5 Steps to figuring out if you have too much on your plate

Today I am telling you the 5 steps to figuring out if you have too much on your plate 

In this episode I discuss how to tell the difference between:

• Actually having too much on your plate vs if it is all in your head
• 5 steps to figuring this out

My associated freebie which will help you calm down and feel better can be found here

Show notes and the transcript can be found here: https://michellekevill.com/podcast

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⚠️ Disclaimer:   This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or psychological advice. Any stories, examples, or scenarios discussed are illustrative and may be composites or anonymised accounts. They do not refer to any specific individual, client, workplace, or organisation. 

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. I hope you are well. And if not, I got you. At least you are here. My name is Michelle Cavell. I am a life coach and I help high achieving corporate women start enjoying a job that they were once passionate about again. Welcome to today's episode five Steps to figuring out if you have too much on your plate. We all know the feeling when we are at work and we've been given another task on our already very full plate and we're sitting there questioning, Is this too much? Can I do it all? I really have no idea. And if you are a follower and listener of all of this stuff, it's potentially come to the point where you are sitting there wondering, how do I define the difference between actually having too much on my plate versus if it's in my head? If I'm just thinking and I'm just really stressed out and I think I can't do it all. How do I determine the difference? Well, in today's episode, that's what we are going to go through. This is something that I've done myself, and these are the five steps that I did to work day. I still continue to do today to work out if I actually do have too much on my plate or if it's just all my old thoughts, if it's all my anxiety coming back up to bite me in the butt. So the first step that I have for you is to write out all your thoughts about the task and why it's an issue.

[00:01:33] You want to figure out what that route thought is that's fueling some of this in the back of your head. So if you've been given a project, just start to either type or write out all the thoughts that you have about it. It's too much. I hate this. I can't do it. Oh, my God. Everything. Everything's going everywhere. I'm going to have time to do this. Go to town, empty your brain out, get all those thoughts. Why is that important? You need to see them for what they are. When they're in your own head, you can't see them. And you really believe them? No. The end of this episode isn't. It's all in your head and you just have to change your thoughts. This is just one step of the process to understanding if it's just some of your thoughts and anxiety and some of those like I call them root thoughts. What they really are are beliefs that sit in your subconscious faffing about. You get given a task and then they flare up. So throughout this, I'm going to show you how to differentiate between the two, because what you'll find is when you write out all these thoughts on this task, I want you to start asking yourself why? Like, why is it super stressful? Why? Darn, I think I have enough time.

[00:02:45] Keep asking yourself why or why is that a problem? This is really important and give yourself an answer and your brain may come up against. I don't know. I don't know. It's okay. That happens. Don't judge yourself. But I want you to say what if, like, I don't have to have the right answer? What if I could just give any answer that just pops up? Like what could what could it be? The reason I say that is because I see this a lot with my clients and really what it is, it's I don't want to go to these root thoughts. I don't want to bring them to the surface or these feelings that I'm feeling right now. And thoughts are getting a little bit too much. So I don't really want to touch them. And if it's too much for you, that's fine, you can stop. But what's really going to be helpful is I'll give you an example right now. I used to get two years ago, you've heard my story, potentially used to get really, really stressed out. And when I was taking on way too much work and a new thing would come in, I'd be like, I can't do this. This is too much. Oh, my God, how come this keeps happening? I'm not going to be able to do it. And then I would just ask myself why to those questions like, why don't I think I can do it? Well, I don't have enough time.

[00:04:00] Why don't I think I have enough time? I'm like, Well, I have like this, this and this going on and I just don't think I can cope. Why don't I think I can cope? Because I don't think I'm good enough. There was my root thought. Now, that was very quick because it was an example. It usually I had a ton like half a page filled of these thoughts and asking why to get to that route thought. The more that you do this, and when I work one on one of my clients, the faster it is to get to that route thought. And then you go, oh, I see. It's just, it's that thought popping up again. It's the whole thought. I'm not good enough popping up, freaking out, worrying about like imposter syndrome or thinking that, you know, people are going to find out that I'm not good and all these bad things are going to happen. Like that thought is popping up again. That's fine. Getting awareness is key. You need to start seeing what you're thinking when this shit happens. Write it the fuck down. I don't care if you. To, like, type it, get it out on paper. Do not think it. I know you might be like, oh, like if I'm thinking about it and stuff like that, then it should be okay.

