Overcoming Overwhelm: Find Time for Yourself in a Non-Stop World
Hi Friend! This week's been a whirlwind with the onset of spring and the start of wedding season. Yep, aside from this podcast, my husband and I are wedding photographers and also manage a venue here in Northern California. Beautiful, yet absolutely hectic times.
So, let's get to the heart of today’s chat: prioritizing yourself amid the hustle. It's something I've noticed a lot, especially among the driven and successful women I work with. They've got it all going on—careers, families, relationships—but when it comes to their own self-care or chasing personal dreams, they're often put on the back burner.
I hear it all the time: "I want to do X or start Y, but there's just no time." Sound familiar? Life's busy pace means our own needs or dreams get postponed indefinitely. And let's be real, "someday" never comes. If we wait for the perfect moment, we’ll end up sidelining our own goals for everyone else's demands, or worse, for endless scrolling, TV binges, or other fillers that don't really 'feed' us.
Take it from me—I once thought I'd organize decades of photos during maternity leave. Spoiler: those photos are still a mess, and my daughter's now in college. The lesson? Waiting for "someday" means waiting forever.
So, how do we break this cycle? Here's the game plan:
- 1) Shift Your Mindset: Saying no, setting boundaries—it won't end the world. It’s crucial for making space for what truly matters to you.
- 2) Give Yourself Permission: This is a big one, especially for the women out there who, like me, were never taught to prioritize their own needs. You've got to break that cycle. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish; it's necessary.
- 3) Protect Your Me-Time: I mean it. Schedule your "me time" with ironclad commitment. Whether it's a spa day, working on your dream project, or simply unwinding, make it non-negotiable. Your calendar shouldn’t be at the mercy of others' demands.
Fair warning: When you start guarding your time, expect pushback, especially from yourself if you're a people-pleaser. It's tough at first, but remember, not everything is an emergency, despite what we've conditioned ourselves to believe.
This isn't just about self-care; it's about fundamentally respecting your own time and ambitions as much as you do others’. By carving out and defending that space for yourself, you’re not just looking after your well-being; you're taking a stand for your dreams.
Quick and straightforward, that’s the gist for today. If you found this helpful, why not pass it along to someone who could use a reminder to prioritize themselves too? Catch you next week for more insights. Stay focused and take care.
xo Melanie
Transcript
Welcome to the Magnetic Creator podcast. I'm your host, Melanie Mishler, and each week we have intimate conversations about the things that matter most in life. My superpower is helping you remember who you truly are. A powerful, magical creator. I give you proven tools to help you get unstuck and manifest a life that sets your heart on fucking fire. Are you ready? Let's go. Hey, friend. Today's episode is going to be short and sweet because...
This has been a very, very busy week here in the Mishler household. Spring started, which means wedding season has begun. And for those of you who don't know, my husband and I are also wedding photographers and we also run a wedding venue. So this time of year in Northern California, it's both, it's really, really pretty, but it's also a very busy time for us. But even though it's short, I'm gonna pocket with value.
And it's kind of timely because what we're talking about today is how to prioritize yourself, both self -care and also setting aside time to work towards your goals and dreams when life is busy. And it seems like life is always busy now. And this is important because most of the women I work with, they're very successful. They have an education, a career, family, partner, a lot of things going on in their life. But often those things can...
easily take priority over self -care, setting up boundaries, or even setting aside time to work on their personal goals or dreams. And it's really common when I'm working with women to hear them say things like, I really want to manifest something in my life. And it could be a career change, starting a side hustle, creating art, anything. But then I hear them say, I'm just so busy.
like my job is so demanding or my kids' lives are so busy that I'll do it someday. And friend, we all know that someday does not come because if we haven't prioritized ourselves or on the other hand, if we've taught others that their needs come before our own, and that could be the needs of your boss, your kids, your husband, whoever, then what happens is any time more space becomes available in our life,
Melanie Mishler:It just keeps getting filled up with other people's agendas and other people's needs. And our lives just keep getting fuller and fuller. The career gets more demanding. Or alternatively, the other thing that happens is we fill up the space with things that don't feed us, like mindless social scrolling, drinking, drugs, binge watching TV, overeating. The list is endless. Like, you know the list goes on and on and on.
