How to get things done without the suffering

I could have written the tweet above.

After years of personal development work, I've realized something about how I show up to my work.

It's not empowering.

It’s a compulsion.

A subtle and constant obligation. To work on all my unfinished projects. And oh boy, do I have a lot of them.

There's the private newsletter. This public newsletter. My website. The podcast I've been working on for the last few months. A personal AI app. Planning for travel next summer. An AI companion for clients. My Substack and the community for leaders doing transformational work. And this doesn't even count all the writing projects I want to undertake.

Phew.

There's a lot I want to accomplish. I'm also clear that I want to do all of them.

The reality, though: Even if I magically create the time, I have limited mental energy in a day to get some of this done, along with running a full-time coaching business and being a parent to a cute little 6-year-old tornado.

Surprisingly (and mayyybe not-so-surprisingly), this is precisely how I felt when I was a 9-to-5 employee five years ago; the content of my to-do lists was just different.

There are many solutions to this never-ending puzzle of getting things done. I'm sure you can think of many as you're reading this. Get organized. Find the right system. Plan better. Prioritize. Reflect on what's important. Etc etc.

But, the problem is not in my systems.

The problem lies in the experience of it all. And whatever creates the said experience.

As we grow up, we create stories to explain the events around us—to respond, to survive, to feel safe, and to belong to our family and friend groups. The basic survival fear automatically creates these stories, and we continue to live them out.

My survival fear convinces me of a few things on an hourly basis:

1. If I don't check off my to-do lists, I'll never reach my goals. Hence, I'll never reach the happiness and contentment I want.
2. I need to put my head down and just DO THE DAMN WORK (yes, I let my inner-voice yell at me). You never get anything if you don't work for it, right?
3. If I don't finish what I start, I'm an irresponsible hypocritical escapist, and God forbid anybody should see me as THAT person.

All of these are old stories that my fear loves to create, based on my past programming (family, culture, peers, genetics... it doesn't matter). It has served me well in the past and helped me reach my current, fairly comfortable position in life, with a decent business, a quiet suburban life, and close relationships. It's made me a pretty reliable person to those around me. Give Mounica any task, and you can relax, she'll finish it all.

There's a cost to living from these stories, though:

1. The constant guilt, compulsiveness, and hyper-vigilance of making sure everything is done.
2. A feeling of living on the edge with overwhelm, pressure, and urgency. I have varying degrees of tick-off responses ready from this edge when someone tries to give me a task. Those responses depend on the person in question.
3. I make my dreams smaller because I can only do so much, and everything checked off is pretty significant. That trip to Italy? Never going to happen because it's too much to plan with a kid. Creating a group cohort? Nope. Too much work.
4. I train everyone around me to assume I'm dependable, self-reliant, and then after enough time of that, I resent them for never 'doing' as much as I do. Oh, and even better, being resentful of them for leaving me alone to handle everything.

Living such a small, controlled life means lacking real honesty, integrity, and depth of connection in my relationships, where people have to walk on eggshells around me.

The worst part is that living in those fear stories and getting everything done is right in my comfort zone. I don't have to commit to the few big things that make a difference. I don't have to sit with all the emotions I've tucked away to ensure everybody is happy with me all the time.

(In case you missed it, it's practically impossible to control people around you into happiness.)

I'm done with that experience.

I want my life to be filled with Joy, Connection, and Celebration. And making sure my to-do lists are checked off is probably not going to get me that life.

As I plan my week ahead, the same stories keep resurfacing.

"I didn't finish all those projects, so how dare I trust myself to create anything this week!"

The easiest part is to buy into those stories, pick up my half-finished projects, and grind through them.

The tougher practice is to let those stories be, and make choices from a place of Joy, Connection, and Celebration. The even tougher part is to trust myself as someone who can create. Creation comes to me when I set my intention, regardless of what my fear tells me. I do get a lot done. I do move projects. I do come up with solutions within limitations. That's all natural, and I can trust that part of me, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

An inquiry I use today:

What would I do from Joy?

I suspect that as I practice sitting with it, my week will be much more Joyful than usual, regardless of what gets done. I also suspect that I'll even pick one of those half-finished projects and approach it with the juicy, magical excitement of starting something new, rather than the heavy guilt of how it went in the past.

I might also examine the entire cycle of my creative process, learn from it, and do something different in the moments when I stop myself.

All of the above is available if I choose to set aside my survival fear stories.

I wish you the same possibility of an examined and joyful life, dear high-achieving and responsible reader.

Sit with this truth: There's always more to do in life. One choice is to suffer and let that 'more' weigh us down.

Here’s a better one.

Celebrate the life we have every single day as we move towards our big dreams. And create whatever is needed to experience the celebration.