lessons from the boardroom.
You know those days where you feel like a garbage person who can’t do anything right, has no marketable skills, and is destined to spent the rest of their life looking around at other people thinking “…should I know how to do that?”
Well, I got news for you. You’re not supposed to live your life constantly feeling like that. If you do, you may find yourself in the position I found myself in on Monday: crying during a meeting. In front of my boss. And many of my coworkers.
In order to understand how I got to that point, there’s a few things you need to know about me:
I only know how to live my life at 120 mph.
My biggest fear in life is hearing the words, “I’m disappointed in you.”
I love people. A lot.
So what do I do? I spread myself out so thin and try to be everything to everybody. I want to be everyone’s go-to for every task imaginable. Need a pep talk? I got you. Need a mechanic? I’m your gal. Want someone to jump up on stage and perform karaoke to “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”? I’m already there with the microphone.
(That one is a real, valid offer.)
I don’t know how not to live my life this way. I know it’s important to take time for myself, and there have been so many moments where I have been exhausted, stressed out, slightly under the weather, yet still driving to see my friends. I can’t remember the last time I said “no” to something for the sole purpose of just taking time for myself. It doesn’t even occur to me.
But I don’t run myself to the ground out of an overflow from the love that God has given me – I run myself into the ground because of fear. I’m afraid of disappointing someone. I’m afraid of not being able to do everything and I don’t know…be human?
This is how I found myself on Saturday planning my day to the minute. Church, friend, home for 5, different friends, home for 5, different friends. My life is an ever-running car engine.
As I was driving to this last destination, my thoughts weren’t about how tired I was (I almost used my toothpaste as eyeshadow that morning), how many things I needed to get done, or how good it was to see friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile the night before (which I did), my thoughts were focused on disappointing the friend I was running late for and the friends I didn’t talk to enough at the wedding.
And can I be honest? It’s exhausting.
My friends don’t ask me to be like this, and I’m sure they would actually prefer it if I wasn’t so concerned with their lives or what they thought of me at times. But it took me crying, in a meeting, in front of my bosses and my coworkers, to realize that relationships aren’t meant to be this way. God doesn’t put people in our lives only for us to crack under the pressure of trying to please them. We’re not meant to give ourselves until there’s nothing left to give.
God doesn’t put people in our lives only for us to crack under the pressure of trying to please them
I know to most of you this is a very basic, very normal guiding principle in your life, but to me this was revolutionary. It felt like God had spoken to me from the sky using Morgan Freeman’s voice.
I think God has probably been trying to teach me this lesson for awhile, but apparently I needed to have a melt down in front of my coworkers to really drive the point home. Neat!
As I walked out of the meeting with tears still spilling out of my eyes, my coworker pulled me aside and shared some sage wisdom with me: “Maddi, you’re not meant to be everything. Yes, you can do it, but nothing is going to get all of your work and therefore nothing is going to be as good as it can be. It’s not going to be done how you want it.”
And it’s true. If you give everything you have to as many different things as you can, you’re going to end up giving next to nothing to many different things.
So that’s it, friends. Take time for yourself and don’t live your life trying to please other people. Also maybe check how you’re doing emotionally before every meeting?
Because I feel like the entire universe has had a bad last few weeks, I’m going to share three things you can do to brighten life up a bit:
Call someone you love and tell them that they’re awesome.
Take time to literally smell some flowers.
Get the guac.