Just keep showing up, mis amigos. Sigue apareciéndote, my friends.

Do you feel like you're failing? Like you're not doing "good enough"?

This week, I've been in a state of overwhelm. Overwhelm comes when you feel like you have to do everything right now - when everything on your to-do list seems equally important, and equally urgent. The inability to clearly prioritize what you need to take action on causes paralysis, and that's when we get stuck in the overwhelm.

Overwhelm is a common struggle for me. If I have free time, I tend to fill it, and I am, as my husband says, a complete optimist about time - how long something will take me, how many things I can fit into a day, and how little downtime I might need in between. I've learned through a lot of coaching and mindset work how to better manage the stress and mental side of overwhelm, but the fact remains that I've consistently had more things on my to-do list for the past several days now than I can feasibly get done in a day while also eating, sleeping, and otherwise being human.

One common escape that tempts me every time I'm in a state of overwhelm is to just check out. Feeling like I can't get everything done makes it easier to justify getting nothing done, instead. "If it wasn't going to all get done anyway..." There's also a certain mental relief to embracing failure: you magically go from having to get everything done to not having to do anything.

Of course, you and I both know the faultiness of that kind of logic. It does, however, contain a certain key: in order to get out of overwhelm, and in order to step away from embracing failure, we need a mental shift.

In order to get out of overwhelm, and in order to step away from embracing failure, we need a mental shift.

One, we need to let go of what's already happened. If you already feel like you've been failing, you are more likely to project that failure into the future and talk yourself into giving up. This is not necessarily true. The truth is that you get to re-start clean and fresh every day, every minute, as long as you give yourself permission to mentally re-set.

Second, we need to reframe what failure and success look like. Success does not look like perfection. Success looks like showing up to the best of your ability, period. Your best is going to look different based on your reality, how you're feeling, what else you're dealing with, and all the factors within and without of your control affecting you.

Your best is very rarely going to look like it would in an ideal world. You are not living in an ideal world. You are living in reality. Just show up to the best of your ability.

So let's reframe failure: what if the ONLY way you could fail was to not show up? To stop showing up, and never show up again? In other words, to give up? What if the only requirement for success, then, was to show up?

Your future failure or success all comes down to this: Are you going to keep showing up?

I'm not going to get the whole to-do list done in one day. Heck, I've done my live episodes of Spanish SATURDAY on Monday twice in a row, now. But that's what my best looks like right now, and I'm showing up.

Keep showing up, mis amigos. It may not be perfect, but the only way to fail is to stop showing up. You got this.

Your life & language coach,

Does showing up for yourself and your goals look like hiring a coach? I'm here for you, in your life & language goals. En inglés o español, incluso si esto es la meta. Schedule a free consult with me today and show up for you!

Ready to let go of your failure stories? Just show up for my latest episode of #SpanishSaturday.

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