I am back with a solo episode (it has been a while), but it feels so good to have an intimate chat with you all. In this episode I share a couple of anecdotes that taught me great lessons about pace. What I learned was that when I overexert myself, and push too hard, that can rob my joy. And when joy is missing in something that I do, I know that is when I need to pay attention and re-calibrate. In this go go go world we live in, we can move at such a fast pace that it comes at the expense of our own happiness. That is simply no way to live.
In times when you feel like your pace is too fast, you are overexerting yourself, I invite you to take an honest look at the pace you are going and whether it is serving you at the highest level. Do you need to slow down just a little bit, just to that point where your joy comes back? On the flip side, if you are not making any progress on your goals, do you need to bump up the pace and start taking daily intentional action?
In this episode I share my experiences that taught me great lessons on pace, and how to recalibrate yourself to find your ideal pace to push forward in the direction of joy.
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
The 2 anecdotes that taught me the importance of going at your own pace
How to identify when you need to change your pace
A boundary I am not willing to cross
Questions to ask yourself to recalibrate
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello, hello, welcome to the Happy Productive Podcast. I’m Jennifer Dawn, a business coach and founder of Best Planner Ever. Today I want to talk to you about pace, our working pace and ask the question, is the pace you’re going at robbing you of your joy. Now, if your bar is on the ground, you’re not doing anything, you probably don’t feel that great about yourself in those areas of your life you want to improve.
And yes, you probably need to pick up the pace, and you need to raise that bar just a little bit. But what I want to focus on today is when the bar is set so high, and that pace is so fast that it starts to rob you of your joy. Okay, here’s what I mean. So earlier in this year, in January, I did something called 75 Hard. Andy Frisella created it; if you’ve never heard of Andy, a super great guy, you can Google 75 Hard and learn more about it.
With 75 Hard, the idea behind it is for 75 days; you do certain tasks each and every day without fail. And if you miss a task on a day, the way Andy sets this up is that you have to start back over from day one. So there’s definitely some incentive there not to miss a day. The things that you have to do every day are, you have to work out 45 minutes a day, twice, every single day. They cannot be together, and one of your workouts has to be outside.
You have to drink a gallon of water, read ten pages of a self-improvement book, make a progress picture, follow your diet, and no cheat meals and no alcohol are allowed. And you do this for 75 days. What I loved about it is that this really launched me into creating the daily habits that lead to success. And those are great habits like working out every day without fail. The gallon of water was a little too much for me. But reading ten pages of a self-improvement book like several of these habits.
This is why we’ve incorporated these into our THRIVE daily as part of our Goal Achievers Membership. When you’re taking these small actions every single day, they do add up and lead to success over time. No question about it. What I didn’t love, however, about this challenge was that I felt like a robot, right? I just felt like this machine that was going through the motions every single day. I had to push so hard to get it all done in a day because of my work schedule.
There are some days where I work ten hours twelve hours or have a really long coaching day. And so to fit this in, or if I had to travel or do some, you know, functions with my children or whatever, I had to push really hard to fit this into a day that was already really pretty busy and pretty jam-packed. And honestly, I didn’t enjoy it. Because I felt like there was no time to look around to pause to take a breath to, you know, enjoy the experiences of the actions I was taking.
I really didn’t have any time except to fit it all in in a day. I’m grateful for the experience, and looking back now; I can you know without judgment, look at it and go, what did I love? What did I not love? Now I also experienced something similar recently on my last Spartan Race. If you’ve never heard of Spartan races, they are these crazy races that are distance plus obstacles and often over some terrain.
So they like to run you up and down mountains and over all kinds of crazy terrain. And so I just started doing Spartan races actually in April of this year. And so in what month was this? September, I signed up for the hardest Beast course that there is, so the beast is the half marathon. So it’s 13 miles, a whole bunch of obstacles over the hardest terrain that Spartan offers in Killington, Vermont.
Now I signed up for this race, which was actually way ahead of my schedule. I hadn’t planned on it because I was working my way up. So I had gone through the 5k races, the 10k races. So this was my 10th race for the year. I hadn’t actually planned on doing a Beast of the half marathon until the end of the year; November or December was really my original plan.
I signed up for this really difficult race in September. My sister was going to be there. She totally has physical fitness. My son also wanted to do it. And so I wanted to do it with them. And so I signed up, and of course, I always love to push myself well as I’m out on this course, and they are running us up the mountain. So this particular course, there’s 6000 feet of elevation gain.
So they’re not kidding when they run in you up this mountain and then down this mountain; it’s technical terrain, you have to be careful and pay attention so that you don’t get hurt. So when I’m out on the course, my son is out there, my sisters out there, and they kept having to wait for me. Now when we started this, I went on the course super excited, right? We’re doing this together, and I love them both so much. And of course, I want them to do their best, and I want me to do my best.
