Why You Sometimes Feel Like You’re not Doing Enough

Happy new year guys!! How is your year going? For those just joining, feel free to go the home page to read more, share the posts and your thoughts with me as well. Follow me on you social media to follow things I share too. I must let you guys know that I have a new phone now!! So expect to read/hear from me more often 🙂

Enough of the rant about me, let’s delve into today’s topic… I’d start with a story

Very recently, I spoke to someone over the phone via Whatsapp given the response she gave me after asking her how she was doing. She seemed to blame her not doing well on the economy.
Let me expatiate. She is in her final year doing her project, her supervisor responding well and has been ever present. My thoughts were you are allowing your situation define your life! I had to probe her further
to know what was really wrong. Then she said some of her friends
already have their own businesses and she’s not happy because
she knows she’s meant to also have hers. She felt pressured and then thoughts of inadequacies flooded her mind.
She felt she wasn’t fine based on what was happening around her at the moment. I started smiling as she asked me if I could relate. Lol

Maybe you’re feeling like she was at this time. Yours might be at a much intense level if you’ve not learnt to manage such thoughts. No, I’m not even talking about those who are lazy but those who are doing a lot (and the right things if I might add) but feel like their enough is not enough. Those who cannot differentiate dissatisfaction from comparison. Those whose work is never enough for them till they have compared it with others. Those who just need to understand the seasons of their lives while putting things in perspective. These are the categories of people I’m referring to.

Does this sound like you? Are you feeling really burned out today or this season?

I can really imagine how you might be feeling!
I’ve been there! In fact, this is me on some days. Those thoughts come once a while! I remember the period I didn’t have a job last year and I hear or go online to see folks who are doing amazing things at their work place. I’d think, “Lord, I can do that too. I should be doing that(working) too”. Don’t get me wrong, It’s not that I wasn’t applying or I was idle. If I wasn’t and I was just expecting a job to land on me, then that’s another subject entirely.

I’ve seen well meaning individuals who have things going well for them, they feed well and live comfortably but still feel they need to do more just because they subconsciously compare their current season with someone else’s.

Or maybe you have so much to do today and no matter what you have been able to accomplish you still never feel you have done enough. You have promised yourself to complete that write up, set goals for the week. Unfortunately, the day you wanted to begin, you probably had an accident.

It might not even be as serious as that for you. it could be that your laptop screen breaks or your day got interrupted by a situation beyond your control and it begins to affect how you view yourself. Probably you got an offer to study the course of your dreams but you got sick just when you’re to resume. You start questioning your beliefs and your ability to be productive. You start asking, “if God
was with me why should i face these?” You beat
yourself up with self pity
and negative thoughts hoping the situations would change right? Have you been there before too?

You have a final year/Masters project you’re working on and even
if you’ve got a supportive and enlightened supervisor, you sometimes feel you should be doing more. Just because! No wonder you’re constantly burned out from not
focusing on what is in store for you to do NOW!

I have been in situations like this in the past. I remember during my final year project, my supervisor was
busy and although i was working on it, i wasn’t excited but i knew i had to finish work on it.

Over the years, these are the things I have learnt to do that have helped me and might help you too;

I had to learn that it wasn’t so much about how I was feeling but the success that was set before me. Like someone said if you ate only when you felt like you’d either be too thin or too fat. Go beyond how you feel to really focus on the end goal if you’re working towards one.

You’re focusing on the wrong things. I learnt the power of focus and attention, especially from someone who has recovered from an addiction. Take it from me, when it finally sunk in, my life changed! Your focus/attention fuels your desires. I guess it applies everywhere else. The next time you have thoughts or feelings of not doing enough despite all you do, remember to ask yourself if you’ve got focus right.

You’re asking the wrong questions. The reason many of us get burned out is because we aren’t sincere with ourselves. I like this point a lot because it’s something I’ve learnt to do to engage myself whenever I(or someone else) catches me on a wrong behaviour. It’s one thing to ask the right questions, it’s another to do so till you’ve found the answer you seek(to find the root cause). You want to ask, “what is true?” “What brought about this feeling?” “Am I doing what I should NOW?”

Another reason could be that you’re probably comparing your planting season with another person’s harvest.

You’ve probably also refused to differentiate your situation from your identity. You’re not what has happened to you and hence what has happened to you shouldn’t define you when you know you’re putting in your best.

I’d leave you with this idea by Greg McKeown in his first newsletter this year,

“Hardworking may not be well-named. It can mislead us to think progress only comes from massive action. What most of us need is to do small and simple things over a long period of time. It’s plain consistency rather than difficulty per se that produces great results. “

Greg McKeown

Share your thoughts with me. I’d like to hear from you.