[00:05:11] When you're starting off with this work, you really need to write it out. Like even I still to this day with like certain topics that are really hard for me and sticky like body image, I need to write it out because I am just believing and going along with all these thoughts. So start writing it out. That's really important. Awareness is key. Number two is you need to calm the fuck down. Now how you might do that, the stuff I've been giving my whole fucking life is like, go for a walk, relax, treat yourself like I used to when I used to get really stressed. And I'm not calling people out, but I used to hear that from managers all the time, like, go take a break, go for a walk, like decompress. The problem with me is when I went for that walk, I would think about everything or I'd feel better after that walk, come back. And then the same fucking thoughts about the task would appear, and then it would make me feel a certain way, which is anxious. So the quickest way to calm the fuck down is actually in my new freebie. It's called the secret to stop crying in the bathroom. In between meetings, there is an excellent exercise that I use on myself still to this day on how to properly process all that anxiety really quickly to calm yourself down.

[00:06:36] The reason you want to do this is so you can figure out if you really can take on this task or not. Now, here's a thing. I'm not going to lie to you here. The first time you'll do this, you won't feel super duper calm. You'll probably will feel a little bit less calm. It's because it's a muscle and you need to practice it. The exercise that I take you through in the workbook, go take a look at it. It's in the show notes. It's fucking free. It's amazing. It's everything I wish I had two years ago, but I had this two years ago. Oh my God. I would have escalated all this shit, all my thought work or the wins that I have had in my life, like getting promoted twice and listened to years, like all of that so quickly. I've put it together in a free workbook. It gives you the why and the how. Now look at all of that, but go to the exercise. The exercise is going to be so key here because what you need to do is feel your fucking feelings. And I know I'm sounding a little harsh on this episode. It's like the reason you are feeling this way is because you have these thoughts. And so I'm the first one. You want to kind of recognize it. You get a little bit more power when you're able to see where these thoughts are coming from and how it's kind of impacting your life.

[00:07:59] But what you need to do is you need to work with your nervous system, okay? You need to regulate. You need to feel the emotions. That is the quickest way to calming yourself down. Why is this important? This is important because when you are feeling anxious, your stress response, your limbic system is turned off. Sorry, it turned on. It is firing. It is like where is the fucking danger? And what happens is when that is turned on, your stress response, your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex, the thing you fucking use to organize, plan, execute, problem, solve the part that's very, very important for working in corporate that turns off. Now, I don't want you to use that statement against yourself. I don't want you to sit there now and be like, Oh, if I don't calm down, I won't be able to organize you. You can still do shit even when you feel like shit again. It's a muscle. But doing this exercise is already going to take like 50% of the pain away because of a lot of the emotional drama you're actually having is the resistance to that emotion, the resistance to all those shitty thoughts you're having about the fact that you have too much to do, you want to run away from it all. I'm telling you to fucking feel it and this exercise goes through it.

[00:09:26] It's really simple and easy. It helps you to calm down when you run away from a meeting and you want to go cry. Does the same thing here. When you're sitting there, you're looking at everything so much to do. You want to do that to get you to do that. Second, because I want you to write out all your thoughts in the midst of that. Go away, calm the fuck down, and then you can actually go take a look at it and you can look at it a little bit more objectively because you're in a comma space now and don't freak out. If you still feel anxious, it's okay. Allow it to. Be that. Let it sit next to you. That's okay. You're working the muscle. By doing that, I guarantee you you have reduced 50% of the drama. You're afraid of the feeling. The feeling is bad. It's going to do bad things. Bad things will happen if you accept it. Good things will happen if you accept it because you it's like a pot of boiling water. You are putting the lid so tightly on it and it is boiling and you're just like looking at me like, nah, I ain't taken it off. Like That is too much. I don't want to deal with it. And I'm like, If you don't, that leads to fucking pop off.

[00:10:33] You need to take it off and you will do it together. We'll do it nice and slowly. And that's what we do in the work on my freebie. Just, you know, take it out nice and slow, but you let out a little steam. The steam is you know, it's it's going to come out, but it's not going to flip the fuck out. So to flip the lid off, it's just going to steam out and you're going to be left with some hot water. And and one on one is really where I teach you how to take control of that gas dial and how to turn it the fuck down. But this exercise is still going to help. This is what I teach all my clients. This is what I still do to this day. It's not fun. I don't lie about this shit. It's not fun. I guys, if there was a pill, if there was a pill that could take emotions away without any consequences, I guarantee you I would give it to you or say without consequences. Because back in the day, I used to be so anxious that I had to take Valium and that had consequences for me. I would feel so calm and chill and it can sometimes exacerbate anxiety. It's the weirdest thing. So the next day I would feel terrible. But if there was something out there that just like click your fingers and it goes away, trust me, you would hear about this.

