220 How to reduce stress | Why productivity hacks and time management tips are failing you

Speaker A: 00:00:00

I want you to be totally honest with me today. When you hear somebody say that you can have more ease, you can let go of the hustle, that being in a rush all day does not have to be your reality.

What actually goes through your head? Maybe the immediate thought is that they've got no clue what you have to deal with every single day.

And then you start justifying to yourself why it's impossible to slow down as you silently list all of the things on your plate which you can't possibly stop doing. And you know what? You're probably quite right to be skeptical.

We have got more productivity hacks and daily planners, (my personal drug of choice) than we know what to do with. So when they don't work out, when we still feel as busy as ever, we just come to the conclusion that this is just the way that life has to be.

Well, I'm hoping that today you can bring an open mind because we're going to dive into how you actually can let go of the hustle. Except not in the ways that you might have been told before. You've got shit to do and I get that.

So instead we're looking at the hidden side of hustle, why pushing harder is not the answer, and how you can create more harmony and less of the day to day grind.

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to Fitness and Wellness where we celebrate you exactly as you are and help you to be the fit, strong, confident woman you deserve to be.

We tackle everything from diet, culture and body image through to how to let go of the hustle, the pressure and the overwhelm and find your balance and energy in a busy life. I'm Alix, women's fitness and wellness expert, therapeutic coach, founder of Life Edit with Alix and mum of two.

And I'm here with your weekly dose of inspiration, helping you to rewrite the rules and live life on your own terms.

Hello and welcome back to the Busy Woman's Guide to Fitness and Wellness.

And just before we start today, I just wanted to say I have at the very start of this month, it's we're now moving into October, I have had a complete rebrand of my business, so you might have known me as ChickFit when you've listened before.

You've always heard me talk about ChickFit, but that's all changed.

So if you have not seen my social media posts, if you haven't been getting my emails or anything like that, maybe you're just a podcast listener, nothing else, then I just want to let you know you're still in the right place. Okay. This is still the busy woman's guide to fitness and wellness.

That is not changing, but brand of my business has changed, and now I am now a Life Edit with Alix. So I've been changing lots of that. And the reason I've really done that is not because I'm completely changing everything I do.

Not because I'm stepping away from fitness entirely, but because I want to integrate everything that I do a little bit more closely, and I want to have a brand that reflects that as well. So it's not letting something go, but it's actually saying, do you know what I do a lot, lot, lot more than just fitness.

If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you're going to know that anyway, right?

Because you know that I talk about such a huge range of subjects, but, you know, for me, it's about bringing the whole woman together, not looking at things in a silo. So looking at fitness and going, well, what can we do to improve your fitness? Yeah, great. But what's all of the other stuff that's affecting that?

I see it, particularly with nutrition, actually, you know, patterns we go to in nutrition, where it's not just about the food, it's about all of the other things that we've got going on, the stories that we've been telling ourselves, the beliefs that we have, the experiences that we've had as younger people, and all those kind of things. So with this new brand, what I'm really doing is I'm bringing all of that together and showing that, yes, fitness is a part of what I do, but it's one part of it, and it's not the whole thing. So if you haven't seen any of this and you're wanting to know more, do go and head over to my Instagram. It's at Life Edit with Alix.

So do head over there and have a little look, because that will tell you a little bit more about what's been going on. But, yeah, if you listen to the intro today and you're like, hang on a minute. Who's Life Edit with Alxx? This used to be ChickFit.

It's still me, just a different brand. All right, so just wanted to clear that up before we get started. Oh, and by the way, to celebrate this, and again, you might have heard my trailer for this. To celebrate this, this rebrand, I've created a limited series podcast, a secret podcast that you can sign up to and have a listen.

All of the episodes are going to be Live now, so you can go in and have a good old binge with those. If you want to find out more, it's called Confident As F**k (Even when you're not there yet), all you need to do is head to confidentas.co.uk and you can sign up and you'll get directly sent a feed, a private feed, so that you can go listen to all those episodes. Right now it's completely free, so go, have at it and enjoy. Right, anyway, onto today's episode.

We're talking all about hustle, simply because there is not a single woman that I speak to who is not dealing with that in her life in some way, shape or form.

You know, how to have all the things we want, how to get all of the things done that we want to get done, how to have some time for ourselves while also dealing with all of the other shiz that's going on in our lives. It feels like the impossible juggle sometimes.

