Episode 323_ _I Feel Behind_ – And What To Do About It.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
Many years ago. I would state it like a fact. It would be equal to it’s snowing outside. That’s a tree I’m behind. They were all just facts. That is also where I would typically end.
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Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy’s goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.
Speaker1:
Hi, I’m Stacy Westfall and I’m here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In the last few weeks, the feeling of behind keeps surfacing, so I’ve decided it must be in the air, so it deserves to be on the podcast. Most recently, I had a student reach out and share that for some reason, episode 293 of my podcast popped up on her feed and she wrote to me to say, I sure needed to hear that one again. It was all about feeling behind, which is exactly how I feel. You gave some excellent advice about how to conquer feeling behind. This was an interesting thing for me to read because I had recently stated to my husband, Jesse, I feel so behind. See, I’m recording this in the beginning of January. Although the example I’m going to use later is going to show that this is not something that just belongs at the beginning of the year. I have noticed, however, that I do tend to say out loud within the first week or so of January. I feel behind. I caught myself saying it again this year and I remember saying it last year. The good news is I have a have a solution for it that I’m going to share with you in a little bit. But the first thing that I want you to do, if this is happening to you, is notice. Are you thinking I feel behind? Are you feeling in your body that you feel behind or are you saying it out loud? Which do you notice first? For me, I usually notice it physically first or in my habits.
Speaker1:
I notice that I start feeling tense. At this point I haven’t identified it yet, but I start feeling tense. And I also will start noticing that I feel tense around certain events. So for me, that might be walking into my office. It’s a lot of times it’s at the beginning of something new. So the new year or a new class that I signed up for, or both. Which explains why this happens so frequently for me in January. Because in January it’s the beginning of a new year. And in particular for this year, I’m setting new goals with new horses in the new year. So when I start noticing that physical feeling of tension, I can usually at this point identify it with that idea that I’m feeling behind. And this is interesting because if you go back and listen to that episode that I just referenced, it was recorded in June and June. If you’ve been tracking this on the podcast is another one of those yearly evaluation points. So this feeling of being behind for me comes up around certain things. Now everyone’s going to be different. For me, I notice the physical symptoms first without recognizing what it’s connected to. And then I will usually find the thought either while journaling or frequently while talking with my husband, Jesse.
Speaker1:
I don’t know about you, but this is something that I actually do if you’ve ever just simply declared, I feel so behind. Like out of nowhere you’re making coffee and you just say, I feel so behind. Then you’re in good company because that’s usually how it happens for me when I start feeling that tension at this point, I’ve done this enough that that will start me into journaling to try to figure out why, and I can find the idea that I’m behind. Or if I blurted out to Jesse, then I also find it. The next thing to notice is your reaction or response when you catch yourself thinking this way. That means right after you blurt out, I feel so behind, what do you do with it? For me, that has changed over the years. Many years ago I would state it like a fact. It would be equal to it’s snowing outside. That’s a tree I’m behind. They were all just facts. That is also where I would typically end. I would feel really heavy, like I was carrying a really heavy load, but I would just report that I feel behind and leave it at that. And I pretty much lived with that feeling year round, because even if I caught up in one area, I always felt like I was behind somewhere else. But if I jump ahead to now, now my response is completely different. The last two years in a row, I remember when I said it’s January 6th and I feel behind.
Speaker1:
I remember chuckling a little bit when I said it to Jessie. And the reason I’m able to have that laugh or that chuckle or that playfulness in my voice. It’s January 6th and I feel behind. I still feel the physical symptoms of truly that heaviness that comes with it. But because I know how to get relief the minute I identify it, especially when I phrase it like it’s January 6th and I feel behind. This makes me laugh because it’s me identifying that I’m going into a cycle that I actually have a solution for. But before I go there, pause. I want you to answer these questions as fast as you can in your head. No one else is going to know the answer. Just grab the first answer that comes into your mind. How often do you feel behind? What does it feel like to be behind? Can you find relief from that feeling, or can you put down that heavy load? Okay, I think about half or less of you did that. So let’s go through it one more time. This time I’m going to give you options to choose. That way, if you feel a little stuck, you can grab whichever one of these options feels more true to you. How often do you feel behind? Once in a while. Weekly. Daily. What does it feel like to be behind? Use either a physical sensation, like heavy or tired, or a feeling or phrase like overwhelmed or out of control.
Speaker1:
Stressed. Incompetent. Annoyed. Pressured. Can you find relief or put down that load? Is your answer? No. It’s with me daily. Yes, for at least a day or two. Yes. Whenever I realize I’m headed down this path. I can choose to stop. Now let’s talk about the biggest challenge that I see when declaring I’m behind. Typically, whether I’m coaching someone on this or whether it’s myself, the biggest challenge I see is not being clear enough with what you need to do. I know it’s not very fancy, but it really is the key. When my brain declares on January Sixth. I feel behind my response now is tell me everything. I run and grab a piece of paper and I want to write it all down. Now the only challenge here is that my brain, I know this about myself, often freezes like a deer in headlights when I actually ask this. So it goes from this feeling of a hamster in a wheel. So behind desire to rush to frozen like a deer in the headlights when I actually say, okay, let’s write all of this down. And that’s actually the reason why I have that little chuckle in my voice when I realize what’s going on. The first step is to grab something to write with and get it all out. All of it. The laundry, ordering, propane, grocery shopping, scheduling the vet, completing that print off that Stacy Westfall gave you last week.
