6: when you feel you're falling behind

in today's episode, shelby talks about the fear and anxiety of feeling like you are falling behind in life, and running out of time.

she talks about why we have a tendency to feel this way and mindset shifts to learn to appreciate time and what it can do for us, and how to stop feeling like you're running out of time to achieve your goals.

each episode covers a different mental health-related topic and has a "small step" or action for you to take on your self-love journey. tune in for today's small step about reflecting on time and your accomplishments and let everyone know in the comments what your answer is to today's question, if you feel comfortable sharing!

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Transcript

Welcome back to the small steps to self-love podcast. i'm shelby leigh and i first just want to say that this is the 6th episode and we have reached over 900 downloads/listens to the podcast so i just wanna say thank you so much if you have listened to any of the episodes, to all of the episodes. If you have a moment to leave a quick rating on apple podcasts, i would appreciate that so much! Subscribing and liking the videos really helps. I find it very cringy to ask for things like this but i’ve learned that it can be really helpful and helps me continue putting out new episodes every week so thank you again for being here and listening.

I asked on my instagram story what topic we wanted to cover today and by a narrow margin feeling like you're behind in life won as today's topic and as we do in every episode i have a small step for you to take with you at the end of this episode, so be sure to stay tuned for this week’s small step and this is something that i've been writing about a lot: exploring time and feeling like i'm running out of time.

Today’s topic:

I used to treat each day like a task like another day that i needed to complete. What can i get done today? What can i achieve today? What can i do today to get ahead, to be successful, rather than treating each day like an important 24 hours in my life, to use that time for what makes me happy and the life that i want. Treating each day as something that i should be using in my own way in my own path. 

I actually wrote a short poem about this topic. There's a couple that explore time and changing with the tides. In one book coming out in january i explore it and then my 4th book that i'm currently working on i've been writing a lot about time so i wanted to read page 76 of changing with the tides it's called to tomorrow.

To tomorrow: i used to think of each day as a fire i needed to smother, a task on a list i needed to complete. Now i think of myself as the flame, unable to be extinguished, leaving behind a trail of ash wherever i go. I'm here and i'm not going anywhere.

So i think that i wrote that after realizing that i was kind of wishing away days almost and again treating them like something on my to do list, that, ok the next 24 hours is done. Here's what i got done versus using it to carve my own path. Using each day to live life the way i wanted to. Whether that was working on something or accomplishing goal, or doing a hobby i love that maybe doesn't get me any closer to more money or a promotion or whatever it is that makes me happy, and all 24 hours of the day don't have to be used for something that would make us more successful because i think being happy is the ultimate success anyway and being fulfilled is the best reward. So that's what stemmed from that poem was kind of a way of me of writing out like i don't wanna treat tomorrow like a to do list anymore. I wanna take that control back over my life and in doing what makes me happy is the best way that i can spend those 24 hours of my time.

I felt behind many times in my life so if you feel behind now or you have in the past, you're certainly not alone in that. After talking to friends and other people in my industry personally which is writing, i found a lot of us have felt that way when we really should not as a creative person i tend to have like 30,000 ideas swarming around my head at any given time and it can be really overwhelming and make me feel like i'm not accomplishing enough because i think of all these ideas and all the time that it will take and all the time that i don't have and “i will never get all of this done it will never achieve everything that i want to achieve.” I felt like i was drowning and falling behind because i haven't checked off all these imaginary boxes that i'm placing on myself and accomplished all of these things that i want to accomplish.

Why do we tend to feel this way?

So i wanted to talk first about well why we put this pressure on ourselves where does this stem from and i think it's a few different things i think the first one is society and i won't speak for every different culture and how it looked different societies around the world kind of treat work and success, but i will speak for the one that i know which is the american dream kind of ideal.

We have a very strong culture of individualism and putting ourselves and our success before other people and working hard hard hard hard hard to get ahead and succeed and i look at other countries that have higher qualities of life, higher happiness rates and all of that, that offer way more paid time off of work, paid family leave, things that i could ramble it out all day that a lot of people don't get access to in america, but i feel like that culture has really had an impact on people feeling like their work their job their career is top priority. And i love hard work, i'm all for hard work and achieving the many goals that i have in life, so i'm definitely not speaking ill of that and i think that we do have to work hard to achieve our goals. 

