How You Handle Your Time Affects Your Mental Health
This one can be a real doozy...how you handle your schedule, time, deadlines, and overall business structure impacts your mental health on many levels. It turns out that the ways in which we manage our business and personal time has extreme implications on how we can grow, where we fit in rest time, how we react to clients, friends, and family, and why we might feel lackluster about our writing. Join me to chat about time management and your mind!
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Hey all welcome into Greta's. That's the funniest funniest first thing that says greetings up until the Friday live stream, and we are talking about, um, how to handle your time and then how that time handling affects your mental health. So, first we're going to do a little bit of trio stuff because we've got a few wild friends in here. So before we get to the fun information, I'm going to do a little, oh, lots of treat out. Everybody watch out. We lost a few. We actually lost three or two.
Hold on. This is part of being live and alive.
Getting our together on a Friday.
There's one right there.
There you go. Okay. Well, we lost some stuff here we go to Reno for you and treat all through you. Good job. Okay. Okay. Let's see if we can give you guys a little bit.
You guys, you're doing great. Shelly. You're sitting in
A different position. We got to fix the pup date. Now,
Here you go. All right. You guys look great. You look great.
Good job guys. Good job. Thanks for the tail wise bear. All right, everybody got their treat off fix. Hey Vicky. Welcome in Charlotte and Barry look so cute today. You guys,
He knows it so cute. You look so cute.
Good job guys. Okay. So here we go. We're going to talk about a few things. I have some notes, cause I wanted to make sure I cover this topic. And it's kind of funny because this is something that I struggle with all the time, like how I handle my time and how it affects, like my mind, how I think, how creative I am in my writing, how well I do with my writing, how well I do with my assignments or meeting deadlines. Um, how well, like how much it affects my anxiety or how much sleep I get. Like, there's a lot of things in here that, um, you know, we need to know as freelance writers, but something that I struggle with all the time and you know, so I hope this information is helpful because I find that a lot of my coaching students and then a lot of my core students kind of fall into these categories when it comes to dealing with their time, the right ways. Sorry, everything I see in there is backwards. So like I always have trouble figuring it out and I've hair like poking me somewhere in here. So, um,
This way right now, this way doesn't matter. Okay.
Everything's off center. Okay. Anyways, here we go. Okay. So I wrote some notes, so we have some things. So the first thing that we're going to talk about is how your business time management is going to affect your mental health. So if you're spending a lot of time with a ton of different deadlines, right? Like you are attempting to try to do a hundred different things at once and it's all getting messed up and you're trying to cram too many deadlines into the week. If you don't manage your time. Well, you're just going to be spilling all over the place, right. You're just going to be trying to get everything done at the last minute, which is a problem I've been having recently, um, not the last minute per se on everything, but it's kind of like this thing where you're like, and deadline and deadline and deadline, like day after day, you have a deadline.
And there's sometimes when you get in your freelance business, where that just happens, you ended up having weeks where you have like deadlines most of the days of the week, or you end up having an issue where, um, you know, you are trying to get a lot of work done trying to make more money, trying to scale your business, but you end up just kind of like cramming all this stuff into a very short period of time and that affects your mind and affects your mental health. So you're, and you end up getting less sleep. You ended up getting less personal time. You end up in this situation where, um, you may be snappy with clients or snappy with other people in your house, you know? Um, or it may be the type of thing where you end up getting more depressed or getting more anxious.
Like I know for me when I have a ton of deadlines and I've been trying to, you know, manage all of my business time and manage my marketing, manage my deadlines, manage my clients and client calls and onboarding all that stuff. I just get really anxious and it's hard for me to sleep. Um, I usually end up doing comfort activities. Like for me, like sometimes a comfort activity as a nap. Like sometimes I just, I know that if I just take a nap, like a two hour nap or, um, like I will write a lot better, I'll have a lot clearer mindset. I'll be able to pay attention more. Um, but sometimes comfort activities are like, you eat a bunch of junk food and then you're like, why did I do that? So it depends. But if you're managing your business properly, you should have enough time to have both personal time and time off.
