Moment: The Real Reason You Can’t Sit Still

We unpack the psychological connection between our to-do lists and our sense of self-worth. This powerful insight reveals how our childhood conditioning has created a neurological pathway where we equate achievement with love, approval, and ultimately survival.

• The never-ending to-do list has become a substitute for our need for approval
• Our brain evolved to equate attention with love and survival from our earliest days
• As children, we learned that achievement was a reliable way to gain parental attention
• Ticking items off our lists gives us a dopamine hit, making us "dopamine junkies"
• We often tie our emotional state (feeling calm, worthy) to completing external tasks
• The key is detaching our sense of self-worth from productivity and achievement
• You are enough just as you are, regardless of what remains on your to-do list

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Balance and Beyond

Transcript

Jo: 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments. Your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts all in 10 minutes or less, whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration, this is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in. Ah, the to-do list, that never-ending list. Or maybe you've got lists of lists where it never, ever seems to end.

Jo: 0:33

I don't know what's on yours, but as a woman, this is something that plagues us so much. Might be crazy sock day coming up, I've got a netball gala day. There's this thing for a boss. There's a million and one things that you've got, and everybody always tells me that this is the one thing that they cannot put down. It's on their minds all the time and as they're doing one thing, they're now thinking about what's the next thing on my list and what's the next thing? And when I do this, I'm going to do this and I'm going to fit this in, and life becomes this crazy frantic mess of trying to tick things off and you tell yourself little stories like when I've got through the list, then I will sit down. When I've got through this little bit, then it will be okay, I'll play with the kids after I've done all these things and I certainly know when my kids were younger, before I did a lot of this work on myself, I would find myself saying, no, no, no, not just yet. Let me go and put away the washing and then I'll empty the dishwasher and then I'll prep this and then I'll do that, and then we'll sit down and the kids would come up to me and say, mom, that was a half an hour ago. So this to-do list, while it feels all consuming and it feels necessary, I get, we have to function in life and there is a lot to do. But there are a couple of things you really need to understand about what's really going on here with the to-do list. And it's actually nothing about the list and it's everything about you. What the to-do list is really a substitute for is your need for approval as an ambitious, high-achieving woman.

Jo: 2:09

What has happened is, throughout your childhood, it has been conditioned in you that doing and achieving whether it's marks or running or races or anything like that that is what's going to get you the attention of your parents and, believe it or not, we are wired for attention. Now, this may not come as a surprise when you have a child who's tugging at you going mum, mum, mum, mum. Of course we're wired for attention, but it's actually primal and much deeper than that. The reason that we are wired for attention is that as a child, we equate attention with love. And if we go right back to our caveman days, knowing that 95%, actually 99% of our brain was actually evolved on the savannah so this thing walking around inside our noggin every single day was built for caveman times. It was not built for all this technology. It was not built for this speed and sophistication.

Jo: 3:07

Our brain, as it used to function as was necessary in a very, very simple life, meant that when we were born as a child, we're born with these beautiful big eyes and these cute little limbs and everything like that, but as a human we're pretty useless. Cute little limbs and everything like that, but as a human we're pretty useless. Now, if you weren't loved, don't you think back to, if you've had children yourself, those first couple of months? The kids wee, they poo, they cry, they make you feel like a human cow and if there was no love there, there's a pretty good chance that you would stick them out on the rock for the saber-toothed tiger to come and eat and be like I don't need this, I'm getting nothing back in return, I'm not getting any feedback. All I'm getting is crying and pooping, and, yeah, I get the other little kind of noise now and then, but that's about it. So we are wired to attach and as children, as newborns, we will do whatever it takes to get that love.

Jo: 4:07

And as we start to get older, you know so that early primary school age five, six, seven what starts to happen is that we start to realize okay, what gets my parents' attention? Maybe it's achieving, maybe it's doing things, and for many of you, if you're listening to this podcast, that is the case for you. That was certainly my upbringing, bear in mind. A lot of the time. This wasn't necessarily explicit. For many people it is, but I know that in my family, what was often considered an insult was to be called lazy, and I was never really one to be encouraged to sit around or to just chill out and just hang out. It was always somebody who was up and doing things. And so, as this happens, this pattern starts to form oh, okay, well, if I am doing things, then I am safe because I'm getting my parents' attention, and then I am loved. And if I'm loved, then I'm not going to die. It sounds incredibly dramatic.

Jo: 5:06

However, that is where our caveman brain goes, which means that we literally tie the to-do list, ticking things off the list, and must do this, and must do this without absolute survival, which is nuts, I know. I know, hear me out, but it's also why that compulsion in you to put things on that list is so strong. Bear in mind, every time you tick something off that list, every time you say yes, I did that, you actually also give yourself a dopamine hit, which is a hormone in your brain which is like crack for the brain and the brain goes oh yes, tick that off. Awesome, well done. And that is how we measure achievement. Now, you know you're a bit of a dopamine junkie if you've ever added something to your list after you've completed it, simply for the satisfaction of being able to tick it off. Because in that adding it to the list and ticking Now, what happens is we feel like, if I can just get to the bottom of the list, if I can just be okay with this, if I can get everything done, I need to be more efficient, I need to be better organized.

Jo: 6:22

That's the thing. That's the thing, and when I'm better organized, then I will sit down, or then I will rest, or then I will do something for me. But you and I both know that that list never, ever ends, and if you have children, it just gets exponentially longer, usually because every time you do something and finish something on the list, that then generates another task to go on the list. And so this is all about. We've got to stop this train of feeling like I have to wait until the list is done or I have to wait until I'm through things in order for me to get what I need. Now, what happens in life is we do everything for an emotion. We are creatures who are driven by our feelings, despite the fact that we do our best to numb them when we are feeling like this. So if we do everything for an emotion, what that means is we usually spend a lot of time trying to make the house feel organized and clean so that we can feel calm, because we have tied our environment and our circumstances to how we feel.

Jo: 7:32

I personally very much put my hands up, love a good, clean kitchen bench, and that's something that I've come to terms with. I've done a lot of work on, but I've also learned to let go of a lot of other things. I am certainly not a perfectionist in my house, even though my mom absolutely love her to bits but she is very perfectionistic or very, let's say, very tidy and neat-nink. I used to call her is very perfectionistic or very, let's say, very tidy and neat-nink, I used to call her. And growing up my house very much looked like a display home Beautiful cushions and glass tables and everything was white. But and so that is where a lot of my, some of my challenges have come from in terms of understanding what it's like to run a home and doing things my way.

Jo: 8:10

So if we do everything in life for a feeling, what could happen if you actually give yourself permission to do the one thing you want now without having to go through this I'm doing, I'm doing, I've got to do, and when that's done and that's done, then I'll sit down, then I'll do this or then I feel calm. This is how we detach from the to-do list, and we're not just detaching our feelings from the to-do list, we're actually detaching our sense of self-worth. We take your sense of self-worth and mean that you are enough just as you are. You are safe. If you sit down on the couch surrounded by laundry, it's okay, you are enough, and you can learn.

Jo: 8:58

If you can give yourself a dopamine hit and celebrate that, that is even better. It's how we hack your brain. So this is what's really really important to understand is you need to start to do this work on yourself so that your sense of self and your sense of self-worth and all this drive for achievement and all your dopamine doesn't just come from the to-do list. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.