Spread Too Thin

When icing a cake, it's important to use the right amount of frosting. If you try to spread it too thin it's just...well...not as good.

In this episode I'm talking about how this same principle applies to our lives too.

Check out the companion blog post to this episode on my website: https://www.joyfulicity.com/post/spread-too-thin

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

When decorating a cake, it's important to use the right amount of frosting. If you try to spread it too thin, it's just not as good. Have you ever noticed that the same holds true for life also? Welcome to the Joy Felicity Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Wakefield. When I was a young mom, I took a series of cake decorating classes. I wanted to know how to make cute, unique cakes for my kids' birthdays. It was really fun learning to make my own icing and create fancy things like roses and leaves. I spent hours working on what in many ways were art pieces. My favorite cake that I ever made was an aquarium cake. Imagine seaweed made from green fruit leather. You get the idea. It was a lot of work, but I loved the process. I don't have as much time for things like that anymore, but I still love cake. The frosting is where the magic happens, in my opinion. I always am going for the corner piece. Isn't it just the worst though, when the icing is spread too thin? First of all, it's hard to use, and the crumbs come through when you try to work with it. Much of the sweetness is lost, and there are so many cool designs that simply can't be done without enough frosting. It's so disappointing to cut into what looks like a beautiful scrumptious cake and realize that the icing is so sparse you can barely taste it. It almost feels like you've been tricked. Don't skimp on the icing, folks. I've noticed that the same holds true for my life. When my schedule gets too packed and I myself get spread too thin, too busy, too stressed, too overworked, too overwhelmed. It just doesn't go well. When I go in too many directions, it's hard to ever actually arrive anywhere worthwhile. I end up with only the crumbs to offer in so many areas, rather than more of substance in fewer. And so often the things that make life sweeter love, laughter, learning, are the things that get lost in the chaos. I find myself getting behind on the basics and the beauty around me is left unnoticed. If you only have enough icing for twelve cupcakes, it's no good to try to make it stretch to twenty-four and have thin, unattractive cupcakes. What's the point of having more if they aren't delicious? We need to carefully consider our schedules too. Make an honest assessment of how many resources we actually have financial, time, emotional, spiritual, and not to push beyond those. If you can find ways to make or find more icing, then by all means make more cupcakes. But until then, savor the ones that you can make without spreading yourself too thin. It's just not worth it. But enough about cupcakes. Let's talk about life. How do we get in this mess to start with, where we're running around like a crazy person and find ourselves spread way too thin? I think usually our intentions and motivations start from a pure place. We want people to like us, and so we do everything that they ask. We always say yes when really we don't have the time or the energy to do what we're doing, but we don't want to disappoint anyone. We want to be helpful. We want to be that go-to person for people. We want people to be impressed by us. We want to serve, we want to be a good person, a good mom, a good Christian, a good whatever. And so anytime anybody asks us if we can do something, we say yes. And then we give it our very best effort. But the problem is, it doesn't stay like that. No matter how pure your motivations are, if you're in something that you just don't have the strength or energy for, or you just don't want to be there, eventually the resentment's going to start to creep in. We end up running around from place to place. And instead of giving our best effort in fewer places, we're giving just a little bit and kind of doing the best we can while we try to keep our head above water in a lot of different places, but nobody's getting our best. Nothing's getting our best. A lot of us find this conflict between our work obligations and our home obligations, where we're trying to be the best employee that we can possibly be and do it all there. And then we're also trying to maybe be the best mom we can possibly be. And most of us find it very difficult to be the best in either of those places. And then, you know, if we're involved in a church or a club or some sort of organization, we're also trying to be the best there. And usually it's not surely from vanity. Sometimes it is that we want to be that person, you know, but but usually it's because we've been taught we have a work ethic. We've been taught and we've learned over time to always give our best effort. And so we apply that everywhere. Problem is you really can't. And before too long, we figure that out and we start to get burned out and we start to get maybe snippy with people around us. And all those things that we wanted to do start to erode because we're not fully present, because we're already thinking about the next place that we have to be, or the place we just came from and all the stressful things that happened there. And when we become this sort of stressed-out mess, we're not very pleasant to be around and we're not enjoying our lives. But what in the world do you do about it? Because your family does want your best. Your boss at work does want your best. And if you want to have any kind of a life outside of those things, everybody out there wants your best effort from you, especially when you're a very talented and capable person and people know that. There's an old phrase that I've heard before: if you want something done, give it to the busiest person because they're the go-to person and they're the ones that will do it. The problem is though, sometimes even if we're keeping it together on the surface and giving all these different areas everything, what's left for us just as a human being, when we've given everything away, we can