Defeating Overwhelm by Harnessing 8 months of Self Improvement Energy

There’s only so much water you can add to a glass before it starts to overflow and make a mess.

This week I realised I was starting to make a mess…

My glass was full and I was beginning to overflow into overwhelm. My writing, my social media engagement, my coaching, my studying, my work, my wedding…

As I sat down to think about my letter, there was a blockage of meaningful ideas and I noticed for the first time a sense of pressure rather than enjoyment.

I sat with this feeling and found myself reliving the past 8 months upto this moment. I realised what I needed to move forward was to acknowledge how I’d got here and the progress I’d made so far.

What followed was a short story of metaphors and lessons that I’d like to share with you.

Its me emptying my glass by pouring out the water as artistically as I can into written form.

It all started when I awakened to the responsibility I had for my own life.

Wandering in the Dark

I knew I’d taken a wrong turn and was lost in the woods. I continued forward into the darkness all while cursing it and letting it consume my happiness.

With each passing year I thought this will be it, this will be when the light appears. This will be when I can finally feel like I’m in the right place.

There were flickers but it never came.

It was useless, all I’d been doing was hoping my surroundings would change without me having to do anything about it.

I’d been wandering aimlessly in the dark, I had no idea where I was going.

The Elevation

Sometimes when we go on holiday and change our surroundings it shifts our minds into a different context. We are able to see our lives with greater clarity.

The way we feel about returning to our routine life after the holiday can be very informative.

Something inside me just said NO.

I can’t go back, I have to change my life now, I don’t want to live like that anymore. I’d never felt more conviction in my life than I did during that holiday.

I felt the conviction lift me out of the sphere of darkness I’d been living in. I could see that there was an expanse of glistening opportunity all around it.

As I descended back down I knew that I needed to choose a different direction and start moving with purpose.

I had got stuck in this place and it was my responsibility to get out.

The guiding inner Light

After getting a view of the bigger picture I was no longer consumed by the darkness. There was a light inside me. It was the same something that said NO to wandering in the dark woods.

It focused me on searching inside myself to figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life.

Life Coaching felt like a natural progression which utilised and built on my skills and experience as a GP. I’d often thought about it and multiple people had told me previously I’d be good at it.

Whilst I researched I could feel the inner glow strengthening, guiding me out of the darkness.

I learnt that anyone can become a Life Coach and offer these services, its not regulated by an official body. However it appears 70% of professional Life Coaches have taken an accredited course and this is rising year on year.

It seemed sensible therefore to undertake an accredited course. I wanted to maintain competitiveness in the market and learn how to structure coaching sessions according to professionals with years of experience and knowledge.

The Light House

Between the Life Coaching Diploma course work and my own self improvement reading I reached a new level of self awareness.

I realised that the barriers to my fulfilment were all an illusion. A very strong and intimidating one but still something that wasn’t real and could be overcome.

I was feeling great joy from helping people take control of their destiny. I couldn’t contain it, I needed to channel it into creative expression that could be shared.

Everything I’d experienced and learnt needed to be shared with others that were feeling stuck or had been through similar experiences.

I started learning about writing on the internet and creating social media content.

My self-consciousness had held me back for so long but I felt enough courage from my purpose that I knew I could do it. I had to do it.

I rose up and shone my light for others to see.

The Soul Mirror

I published my first newsletter 22^nd October and sent my first post on X on the 5^th November.

I fell in love with the writing process.

Writing allows me to:

• Express my thoughts creatively

• Come to realisations about myself

• Educate people in my own unique way

• Unearth buried emotional memories from my mind

Writing is like a mirror for my soul.

There’s no social filter, there’s no self consciousness its just my truth that comes out freely. The hidden depths of my soul which I can’t express through speech is reflected back to me on the page.

Writing allows me to see clearly what I think and who I am.

After the initial anxiety of sending out my first newsletter and social media posts, I started to relax. My audience was very small so I didn’t feel any pressure and could just enjoy the writing process in itself.

The Vanity Metric Virus

In order to reach more people who might value my content I had to remain active on X and engage with other accounts.

At first it felt like my feed was flooded with content creators who all want to sell themselves to other content creators.

Posts were all about how many followers they got or how much money they’ve made. They got loads of engagement with this.

I managed however to find a few creators to form genuine connections with and have really interesting conversations about mutual interests.

It still felt disheartening to see how much engagement the vanity metric posts got.

I had to ask myself. Am I here to Sell myself or Am I here to Be myself?

I realised everyone has different motivations, it just so happens that there are a lot of people who want to be content creation consultants or brand building specialists.

The aspiring growth gurus need to build large followings quickly to demonstrate their value to potential clients. It makes sense that their higher activity dominates the feed.

The Vanity Metric Virus is the influence of seeing high engagement from vanity metric posts which infects creators who’s primary service isn’t growth.

You either join in or miss out on rapid growth.

I learnt if you click ‘not interested in this post’ enough times the algorithm gets the message and you are essentially vaccinated against the vanity metric virus.

Navigating the Multitasks of Madness

We’ve arrived back in the present moment now.

I feel sad that I don’t play video games anymore but in a way I’ve managed to turn my own life into a video game.

I have so many things going on at the moment that I’ve had to mentally organise them into missions the same way a video game would.

I have:

• Primary missions

• Secondary missions

• Ongoing missions.

Primary Missions

Secondary Missions

Generating Subsistence income

• Working 2x weekly as GP

• Preparing GP revalidation portfolio (To stay licensed as a Doctor)

Ongoing Missions

• Exercising regularly: Daily Calisthenics, 3x weekly Yoga+/-Rockclimbing

• Mindfulness Meditation Practice

• Reading

• Cooking and eating healthy diet

Time is Relative

Time is a mysterious and powerful force, it can feel like its flying by at the speed of light and you’re just standing still struggling.

But if you can flash back like I’ve just done, time will slow down. You will realise that you’ve already overcome the hardest struggle of all. The struggle of starting and getting unstuck.

Imagine having to face the final boss on the first level of a video game. When you start your self improvement journey you are facing your ego.

Admitting a lack of fulfillment and commiting to action connecting you with your true self and purpose in life is defeating your ego- AKA the final boss.

Everything that comes after that is easy in comparison.

So look back at how far you’ve come from a motivational perspective. Doing this periodically will keep you locked into the current challenge with a renewed sense of confidence in your ability to overcome anything.

Just look at all the fears I’ve wrestled with and won so far:

• The fear of failure

• The fear of change

• The fear of speaking on X spaces

• The fear of engaging with new people

• The fear of social media content creation

• The fear of investing in myself and taking risks

• The fear of judgement from the world wide web

• The fear of building a business and selling my service

• The fear of expressing my honest thoughts and opinions

• The fear of being overwhelmed and not being able to cope

• The fear of standing out from the group and doing something different

Learning Points

• Don’t be a passenger in life. When you get stuck, its up to you to find your own way out.

• If you have the ability to arrange a Holiday or a short break in a different environment, do it.

• When you feel like crap, take time to observe your thoughts and figure out why. Distracting yourself from them temporarily will not solve the problem.

• Knowing what you don’t want is a good start, but you won’t feel fully motivated until you know what you do want.

• Having multiple tasks and multi-tasking are not the same. Focus on one at at time.

• Make a committment to self improvement, the increased self awareness that comes from this will help you find your purpose and give you the confidence to actively tackle life

Thats all for now

Lewis

P.S

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