Spring Cleaning: When You Have Too Much On Your Plate

Spring is a great time to reassess, reorganize, and refresh. This year, instead of tackling your closets, I suggest you think about a thorough spring airing and cleaning of your life. Too often, busy lives lead us to patterns where we are simply following the bread crumb trail of our to-do lists and not taking the time to step back, gain some perspective, and revamp or refocus. This month I’m going to be blogging about spring cleaning for a better life.

j0432847Spring Cleaning: Beliefs that don’t serve

Some of the most bothersome life clutter is the stuff we carry around without even realizing it. This includes beliefs and attitudes about ourselves that don’t serve us, and that may even sabotage us or keep us stuck. Spend some time listening to your internal soundtrack (the way you talk to yourself inside your head). What is the tone of these conversations and what are the beliefs underlying your internal chatter? Try to capture that chatter in several key situations.

What does your internal sound track sound like when you have accomplished a goal? Are you your biggest fan? Are you all about the praise and celebration or do you automatically downplay it and focus on what you didn’t do? Does your internal audio register accomplishments or has it already moved on to the next item on your list?

How do you talk to yourself when you are taking on a challenge? Are you the “little engine that could” (“I think I can, I think I can”) or are you likely to remind yourself of all your shortcomings and the reasons that you are likely to fail? How’s the tone? Is your internal audio reasonable and respectful, a harsh task master, or too rigid or too wishy washy?

When the going gets tough or you get off track, what’s the conversation you have with yourself? Are you one to talk yourself back on the horse or do you beat yourself up and call yourself names like lazy, disorganized or something worse?

This conversation we constantly have with ourselves matters and most of us are rarely aware of it. It can take place almost as automatically as breathing. Here’s the litmus test: would you talk to your friend or your child the way you talk to yourself? If not, it’s time to do a major clean out. Raising awareness is the first step and the next step is crafting an alternate soundtrack. What are the words and labels and conversations that would really truly nurture your most brilliant and effective performance?

Take good care,

Melissa

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2 Responses to “Spring Cleaning: When You Have Too Much On Your Plate”

  1. Ande says:
    April 15, 2010 at 10:06 am

    This is valuable, advice, Melissa. Self talk has so much power. I struggled for years trying to figure out how to keep an eye on this self talk and still go about my daily life. I’ve learned that if I simply it to “how do I feel?” I know in an instant whether my self talk is good or bad. If I feel good, I’m thinking good thoughts about me or something else. If I feel bad, I have some negative dialogue going on in my head. So when I feel bad, THEN I ask myself, what are you thinking. Then the thought jumps right up and bites me on the nose, and I can deal with it by deliberately choosing a better thought.

    And I know I make that sound easy–but it’s an ongoing process that I’m not anywhere close to perfecting. But I keep practicing. :)

  2. Melissa McCreery says:
    April 17, 2010 at 5:39 pm

    Ande–I agree, practice doesn’t have to make perfect, practice can be helpful simply for the practice. I think of self-talk, attitude, and mindset as three very overlapping pieces that can create a very powerful cycle–in both positive AND negative directions. One shift in any of them can have a whopping mindset, don’t you think?

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