So when this subject crops up, and it always does, you know, whether it's a coaching session, where it pretty much crops up every time, whether it's personal training session, whatever it is, it can be a really tricky one to navigate because on the one hand, it feels like there's not a single thing we're doing that we can stop doing. You know, the washing needs doing, the kids need picking up the work, emails need answering, that all has to happen.

But on the other hand, we're craving space, we're craving some downtime, we're craving a bit more balance and we just want for it to not feel so bloody hard. So we end up feeling a bit stuck between what we want to achieve and all the things that are kind of holding us in this same place.

And so what happens is, when I work with coaching clients, for example, what they'll do is they'll come to the session saying to me, what I really need is some strategies for dealing with stress, or what I really need is some ideas on how we can essentially cram more into less time, how I can somehow buy a bit of time back while still doing these things, just doing them more efficiently. And that's often where the conversation starts.

And I think it's often where our brain goes to when we're talking about this subject, because our brain instantly goes to, yeah, but I can't stop doing all of these things. These things all have to happen in my life. So what I'm really doing here today is saying, I get it, I get it, right? I'VE been there myself as well.

I've been there where everything feels urgent, everything feels like it has to be done, everything feels like it cannot be let go of. So what I'm not going to do is sit here today and give you five strategies for how you can let go of doing stuff.

Hey, let's delegate it to such and such person. Let's do this, let's do that. I'm not going to tell you that, we're going to look at this from a different angle.

We're going to look at this in terms of where that pressure is coming from and how we can address some of that in our lives. And hopefully the byproduct, the upshot of that is that you get to a place where you feel like there's a few things you can let go.

You might actually say, oh, hang on a minute, why am I doing that? Or why is this my responsibility and not somebody else's responsibility? So hopefully that will be the upshot.

But that's not the aim of today's episode. Today's episode is really to highlight where is this pressure coming from?

Where is this pressure to like, keep going and do all the things and push harder coming from? Where is this need that we have to kind of go, I just need to be more efficient, I just need to do more, I just need to get more done in a day.

Where's that coming from?

And how can we maybe let go of a little bit of that so that we can find a bit more clarity, we can find a bit more space and not necessarily in our lives, but maybe in our brain and maybe that's where the space needs to be created.

And like I say, I, you know, I've been there myself as well, you know, chasing, chasing efficiency, telling myself I could just get through this week and push myself to get it all done. Then next week I'll finally create the space that I need. But of course, guess what?

The productivity planners I tried, the efficiency hacks I tried, the time blocking, whatever else it was that I tried a million times. It never worked for long. And here's the reason, the simple reason, this is why all of us do it.

Because all of that doing became a way for me to prove that I was superwoman, that could do all the things that I could cram it all in and I could do it with a smile on my face. And it was a game that I was never going to win. None of us are ever going to win that.

So eventually I stopped trying to play the game and that is what I'm going to share with you today. Like I say, this is not about telling you to stop doing some of the things you're doing. This is not about telling you to go delegate.

This is not about saying, hey, just let your house be a mess. Like, I can't bear that. You know, people have said that, oh, just let your house be a mess. It's okay. It doesn't have to be clean all the time.

Yeah, it flipping does, because I like it clean and it makes me feel better when it's clean and it makes me be able to focus more at work when it's clean and tidy. Right. So actually, yes, this is important to me. So I'm not going to be telling you to do all of those things.

And, you know, yes, I do feel that as women, we tend to take on more than our fair share. A bit of redistribution of that can do wonders. But that is not what today is all about. This is actually about the stuff behind all of that.

And the thing that I want you to remember to start off with is that I can tell you without exception, every single woman I have ever worked with has had ways that she can let go of stuff. And it's mostly not physical stuff. Occasionally it is, but when I'm coaching women, it's often about other stuff. It's about the internal stuff.

It's about the internal pressure that they are carrying. That's the stuff that is holding them back. That is the stuff that they need to learn to let go of.

And so if you're sitting there right now going, but there's not anything I can let go of, I've got to do it all. I get it. I understand that and I understand why you feel like that. What I'm saying to you is it's not all about the doing.

It's about the internal pressure that you're carrying.

And like I say, I have yet to meet a single woman who we've got to the end of a session and we've genuinely gone, oh, yeah, you're right, there's nothing you can let go of. That has never happened to me. And I would bet my bottom dollar that that never will happen to me.

There's always something and it's not the physical stuff. So I think the best way of doing this today is just to share a couple of examples with you. Now, these are not exact examples of clients.

I've changed some of the details, but these are based on real clients that I've worked with or they're based on an amalgamation of a few different clients that I've worked with. And these are just some of the things that have come up. Seemingly small things, but actually quite big things.

