After a 17 day trip, easing back into my routine opened a floodgate of emotions. Dread and anxiety lingered as I lay in bed the night before, thinking about all the tasks that I needed to get done, while also feeling at ease returning back to my comfy, cushioned mattress.
Our thoughts and emotions are such a gift but tend to feel otherwise when you’ve become so disconnected from yourself and immersed in your professional and personal goals.
Especially with stories of our immigrant parents, posts from social media influencers, and harsh comments from the corporate world influencing our beliefs around success and hard work. Creating a society with a subconscious drive to do more with the aim of feeling productive, or filling up one’s calendar for an appropriate social life, or to consume the latest gadget in the attempts to feel relevant.
We are all guilty for behaving as an overachiever for the reasons mentioned above in addition to so many more. So now what?
There is always time to turn our inner narratives around to a story that actually makes more sense to who we are, what we want, and what’s important to us.
If you’re aware that you’re starting to feel burnt out due to an overachieving culture, then you’re at the right place.
How to be a mindful overachiever
Being driven and having a vision for a life that fulfills you is not a crime. This energy can be used effectively through somatic experiencing. An experience that connects body and mind. Allowing you to notice when the stress and anxiety from your rigid expectations are consuming you and causing you to overwork. This internal reflective practice starts by noticing the tense parts in your body.
I invite you to try somatic experiencing in the morning to understand the type of mood you wake up in and nurture the limiting beliefs which immerge.
This can look like setting your alarm 5 minutes earlier to acknowledge the tension in your body and assess which emotion is trying to express itself through the tension identified.
When you’ve noticed and found an area to observe, begin to focus on breathing into this space. Allowing each inhale and exhale to make space for the emotion and/or belief to soften.
Lastly, acknowledge that the role of your emotions and/or beliefs is to protect you and feed into the narrative you’ve discovered which is ultimately not a reflection of your authentic self.
This practice also gives you an opportunity to challenge your thoughts so you can consciously decide the emotional state and aligned beliefs you would like to carry instead. You can enter your workday and achieve your goals in a way that gets to feel like a breeze.
If you’d like to connect further about mindset shifts and somatic experiencing visit my website and get in contact: https://thesecureself.podia.com/
Main photo by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash
