In today's episode, I'm opening up about a personal lesson that I've been struggling to learn for quite some time. If you're like me, and you think that you should be further along than you are right now, this episode is for you.
You'll hear:
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
In today's episode, I'm opening up about a personal lesson that I've been struggling to learn for quite some time. If you're like me, and you think that you should be further along than you are right now, this episode is for you.
You'll hear:
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
This is your Speech Path mindful time management for the busy SLP. My name is Teresa Harp and, as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnout and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in. Hey SLPs, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:This is episode 35, where I'm going to talk a little bit about something that is I guess this is more of a vulnerable type of an episode. It's something that I've been thinking about for a while and it's been showing up a lot and I finally said enough, I'm taking it to the podcast, I'm just going to record it and somebody out there needs to hear this. So maybe you are that somebody and if so, I really hope that this episode is meaningful to you. So I'll start out. I want to start out with just a story from family related story that happened a couple of weeks ago with my daughter, and I promise this will make sense.
Speaker 1:My daughter, mackenzie, is, she's eight and she plays piano. This was her idea. She loves to. She wanted to learn how to play piano. She worked hard to earn her piano lessons and she really enjoys the music and playing piano itself. But one of the things that she doesn't really love is practicing. And one day I was listening to her while she was supposed to be practicing after school and I was just kind of sitting on the steps listening. She knew I was there and I was watching as she was basically rushing to get each song done. I think she had to do like four, maybe four or five songs. They're short, they're relatively short, and she had to do maybe I don't know maybe four songs twice, two times each. And I was watching her and I was listening and she was just clearly trying to get through it as quickly as possible because she wanted to move on to screen time. In particular, she knew that once she was done with piano she could go watch a show and the songs that she was practicing were new songs, so they were really unfamiliar to her and as she was rushing through them she kept making mistakes. She would read the music wrong, she would slip on the keys so that she would hit a wrong note, you know, so on and so forth, right, and I could see how frustrated she was getting as she kept making these sort of errors, if you will. And so I asked her if I could make an observation. She loves that question, by the way.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you can sense my sarcasm, but I asked her if I could make an observation, which she begrudgingly allowed me to do, and I said something along the lines of I noticed that when you slowed down and took your time playing the songs, you were able to hit the right notes and you got further into the song than earlier when you were rushing. And as soon as I heard myself say that, it was like a light bulb went off for me, because this is exactly the thing that I have been struggling with so much lately in my own personal life and my own business, in you know, all sorts of different ways, and that is this sort of tendency or urgency to speed up and try and do things faster, faster, faster, so that I can hit a goal sooner or, you know, achieve whatever. I think it is that I should be achieving faster, because in my mind it's just not happening quickly enough and this isn't like. So, this moment with the piano, that was not the first moment that I realized it. It was just another moment of me realizing how God, the universe, whatever you believe, keeps presenting me this lesson, like this lesson just keeps showing up in so many different Contacts, in so many different shapes and forms that it was funny to sort of hear myself say it out loud to her, without even realizing, until I said it out loud, without even realizing how it actually related to me as well. Right, and so I want to share this with you, because I bet that there is somebody who's listening who can 100% relate to this Challenge that I am calling it a challenge that I have been experiencing. So, for me, what? The way that this has been showing up is a number of different ways, but I'll give you a couple of concrete examples so that this hopefully makes a little bit more sense. But it's mainly happening. It's mainly been showing up in and around my business and in around coaching. So, for example, the podcast podcast that you're listening to right now.
Speaker 1:Right, I have this goal of hitting a certain number of downloads and having a certain number of subscribers, right, really wanting to see more growth, and, in my mind I Like okay, it's February, it's almost a year since the podcast was relaunched under the new name, which actually isn't quite true. I think it was relaunched in, I don't know, maybe it was April of last year. I'd have to go back, but I Mean we're on episode what, 35 and there's 52 weeks in a year. So you do the math right. I'm 32 weeks in out of 52 weeks in a year and in my mind it's not fast enough. It's not happening fast enough. It's not happening quickly enough for me. I'm not hitting the numbers of downloads that I expected to see by this time. I'm not, you know, gaining the traction that I had hoped to gain. This is, in my mind, by the way, not necessarily fact, but not hitting the traction that I had hoped to gain with the podcast.
Speaker 1:Similarly, with my caseload in terms of coaching, coaching caseloads, you know when I mapped out, when I was starting the coaching business, and sort of planning out what I thought would happen when or what my goals were for timelines, wanting to have a certain number of Clients on my weekly caseload by this point in time, wanting to have a certain amount of income by this time. So In my mind, I should buy. You know, such and such date Should have matched what I was making when I was running my private practice and when I was treating families of kids with hearing loss, right Workload to so you know, for example, just the sort of tasks and goals that I have for my day to day, my day-to-day schedule where I'm showing up in my business, working on my business. You know I have goals in that regard and, like, all of these things in my mind should be further along than they are right now. Right, that's the. That really is the underlying thought.