And here's a funny story that kind of relates to this like someday never comes. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was so busy. I was working crazy hours at a woman's trauma center. I was building my private practice, finishing up school, performing with a dance company. And on top of that, I was dealing with my completely psychotic ex. Life was just totally full. And during this time, I had this huge box of photos that was back in the day when we had negatives and...
prints from every roll of film. And I had wanted to organize these photos for years. So I told myself, when I'm on maternity leave, I'm going to take time and I'm going to organize all these photos. I'm going to get them put into albums and it's going to be so great, right? Because I'm going to have all this time on maternity leave. And friend, my daughter is now 21 years old. She's a junior in college. And let me tell you, that shit still has not gotten done. But now...
I have like countless more boxes of photos, plus this huge digital photo library. And so I just kind of figure that ship has sailed, like I'm never going to organize the photos and I'm going to be okay with that. Okay, so I digress, but let's take this idea of someday off the table because the time to prioritize yourself and your goals or anything you want to manifest, the time to prioritize it is today, like right
this freaking second. Okay, so how do we do this? I'm going to give you three quick and easy tips because you know I like things fast and I like them easy. The first thing I like to coach women on when they're starting to prioritize themselves is to shift their mindset. Because a lot of us think that if we say no to our boss or if we say no to our children or if we put up boundaries that someone will suffer.
Melanie Mishler:Like our career is gonna suffer, our children are gonna suffer, our marriage is gonna suffer, all of that. And this leaves us open to other people just filling up our time and space with all of their needs. And this is really, really hard for all my people pleasers out there. And I'm a recovering people pleasers, so I totally understand how hard this can be. But we have to get it in our minds that no one will suffer when you put yourself first.
And the next is to give yourself permission. You have to give yourself permission to put yourself first. Now, as a mom, especially when my daughter was younger and I was a single mom, this was very, very challenging for me because it wasn't something that was modeled to me growing up. When I grew up, all of my female role models, they worked their asses off and they just gave and gave and gave until there was nothing left. Like they were totally exhausted and depleted. And friend, if...
this is something that you do, you are robbing your children, your partner, your boss, basically everyone in the world from experiencing the best version of you. Because you have to show up for yourself first, you have to fill up your own cup before you can really authentically show up for others. Okay, the last step, which is the most important, is to block out your time first, and then you have to protect that time like your life.
fucking depends on it. And here's what I mean. I sit down at the beginning of each month with a calendar and I block out times that are specifically for me. It's me time. It literally says on the calendar, Mel time. And you can do this weekly. But what I found is that when my clients do it weekly, life tends to fill up their calendar first, like the month will just start adding things to your calendar. And it can be hard to do it on a weekly basis. So
I block out these times and it can be for a massage, a pedicure, time to work on something I'm manifesting. I put this podcast during me time. But the key is that this is my time. It's not time that anyone else can like schedule a meeting. They can't input their agenda. I'm not going to move it around to accommodate anyone else. So when I have my time, I don't have my phone on. I don't have to do social media. I'm basically out of commission to the world.
Melanie Mishler:Now, I'm going to warn you that when you try this, especially if you're a people pleaser, what's going to happen the very, very first week you do this is that someone's going to come to you with a very urgent issue that needs to be handled like right now or right during your special time. And I guarantee this is going to happen. It happens to everyone. And usually the default is to say, well, I had, you know, massage scheduled, but you know, let me call and see if I can reschedule.
or I was gonna work on this thing I'm manifesting, but well, I can do that later in the day. And so the default is to move your time around and to prioritize someone else. But here's the thing, very, very few things in our life are high level urgent. It's actually really rare, but we've trained everyone to think like,
We're always open. We're always available. So they're just kind of used to us saying yes to whatever their need. And this is why I say you have to protect that time like your life fucking depends on it because this is your time. Don't let other people arrange your time. Don't let them fill it up. You need to preserve it like it's sacred because it is sacred. This is the time that you use to fill up your cup to take care of yourself so that you can show up as the best version of yourself.
so that you can work towards your goals and dreams or anything that you're manifesting. All right, friend, I told you it was gonna be fast today. That's all I have, but I hope that you found value in it. And if you did, please share it with a friend or anyone that you know who needs to make themselves a priority. And I will see you next week.
