A 3 Step Process To Lose The Dread Of ‘I Have To’
Something I encounter pervasively is the feeling we ‘have to’ do something in our business that feels draining or just ‘not right’. This is not just in the women I work with, but also within myself – I really feel the weight of expectation and duty without remembering to really question it. Our whole lives we’re brought up with certain obligations; we have to go to school because someday we’ll have to go to work, we have to do this task because our boss says so, we have to abide by the rules. When you become self-employed, the real have to’s melt away but they leave a shadow of themselves – we still feel the feelings, even though the reality isn’t there.
When you’re used to having an authority figure dictate your working life, it’s hard to shake that feeling of someone looking over your shoulder. It’s so ingrained it takes a long time to shake off – even two years in I still forget I don’t have a boss! For so many of us, we chose self-employment because we wanted freedom, so it’s a special kind of irony that we impose these prisons of have tos on ourselves.
There are, of course, different types of have tos. There are the admin have tos like taxes and answering emails and posting out orders that weren’t exactly the dream we were signing up for, but they are a recognizable part of it that mostly don’t cause undue stress. The kind of have tos I’m talking about, however, are those bigger ones which are more around the work you’re doing – a particular client project, a speaking gig, a certain social media channel. They’re the things you’re only doing because somewhere you feel like you have to, you have no choice, but they are draining and feel like the opposite of the reason you started this business.
It’s a work in progress to catch yourself when you’re working to imagined ‘have tos’. You can go a long way into a project, or spend weeks struggling under a heavy workload before you start to wonder ‘why am I actually doing this?’.
The first step is to learn to recognize the feelings of ‘have to’ – for me, this often dread, heaviness, worry and distraction. When I start to notice these feelings cropping up around something, when my inner monologue starts to say ‘yes but you have to do this’ I let that trigger a three step questioning process I’ve outlined below.
1 – Who says you have to?
Is it a real person in your life, or advice from the internet? What is your relationship with this person? Are they an authority figure – do you really have to do what they say? (If yes, skip to part three)
2 – Was it you who said you have to?
Was the thing filling you with dread something that you decided for yourself? If so, what kind of you told you you have to? Was it the uber productive version of you that schedules something in? Or was it a fearful, lack mindset version of you who decided you needed to take on all this work? If you ask *her*, can you negotiate a way around this?
This happened to me when I got back from holiday. Pre-holiday me had planned that I’d spend the whole first weekend back working, but post-holiday me was really not feeling it. I felt guilty, like I had to do all those things I’d planned or I’d fall behind, although when I looked at it I realized I had plenty of time to catch up with that work. Knowing that I had the time meant I could say to myself ‘that might have been the idea before but I just really don’t have the energy, I’m going to do it then instead’. And you know what? I was ok with it.
3 – Still feel you have to?
If you still feel like you have to do something it’s likely to be something that involves other people – a client, an event organiser, a collaborator. Are the repercussions of cancelling this thing worse than actually just doing it? If no, cancel; if yes, can you grin and bear it? What is actually the worst that can happen if you don’t do it, thinking very objectively without catastrophising? And what’s the best that can happen if you don’t do it? What other opportunities might open up, how much better might you feel? Which feels more worth it? Take the scale of the thing into account too – it might be more manageable to get on and do a commitment that will take up just one morning, rather than continue with a 6 month project.
Whether you go on to do the thing or not, an important question to ask yourself is: how can I not get into this situation again? I am so guilty of putting myself back into situations where I end up thinking “wait, why the hell am I still doing this?!”, and our sense of duty and obligation will often take over. Find a system of boundaries that work for you – maybe a checklist an opportunity has to pass in order for you to take it on, or a shorter list of non-negotiables to black list the things that bring you dread. Take a little bit of time to project yourself forward into the future and think about how you’ll actually feel doing the thing; is it one of those things that’s nice to be asked but actually doing it will feel like hell?
Ultimately, remember that you are the one in charge here, the only one with the right to dictate what you have to do (maybe we all need to write this on a post-it…). Empower yourself to make the decisions and choose activities that make your life happy and fulfilling, rather than full of dread and obligation – and that means being a nice boss to yourself too :).