So the first example is about work emails. So somebody that I work with who, one of the things that came up was that if it had taken her more than a few hours to reply to an email, for example, so she'd been in a meeting or she popped out for lunch or something, it had taken her a few hours to reply. Every email or every message was started with a, oh, I'm so sorry, it's taken me such a long time to reply.

And every single email, every single message would be like that unless, unless she had responded pretty much straight away. There was always a, I'm really sorry it's taken me this long.

And it was a really interesting conversation around that because it's one of those things that when you then reflect back on it and, that's one of the things that I will often do with my clients is like, get them to reflect back and just almost say, oh, right, okay, so that's interesting. Every time it takes you more than a few hours to reply to an email, you say sorry.

And that moment will make them think, oh, actually, yeah, that's a bit weird, isn't it? Why do I do that? And quite often we're doing things without even thinking about it. It's become a habit for us.

It's become a habit that this is the thing that we'll do, and it's driven by something else which we'll talk about in a minute. But we are putting ourselves in a position where we're creating a lot of urgency.

Every time we go into a meeting, we'll come out of it, there'll be a couple of emails we need to reply to, and there's a lot of urgency around that because we're feeling guilty that it's taken us a while. We're saying sorry for not having responded more quickly and we're putting a lot of pressure on ourselves.

So that's, that's one example of a place where, like I say, a really small place actually, but like I'll talk about in a minute, it becomes a bit of a microcosm for everything else.

A really, a really small place in our lives where we're doing something which is, is creating some, this internal pressure that says to prove that I, I am good at my job, I need to reply straight away, people will think badly of me if I don't reply to this thing straight away. So that is the kind of thing that a lot of us will do, women in particular, we will say sorry for stuff that we don't need to say sorry for.

We carry that guilt, we carry that pressure. We don't even know we're doing it. And suddenly it's making everything feel very urgent in our lives.

Because taking time to get back to somebody, taking time to do something is a reason that we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. Right? So that's the first example of this. This internal pressure that we are maybe carrying that we can start to let go of.

And I will come back to this and talk a bit more about this. There was another example, and again, this is like really an amalgamation. This has come up definitely more than once.

But times when, when women are putting off something that we really want to do, we're telling ourselves we really want to do something, but we're judging ourselves against how we used to be able to do that thing. So, for example, I used to be able to run 5k in 30 minutes, and I've not run for a long time. And now I've got to go back and do the couch to 5K.

And then they're feeling rubbish about that. They're feeling like they're failing before they've even begun because they've got this heaviness of, but I used to be able to do that.

Why can't I do it anymore? It's not fair that I can't do it anymore. I wish I could still do that. I'm not as fit as I used to be. I'm not as strong as I used to be.

And we're putting ourselves in a position where we're comparing ourselves to an old version of ourselves, to something we could do 10 years ago that we can't do right now.

So this kind of thing, again, it's internal pressure that we're carrying, and it's making it very hard because like I say, what's happening is we're telling ourselves, I want to go out and get fitter, I want to go out for that run. But then we're not doing it because the voice, little voice inside us is saying, what's the point? You can't do it like you used to be able to do it.

It's a bit rubbish, isn't it?

And so every time you do force yourself to go for run, it just feels heavy and hard and you're just spending the whole time thinking, oh God, what's the point of this? This feels rubbish. But when we can let go of that, it feels lighter because it becomes about looking after ourselves in the here and now, right?

Instead of trying to constantly compare ourselves, it's not this competitive task against a version of us that doesn't even exist anymore. It becomes just us looking after ourselves.

And like I think we can all feel the difference between those two states of being, of the pressure of I can't do any more what I used to be able to do. And do you know what, I let go of that and I'm just going to focus on where I am at the moment.

So what I want you to see from those stories is that the pressure that we feel doesn't just come from outside of us. You know, there's already more than enough of that. It comes from the inside. And that inside pressure has us chasing those old versions of ourselves.

The version that used to be able to do the 5k run and can't anymore. The version of us at 25 that used to be able to do a headstand in yoga but can't do that anymore.

The inside pressure has us people pleasing by replying to that email quickly so we'll be liked and admired, proving ourselves to others, proving, look, I'm good at my job on I'm on top of my ship because I've replied straight away to your email on top of it. So we're proving ourselves that inside pressure is around. Productivity is a measure of our self worth.

Like the more that we can do, the better we are. A lot of that and a lot of pressure about running away from, from like the guilt that we associate with rest because we think that rest is lazy.

