brain blog – Mel Reviews Her Books

It can be hard in these busy, bustling lives of ours to not feel as if we have too much on our plates. For me personally, I choose to juggle (key word here is choose – we’re usually in control of how much we take on), full time work, recreational sport, book blogging and reviewing, interviewing authors, developing a book festival and making time for friends & family.

I’m not here to boast or brag – I don’t want your empathy as I’ve said, it’s a choice I make – but I’m explaining this to give context in how try to use delegation in my life.

At this stage of my life, I choose to delegate; developing the book festival and friend & family time.

I delegate festival time by having found the most wonderful people who share it’s passion. These people have formed our strong and involved committee, whom each have a plate the size of mine, if not larger. But the key is we choose to delegate areas in which each members skills are going to excel. For example, I love communicating with others. So my areas of excelling include email correspondence, finding local community members to support us, attending networking events and organising our meetings + some more on the creative side of things. Therefore, anything that tends to fall outside of this scope, we discuss who will best suit the task. This is because somebody else in the room will find a task related to their skillset a heck of a lot easier than I, and will have the capacity to have this said task knocked over in 2 hours, compared to my 6. That my friends, is delegation at work.

With my friend & family time, I also choose to delegate. I generally choose to dedicate my Sundays spending quality time with those I value and who bring value to my life in return. You will see online that I tend to do my baking of cakes, biscuits, roasts and entertaining meals on a Sunday. This is because I delegate my other ‘need-to-do’ tasks throughout the week, leaving my Sunday for visitors. I think this comes from growing up and always dedicating time as a family to a Sunday night dinner together. As Italians, it was always pasta on a Sunday – and funnily enough, I still do that now at times. I personally choose a Sunday because it is typically known as our day of rest, but mentally for me, it’s also a ‘fill-my-cup’ day before heading back into the Monday to Friday grind.

I instantly resonated with this post saying the simple 4 words of “Don’t carry it all”, because I’ve had times in my life where delegation wasn’t my strong suit. And don’t get me wrong, as someone who has strong perfectionist traits, this can be extremely hard to work on and I do slip up – it’s only natural and normal. But choosing to have a healthy system of delegation in your life is something I would encourage you to try. And lastly, find those people who are in your corner and WILL cheer you on and work around your choices – they are your people!

I find it challenging to convince my brain sometimes that I am the best person for the job. Self-doubt can weigh in on decision making in my life far too heavily at times.

Let’s talk an example; recently, I decided to expose myself to a new opportunity/challenge and perspective. At the time of this challenge taking place, my thought patterns when a little like this … “YES! I can do this.”, “I tick all the boxes.”, “I have the ability to make this fit in my life and thrive.”. All great and probably truthful things, correct?

However, a day or so after being in that positive frame of mind, performing at a happiness rate and with confidence that is a true part of myself, I began to doubt my ability. Thinking thoughts of; “Maybe I won’t be good enough”, “I probably wouldn’t be the right fit.”, “What if I can’t handle it?”, “Surely, there is someone better than me to do this”. These overpowering negative thoughts tend to hold more traction in the human brain than the positive thoughts. Why do you think that is?

For me, I think the negative thoughts can trigger that overthinking part of my brain where hypothetical downfall is more and more inevitable. The hardest part is challenging those thoughts and proving to yourself why they are not true.

Therefore, I am attempting to change:

“Maybe I won’t be good enough” INTO “I am good enough and capable as I have succeeded in this task or identical before in X,Y,Z.”

“I probably won’t be the right fit” INTO “Why should I try and fit when maybe what this experience is asking me to do is be myself and that in fact might be the perfect fit.”

“What if I can’t handle it?” INTO “This experience may be hard at first but if I am strong enough to ask for help when I need it, learn from those with more experience and take on valid feedback, I most likely will be able to handle it.”

“Surely, there is someone better than me to do this” INTO “I am capable and strong. I am intelligent and have an abundance of experience in preparation for this challenge. I could in fact BE the BEST person for this.”

I think a lot of these affirmations are in fact transferable to many experience and aspects of life. As I can only speak from my own experiences, I have learnt that self-doubt will stop my personal self growth if I do not challenge it and remove it from my thought patterns. Growing is part of life and changing paths is also part of life. I guess that is just some of life’s beauty, we manifest what we wish to get out of this life and self-doubt is not on my list people!