Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done pdfdrive com

Say No to Shame
More than likely, you’ve spent most of your life choosing to do more than is
possible and beating yourself up for not being able to keep up.
“I should be able to handle all of this. Yes, I’ve added a new goal to my life
that I care about. Yes, I’m trying to put a new daily action into an already
crowded calendar, but I should be able to handle it all. Yes, I moved to Atlanta
to take care of my ill father-in-law, but I should be able to carry on like nothing
has changed.”
Our attempts to do too much feel noble and honorable. Look at us, tirelessly
working toward burnout, reducing the quality of everything because we insisted
we can do everything. We can share that approach with honor on Instagram.
That’s the grind. That’s the hustle.
We often do this because we’ve rolled forward some bad habit we learned in
high school. You could pull off an all-nighter when the final product was a ten-
page essay on the effects of trade restrictions during the Civil War. It’s a little

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page essay on the effects of trade restrictions during the Civil War. It’s a little
harder to cram for something like your quarterly sales numbers or your weight.
Eating a week’s worth of kale in a single night because you’re trying to get back
on track with a diet is a bad plan.
At some point this catches up with you. You miss a flight and the whole
fragile system falls apart. A soccer practice runs late and the plan collapses. One
meeting takes too long and that dominoes into the rest of your day. A rotund
family of groundhogs moves into your yard because the height of the grass
provides tactical ground cover from neighboring red-tailed hawks.
Something fails, and in that moment we feel shame.
We don’t pull grace out of our pocket and cut ourselves slack. No, on the
contrary, most people quit right there. Not just the extra thing that proved to be
too much—we give up on the whole goal.
That’s the truly terrible part of trying too much. You don’t just drop the
bonus item and carry on with your goal. You drop every ball you’re juggling
when one gets out of sync, like our would-be Ironman participant from the last
chapter.
When you can’t do it all, you feel ashamed and give up.
Or you pick a strategy and decide in advance what things you’re going to
bomb.
When you choose in advance what those things will be, you remove the sting
of shame. The surprise effect of shame pointing out something you’re bad at is
removed. Instead of reacting in shock at some ball you’ve dropped, you get to
say, “Oh, that ball I put down on purpose before the game even started? Thanks
for noticing!”
That’s why Shonda Rhimes, the creator of popular shows like Grey’s
Anatomy and Scandal, doesn’t worry about what she can’t get done. When Fast
Company asked her what she lets slide, she said, “Right now, I don’t feel guilty
that I’m not working out. I’ll feel guilty about it at another time.” When she’s in
the middle of running a show, actual running falls by the wayside temporarily.
Shonda said no to shame, and she could do that because she had a strategy.
She had decided what she could bomb, and perfectionism couldn’t torment her
about missing the gym anymore.