Speaker 1:The underlying Thought is, basically, I should be further along. I should be further along by now, and this is something that I've gotten coached on. This is something that I've talked about with friends or family of my husband, with In therapy, with my therapist, who I love and talk to every week, like this is something that just shows up. I'm not sure if I'm talking about that. I've been it's been an ongoing dialogue for a little while because it's something that I have to Work through. It's something that I am working through.
Speaker 1:It's something that my brain just sort of I don't know creates the story in my head of where I should be and that things aren't happening fast enough. Right, I set a goal, I hit the goal. But if I don't hit the goal by the you know, quote unquote deadline that I had Established for that goal, my brain makes that a problem, right, and I am able to recognize the, the danger in that, the cost of that. I definitely recognize the problems with that line of thinking and I am aware of the line of thinking so that I can work through it and change it, reframe it, so on and so forth. But it's still showing up, right, it's still showing up in different ways. And so, and even ironically this is funny, too, ironically even in the journey of self-development, right? So coaching is all about personal development, personal growth, self-development.
Speaker 1:And so, even as I've been working on myself, internally, the thought there is like I should be further along by now. How am I still? Why am I still thinking this way? How have I not gotten over this by now? How have I not worked through this by now? Why is this still showing up? Right, I should be able to do this by now. I should be able to better manage my stress by now. I should be able to prioritize what's most important to me by now, like all of these things that really aren't even truly the reality, like they're absolutely as progress in all of those areas, even though my brain doesn't always wanna see it. But even those areas I still, I still get on myself about and I still give myself a hard time because it's not happening fast enough, right?
Speaker 1:So the way that this might apply to you this is what I want you to think about as you're listening to this is where, if anywhere, is this showing up in your life, and what is the cost, right? So for those of you who are listening, maybe it's your private practice. Maybe you have a private practice that you started and in your mind, you should be further along. I should have more clients by now. I should have hired my first contractor or employee by now. I should have opened up a second location by now, right?
Speaker 1:Whatever that looks like for you, think about that, reflect on that and identify where might this be showing up. Where might this sneaky little thought of I should be further along be showing up in you, in your business, in your career, in your personal life, right? Maybe it's starting a private practice. Maybe you have been thinking about starting a private practice and you thought that by now, by this year, or by this month or by this age, you would have started it. So I should be further along than I am right now. Right, maybe it's in your clinical expertise or your clinical experience as an SLP. So maybe it's about, oh, at this age or at this year in my professional career, I thought I would have been certified in XYZ. I thought I would have given 10 different presentations, whatever that looks like for you, right? Maybe it's in your own system of planning, like how you spend your time in work or at work and in your home life. Like, maybe it's I need to get more done. I should have gotten more done by now. I should be further along. I should have accomplished more at work, I should have accomplished more at home.
Speaker 1:And you are rushing, rushing, rushing, or you're putting stress on yourself to speed things up because you're not as far along as you think you should be right? The problem with this is that, more often than not, the harder that we push, the faster that we go. Oftentimes, the longer it takes to get to the place we're trying to arrive, we take a wrong turn or we hit a dead end, or we are stressed and anxious in the journey or we're exhausted in the process of trying to hit a goal or trying to be where we think we should be by now. Right, those are the costs. That's what happens is when you try to speed up you often it often costs you the progress that you've made or that you could be making, and it sometimes can bring that journey bring that, you know, I guess focus to a screeching halt. In our attempt to get somewhere faster, it winds up taking longer.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I'll give you some super silly examples of how this shows up sometimes for me. I gave you some of the sort of like big, vulnerable shares in how this shows up. But the silly, silly ways that this shows up. Here's an example, wondering if anyone can relate. As you hear, this is when I go to the grocery store and I come home and I have eight bags of groceries in the car and now, because I'm in New Jersey, they're all reusable grocery bags by the way, they're not plastic bags, because those have been banned here. And that really has absolutely nothing to do with the story, just the fact that I still I don't know how many years it's been since this ban went into effect and I still don't remember to bring my bags in when I go, like nine times out of 10. So, anyway, I've got eight bags of reusable eight reusable bags of groceries in the trunk and when I pull into the driveway and get out of the car, my brain says you can get them all in one trip, teresa. Just grab them all and that will get you in the door faster, and then you can get them put away faster and you're back to your time. Air quotes, right Like the time.
Speaker 1:Whatever it is that I had set out to do during that like time of the day, except so often, what happens in that moment of me trying to grab eight reusable grocery bags is either number one I'm struggling to get all of them picked up at the same time, so I'm like fighting with the handles of these bags and or, once I finally get a grip on all of them and take them, start to take them in. Inevitably one bag breaks or it spills, something topples out and I'm now spending time picking up stuff that fell on the ground, or I start walking a few steps and I realize, oh my gosh, these are way heavier than I can handle, and so I have to put them down and then re pick up a few of them to get them in. Or I make it to the door with all eight bags, but I can't get the door open to get in the house because I don't have a free hand, so I'm stuck at the door. I have to then put them down to open up the door. You get the idea right.