[00:11:47] My job would be obsolete and I would be okay with that because I'd be like, Great, I could use this for myself as well. But there isn't. This is how we do the work. This is how we feel. Better feel your fucking feelings. Okay, step three. We've calmed down a little bit and it's okay if you're not fully calm. That's okay. You're letting anxiety or whatever sit next to you. Now, what I want you to do is write the tasks that you have to do without the drama. This is so fucking important. Do not write. I have to do a really urgent project for really senior people in 2 hours. And it's super important and I don't have enough time that. No, that's very triggering. I want you to write out facts, the task in the most neutral possible way that you can. And then I want you to write out the steps to complete that task in the most neutral way possible. So I have had the exact same that that example I had that I had to get an analysis done 2 hours super senior people I had this happened like about I would say a year and a half ago. So it was like six months into her coaching. My brain was like, Hey, so this is what I did. I did these exact steps, but I also wrote out the project neutrally, and instead it was, I have to do some analysis in the next 2 hours.

[00:13:24] For this ad or something like that. Then I rode out the steps to doing that. And the reason I want you to write out the steps is in this specific scenario. When I wrote that out, I realized. With my level of capability at the time because I had just started the role. I wasn't able to do this in 2 hours. It was I had to write the code from scratch because I'm an analyst. I had to go check in with three teams, I think, around the Wright like data attribute to use. And I just wrote this all out and was like, this isn't possible to get into hours. And I did have to communicate that back with my manager, and that was a lot for me to do. And this is where Tip four is really important. This is why I get you to write out the steps in a neutral format, because you'll start to work out in your head as you go through this. Is this my brain or is this my ability? Do you need to trust yourself? You need to ask yourself, where are your abilities at right now and why is that a fucking problem? Because that is the same question I asked myself when I wrote this all out and the steps I realized I don't have the ability to do this into hours.

[00:14:51] Someone who's maybe been here for a year, maybe someone who's been here at the exact same time for me, six months can do this in 2 hours. I cannot. And I was so afraid before my coaching of going to my manager and being like, this is where my abilities are at and this is why I can't do it. And I realized the reason I didn't want to do that was I had a lot of I didn't want to do like quote unquote, confrontation, because I had no idea how the manager was potentially going to react. And God forbid, the person or the manager did react in a certain way that I didn't like. Then that proves all my thoughts about myself not being good enough. True. So I'd rather cause all this pain and trauma. Try to do everything all at once, take on all this immense amount of work, then upset people and use that against myself. Use another person having their own emotional experience and berating myself with it being like, Yep, see, this is proof you aren't good enough, you're not smart enough. You're a problem. You need to start being an advocate above. I can't speak words now. You need to stop being an advocate for yourself. The amount of people that I see in corporate, including my clients, they just start a job and they expect to be like like I've just I've started for six months and I should know everything.

[00:16:19] Like I've been here for ten fucking years. That is such a like it's bad for you. I'm not, I'm not good with the words today, people, but it's actually hinders your abilities. It actually hinders your growth, your learning and development. And I will tell you why. When I started to do this and when I started to trust myself and be really vulnerable, which was so fucking hard and I wanted to die like I wanted to actually vomit. When I went back to my manager and said, I can't do this in 2 hours, this is the reason why I body was physically like having a reaction. Like I was like shaking a little bit when I faced that I was able so context I ended up like the worst case scenario. It's like never happened when when I go, when I've had to go back to like managers and stakeholders, it happened like 1% of the time. I know that's different for everyone and I will do another episode on how to deal with management stakeholders, whatever, when like they are having a reaction, etc. But in this case I had a chat. I was really open about where my abilities were at. Manager was like, Yep, that's fine. Go work with so-and-so to like escalate this and get it done. We'll like instead of 2 hours, it's let's give you a day and I just want you working on this.

[00:17:39] I learnt so much. When I was vulnerable with where I was at in my abilities, I was able to learn more, increase my abilities, and then the next time something similar happened, I was actually able to do it faster and I knew I could do it because I had done it before and I knew and I was getting better at it. Capability is like a plant and you feed it or water it. When you learn, that would call me the fuck down. So it was a bit of like a I like to call them little mind trips or something like something that just escalates your thought work. Because a lot of my brain at the time would do is well, it's kind of like we have to slow down to speed up. It's like, well, if okay, like I'm okay to then slow down and take the time to learn things if it means we will become more capable and better in the long run. And that takes it takes a lot of trust in yourself to do it takes a lot of vulnerability to be open with, like your stakeholders, your colleagues, your managers, to be like, Hey, this is what this is where I'm at. And it's hard. And my freebee actually goes through a little bit as to why this occurs.