And I thought that being together was going to be this big advantage. But it turned out the opposite and went against me. Because every time that I would see them up ahead, and they were waiting for me, I felt this pressure, this pressure to bump up my pace to hurry up to go faster, right and not slow them down. The problem is that for me, where I’m at, I was going the fastest I could go in my physical fitness. That’s where I’m at. And that’s okay, and it’s totally okay.
I kept feeling this constant pressure of letting them down. And when I would feel that, it would just suck all the joy right out of the experience because I couldn’t go at their pace. So along the course around a mile, I don’t know 10 or 11, there’s a part of the course where they have you swim in a very cold lake, and my sister says, don’t do it, it’s going to be too much. She was right.
I listened to her. I kept going. They were behind me now they’re off doing the swim and I’m by myself. I found surprisingly that when I was by myself, I could relax. I could go at my pace. I ended up even going much further than I had intended. My emotions started to settle down, and that pressure relaxed, and I realized, oh my god, I’m so much happier.
I use the term happy loosely because you’re out on this course. You’re just like, you know, gassed, and it’s just so much, but I felt so much happier just going at my pace. During all those hard miles, I realized, you know, it’s not that we want to isolate ourselves from others. We don’t, in fact, the opposite but we do need to honor our own pace and honor the pace of others. I really wanted them to do well in my heart. Absolutely. I also wanted to do well but what I realized is that we all need to go at our individual pace. We could start together at the end, we could celebrate together, and we could love each other enough to give each other permission to run our own race.
Both of these experiences were such valuable lessons for me and owning my pace but also owning my joy. I take my joy seriously, guys. If the experience isn’t fun, if you’re doing it because those quote productivity experts say this is what you have to do to have a fulfilled life. You have to get up at 4 am and do these hundred things and fit it all in. I’ve done this, I get it, and some people would even call me a productivity expert because I own a planner company, and I coach in the productivity and time-space, right?
So I totally get it, but if you find that your joy is missing, pay attention. If you’re just like you know, I’m doing everything they say I should fit in in a day, yet I still don’t feel fulfilled. I don’t feel satisfied. I don’t feel happy. I want to give you the permission that I gave myself to go at your pace, not the pace of others. If you notice your joy is missing, pay attention, then make a correction because the beautiful thing is that once you see what’s happening, the rest is just tactical. But when you’re caught up in the emotions, the pain, all that mind junk that goes through our heads, it can be really difficult to see clearly.
I know this when I was on that mountain in the Spartan Race. I was just so hard on myself even though I knew better, but every time I saw them waiting for me, I felt horrible that I was holding them back, and then I was really hard on myself for not being faster for not being better. All those negative emotions, boy, they just had me tight in their grip, and I did. I cried on that course. I probably cried for three miles. I couldn’t even explain why I was crying. The tears were just like flowing right out of me because they had me locked tight.
When I look back at that experience in the race and the same for 75 Hard right now, I can look back at it. I can look at it without any judgment without any emotion. I can just explore what the heck was happening, but now I can see it clearly from this perspective. I knew what I was doing. I was pushing myself so hard and so fast that I lost my joy.
By lowering the bar and actually slowing down my pace, I can relax, enjoy the ride and fully experience the experience. Now, it doesn’t mean to lower the bar back to zero and not do anything, right. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to push ourselves to greater goals. What do they say like you accomplish a goal, you immediately set the next one? I totally get it. Even though that Spartan Race wasn’t my best experience, I turned around. I signed up for the next one. I’m going back out this weekend because you set that next goal.
This is what successful people do. You achieve it. You set the next one. We always want to strive right to be better expanded versions of ourselves always but we don’t want to do it at the expense of our own happiness. I’ve learned that’s a boundary I’m just not going to cross.
So I want you to ask yourself the question, what’s your ideal pace? Now, if you’re a zero, and you’re just sitting around talking or complaining about an area of your life that needs to improve, but you’re not doing a darn thing about it, except talking and complaining? Without question, you got to bump that pace up. You got to raise that bar. You got to start taking some daily action, little daily action to change. It could be 10 minutes a day. And don’t tell me you can’t find 10 minutes. That’s baloney. If you can do this, you can do this. You can do it when you decide that you’re going to.
On the flip side, is your pace too fast? Are you pushing too hard? Are you going so fast that it constantly feels like you’re under pressure to go go go? Are you feeling a little bit like an emotionless machine just going through the motions trying to get it all in every single day doing doing doing? Do you need to slow down just a little bit, just to that point where your joy comes back?
Take a few moments to think about this. take an honest look at the pace you’re going and see it clearly. Once it’s clear, you’re going to know in your heart what the right move is for you. But no matter what, make a move. Don’t just think about making a change or talk about making a change. Actually take a different action. I know you can do this; you’ve got it. Be brave. Okay, be brave and take action in the direction that you need to go. Whether you’re bumping your pace up or bringing your pace down.
All right, you guys, if you would like some help with this, come check us out at jenniferdawncoaching.com. If today is the day that you decide you’re going to choose a better time management system. Of course, consider our Best Planner Ever that you can find the bestplannerever.com. Thank you so much for listening today. Now go out there and have a happy, productive day.