Last week, I wrote about how we need to talk about some big emotions–guilt and shame–that come up when we start to shift out of our overing patterns. Many of us feel guilty as we start to establish boundaries and center ourselves in our own lives.

Shame is connected to overing, too. For many people I work with, that shame they feel when setting boundaries and prioritizing themselves bubbles up out of the belief that they don’t deserve that level of care and consideration. I’ve felt this myself!

The more you practice living out your inner wisdom, the more you continue to recharge your batteries and get out of overing.

But we need to talk about some big emotions - guilt and shame (within us and from others) that get triggered when we start to make shifts in our lives.

Connecting into your inner wisdom (that talks to you in embodied ways) allows you to get clear on what boundaries are needed and how to live your boundaries.

Being embodied means knowing your body's different signals and what those signals feel like physically. When your inner wisdom talks to you in an embodied way, you feel physical sensations in your body.

Here’s what a client said about overcommitment and overscheduling too many priorities that really hit me in my core:  “I genuinely thought I could do all these.”

Ouch. Me too, friend, me too. It’s taken me a long time to (un)(re)learn myself. Unweaving imposterism myths of academia. Unlearning hyperproductivity of toxic capitalism. Unfucking my mindset from sexist notions of superwoman/supermom. Separating my worthiness out from faux praise and BS rewards - like more responsibility but no pay increase - that came when I overed.

We let our time and energy be squandered by others and through overing–until we create boundaries. That means you’re complicit in your own overing until you create boundaries.

To interrupt these cycles, you need to create timeouts from overing with value-aligned boundaries. I have a coaching client who learned to place colleagues in a texting “time out” (phone silencing) when they violate the boundary to not text her personal cell phone about work during or after work hours. She made sure they knew of multiple other opportunities to contact her in-person during work hours, via office phones, or online work platforms.

Everything we do - all of our actions - requires energy.

Simple enough of a concept, right? But what does it mean to practice protecting, managing, and activating our energy? That might feel much more difficult to figure out these days.

I wish energy management was a course taught. If you’re in service to others, if you care about making life better, if you want to help or fix or change, chances are you are generous and giving of your time and energy.

Giving away your energy without regular recharging is a critical contributor to the overing pattern.

Educators, professionals, folks with kids, near everyone - we are all under what one of my Overing workshop participants coined the “tyranny of the academic calendar”. It’s the promise of… just hold on until spring break, just get to summer, just get through the week. We find ourselves consistently just holding on until (fill in the blank) – week after week, month after month, year after year. But the break never really comes because there’s always something else.

This is how Overing patterns become habitual and so deeply ingrained in us that we can’t imagine another way. Overing causes you to shift into overdrive. And overdrive causes more overing. It’s a vicious cycle.

You have worth beyond production. Culture and capitalism will tell you otherwise. And. You can choose to shift out of external achieving/validation and center yourself back in your life. You can slow down, feel more purpose and joy so that you take aligned action that cultivates a meaningful impact in the world.

The shift out of overing can create what one client described as finding “liberation within the system.”

We all have realities and responsibilities. And you also can take back your power and re-center yourself in your own life.

“You’re book smart but you lack common sense.”

Anyone else heard or been told a version of this line? 

Well, welcome to the world of my inner stories and how this line popped into my brain so fucking loud a couple days after crashing my bike and my face on the back of a camper van. 

Mind you, no one said this to me. I yelled it at myself as I was beating myself up emotionally. Ouch.

Are you over-ing, especially in your career arena?
Are you someone who over-does, over-commits, over-functions?
Are you ready to stop romanticizing work as your main identity?
Over-ing has REAL health consequences and keeps you out of living your true ambition of impact and goodness in the world. This is one of the messages of don’t be 2016 me.

Neuroscience shows that we as humans can adapt to stress (physical and mental) and grow from that stress, but only when paired with real restorative rest - which is the opposite for many folks on this side of the pandemic or even for work hustle culture generally. I see rest as a critical element of living intentionally and mindfully.

Taking on other’s work as a Rescuer gave me a temporary rush of purpose and service followed by lots of guilt, worry, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. What it never did was give them the tools to engage in more effective behaviors, or change how they worked or prioritized tasks, or even how to make more value aligned choices.