2098: 3 Things I Did to Relax When I Was Stressing About Reaching My Goals by Alexander Heyne with Tiny Buddha

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[00:01:01] This is Optimal Work Daily. Three things I did to relax when I was stressing about reaching my goals. By Alexander Heyne with Tiny Buddha Quote, Every day brings a choice. To practice stress or to practice peace. End quote. Joan Borisenko. Stress and my own expectations were killing me. I was taking care of my physical health with exercise four

[00:01:27] to five days a week, eating right with lots of plants and vegetables, and sleeping enough. But my health was getting bad. I had IBS that was getting worse, and I wasn't sleeping well, even though I spent enough hours in bed. In other words, I was doing everything right. Or rather, all the external physical stuff right. I was doing something that virtually everyone agreed was going to make me happier. I was building a side business to fund my freedom from my day job.

[00:01:53] Finally, I had taken the plunge to pursue one of my biggest, scariest, and most exciting dreams. I would fantasize about being able to do what I was passionate about every single day. Help people live healthier, happier, more whole lives. I couldn't wait to turn in my two weeks notice and wake up every single day early in the morning with the fire and passion to make a difference in people's lives, and actually get paid to do it. It sounded like a dream come true.

[00:02:20] Fast forward one year. I still hadn't quit my job, and I was living in a nightmare. Some days I had slight panic attacks because I would tell myself I would quit my job soon, but my passion business wasn't making enough money for me to quit comfortably without freaking out. The expectations I put on myself were crushing me. I thought I would be at a certain benchmark by a certain date, and I hoped I would be somewhere that I currently wasn't in my business. I was being crushed and crumpled under the weight of my own expectations and goals.

[00:02:50] Something that originally woke me up in the morning, inspired and ready to roll, was now drudgery. Something that I constantly associated with pain and failure. There weren't enough clients. There were too many things I was trying to figure out. Working 12 or more hours a day was wearing me out, and I was nearing burnout. Nothing seemed to be enjoyable anymore. And one night, when I yet again couldn't sleep, I had an aha moment. I thought to myself, what a horrible irony.

[00:03:18] I started this side thing, working on my passion every day with the hope of one day getting compensated for doing something I loved. And now I wake up every day dreading both my job and my passion business. How did it get to this point? After sitting down to think about my own goals, passion, and what was destroying my happiness, I learned a few things. 1. Remove expectations and find flow. So much of this initial stress was self-imposed.

[00:03:46] Actually, all of the stress I had each day was self-imposed. I thought back and realized that I'd stressed myself out with almost every goal. Health goals around the new year. Personal finance goals. And now my own business passion goal. How often do we place these expectations on ourselves? I'm gonna lose 30 pounds in 60 days. And once we don't reach them, we get crushed and quit. The more this happens, the more our self-esteem suffers. And the more we internalize the story that we're failures.

[00:04:16] Even though I needed money in order to quit my job, I did a test. Instead of focusing on the bottom line, I focused just on flow. I focused purely on things I enjoyed the most, the things I was most motivated to work on. And I focused on pushing myself forward every single day, rather than meeting random goals like losing 30 pounds in the next two months. 2. Focus on growth, not hard deadlines. By far, the best thing I ever did for myself was set only one goal.

[00:04:46] Get better each day. No other goals and no more deadlines. Deadlines always produced massive stress in my life. Did they work? Sure, sometimes. But every time, they resulted in pressure and discomfort. And often they didn't work because I didn't accurately estimate how much time I would take to achieve them, since I was doing things for the first time. Whereas every day used to be stressful because I was always measuring how I stacked up against my goals, now every day was enjoyable because I just focused on getting better each day.

[00:05:16] To say this was a major relief would be an understatement. And 3. Forget the timeline and focus on enjoyment. There's an old Tony Robbins saying that goes something like this. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, but underestimate what they can do in 10 years. Almost all the anxiety, panic, lost sleep, and stress occurred because I had an artificial timeline. I wanted to quit my job now.

[00:05:42] So, I wanted to reach XYZ goal by XYZ date. And when I didn't, it would cause anxiety and panic because I was resisting reality. As an experiment, I spent 30 days without any timeline. That meant no goals, no benchmarks, nothing. It didn't happen overnight, but over the coming months, I slowly regained that passion, love, and zest I had for life.

[00:06:05] And my passion business regained its former passion, which had disappeared in the face of my expectations, stress, and anxiety. I'm proud to say with these 3 subtle mental shifts that dramatically simplified my life and removed deadlines and pressure, I was able to focus on self-growth, and my sanity returned. At the end of the day, the self-imposed stress and anxiety caused by deadlines and setting too many goals were more damaging than the benefit.

[00:06:32] I realized that it was only once I stopped trying to control everything and trusted the process, things started to happen. When we release expectations and focus on enjoying every day and working our hardest on growth, not madly achieving our goals as quickly as possible, that's ironically when we reach our goals faster and with less stress than ever. You just listened to the post titled,

[00:07:00] Three Things I Did to Relax When I Was Stressing About Reaching My Goals, by Alexander Hain, with tinybuddha.com. Study and play! Come together on a Windows 11 PC! And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds! Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

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[00:07:59] Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop. Where taste recognizes taste. So that was a great post from Alexander today and we're very thankful that he let us share his work. And this was actually a guest post on a site that we have featured before here on the show, Tiny Buddha. So I also want to thank Lori from Tiny Buddha. Tiny Buddha has been helping people heal, grow, and find peace since 2009.

[00:08:26] The site features stories and insights from people of all ages from all over the globe. For daily wisdom, follow Tiny Buddha on Twitter and Facebook, at Tiny Buddha, and Instagram, at Tiny Buddha Official, or subscribe to the blog at tinybuddha.com slash list. And be sure to check out Tiny Buddha's Inner Strength Journal, creative prompts, and challenges to help you get through anything, which is available on Amazon. Content from Tiny Buddha is featured across pretty much all of our podcasts here on the network.

[00:09:00] And show your support. So that's it for today. I thank you as always for being here and hope you enjoyed the post as much as I did. And I hope you'll be right back here with me tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.