Ep 51: The Silent Struggle:
Are You Overcommitted in Your Creative Journey?
SUMMARY
If we're honest, we love to say yes to things, right? It feels good. It gives us a sense that we're needed and wanted. But meanwhile, inside, we're slowly building to that inevitable panic attack or mental breakdown. Today we're diving into the silent struggle that's plaguing creative professionals everywhere: overcommitment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ A healthy version of you creates better work than an unhealthy version of you - without mental margin, you'll never reach your creative potential.
⚡️ Every yes is automatically a no to something else - evaluate what you're saying no to just as carefully as what you're saying yes to.
⚡️ Graceful honesty about capacity serves everyone better - having honest conversations about your workload benefits you, your team, and your organization.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "A healthy version of me serves others better than an unhealthy version of me."
💬 "When you say yes to something, you're always saying no to something else."
💬 "If you say yes to everything, you're doing a disservice to all of the things and all of the people because you can't give them your best."
EPISODE RESOURCES
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TRANSCRIPT
Listen, if we're honest, we love to say yes to things, right? It feels good. It gives us a sense that we're needed and wanted. And we say yes, we can quiet down the lies in our minds that say we're not good enough because we said yes to something. Truthfully, it's easier to say yes. Saying yes makes other people happy. Saying no makes them disappointed. So we say yes, of course, not a problem.
Meanwhile inside, we're slowly building to that inevitable panic attack or mental breakdown. I've discussed many times here before about the importance of margin, but the place that is the most vulnerable is in between our ears. Today we're going to talk about the silent struggle. Are you over committed in your creative journey? Let's get into it.
Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm here and everything that I release is for creatives to know themselves, their process and their teams better so that they can create greater things together. If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, I want to say thank you so much for listening and I would really super love and appreciate if you were able to leave a five star review and rating for this podcast. It helps the algorithm get this content out further to people who are looking for similar content as you.
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Today is all about the silent struggle. Now we've talked about mental health on here many, many times, but I want to talk about this struggle of over committing ourselves. So full disclosure, I am a recovering people pleaser.
I am. I loved it. I was raised in a home that kind of taught if you can just please people, then everything will be hunky dory. Well, we all know that that doesn't last very long at the hunky doryness, right? Eventually it fades. And you're left wondering, well, I thought, what else do I need to do to make people happy? Because that's what I'm supposed to do, right? So as long as I please other people, as long as other people are happy. But listen, what we learned over the years and what studies and research and mental health discussions and things like that have taught us is that a healthy version of me serves others better than an unhealthy version of me.
So if I really do want to please people, which deep down I think we all do, I think we all would say I mean I would love to make another person happy. It feels really good right? It feels really good to give a gift, it feels really good to do a good deed, it feels really good to serve other people and to cheer them up when they're down. But you can't do that as effectively as you could if you're unhealthy and unhealthy and people pleasing will lead to unhealthiness.
You also, I want to tell you this, healthy you creates a greater work than an unhealthy you. A greater you creates a greater work than an unhealthy you. And so we have to learn to recognize what we're saying yes to and what we're saying no to. So without mental margin, you're never going to be able to create your best work.
When I was young in my career, right, I got into full time ministry when I was 22 years old and I thought I could do it all. I managed three departments of a small growing church and I managed this for a couple few years right but eventually I realized that if I wanted to create greater things then I'd have to start letting go and saying no to some things. There's only but so far I can go saying yes to everything. So I empowered other leaders around me, I delegated, I let go of perfection, big one there, and with it my influence and my work grew to new heights that I had never seen before.
You need to understand that when you say yes to something, you're always saying no to something else. That's not a brand new concept. That's not some big revelation. It is simply a reminder for you today that by you saying yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. And what you're saying no to needs to be evaluated just as much as what you're saying yes to.
Now if you say yes to everything, you're doing a disservice to all of the things and all of the people that are associated with the things that you said yes to. Now I know you think you might be serving them by saying yes, but you're actually doing them a disservice because you can't give them your best. You can only give them what fractional percentage of yourself is left to give, which is not much because you said yes to everything. Right.
