Rachel’s Room🛋️

Happy Wednesday. Cadre crew. Hello. Hello. I'm getting a code on the bottom of my life. So I hope that this is working. I don't know what the code means. Code 2001. 2001. Great year. Love that year. Hello, everyone. I'm gonna give folks a moment to trickle in. I really hope this code doesn't mean I'm not working. We'll see. If no one shows up in five minutes, I might try and restart this because that might mean something is wrong. So. Okay, it's working. Phenomenal. Hi, junk food junkie. Hello. Happy Wednesday.

Happy Wednesday. Hi, Jules. Hello. Hi everyone. Happy to see you. Happy to see your names in the chat. Good afternoon, sunshine to you as well. Good afternoon to you as well. So today I'm gonna chat a little bit about something a little bit more like logistics, like tackling overwhelm. That has to do with more practical things like job, like job stuff or like household stuff. Because that's something I'm really struggling with right now, is managing. Not managing my time. But, like, if I have something that I know is going to take me a long time, I get really anxious about starting because I have a history of not finishing things.

So there's this story in my head that says, well, you might not finish it and I don't know how long it's going to take you to start, so we might as well not do it. And so instead I'll focus on things that I know I can do quickly so I can get that quick reinforcement of accomplishing something rather than sort of that longer. The longer reinforcement of finishing something, that takes time. And because of that, I'm not actually engaging in things that I need to do or want to do. That will have a really high reward on my investment if I actually.

If I actually give myself the gift of doing this thing, that's going to take me a long time. So, for example, like right now I need to merge a lot of things on my website. Like, I need to merge products from my website and my mailing list and everything is just kind of on a different place and trying to merge it all together. And you know, this is gonna take me a long time because I'm also gonna have to sit down and learn how to. How to go about doing it. Sort of like best practices. Cause it's a lot of like backend web stuff and I don't wanna f*** it up.

So I also know that I'm gonna have to sit down and learn some things, which is gonna take time. And the overwhelm of not knowing how long it's all gonna take and not knowing if I'm of like giving up on it is just stopping me from starting. So my therapist and I have been working on, and I like the way she, she says this in session. I, you know, I kind of like, will be really stubborn, but in the long run, I like the way she says this, which is, it's giving myself this, this gift, right? I'm giving myself the gift of doing something that I know might be a little harder for me to mentally tackle because at the end of it, I'm going to feel so proud of myself.

And I'm also going to teach myself that I'm capable of finishing something like this. So the next time it comes up, I have less resistance to beginning because I have evidence that I'm able to do it. So in the same ways, like, I can start long projects that I have done before because I have evidence that I've done them. So for example, like, I have written a book before. So when I wrote my last book that I just finished, I didn't, it didn't stress me out that like, there were days where I was like, I have no creative energy and I can't write because I knew that that was part of the process of writing along, of writing a book.

And I knew that it was going to take me, you know, X amount of months to do. And so I didn't have any of that internalized anxiety or shame around. Why is this taking me so long? Why can't I get started? Shouldn't I have be at this juncture or this milestone by now? Because I've already done it. I know what the process looks like. So for this particular work task that I have to do, I haven't done this before. So I don't know what the process looks like. I don't know how long it's supposed to take.

I don't know how many hours it's supposed to take to do a particular task. So it's hard for me to break it up and go, okay, well, I know that this is going to take me a couple of weeks. So if today what I did was just two hours of this one little thing that's a part of the process, instead I start to really spiral around how I'm not doing it fast enough, I'm not doing enough, and then I just avoid doing it. So something that she's been helping me work on is sort of this breakdown of longer projects into smaller tasks.

So I can still have that feeling at the end of the day of like, I actually know I accomplished something. Like I did these five things. It took me three hours. And that is a small brick leading up to this bigger picture. She also told me about this website called Hang On. She sent it to me, which I never heard of. And I'm now very excited about it. Not only for like what it does, but the name is really amazing. It's like Goblin, Goblin Tools. If you have not heard of Goblin Tools and you are, if you struggle with like productivity or like long term projects, like, this is gonna be a game changer for me.

I'm very excited. But basically what you do is you like type in a task. So like, for example, like I need to transfer all of my products to Shopify. So you type that in and it breaks down how to do it for you. Like it generates like step one, assess all of your products, step two, like categorize them. Like it breaks it all down. And then you can even like break down each of those if you want to, into steps. And then you can also click, click a button that says estimate, where you can estimate how long each of them is going to take.

So I'm very excited about this tool. I think it's going to be very helpful in sort of tackling these longer term projects that I typically like procrastinate or avoid. But it was also helpful to just talk about like where that resistance comes from and like understanding that a lot of it is because like, not that I can't, that I don't believe that I can do, can't do things that take a long time. A lot of it is that I, I don't have evidence that I've done it before. And so there' fear that I'm not going to be able to finish it.

And so I think reminding myself that it's really about the fear of the unknown, it's not about not believing in myself. It's literally, it's a thing I've never done. And so it's scary. And because I don't know what's going to happen. And acknowledging and honoring that, that fear of that unknown is really, really normal and common. And the only way to create knownness is to do it as a beginner and know that being a beginner means I'm going to f*** up, I'm going to make mistakes, I'm going to like, it's not going to be perfect.

And like by doing it, I move through it one time and then I'm no longer a beginner. And so I Think it was a really helpful reframe and I wanted to share that because that's something I'm going to be working on this week is tackling those sort of longer tasks that I avoid or put off for fear of not being able to finish them or not knowing how to do it or not, or not feeling like I'm doing it fast enough. Like there's. I have such a sense of urgency all the time, like I'm not doing anything fast enough.

So trying to give myself space and time to do things, trusting that if I break them down like they will get done little by little. So Junk Food Junkie says how I overcame that. Not finishing things that write a task list down for what I need to accomplish in a month by doing this. I now stay on task to check each one off when completed. Yeah, and that's something I need to get better at is like those longer term projects of like knowing it's going to take a long time to break it down rather than like doing things all in a day.

Like it's okay if things, things aren't finished today, it's okay if they take a long time. And reminding myself of that is going to be really important. So yeah. So that's what I'm working on. Again, that website is Goblin Tools. I'm very excited to dive into that. So we'll see. I'll update you all next week, but I hope that you are all managing your week okay. It has been a really weird week. I feel like emotionally for a lot of people, like so tired and heavy and so I just hope that if you're feeling that way, like you know you're not alone and that you're giving yourself some grace and some kindness throughout it all and that you're eating, staying hydrated, trying to get good rest, staying connected to people and I'm just happy you're here.

So okay, my loves, I will see you same time, same place next week. And I hope you all have a lovely rest of your Wednesday. And I.