Do You Ever Feel Like You Are Just Treading Water?

Treading WaterThat’s me right now – treading water. I am maintaining my position, and yet not making any forward progress. At least I am not going backwards.

I have a very busy month ahead of me. Starting last weekend, and going through until mid-November, I have something happening every weekend, which means very little down time. It is also the busiest time of year at my job. I’m often quite tired by the time I get home in the evenings. My goal over the next month is to continue treading water – to maintain my current level of two blog posts per week.

If you think about swimming, treading water is used to conserve energy, or to recover after a large expenditure of energy. The blog challenge was a pretty big expenditure of energy for me. It was exactly what it says, a challenge. And now I am working to recover and conserve my energy, by keeping up a slow and steady pace.

Part of me is a little discouraged, to be honest. I had hopes of starting a group coaching program this fall, or possibly having a beta test for my Elements of Abundance program. I have lots of ideas and not as much time and energy as I would like to implement them.

Being discouraged is not productive, however. So I have been working the last few days to change my perspective. I did a big push this summer. It is natural to have cycles of outward focus and inward focus, of high energy and low energy. Even turning my attention to the world outside, it is the inward turning time of the year. It is hibernation, harvest, and storing up for the winter.

Changing my perspective in this way, I am able to accept where I am at in this moment. I understand that this time of slower movement, this treading water, will not last forever. And if I try to push myself too far beyond my abilities, I will burn out, and set myself farther behind where I am now.

It can be a fine line between making excuses to stop or quit, and giving myself the space to move more slowly. A couple of people have suggested I take a break from blogging for a bit, or perhaps post only once per week. I know from experience how easy it is to stop something, and then how challenging it is to start it up again. So I am keeping this good habit going, and giving myself the space not to take on any more right now.

It is all too easy to fall into negative self talk when these times of slow down occur. Instead of beating yourself up mentally, here’s a couple of things you can do to shift that line of thinking:

  1. Take a few deep breaths.
  2. Acknowledge where you are at energetically – are you in a high energy, productive phase, or a lower energy, integration phase?
  3. Give yourself permission to be wherever you are. Actually tell yourself, out loud preferably, that you have permission to take it easy for a while, or to push through and ride the energy.

It’s ok to tread water sometimes. As long as you don’t stop swimming altogether. As Dorie says in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

Have a swimmingly good weekend!

Blessings,

Mary