[00:18:58] I go, I talk about like the brain, society, culture, like all the messages we've received. For me, it had to do with like my upbringing and my culture. You do not fail. You work hard. You do it all by yourself. You don't ask for help. These are the messages I learnt. If I do that, I'm doing something wrong. I'm out of bounds. And the problem is you will not realise how much shit, how much like stuff that we've learnt as a child growing up etc., how much of that we take into the corporate world? It is not like you're not a fucking robot. It's not like like you turn almost off your emotions right at work and then, you know, you're back to being quote unquote, a normal human outside of work. It doesn't work like that. You're a human being. You have emotions. You just need to learn how to manage them. And when you are vulnerable, that is actually your biggest strength. Go check out my episode actually on being vulnerable and how it fucking saved my life as well. That's really important. So this is what you need to do and you need to like start like tip four. You need to trust yourself. You need to start developing that trust with you and other people and knowing that you have your own back, you're not going to be a dick to yourself. Even if your manager is upset with you about it, you are going to instead.

[00:20:20] And it's hard at first. I know. Be like, you know what? My manager is upset that I'm not able to do it in 2 hours. And I stood up for myself. I advocated for my needs. I, you know, or I had it like an open I had the courage to speak up around where I was at. And this I'll do more episodes on like the, I guess some of the nuances that I'm talking about here. Like some of you might be like, like, yeah, how do I deal with it if my manager is upset, how do I potentially have an open conversation, etc.? So there'll be other episodes that I do have listed here. Okay. Step five is now that you're going all through this, I want you to look at the tasks, all the steps, and I want you to ask yourself, would you be okay if a friend was doing this? Like, I want you to imagine everything that you're going through in your head. If this was your best friend, if this was your child, like imagine your child. Like, you might not have a kid. That's totally fine. Child, nephew, niece, best friend. You know what I mean? They come home, they really, really sad and you ask them what's wrong? And then they tell you what's going on in your day and they list out everything that's going on.

[00:21:34] What advice would you give them? What would you say to them? Then I want you to look at that answer and say, why aren't you taking that own advice? Why are you questioning it? And why are you questioning your own inner wisdom? Why the fuck are you holding yourself to such a different standard that you would your friend? That is key. That is how you learn to trust your gut. You know that gut feeling. Like, guys I know, like you have it right? And I know it can be challenging sometimes if you haven't been able to trust your gut but deep. The only way I can explain it is deep down. I would just know when something isn't right too much on my plate or no, I can do it. It's my thoughts. I had to go through these steps to realize that and kind of cut through what I would call the fluff, like all my thoughts or the emotions or whatever. But deep down there is like this. Like it's your inner voice or inner wisdom that's like, Hey, I know what you need to do. I just need you to trust me. You need to learn to trust yourself again. Because the fact is there are going to be people out there who can, you know, do that project. They do have bigger plates. They can do more. That's okay.

[00:22:58] That doesn't mean anything about you, doesn't mean you're a shit worker, doesn't mean you're not capable. It means that we're all fucking humans with different levels of capability and different strengths and weaknesses. And you need to learn to accept that. And you need to learn to accept yourself. You do that by asking yourself like, why? You know, why is it that like another person who may be I knew that there were all the people who'd been in the same example, who'd been in the workplace for six months and they could do it. Why was I finding it a problem at that time? I found it a problem because I had all these thoughts that I'm not good enough. And that was proof to myself that I'm not good enough because that person could do it. And I couldn't. Why the fuck am I criticizing myself like this? I would not do this to a friend. I wouldn't. If a friend came to me, I wouldn't be like, Well, so-and-so can do it really into hours. Why can't you? What's fucking wrong with you? You must be really shit. Like that's not a very good friend. So why are you saying it to yourself? That's where all this mess comes from. That's why you're sitting there like, Oh, I don't know if I don't have too much on my plate or not, because it's almost like there's two voices going on, there's enough wisdom, and then there's all the negative shit and all this.

