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I am an exceedingly anxious person.
I always have been.
But it’s only been within the last decade that I’ve had access to the tools and verbiage that helped me understand why I’m the way I am.
I now understand I am a Normal Zebra instead of a Failed Horse.
It’s taken me over 50 trips around the sun to say this with confidence, but I am who I am, and I’m cool with that.
I’ve also realized that I need to adjust my life to honor my craving for peace and calm, and that’s okay. This has become more important as I age, too. My desire to “hustle, grind, and conquer” is waning in favor of gentle abundance and stillness.
In the early days of my writing/freelance/virtual assistant career, I would bounce out of bed filled with excitement for the day. Even though I was stoked by the work I was doing and the quality of clients I was landing, the weight of anxiety that I was carrying was getting pretty dang heavy.
My daily goal was always to “hopefully” chisel away at many things on my ever-growing to-do list and keep my head above the hypothetical waterline of workload. As I struggled to keep up, my mental and physical health began to suffer because I was working too many hours and trying to please too many people.
Another thing that suffered was my creativity. I could never find the time and brain space to focus on my projects. Much of that was due to FEAR. I just couldn’t fathom not focusing on the billable hour for the sake of personal projects. The dread of imagined failure and inability to pay my bills ruled my business day and drove me to work harder than I needed to.
I’ve discovered lately that pressure, sacrifice, and stress are not my jam anymore.
Don’t get me wrong. I have zero regrets about how I built my writing business and how many fires I had to fight to get where I am today. I am proud of what I’ve achieved and would change very little about these last 12+ years.
I am slowly learning to embrace the fact that what I am doing now in my business is where I want to be. It’s a place of gentle abundance where I work on my projects and focus on quality over quantity when it comes to clients.
I’ve learned that minimalism isn’t just about your closet but your calendar, too.
The Fear Monster still rears its ugly head regularly and plays the “WHAT IF IT ALL GOES AWAY??!!” broken record on my brain. But I’m getting better at telling that monster to hush up and trust that all will be well. As the title of this post indicates, the shorter my To-Do List is these days, the happier I am. I may be doing less, but what I am working on requires laser focus and offers the potential of big rewards.
Readjusting my brain away from a “hustle and grind” mindset to a more gentle and purposeful pace has been a trip. Old habits die hard, but my mind and body remind me in not-so-subtle ways when I go off the rails and start overdoing it again.
The best reward from this new business model has nothing to do with money. It’s the gift of being happier, more content, and more fulfilled.
If life goes sideways and I find myself needing to return to the “hustle and grind,” you better believe I’ll do it. I’ve stocked shelves at Menards and gritted my teeth through the most miserable of writing projects to get where I am. If I had to, I’d do it all over again if it meant keeping my boat afloat.
But for now, I am wrapping myself in my new cocoon of “enough” and spending several hours every day exploring the creative side of me that has been dormant for too long.
And daily (sometimes hourly), I remind myself to trust the process and that all will be well.