So for me, the time off, isn't always like personal time. Sometimes time off is just like, literally not doing anything. Sometimes time off is just, I'm not answering emails or time off is a vacation or walking my dogs. Right. But personal time sometimes to me is just like time by myself, like where I don't have to deal with dogs barking outside. Um, I don't have to deal with like paying attention to all the things around the house that need to be cleaned or put away, uh, personal time to me sometimes it's like reading a book or like laying around in bed for a few hours in the morning. Um, or, you know, just time by myself. And if I'm not getting enough personal time, like if I'm not getting enough personal time, plus time off in amongst scheduling all these things, I know something's going wrong.
So like right now, like just transparency wise right now, I'm like handling a bunch of different things and I'm lacking a lot of personal time and rest time, like I am sleeping, you know, I do get sleep, but a lot of times what ends up happening is I'm working late, trying to finish some things up. And then tomorrow I have a bunch of other things to finish up and it's just kind of like compiling. But I already know, um, since I burned out back in 2018, that that's not a long-term strategy, it's not going to work. And I know that like the way I'm feeling right now, like has tired as I am right now. Uh, I know that that is a signal to me like, Hey, you're not getting enough rest time. You're not getting enough personal time. And you're cramming way too much stuff and way too many deadlines into this short period of time.
So that means that I need to pull back that needs that, that means that not only do I need to pull back a little bit and like, be more careful about what deadlines I take over the next few weeks. Um, but it also means that I need to be more careful about like what I'm working on. So that means that, um, I need to pay attention on like what size of the projects that I'm working on. Um, what's the frequency of them. Uh, am I doing a lot of deadlines at once because I have a lot of content to do for one client or am I doing a lot of deadlines at once because I have a ton of clients and it's like too many clients for me to work on too many different things. Um, sometimes what happens is we end up taking on all these clients and then we have all these different subjects and styles and topics to write about.
And it's just a lot, right? Like if you write in, in one for one client in one niche and you just keep doing that content that you become more familiar, you're like, yep, I get it. Um, you have a lot more thoughts where you can kind of like get through things. You're like, yep, I remember this. And here we go. But if you're like this day, we're talking about freelance writing. And this day we're talking about prop tech. And this day we talk about hospitality tech. And this day we're talking about traveling. Like it's a lot of different switches that you have to make and you do have to make those switches as a freelance writer. But when you have to do them for a deadline every single day, changing your topics, it's really tough. So how do we actually solve this? Right? Like how do we actually fix the problem, the problem of our time management and our business and our mental health.
So for me, that means pulling back. So that means I need to look at my business. That means I need to look at like what I'm working on, how many clients I'm working on, what types of projects I'm working on? What, what, why are my deadlines so condensed? Um, I need to look at like the length of my projects. Am I doing a bunch of short projects right now? You know, are they like one month or three months? Or am I working on a lot of long-term things? Like, how is this going to look longterm? Uh, when is my next time off? Like, when's my next vacation? Uh, when do I actually get time away from like my crazy inbox? Um, if you're anything like me, you wake up and you have like 150 emails every day or 200 emails every day where you, like, that's just the number you wake up to.
That's not just the, the amount of emails that you get during the day. So not dealing with that for a period of time. And then I need to look at like my planning, what is it going to look like in the next three to six months? Uh, in terms of like the work I have, the projects I have coming up, the things I want to do in different parts of my business, things. I want to launch things I want to refine and fix, um, like things that are coming up maybe in the next year or two. Like, I kind of always try to think that far ahead, like not necessarily always with freelance writing, um, but things that I want to be doing. Right. Like in a couple, um, w so he says, that's why I've been told. Yeah. So one of the reasons that we only have a few niches is that we don't want to be going wild and crazy with everything.
Like when there are those writers who do really well being a generalist, but what I've found is that being a generalist makes it a little bit harder to market, and they're not really a generalist. Like they kind of start out just writing about anything and everything. Then they're like, well, I am a generalist, but I typically focus on these three topics. Right. A lot of times someone says like, oh yeah, I'm like, I'm a Jack of all trades. And I do all these things, but what, it really comes down to it, most of their work focuses in like three to five categories, most likely three to four categories or niches. Um, so yeah, we don't want to like spread all of our workout and have a huge pile of all these different things to do. Like, we do want to have some interest in different niches, but we also don't want to get stuck in this trap where we have so many different topics in a short period of time.