Speaker1:
That deadline you have at work. The exercise program you wanted to start. The email you’ve been putting off. Responding to all of it. It should be messy and it should all be in writing. No editing. Now, if your mind is like mine and freezes when directly asked, okay, let’s write it all down. I have a solution for that too. Just repeat writing things down every time your brain offers you that you feel behind. Sometimes I do this in my notes on my phone. Other times I do it on physical paper. Even back when I was first starting this, I could get everything out of my head inside of a week. Now it takes me just a few days, and I actually realize now why it takes me a few days. It’s because I mostly have to be in a certain category, like in the barn, or in the office or in the kitchen, in order to find all those hidden thoughts about the things that I’m behind on. This process is a little bit like cleaning out your tack room, or your horse trailer, or your closet. It’s a little scary at times. I just found dog treats in my heaviest winter jacket from last year, and I’m also guilty of finding old tissues, and I can’t believe I’m telling you that. But it’s true. And you’re going to have thoughts like that dirty old moldy thoughts.
Speaker1:
Get them all out on paper without judgment. Judgment sounds like when you go to write it down and you physically freeze before you write it on the paper, because you’re trying to decide whether or not to write it on the paper. The answer is, write it on the paper. You just found something like my dirty tissue. And let me rephrase that. You’re probably going to be judging them as you write them down. Just like I’m judging my dirty tissue right now, but just write it down. Here’s an example. If you’ve been thinking about something that you’ve been putting off and you go to write it down, but you think I’m so mad that I put that off, I’m just going to go return the call, return that email, whatever it is, pause long enough to set a timer. Whatever you choose. 15 minutes, 45 minutes and finish your download. Finish writing down everything you can think of. Because that call or email or whatever it is you just uncovered, like my year old tissues, is going to be there an hour later. You’ve already put it off this long. Another hour won’t make a big difference. And what will make a big difference is that you will be done emptying out your brain, at least for today. And you, even more importantly, will have resisted the urge to jump away from one task to another. That right there is a skill you need in order to train your horse.
Speaker1:
Staying on task when your mind finds an amazing reason to pull you somewhere else. That’s a huge part of the problem of feeling behind. Stay on task. I can’t tell you how many writers report changing what they plan to do mid-ride because they had a different idea. Mid-ride. Now, this is not the same as a rider saying I noticed what was happening and I changed my plan to better support my horse. I’m in favor of that. The one that comes up is I started working on blank and then I decided my horse was bored. So I went and did something else that has more red flags around the idea of jumping off topic. The first place to learn the skill of practicing sticking with a plan is all by yourself, and getting clear on what to do for your next step is a huge part of that. But equally important is breaking things into small, doable chunks. I learned a lot of these skills in a year long experiment that I did several years ago. That involved deciding ahead of time everything I would do for the week. That meant that I would write everything down that I wanted to do, and then I had to put it on my calendar with an estimate of how long it was going to take, and I had to evaluate at the end of end of each day and at the end of each week. And I spent months failing at this every Monday, deciding what I was going to do every Friday.
Speaker1:
Coming up short. I can be a bit of a slow learner at times. I’m not kidding you. It took me months to figure this out. And here’s what I discovered. I’m the one causing myself to be behind. Sure, there are actual factual things that need to get done. The horses need to be fed, the bills need to be paid. But the process of putting everything in writing, choosing what to do and what not to do, it was eye opening for me. This next thing I’m going to tell you is a terrible example, but it’s the strongest one I have, and I’ll tell you why I’m sharing it with you. Many years ago, before this time tracking experiment, when Jesse and I trained horses full time and had three little kids. We were factually working from before dawn to well past dusk, and I would have absolutely sworn there was no way we could slow down or stop. And then the phone rang and there had been an accident, and my dad was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. And you know what we did? We stopped and a barn full of horses got taken care of. And a full list of clients were somehow informed. And even in the middle of all that was going on surrounding that. I remember somewhere on the road between Ohio and Maine driving all night.
Speaker1:
I remember thinking how wrong I had been, about how important everything was. So many things that felt absolutely Lutely necessary were instantly not. And I know it’s extreme, but on some level, that feeling, that light bulb moment, that realization in the middle of the night on the road, I felt it in my body. Now, don’t get me wrong. When we came back, we went right back into the same schedule. But a decade later, when I committed to figuring out how to manage my time and everything on my list felt so important. When I had that, everything is so important. Nothing can be put down feeling. That’s when I was instantly transported back to that moment on the road, when I realized how wrong I had been. That for me was a little crack in my thinking, and I realized that my brain wasn’t telling me the truth. And from that moment on, every week when my brain told me everything on my list was so important and I had to get it all done, I gently reminded it. Actually, I could put all of it down and walk away today if I needed to. This is not a threat, it’s just a recentering. Now, I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that the idea of feeling behind has come up several times, and I was talking to a different student today, one that I’ve coached for several years, and we were discussing her goals for 2025. As I outlined different options that I saw for her, I felt called to remind her, you know, there’s this option, but there’s also this option.
Speaker1:
And just because it isn’t as shiny or big as the other one doesn’t actually mean it’s any less. Sometimes choosing less is exactly what we need. But when you live in a culture that embraces hustling and climbing invisible ladders, choosing to go against that might not be your first thought. I’ll close with this. If you catch yourself saying, I feel behind. Remember, this is actually an invitation to get clear. Clear about what exactly you’re behind on and clear about what you’re choosing and why. Your first sign might be that tension that you’re carrying in your body. Or maybe you notice you can’t stay focused on one thing. And while running to the barn might sound like the perfect escape, it was my go to for many years. It won’t be long before you notice these patterns showing up there too, even if it’s in subtle ways. Clean out your pockets. Empty your brain. Write it all down. Stay on task for short periods. I use timers, pause to reevaluate, and most importantly, give yourself permission to choose what truly matters to you. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is choose less. Not because you can’t do more, but because you’re clear about what really matters. That’s what I have for you this week. Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you again in the next episode.
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If you enjoy listening to Stacy’s podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.
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