Speaker 1:This is like the human brain. This is what my brain does in order to try and get somewhere faster. Okay, it's just, it's a really silly example and it's low key. It's not a major issue for me, it's not a major problem, right? But hopefully it illustrates the point that I'm trying to make that sometimes, in order to get to where we're going as fast as we want to get there, we have to slow down, we have to pause, we have to take breaks, right?
Speaker 1:This comes up a lot with hustle culture too, where people think, if they're starting a private practice or they're starting a business or they're working towards some sort of a goal, that they need to hustle, hustle, hustle, get as much done, put in as many hours as possible, as many reps as possible, to get it done, to hit the goal, because the faster I do this, the faster I'll get to where I want to be. And what happens? You burn out, you get completely overwhelmed, exhausted, and not only that, but you're not enjoying the journey, you're not enjoying the process of getting to where you want to go. You're missing learning opportunities because you're bulldozing right over them, you're not aware of what they are, you're not pausing to recognize a mistake and or a learning opportunity, or trying a new strategy or a new way, right? These are all things that you don't have time air quotes to do, because you're rushing to get where you think you need to be, where you think you should be, where you think you want to be right. So for my daughter, for example back to the piano example she is rushing to get through the song. So she's not, her brain is not as sort of attuned and engaged to what's happening where she's not as present in the moment, and so the learning isn't happening the way that it would if she was slowing down, being present, checking in and really being aware of what she's doing, how it's feeling, how it's sounding, so on and so forth. Right, these are all the things that we miss when we are focusing on trying to get somewhere faster, right. And so what I want to invite you to do is think about how, like I said, how this is showing up for you and what could be the value of slowing down, and how might slowing down actually help you get where you want to go faster.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll leave you with one last example that came up in a coaching session recently and she my client. She might be listening. If you're listening, this is, this is for you and this is for lots of other people who I know need to hear this. So we were coaching on the topic of work load and she had a specific project for her business that she was working on that she wanted to hit by a certain amount of time, right, like she had a goal in mind, a deadline in mind, and she has this list of tasks that have to get accomplished in order for her to reach this goal that she has set. And we were talking about how she would come home from work and used to be able to sort of.
Speaker 1:What she wants to be able to do is check in with her kids, be present and engaged with them, spend time with them after school, have family time together, where she's not being pulled in by work, but what's currently happening is she gets home and she realizes and thinks about and is focused on all of the things that didn't get done and how much further she has to go with her work tasks in order to hit that goal. There's always more that she could be doing right. There's always emails to respond to, there's always customers to reach out to, and so her brain just wants her to sit down and work and she's like, well, I'm just gonna crank this out, I'm gonna get this done, and she's basically burning the candle at both ends to try and hit this goal. And what's happening is that she's like she said I'm having a breakdown every day. I'm crying, I'm miserable, my relationships with my family members are suffering, I'm not taking care of my body, my health, I'm gaining weight. I'm not having my morning routine like I used to have. I don't have my time for journaling or devotions or exercise or listening to podcasts, planning my days. Sleep is not happening, or at least it's happening on a less quantitative and qualitative basis, and so the impact is pervasive.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's really affecting all of these different areas of her life, and the thought at least one of the thoughts is that her brain is offering is you can't take a break. You have too much to do. You can't stop and spend time with your kids right now because you promised your customers that you would do X, y, z, because you still have these emails or phone calls to respond to, right? You can't stop and pause until these things are done. And so until we change that thought or those thoughts, until we reframe them, the pattern will continue, until she just can't go anymore, because obviously this is an unsustainable pace. This is not sustainable in the longterm. And so we were talking about how could pausing and taking time for yourself actually help you hit that work goal faster. How could pausing and taking a break actually help you get more done at work? It's very counterintuitive, but if you stop and think about it, I bet you'll identify some ways that it's possible.
Speaker 1:So I would love to hear from you if this episode is something that you needed to hear, if it resonated with you, if there's something that you're taking away with, if you're walking away with something I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:You can send me a message in the DMs on Facebook. That's where I'm most active, probably because I was born in the 1900s, as my children like to tell me, and you can also pop into the Facebook group. Come join the SLP support group, where this is the stuff that we talk about as a community. I would love to hear what your key takeaway is from this episode, and if there's someone that you know that needed to hear this, share this with them. Just go ahead and click, tap the little button. Whatever, depending upon what platform you're listening on, it might look different, but you can share this episode with them directly so that they can hear it too. All right, so that's what I'm leaving you with identifying what areas of your life you are pushing to go faster in or to get somewhere faster in, and how might you be able to slow down in order to get where you're trying to go faster. All right, hope this was helpful. I will talk with you all next week. Good night,