[00:24:09] Like, I'm not good enough and all that. Like, basically there's another part of you trying to protect yourself from your thinking. It's like, Oh shit, no, we should do it. We should do it. Because I don't want to admit that I'm not good enough and I can't face all the emotions around that. So we should be doing this. And then there's another part of you. It's like maybe, well, hang on a minute. No, no, we can't do this. Like, we cannot literally do this in 2 hours. And to add to this as well, because I have heard and I get this a lot with different schools of thoughts, I've seen this a little bit with a life coach school, which is where I studied and where I became a certified coach. It's that technically, yes, you could do anything in like a set time. So they talk about, for example, you know, set a time, stick to that time and do it. And I think the challenge with corporate and certain scenarios is that especially from an analyst perspective, I could do that thing in 2 hours, right? I could do that analysis that I'm this example that I'm giving. It would have been a really shit analysis because I didn't know anything like it, didn't know much. Like to get the quality that they wanted, I would have it.

[00:25:23] It took me a day. And so, yes, you can do anything technically in 2 hours. Like you can do anything you want. But it's kind of like I give a really broad example. I could someone could say to me, chop this field of trees like I'm talking like hectares. Like, I don't know. I don't know what one hectare is, but I assume it's massive. And the thick trees treble these trees down just you in an hour. It's like, well, that is physically not possible for me to do it. But maybe the other person who has like, I don't know, a team of wood chop is and like chainsaws or whatever, maybe they could do it in an hour. I don't know. This is why trusting yourself is so important. And obviously having a like an open conversation, which would be like probably another episode, having an open conversation with your manager to be like, Look, I can get you this in 2 hours, which is like this beta level analysis, really basic. I haven't had time to qualify it, check it, etc. based off what I can do now. So equivalent to the wood chopping I can get. I can get like one chop mark in every single tree in the hectare or the hectare. I don't know what fucking hectares are, but you know what I mean versus give me, I don't know, three days and I can chop all the trees out or something like that.

[00:26:41] Do you see what I mean? It's working out. What standard are you able to ride in the time that you have to do that? You need to learn to trust yourself and all these steps are going work that you do to trust yourself. It's really important I say this because when you're able to trust yourself and be your own best friend and advocate, that is when you'll start to get faster. You're able to do more. You're able to figure out really quickly and stand up for yourself what I can and can't do. I've done this one on one of myself and my clients and it is so fucking empowering. This isn't an exercise to just be like say no to everything. It is to work out what you can do with your abilities and be open and honest about it. And that's important. We need to know how to do this. We can't just be taking on shit because we have all these negative thoughts and we don't want to deal with it because that's when you end up working ridiculous hours. You burn yourself out and you end up like me two years ago crying on the bathroom floor or in between meetings when like one small thing doesn't go your way because you put the lid on your emotions for so long, and then one thing just makes a whole pot explode.

[00:27:56] And then you have this massive emotional burst because all the emotions and your limbic system and stress response is like, fuck it to be. Which is why I became a coach to help you. So go do the steps. To quickly summarize. Write out your thoughts about the task. And why challenge our thoughts. Get to the root thoughts. Calm the fuck down. Go to my freebie. The link will be in the show notes or you can check me out on Instagram and it's all there. I will email you the workbook straight away and you can unsubscribe at any time as well. I don't send spam just freebies like this which help you and it's great. Write it out on paper. Write out the tasks without the drama. Just neutral facts start to learn to trust yourself. Ask where your abilities are at right now and why it's a problem. And then step five What advice would you give to a friend if this was happening to them? Why aren't you doing it for yourself? All this shit gives you insight, gives you an understanding as to why you're thinking this way and how you're showing up in the world. And if you want more help doing this and taking this at a deeper level, if you are fucking ready to feel passionate about your job, if you are just absolutely sick, emotional, fucking rollercoaster, if you are sick of just feeling so anxious on your weekends and missing precious time with your children, your friends, your family, your partner, and you just have this general disdain for your job and life.

[00:29:39] If you're ready to change that and start feeling passionate again and be able to just go in feeling confident, you know, not have to change your job. And the same thing happening where it's like, Oh my God, I hate this. Like, why is it happening? Oh my God, it's because you're bringing the same thoughts and your brain with you. If you want these skills for life, come book in a one on one discovery. Call with me. Let's see for a good fit How I can help you. How I can bring that passion back into your job so you can just, like, start to enjoy life again. Do you know how much more fucking free time I have now? Do you? How much more? I enjoy my life like I'm so much more present in my job I'm so much more present on the weekends with my family. I have such a balance like it's a full picture. Everything just feels good. Do I have bad days? Sure fucking do. But I know how to handle it. And you deserve that. You deserve that as well. So go reach out if you're ready. And in the meantime, take care. Take a look at my freebie. See you later.