Fashion Business Owner Musings: We Have to Stop Telling Ourselves We’re Behind

In my entrepreneurial life, I used to feel behind in my work all the time.

Behind on emails, behind on projects, behind on tasks.

I felt like I was in a constant state of catch-up. Always looking at my to-do list and wondering what I could squeeze in here and there to check off the list.

But over time I realized how this was impacting me, so I worked to stop doing that to myself because it was a real problem. It was seriously stressing me out.

It was challenging to stop because, the more my business grew, the more opportunities appeared and the more tasks there were to complete.

The thing about feeling behind is that it comes with a giant side of guilt.

Feeling behind causes you to be in a constant state of worry and fretfulness that things won’t ever get done.

It often starts to impact the way you feel about your business and whether or not this ongoing feeling is really what you want all your days to be filled with.

But here’s the thing that I realized.

We’re doing this to ourselves.

We’re setting precedents that we’ll respond to emails within a few hours. We’re creating self-imposed deadlines that are actually unrealistic. We’re adding things to our to-do lists without any sort of prioritizing so that everything feels life-or-death important. And we’re feeding into our own hectic feelings.

Like it or not, we are responsible for our chicken-minus-head approach to business and therefore it is only ourselves we can look to in order to fix it.

We have to train ourselves not to feel behind. It’s a psychological thing, you know?

The more we feed ourselves our own lines of “I’m so behind!” the more frantic and weighed down we feel.

We have to remind ourselves of what really matters — our health, our relationships, our families – and just stop.

Because if we stop allowing ourselves to always feel behind, and instead just allow ourselves to remember what matters, the important things do actually get done. Believe it or not.

And once things important things in the business are getting done, then we feel less guilt for letting life in.

Remember, fashion business owners…

• Emails can sit in your inbox
• Tasks can wait until tomorrow.
• Your business will not implode if you allow other things into your life.

BUT. There is one caveat that I must address. This cannot be your excuse to put off that project. You still have to be disciplined and determined. You just need to give yourself a break sometimes.

You need to be realistic about the hours in your day, the days in your month, the months in your year, and the years in your life.

You need to be realistic about what takes priority — sometimes that’s family and health and just life, other times that’s business.

And then within the business, you need to be realistic and honest with yourself about what tasks are must-do and what tasks are would-be-nice.

Because what will you look back on and want to remember? The fact that you posted on Instagram every single day or that fact that you spent your life with the people you love while running a business that you truly loved building and growing?

Thought so.

Lots of love and encouragement,