can control them, do something about it, if you can’t control them why are you worrying.
I have to say I have found coaching invaluable over the last 18 months; coaching is always a great place to share your concerns, plans, goals and with life being somewhat uncertain it also helps you discuss your worries and where you want to get to.
Even if you don’t have coaching, if you find yourself worrying and fretting, either talk to a friend, write it down and reflect but don’t bottle it up in your head as it is not a healthy mix.
I hope you have enjoyed my quite honest blog today, if you fancy ‘de fretting’ give me a call to see how together we can manage you managing ‘fretting’ and keeping it at bay.