So if you can't give your best, which is what you desire to do when you're stretched too thin, right? You may be in a position where you can't make this decision on your own though. You may be in a position where it's like, well, I don't have control over what I get to say yes to in all areas of my life. I would be willing to bet there are definitely a portion of your life where you get to say yes to maybe a situation though, professionally at work where you're not able to and things are handed down to you and you're just do as you're told. Right. But listen, that's totally understandable.
But you can gracefully be honest with your boss and let them know that if they want greater work from you, you're going to have to let go of some things. You're going to have to let some ball drops. And I can promise you that your boss will appreciate that conversation far more than they will if you just say yes to everything and then drop the ball constantly. They want honesty just like you do at the end of the day.
So if you're going to shuffle some things around in the name of greater work, you're going to need to be prepared to deliver. So if you go to your boss and you say, listen, if I could just take an X, Y, and Z off my plate, then I could give you a B and C at a hundred percent, be prepared to deliver. Then if they're willing to work with you and give you that opportunity, you need to take it and you need to capitalize on it because those things are a moment for you to prove what you can do with that mental capacity. And I can promise you that if you, if you do what you said you're going to do, you will be happier for it. Your boss, your company, your organization will be happier for it. You'll have way more mental energy.
Now, if you're, so if you're going to shuffle things around, be prepared to deliver. The good news is that you will be able to deliver, like I said, due to all the mental margin that you just created. So this is not an excuse, right? You're gonna go to your boss and say, I just have too much on my plate. I don't know which way is up and down. And then they move some stuff off your plate and they give you some priority of some things. And they say, these things are priority. You can let these things fall a little bit. And then you just go back and you just kind of twiddle your thumbs at your desk because now you don't have the pressure of all the things. You only have the pressure of some of the things that will not pay off.
That doesn't serve yourself in the long run and doesn't serve your organization immediately. So if you're going to make some margin, if you're going to work with your boss, your leader, your team or whatever to create some margin and to create some things that you can say no to, you're going to have to be prepared to deliver those things, but you can because of the margin that you just created in your mind. It's a different mindset that we need to step into.
Ultimately, I know mindset is a buzzword right now, but the mindset here is that knowing when to say no and knowing that saying no is not a bad thing. It's rather a great thing for you and everyone around you. I think we so commonly associate the word no with a negative result, right? Which is so funny to me, right? Because I hear all the time in comedy or show that I'm watching or somebody like that. And they get test results back for what could be, you know, a really traumatizing disease or illness that they have been diagnosed with. Right. And they get the test result backs and the doctor comes in the room and he says, it's negative. And they're just like, negative is bad. Right. In that case, negative is good. You don't want that thing.
So it's the same mindset here. Think of the things that you get to say no to as the things that you don't need in your life right now. Maybe it's not for today. Maybe it's for tomorrow. Maybe it was a good opportunity for you three years ago but not so much now. Saying no can be just as much of a good thing as saying yes. It's all about your mindset moving forward.
So here's what we're going to do moving forward. You're going to be gracefully honest with yourself first and then gracefully honest with others. Notice I say gracefully honest because you're gonna have to have some grace, gonna have to have some patience, you're gonna have to have some tact when you say this. You can't just walk into your boss's office and say, I'm not doing all this anymore or walk into your home at dinner time and be like, I'm not fixing dinner tonight. That's not gonna go over well. You need to gracefully ask for some opportunities to say no to some things if it's out of your control. If it's in your control, then you need to with wisdom and grace and tact. Understand, be honest with yourself. This may not be for today. This may be a future me thing or this may have been something that yeah, probably would have been great a while back, but not for me right now. So be gracefully honest with yourself and with others.
If you need help kind of working through some of this stuff and what to say yes to and what to say no to, I would love to hop on a call with you. You can go to DustinPead.com, click on the let's chat button, get on my calendar and let's talk about your unique situation and how I can help you say yes to the right things and no to the right things so that you can gain the mental margin you need to create your best work ever.
Thank you all so much for joining me this week on Creativity Made Easy. We'll talk to you next week.