So You Can't Do It All & That's Ok
I've always been a believer that if you manage your time properly then you can fit most things into your life and for the most part I still stand by that. Managing your time and prioritising what's vital is hard and takes practice that's for sure but it's not impossible. However, something I've realised lately is that there is only so much time in the day and it's not physically possible to do it 'all'. No matter how hard we try and how many late nights we give we cannot possibly fit it all in and when that starts to happen it can make you feel like you're failing and not doing well enough. Finding comfort in the fact that you can't do it all is incredibly hard and it's something that's still I'm still struggling with. So I wanted to open up a conversation about not being able to do it all and why it's ok if you can't.
WHEN ONE THING IS GREAT EVERYTHING ELSE SEEMS TO SUFFER
A long time I came across the concept that the most successful people in the world can only have one or two big focuses in their life and when I read that I had a lightbulb moment. Not that I believe I'm some huge success at all but something I struggle with is to give my focus to everything that I need to and when one thing is going really well then other aspects of my life suffer. So for example when work is going really well then everything else falls by the wayside. I might be on top of all my projects and replying to my e-mails in a timely fashion but I've more than likely not washed my hair in 5 days and the house is a tip. And then when I'm doing a really good job at taking care of my mental health and nurturing the relationships in my life I'm probably not as on top of work as I would like. For so long I've felt like a failure for not managing to juggle everything successfully but as I get older I realise that's just life. Sometimes we can take on more and sometimes we can't, life isn't as easy as we like to make it out to be and that's ok.
WE DO WHAT'S RIGHT AT THE TIME
There is no guidebook to life like if you do XYZ then you're going to do everything perfectly and feel like I'm an absolute boss on a daily basis. There are definitely days or maybe weeks like that where everything feels like it's working out for the best and those little things are all slotting perfectly into place. But when things become crazy and hectic then we make the decision that's right and that's best for us at the time. Sure when looking back on it then maybe we could do things differently but whatever we do at the time is what we believe to be best. It's so hard to believe in yourself when self-doubt plagues our every move and we believe that we could constantly be doing better.
NO-ONE IS SHARING THEIR STRUGGLE ENOUGH
Something that's prominent in the online world is the fact that none of us is sharing our struggle enough. That's a generalisation of course as there are some brutally honest people who really share their deep honest truth. But for the most part, we all like to glaze over the really rough parts and there is nothing wrong with that because maybe that's just not how we cope. We don't have to share everything online but because of that when you feel the pressure more than usual it can feel incredibly lonely and isolating. I'm sure we've all been there when life seems to be a lot tougher than usual. And when you go online to get a little breather it seems like absolutely everyone is doing everything they should be without a problem. Everyone has their own issues and battles in life whether we choose to share them online or with our most loved ones that doesn't mean they don't exist and that they're not real.
THERE'S ONLY SO MANY HOURS IN THE DAY
You know that really irritating slogan that was going around a few years ago about how we all have the same amount of hours in the day as Beyonce? Well, I'm pretty sure most of us don't have multiple assistants and when you're sharing the workload with someone it completely changes the game. There are only so many hours in the day to cram in absolutely everything that we need to do as well as a few things that we would probably like to do as well. Beating yourself up and cramming your day's without any breathing room is all too easy and you end up stretching yourself thin and ultimately end up burning out horribly because you've not given yourself enough space to just be a human being. Whilst we all need to work crazy hard to provide for ourselves we also need to cut ourselves some slack because there are only so many hours and in them, we also need to sleep and eat.
WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF IT 'ALL'
For some people having it, all might mean working 16 hours a day and feeling like they've really given it all to their career. And to some people, it might mean just doing the hours that they need to do at work but then hitting the gym afterwards or maybe catching up with a friend. We all have different definitions of having it all and we can't put our expectations onto other people and define them by it. Just because someone else doesn't look like they're slogging themselves into an exhausted state and we are it doesn't mean we have the right to judge because you never truly know what's going on. We all have the right to live our lives by what we see fit and trying to play catch up with everyone else is an exhausting never ending race that we will never win.
