Grant Yourself Grace
“Can you approve this? Can I get your thoughts on that? How would you like to weigh in on X? What is your vision for Y? How do you plan to make Z happen? What are the requirements on this? How would you handle a situation like that?”
These are questions that many of us are asked on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Being asked for advice, regardless of the situation, is a compliment. It means that the person on the other side of the conversation trusts your judgment to take that into consideration during their decision making process.
I love making decisions for our business that will ultimately help our clients in their safety needs. Seriously, it’s a wonderful type of power to say yes or no to something that you know will make a difference in something as important as safety.
When these larger decisions get thrown at you all at once, it starts to weigh on you a lot more than you’d think. The last time this type of season came around, I had no idea why I felt this way. That’s when I found this article on a thing called “decision fatigue”. It blew my mind. The quality of your decisions deteriorates as you make more and more decisions throughout the day. It all started making sense: this is why I really didn’t care what I ate for dinner or why I didn’t plan for work the next day (outfits, breakfast/lunch, etc.). If you haven’t read about this, The New York Times has an amazing article that discusses other ramifications of decision fatigue.
Basically, we only have so much capacity for decision making throughout the day, so how do you beat the epidemic? The experts say the ones who beat it “establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices” (Tierney, 2011). OK, they say this is the trick to keeping the energy there during these crazy times in my life, so where do you even start?
Last winter, I started with a really small thing: outfits. Regardless of whether I was going into work that day (work from home privileges are such a blessing) I planned my outfits for the week on Sunday evening. Just one decision less that morning felt really good. At the start of the new year, I then added meal prep into the equation – this was a NYE resolution for 2019.In March, I added calendar structure for the week, both personal and professional. This one has been tricky to keep on top of – honestly, who wants to open up their work calendar on Sunday. I cannot stress this enough: it has done a full 180 for my productivity. To take this one step further, recently I’ve started taking a few hours each month to lay out larger goals and schedule those into the calendar too.
However, even with all of these habits in place, the decision fatigue still creeps up on me every once in a while. (No, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Trust me, I’ve obsessed over this too.) This past week, have been a series of nonstop decisions. Some seasons are just a little more difficult than others and this one has been ridiculously rough to say the least.
I need to blatantly insert something here: BEING OBSCENELY BUSY IS NOT IMPRESSIVE. It’s honestly a horrible perpetuation of what corporations want you to think is the norm for their employees so they don’t have to sacrifice for another head count. Don’t let yourself fall for this because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, just a sad smell of rubber from your inevitable burnout.
I like to take a step back and label all of the responsibilities I have at the moment to either prove or debunk this feeling. I either feel really relieved since most of it is in my head, or I feel validated that I really do have too much on my plate. Ok then what? RE-F**KING-LAX. Grant yourself the grace to appreciate all you’ve been working on. Normally when fatigue and overwhelm set in is when all of my labors of love are finally coming to fruition. So we need to re-evaluate and be grateful to have these opportunities and have others beside us each step of the way to see it through.
I know for myself my diet still takes a huge hit when that feeling sets in. As women, we stress over our appearance so much that it takes a compounded effect when you’ve worked yourself through most of that bag of chips. I get so down on myself that the negative dialogue makes the exhaustion worse. I have been trying to be better about this because really, what’s the worst that happens, the snickers bar I just ate might take an extra workout to burn off? Get back in the saddle tomorrow and stick to it. C’mon.
I think the important thing is to take a moment and allow yourself the grace to be exhausted. If we’re really doing all the right things like eating right, planning ahead, exercising, and staying committed to our schedules, we need to give ourselves permission to take that break so we can save our energy for making decisions that matter. Who knows, the most important decision of your life could be the next one.