But i also do think it can have an effect mentally on what we prioritize in life and that feeling of falling behind and feeling like a failure if we haven't accomplished certain work goals or monetary goals or family goals by certain age…  it’s like if you get married later in life you are behind. If you have kids later in life you're behind. If you aren't making a certain amount of money by a certain age you're behind. If you don't go to college or you go to college later in life or are you taking a year off of school you're falling behind.

I felt it even when i was young in school if it came to grades or taking longer to learn a certain concept in class i feel like at any age this can really impact us and impact our minds and impact what we think that we can achieve because we feel like we are falling behind. So maybe it's easier to just stay behind or to procrastinate because we don't want to experience that feeling of failure and so i think that it stems from society. I think it stems from comparing ourselves to other people when we are all on very different paths and backgrounds and journeys and have had a mix of different privileges too. I think that when we're comparing ourselves to other people we can feel even further behind when really comparing ourselves to someone who might have had a completely different experience than us or completely different challenges that we're facing, we just don't see them. 

I wanted to share another poem. This is kind of a poetry filled episode but i have a few on this topic that i felt were worth sharing this one isn't so positive it comes from the first half of my book changing with the tides, and if you haven't read it the first half of the book is more about challenges and mental health insecurities and anxiety and things like that and then the second-half is more empowering and healing from some of those things so this poem is called to the one who always wins. I actually wrote this poem with the intention of it not really being about another person but about society. And for some who have been dreaming their whole life of that you did it and it shouldn't be a factor of how much time it took you or the age you were when it happened that shouldn't hold you back from celebrating that that shouldn't help hold you back from feeling like you aren't successful if it took you longer than others so i think that that's a mindset shift that's really important to remember when we're thinking about feeling like we're falling behind. 

And the other thing to remember is how much this feeling can affect our mental health and affect how much we are getting accomplished because if we are getting very overwhelmed by the concept of time and the time is slipping away from us that can lead to procrastination and procrastinating or goals putting them off like i said before, avoiding it because we don't want to fail we only want to do it if we know we're going to be successful or if it's going to take us a short amount of time or whatever it may be. 

You have time to accomplish your goals. 

This is the last one i promise but there's a poem that i shared really short poem that i kind of just free wrote about time and how i was feeling because i wanted to feel better about it myself and not see time as this thing that could hold me back as this thing that is slipping away from me that there is limited time in my life i no longer wanted to see it as i wanted to see it as something that was a gift that was something that i could use to practice to improve to grow.

So that's where this poem came from i kind of already just read the poem just by saying all of that but i'm gonna read it for you, it's not in any of my books maybe it will be one day but just a short little reminder that i wanted to read for you today. 

You have time. You will grow and build confidence and change paths and make mistakes and love deeply and find new passions and laugh freely and cry from joy and cry from pain and isn't it so beautiful how much we get to feel? 

That one kind of just came out it was just written as like a rambling type of thought jump on the page but i really liked how it turned out and i feel like it's a good reminder that i keep close by that i want you to keep close by.

Small step

For this week’s small step i want you to recall a time in your life where you felt like you were falling behind like you weren't going to accomplish something in time but you did if you were journaling these small steps you could write down the moment and how it made you feel so that the next time you're feeling behind you can remember that this is something that you have accomplished in the past when you felt like you were running out of time this is something that you have done and remember what you've been able to achieve and remember when we're thinking of time as something negative as something that is slipping away as something that we are losing or that we're going to run out of it try reframing it as something positive as a gift if you were not feeling confident about a certain thing think of time as a way to grow and practice and become more confident it's a positive thing not a burden time is the ultimate tool we have to get better bad things to change our mindset to become better to grow to practice writing ourselves of self doubt and to be on this self love journey together which is what we're doing that takes time. Viewing it as a path to growth versus being a burden or a negative thing is a wonderful mindset shift to take with you this week and in the future so that is today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening i hope you're able to take something away from this episode about time and know that you have time to achieve what you want to achieve. 

So thank you so much for listening again if you have a moment to leave a quick rating on apple podcasts or give us video like on youtube and let me know what you thought of today's episode, i would love to hear from you and i will talk to you in next week’s episode. Thanks for listening!