And so we feel guilt when we do allow ourselves to rest and when we do step away from the constant doing and essentially that internal pressure, it has us chasing validation. And when we're in that place, it can be extremely hard to see how we can possibly slow down.

But like I said earlier, this is not about doing less stuff that will be a great part or a great outcome of this. Absolutely. But actually it's about the way we're fundamentally approaching life. So let's go back to the emails.

The emails still have to be replied to, there's no less work involved. But the act of dealing with them starts to feel different. When we let go of this need to say sorry, we let go of this need to apologize.

We let go of this idea that if we haven't replied in the Last three hours, we're not doing our job properly, you know, because then when we're dealing with that stuff, there's less rush, there's less urgency, there's less guilt. We're not adding to that frenetic pace of life that we're already trying to live by. We're letting go of some of that.

So we're still doing the thing, but we're doing it from a very different place, from a very different energy. And you might be sitting there thinking, well, that's such a tiny thing that would make zero difference to my life.

I'd still have to do all the things, it would still make me really busy and really stressed.

But the truth is that, you know, when, when I did that session with that client, by the end of the session, it was one of the key things that we actually talked about. She felt so much lighter. She literally said to me, I feel lighter. Because that was a microcosm of the way that she was doing everything.

And sometimes we think these things are really small, really inconsequential. But just imagine if that's the way that you're dealing with emails, how are you dealing with other stuff? Probably in a similar way.

It's showing up in the emails, sure, but it's going to be showing up in other areas. And if you look at that one small thing, you start to go, hang on a minute, maybe, maybe this is, is showing up in other parts of my life.

Maybe this is, one of the reasons that I feel like everything is urgent all the time.

Maybe this is one of the reasons that I'm always in a bloody rush because I am carrying some kind of guilt, I'm carrying some kind of idea that if I don't reply, I am not good enough at my job.

So exposing that one small thing can then have a knock on effect on everything else because it makes you start to question, hang on a minute, why am I doing it like this? Why am I feeling guilty for this thing? It's ridiculous. So yes, it's small, but it's a microcosm of everything else. And I want you to remember that.

And this is one of the reasons that I always talk to people about small changes because we can look at it and think, right, this is some big huge change that needs to happen. You're not going to do it, it's going to be too much, it's going to be overwhelming, right?

It's not going to feel safe to suddenly let go of all of these things. But you take one small thing and you suddenly go, hang on a minute, well, if I can do that with that, what else could I do?

Now I wonder where else this is showing up and what I could do there and there and there and there. And like I say, once you do that, you start to breathe a bit better.

There starts to be less urgency in your life and you, you just, you create that bit more of brain space. And that is so, so, so important when we're trying to give ourselves more balance in our lives.

So the runner, let's come back to her in the current scenario. Oh, 10 years ago, I used to be able to run 5k in half an hour. Now I'm having to go back and do couch the 5k. How rubbish is that?

You know, what do you think is happening when we keep saying that to ourselves, we're not going for the run, and then we're feeling guilty because we didn't go for the run that we said we were going to go for, and we feel rubbish about ourselves. And so the cycle just continues and continues.

Whereas actually, if we can let go of that and say, well, I'm not the person I was 10 years ago, my life has changed. I have completely different circumstances in my life. I haven't been able to go running for ages.

I've been focusing on other stuff and now I need to just focus on me. In the here and the now.

We let go of that old version of us, we start to actually be able to go out and do that thing again, because it comes from a place of a little bit more enjoyment, a little bit less pressure. It gives that thing a completely new energy.

And again, we could just sit there and say, well, it's just a run, but again, it's a microcosm of everything. In this case, comparison. What other parts of her life is comparison running the show? And how would letting go of some of that feel?

So we're still doing the things, we're still going for the run, but we're doing them with so much more ease, with so much more brain space, with so much less pressure. So, like I say, those are just two examples.

But I bet you can probably think of other examples in your life where you're like, oh, hang on a minute, yeah, I do compare myself to a past version. Or, yeah, why do I say sorry every time it takes me half a day to reply to an email? I don't really get why I do that. It seems a bit silly now.

And once you start to identify those little things, you're starting to actually create that that sort of, that sense of, oh my gosh, yeah, I can let go of that. That doesn't have to be me rushing around, making sure that I get out of the meeting quickly.

So I go back and I respond to the emails straight away all the time. Could put a bit of space in there. So a few, a few questions to ask yourself.

So where are you putting pressure on yourself that no one else is actually asking of you? Because bet your bottom dollar that if the email thing is the thing, if I said to you, well, do you expect other people to reply to you immediately?