Yeah. That's a good, that's a good point, Vicky. So, um, the other thing we want to do to handle it is we look at like, how have we actually been doing with our mental health? Like how, what has our attitude been? Are we being snappy and snippy? Are we keeping a good attitude? Are we laughing? Or are we just like miserable? Are we really tired and grumpy? Um, are we like handling all these deadlines fine. And it's just right now, we're just like, Ugh, this is a tough period, but I'm feeling good about it. Like, how are you actually handling that? Uh, if you have a mental health issue, like I have anxiety, I've talked about it a bunch. Um, but for me, like my anxiety just goes through the roof. Like it affects everything I do. Like, I start overthinking all my work and I'm like, is this this thing?
Like, I think that it's like, when you get to the point in your work where you're like is light spelled L I G H T like, what am I even saying here? Like, that's the point where like, your anxiety, like at least mine gets really activated. And like, I started being like, is this really what we're talking about? Like, is this really the point of the article? Or, um, I ended up trying to like put pieces together where I'm like, does this actually make sense? And that, that point, I know like my, eventually my writing is going to suffer from that. So I need to make sure that I pay attention to what's going on, how much sleep I'm getting, how anxiety I'm feeling. Like, how am I actually sleeping? Am I getting quality sleep? Am I having any time off that actually lets me like, not think about work? Am I enjoying some doggos?
Um, but she's, she's not on camera. She just likes to sit over there. Now she just like, doesn't want to sit in her little, the hole. Maybe we can put her on travel. I mean, can you go into your Hobbit hole, go in your rabbit hole. Good job. Good job. I don't know why hog the whole just stuck with her. Like I've used all different types of words to tell her to go over there and some, and for some reason, Hobbit hole stuck with her and she knows what that means. Sorry, Benny. Yeah. Hobbit hole. For some reason, it makes sense to her. Maybe that's the other thing. How does your hub of hope? Maybe that's something you need to think about. How's your habit whole doing with your mental health? So that's another part of it, um, with your business and your mental health, like, are you feeling really depressed?
Are you feeling more tired than normal? Are you feeling hungrier than normal? Are you craving like specific foods? Like I know for me, like when I get really tired, like really exhausted, there's like very specific foods that I want to eat and they're not healthy foods. They're just things where I'm like, I'm so exhausted right now. I've been working my off. I am so tired. Like, and you know, and I haven't treated myself, like I've been working my, like working on all this stuff. I've been turning in all my work and there's like, you know, no benefit, like, right. Not no benefits, but there's no like, um, celebration point, right? So like sometimes you're like, oh, you know what? I'm just going to have a few gummy worms or I'm going to have a few, you know, chips or whatever it is. I'm like, how are you handling that?
How is that working for you? Like, are you noticing and being aware of the things that are happening with your mind and your mental health, um, and how your, how that's affecting, not only just your work, but like your personal life, your lifestyle, your wellness, all those things. So I think the most important thing is if you start seeing all your personal time slip away and your rest time slip away, and you start noticing that you're just like, not excited about your work or you're really tired and grumpy, or you feel like everybody's asking things of you. Like, you feel like every day you wake up and you're like, oh my gosh, everybody's asking for things like, Ugh, I don't even have time for myself. Hold on. You know, that's kind of a signal that you need to pay attention to your mental health. You need to like, take a little bit of a pause from business stuff and, and see if you can work a little bit less over the short period of time coming up.
So, um, for me, that's also helping in my planning. So, like I said, like the vacation stuff, when I end up planning ahead, I ended up having vacations planned out where, like, I know that I usually get busy around certain times of the year, or I know that, um, you know, this project is going to end at this time and I need to have a break because I've been working my off. So pay attention to those things and stay aware of them. Um, the other thing too, is it helps to talk to outside of your situation. So if you have a partner or a significant other, or you have a therapist or you have a family member or a friend, someone that you can talk to, who's outside of your deadlines outside of your business to give you advice on like, Hey, I've noticed the last few times I've talked to you.
Like you've been really negative. Or I noticed the last few times I've talked to you that you're just, you keep saying that you're really tired. Or, um, I noticed that you missed like our last few calls, like what's up, uh, or, um, Hey, like, you know, you've, you've missed, like we go on walks together. You've missed those for the last three weeks. Like what's going on. It's really good to have an outside person to talk to, to say like, Hey, remember, there's other stuff besides your business, there's stuff outside of your life and business. And you need to pay attention to that. And there's plenty of different ways that we can kind of feed good mental health. Like when we're working a lot, though, we don't actually remember to feed our good mental health. We're just like, oh my God, I have to pay attention to this.
