What’s Keeping You Awake? Are you a 3am Worrier?

I’ve been a worrier my whole life. Some call it a “Type A Personality”. Some say “Worrywart” or “High Strung”. I don’t know what I’d call it.

This last year has changed that mindset for sure. I was always a bit of a conundrum anyway. While part of me would worry about the worst-case scenario; I was still the eternal optimist most of the time.

I used to hate to be told “no” and I would usually try to find a way around any obstacle. I just knew there was a way to get it done!

Until I couldn’t.

Then I was lying in bed trying to sleep. Trying not to think about it. Counting…counting prime numbers…counting backward…counting by 3’s…by 4’s…….Trying to stop thinking about how much there is to do. Trying to map out how I was going to solve a problem. Mapping out when I would to have time to do x, y and z. Because I was hard-pressed to do a, b and c.   

So what changed?

I still am an optimist. And with good reason. I’ve given up the endless worry. In fact, when things go wrong or break, I actually love the process of figuring out what happened and being able to fix it. 

I knew I needed to delegate some tasks. But which ones? And to whom? I was so afraid it wouldn’t get done – or wouldn’t get done right; or on time.

But I knew I couldn’t continue to do everything for everybody all the time.

Are you the same? 

Here are some of the things I delegated or just changed:

• I love my work. But I needed to have a day off. So Sunday is officially a no-work day.
• I do laundry on Saturday. Unless there’s some kind of emergency, like I really need a certain article of clothing, I don’t do laundry during the week.
• I started getting _Factor by Hello Fresh. Not because I’m on a diet (though it can help with that), but because I didn’t want to cook or clean. (They didn’t pay me to say that, LOL)
• Take a chance and let someone else do the work. If a client is looking for accounting, I have a friend that I refer them to.
• If a client needs more hours than I have available, I have friends to refer them to.
• I went back to audible books for some of my reading. This way, I can do mindless tasks like cleaning or driving while I listen.

So here it is in a super-meaningful nutshell: I stopped doing anything that was overwhelming or that I really didn’t have the desire to do (and that I didn’t have to do).

The result is that I can sleep like a baby! 

I’m happy to help you with some of the office tasks that are taking a lot of your time and keeping you up at night.

So what’s keeping you awake? Are you ready to find ways to hand some of it off?