feel a bit like a hollow shell or a performing seal that is doing all these things and we become human doings rather than human beings, and something feels lost, something feels wrong, and sometimes we can't even quite identify what it is. And it usually is coming because we're spread too thin. We're moving too fast. But what do we do about it? Because last time I checked, if I tried to say to my boss, hey, you know, I've decided I'm only going to give you 50% of my best because my family needs it, I probably would not have a job anymore. So what do we do in those cases? First of all, I've talked about this on previous podcasts, but take a good hard look at your schedule because there may be things that just simply have to be cut. For instance, me as a single mom, I can't be involved in as many activities. I see a lot of my friends that have a much, much more vibrant and active social life than I do. And that's just because at this moment in my life, with a lot of my kids still living at home and trying to be the provider in my home, there just isn't time. And there, remember, there will be a time in the future for those things. And sometimes it's a matter of prioritizing what matters most now versus what matters most at a different time of life, and just being a little bit patient and focusing on the things that are most important now and shelving some things for the future. Not everything. We want to still have a social life, but I have to be realistic about what I can do and what I can't do. And sometimes it takes just looking at the schedule, figuring out, cutting the things that don't matter to us at all, cutting out all of the unnecessary stuff, learning how to say no to the things that we don't even want to do. Because that's the worst, is when we're getting spread too thin on things that don't even matter, things that we don't even care about, that we don't even love. So just cutting those things out can be very, very helpful. All of the time wasters, it's pretty good to cut some of those out. And I don't mean relaxation. That's not a time waster. But you know what those things are for you. I know what they are for me. We all have our little things that we do that just waste our time that aren't worth anything really. Cutting those is very helpful, but even then, like even when we've gone through that whole process and have cut all of that, generally sometimes even still we can feel like hamsters on a wheel. In those cases, sometimes it's helpful to lower the expectations because sometimes the expectations that we're trying to achieve are entirely in our own minds. At this stage of my life, is it really necessary that my home looks like it's straight out of better homes and gardens? No, it's really not. There might come a time and place for that. And if I'm enjoying the process of decorating and doing all of those things, then fantastic. But if I'm doing it just so that other people will be impressed when they come in, maybe I need to let that expectation go. And there's a lot of areas of our life like that. You know, we get these ideas in our heads about what a good mom is supposed to look like, what a good partner is supposed to look like, what our relationship is supposed to be like, how our social life should be compared to all the people that we see on social media. All of those things, how much money we ought to be making, all of those standards that we set, sometimes it's important to really take a look at those. And I don't mean be a slacker, I don't mean not reach for big things. But a lot of it really doesn't matter. And no matter if you achieve it or not, if it doesn't matter, it's not going to bring you any peace or any satisfaction when you arrive at perfection, if you ever could, because perfection is an illusion. But even if somehow you managed it, if you achieve perfection at something that just doesn't have any value, who cares? It doesn't matter. So take a good hard look at some of the perfectionistic tendencies that maybe you're striving for and really evaluate what is important today? What is my most valuable use of my time today? And is reaching for that and the stress that it's causing and keeping me running and running, is that getting me anywhere that I actually want to go? Sometimes we can't fully ramp down our schedule. We just have a lot on our plates. And shout out to all the single moms here, because you know who you are. I'm one of you. There's a lot on your plate, and that's not going anywhere anytime soon. So, what do you do then when you just can't cut things out? You've cut everything you can, but you're still feeling just burned out and stressed out and tired. Just tired deep down in your soul. Have you ever felt like that? That you're exhausted when you first wake up in the morning just at the thought of facing the day ahead. Here's some recommendations that of things that have helped me because I do lead a very busy life. I have nine children. I'm a single mother. I work multiple jobs, and I am trying to be a podcaster and do my social media and all the different areas of my life. And I have friends that I like to spend time with, all of those things, and it keeps my schedule pretty packed. And I have honed it down, but there's still some days when I just look at my calendar and I feel exhausted. Or I used to. It's not so much anymore because I made some very simple, subtle shifts that have helped a great deal, and I'm going to share them with you. One, I picked one day a week. For me, it's Sunday, just because Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people. And so it's probably the easiest day in terms of most activities and work things. That's my day that I try to really slow down and keep my calendar as clear of obligations as possible. It doesn't mean that I can't go do things, but I mean those obligations. I made Sunday a day when I have very few of those. And that leaves me free and open to pursue joyful things on Sundays and the things that I want to do. And maybe fill in some gaps of some things that I'm behind on if I feel like it. Picking a day of the week, whatever day that is for you, that becomes a sacred day for you, a day of rest, because we all need that. We can't function without