You're going to go, well, no, because they're busy, they've got stuff that they're doing, yeah, I might expect a reply within the day, but I'm not expecting them to reply straight away all the time, not unless it's particularly urgent for some reason. So we're putting pressure on ourselves that we would not expect of other people. So where are the areas that you are doing that to yourself?

And also an interesting kind of side question to that is what of other people's pressure are you carrying? That is not yours to carry? Because other people will do that.

They'll try and take it off their plate and plop it onto yours and then you're carrying it and feeling guilty for not doing more about it when actually it's not yours to carry in the first place. So what you carrying, that's actually not yours to carry. So that's one question, another question to ask yourself.

Am I comparing myself to an old version of me? You know, so fucking what if 25 year old you could stand on your head, maybe 40 year old you has very little interest in doing that anymore.

Maybe 40 year old you has very different reasons for showing up and doing yoga than the one that was 25. You're a different person, you've lived 15 years. Maybe you've got a couple of kids now. Maybe you've got a different job.

Maybe the things that you need in life are different and yet we do that to ourselves. Don't we compare ourselves to old versions of us.

And then it sucks the joy out of doing that thing anymore because we're just constantly in that mode of I should be doing better, I should be doing better rather than actually what I need right now is this. Maybe I can just enjoy it for what it is in the moment. So what are the old versions that you're comparing to? And then a third one.

Why, why is this thing making me feel guilty? What do I think is going to happen if I don't do this. So going back to the email example, why are you feeling guilty?

Or why do you think that you need to respond straight away? What do you think is going to happen if you don't do that? Do you think people are going to complain about you?

Do you think people are going to think you're doing a bad job? Do you think people are going to be secretly going, oh, well, she doesn't have things together.

She didn't reply within five minutes of me emailing her. Is that going to happen or not? I would suggest the answer is probably not.

And I think that we often think there's something exceptional about us that means that we have to live to a different set of standards than somebody else.

So I would probably ask you, what is so exceptional about you that means that you have to live up to a different set of standards than you hold other people to? If you would happily accept somebody to respond to your email in five or six hours, why do you have to live up to a different standard?

So those kind of questions are quite revealing and quite helpful. Now, there's lots of other questions I could ask and, you know, lots of questions I do ask in my coaching, depending on the particular situation.

But what I'm really asking you to do here is reflect when you're doing something out of habit or where there's a area of your life where you're feeling a lot of pressure. How can you put distance between yourself and that thing and ask questions that are going to take the pressure off?

Because the minute you ask those questions, quite often you sudden start to feel a little bit silly, like, oh, yeah, it's a bit silly really, that I compare myself to what I was 15 years ago when I was standing on my head in yoga. And so the minute you start to ask those questions, you kind of go, oh, hang on a minute, why am I doing that? That is ridiculous.

But yeah, like I say, it's more about. This is about the reflection.

It's about looking at everything in your life and not going, oh, well, I've got to delegate this and I've got to stop doing that and I've got to let my house go to rack and ruin. You don't have to do those things. It's going to yourself. Where am I feeling pressure? Why am I feeling pressure there? Where is that coming from?

And how can I let go of some of that? So let's wrap all of this up. So here's what I want you to take away. Less hustle, more harmony is possible for all of us, regardless of how much physical stuff that we have to do. And pushing harder, hustling more so we can shoehorn more into each and every day, is not going to magically give you the space you're craving.

Working on the internal pressure, on the other hand, will help. Where is it coming from? Why is it there? And how can I make some simple changes to the whole energy around the way that I'm doing everything?

And like I said before, do not mistake this as needing to be big, massive, huge changes. Look at the small things, because the way that you do the small thing is probably the way that you're doing a lot of things in your life.

And if you address that one thing, it opens the doors for lots of other things to change, lots of other small little things that are going to take the pressure off.

And that act of letting go of the guilt, letting go of the comparison, letting go of trying to prove yourself all the time, it can create more space, it can create more harmony, and ultimately it can create a happier, less stressed life. So enjoy doing that, enjoy your reflection.

And before we go, just a reminder that I have recently launched my secret limited podcast, Confident as F**k, and I'd love to invite you to head over and have a listen. So go to confidentas.co.uk you can sign up. You'll get sent your private feed for that to go listen.

And with all that said, I'm going to love you and leave you and I'll see you back here again next time.

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you have loved this episode, don't forget to hit follow so you don't miss future episodes.

And of course, head over and follow me on the socials as well @lifeditwithalix