The First Week

Last week was my first week of self employment.  I had a long list of things that I wanted to get done and an entire week free to do them.  Well, except for those couple of meetings that I wanted to go to.  Oh, and those tele-classes I signed up for and the calls and meetings that I do for my iPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching) classes. Do you see where this is going?

I had all these good intentions and thought I had sooo much time to get all these things done and I didn’t schedule any time for down time.  Do you know what happens when I don’t schedule time for me?  I take it in 15 minutes here and a half hour there of unstructured, unsatisfied time.

So, how did I feel when it was Friday morning and realized that I didn’t accomplish absolutely everything that I wanted to during the week?  Well, I was a little disappointed with myself and decided I could do it on Saturday morning!  Great idea right?!  Well, it might have been if I had set my alarm clock to get up, but I didn’t.  So, Saturday morning I decided that it was Okay that I didn’t get everything done that I thought I could and realized I probably needed to be a bit more reasonable with my schedule.

In the past when a situation like this occurred I would be upset and beat myself up about it.  This time I sat down, looked at my schedule for this week and tried to more reasonable about what I can accomplish.  I left plenty of time to get each task done and plan to reward myself with shopping trip for new shoes.

Next time you’re beating yourself up for something, take that energy to look at why you didn’t accomplish what you wanted to and how you can adjust for next time.