that. Taking a day off now and then. It doesn't have to be a fancy vacation, although that's really fun. But it doesn't have to be. It can be a day of rest at home. It can be a day of rest going places and doing things just around your own community by yourself or with people that you choose to spend time with. Just not a day when you're jam-packed full of obligatory activities. It has made all the difference to me to have one day of the week. When I pull that day up on my calendar, generally speaking, there's nothing on it. And it was a game changer for me when I absolutely committed to that and gave myself that gift. And I would highly recommend, no matter what you have to do to make that happen, that you find one day a week that you're able to do that. Again, it does not have to be Sunday. That's the day this worked out the best for me. The other thing that I can tell a massive difference in my life when I'm doing it and when I'm not is my morning routine. Starting my day rather than jumping right into all those things, you know, the emails. Don't open your phone, don't look at the emails because you'll get sucked down the rabbit hole of chasing after everybody else's wants and desires and needs of what they want you to do that day. And taking some time first thing in the morning to do your self-care, whatever that looks like for you. For me, it involves some stretches, maybe exercise, meditation, prayer, just some time to myself to read or whatever I feel like doing in the morning to just set my soul at peace before I jump into all of that. And taking maybe 30 minutes to quietly drink your coffee outside in the fresh air before you dive in, you will find that you have so much more energy when you do dive in. When the first thing you do is open your phone and jump into everybody else's obligations, it's like your day never slows down. It stays frantic. And it's very hard to find that time for self-care later once you jump in. I get up fairly early in the morning. So generally speaking, I'm able to do that before everybody else gets up. I usually get up around five or six in the morning. But even if you don't, those emails can wait. Once you've answered one and people know, okay, she's up, she's ready, she's here, then they're going to fire 10 more at you. But if you haven't opened the first one yet and answered the first one yet, most of the time people are pretty patient, maybe not until 11 or 12 in the afternoon. But if you take that time first thing in the morning, generally speaking, that's the best time of day to do that because it will just set your day off from a peaceful place. And you'll find that you actually get more done by taking that 30 minutes to yourself than you would have if you didn't. Schedule little breaks for yourself, even if they're just tiny little micro breaks where you get up and stretch and walk around a little bit. Just allow yourself to reset. When you keep your head down, just charging forward, constantly running, the exhaustion is real. And even if you're still moving, you're not behaving in any kind of efficient way. Studies have shown that exhausted driving is just as dangerous or more so as drunk driving. So that's pretty significant to bear in mind. You're not doing anybody any good to wear yourself out. So take those little micro breaks. They can take 15 seconds, but just to kind of shake it off and give yourself a small little reset. I have felt spread a little bit too thin recently with my move. I've I've been moving state to state. I've got a whole house to unpack, but I took some time off today and I went to the beach. And I'll tell you what, I feel so energized that I think I'm going to be able to get more done tomorrow than if I had worked all day today and all day tomorrow. I think I'll get more done from a refreshed, reset place than I would have if I hadn't given myself that chance to remember why I'm doing what I'm doing. I came down here for one reason so that I'd be near the beach. If I never go to the beach, what did I do it for? Spend time with your family. Spend time with your friends. Remind yourself on a regular basis about your why. What are you doing it all for? Because I think that that's something we find ourselves in a lot in this world, that we're running around and we're running around serving people behind the scenes. But sometimes we're missing the very things that we're doing it for. For instance, you know, we're working so many hours to try to provide for our families financially and buy this for them and make this opportunity possible for them, that we're not spending any time with them. And honestly, at the end of their lives, your kids are gonna remember the time you spent with them, not the things you bought them. And that's so hard to remember because families can be demanding. They want what they want. But that is the hard truth of the matter. If you just found out, for instance, that you only had one year to live, or at the end of your life, you're in your 90s looking back, what's gonna matter to you then? And what kind of priority are you putting on those things now? Because what you're doing now is what's gonna impact you then. So the life you're looking back on when you're in your 90s, guess what? That's the life you're living right now. That's what you'll be looking back on. So, what do you want that view to look like when you get there? And focus your attention on those things. We still have to meet our obligations a hundred percent. But if we don't truly live our lives in the process, then what is the point? Just like the cupcakes, it does no good to have more if more isn't any good. So take care of yourself. Seek for joy, seek for relationships and love, and let the details take care of themselves. But take breaks so you're not spread too thin. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you for joining me today on the Joy Felicity Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share, and come follow me on all major social media sites at JoyFelicity or on my website, joyfelicity.com. You can follow the link in the description for this episode to all of the places that we can connect. Have a great day, everybody, and remember dare to dream, plan to play, live to learn.