Right. We're kind of in reaction mode, we're not being responsive to all the different needs that we have as humans. We're complex. We have a lot of different needs. It's not just like making money and, you know, like reaching these few goals. There's other things in our lives that we need to pay attention to. And I know for me, it may be the same as for you. Like, I get really sucked into work sometimes. And I forget that there's other things that need to be done, um, to have a good life besides meeting deadlines or hitting certain goals or, um, working for specific clients that I've been trying to work with. There's other stuff that's not just business-based and that's part of paying attention to mental health. Like how much time are you spending in your business? How much time are you spending on all of your personal health stuff and all your mental health things?
So that's the first piece. So if you have questions pop up in the chat, um, if you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up or subscribe below for more freelance writer, tips and tricks. So the next thing I have on here is, um, we want to make sure that we prioritize rest and growth for a bunch of different reasons. She's now moved over here. She's no longer in her Hobbit hole. Why aren't you in your rabbit hole? So when we prioritize resting growth, um, we wanna make sure that we're prioritizing the right types of things. So it's not just rest as in, why do you have to sit on my foot rest as in time off in vacation time? Like you take a week off. It's not just rest in that like sweet. Now I have weekends off. Um, it's not just rest in terms of like sweet every day.
I have like, I'm done with work at 8:00 PM. And then I go off and eat dinner and watch TV or play games on my phone or whatever, until I go to sleep. It's not just that it's like actual time where you're like, not thinking about work. It's not just time that you kind of fit in where you can it's time, where you don't have to think about upcoming deadlines. You don't have to think about answering to everybody. Else's stuff, answering messages. Um, it's, it's about actually taking a break from the business part of your life. Um, I found for me that this is really difficult, but it's really good for my mental health to not feel like there's all this stuff I have to do all the time. Right? Like that really activates my anxiety. I'm like, and this and this and this and this.
And what about that? And what if this happens with like the rest part needs to be actual quality rest, where you're like, Uncorked, you go do other stuff. You don't have to check in on your phone or your computer. You actually take time away. And I can tell you that a few days away, sorry. She's like on my, in my foot space now. Um, so a few days away from your business is not going to kill your business. This is something that I have struggled with for like, that's why I burned out. Was like, I just kept thinking like, oh, well, if I take time off, that's like days away from making money. Like every day that I'm working or like answering emails or marketing or doing stuff is like making money. Right. But a few days, like seven days or nine days of you take the weekend, plus the week, plus the next weekend, nine days away from your business, like, wait, is that 9, 7, 8, 9.
Yeah. Is not going to go like in the length of time that you have a business is not going to change anything. And you need that time to rest. You need that time to unplug. You need that time to kind of step away. And I can tell you that when you don't do that, what happens is your growth stagnates. You end up taking a long time to do your projects. Like your, your work takes instead of taking, like, let's say it takes you two days to write and edit a blog post, or it takes you like over the course of two days, you're writing and researching and editing, like amongst your other stuff. Let's say that turns into like a week. Like, instead of it being a quick turnaround thing, you're just like, oh, I don't want to do it. And you put it off.
And you're just like, it takes forever to do the research. It takes forever to get the interviews done. Like all that stuff. It just expands. So when you just keep, keep focusing on like making money and you keep focusing on trying to spend every day in your business, like everything kind of starts falling apart. Like you feel burnout, you feel more anxious, you feel more depressed. Um, you just don't grow as quickly. And I can tell you to taking those nine days off, like not a big deal. It's just nine days. It's nine days out of a whole year or whatever. However many vacations you take per year, right? Like, um, I'm just talking about a week off, but just taking that time away, like it's not going to make or break your business. That's a mistake. I think a lot of people make is they think that by actually scheduling vacation time, even if it's just you staying at your house and like ignoring your computer and inbox, a lot of writers are just like, had that same trap.
I, well, if I'm not doing this, then I'm not making money. And like, I I'm scared if I take this time off, I won't make money, but it's just five businesses, right? Five business days out of the whole year, or however many days you take off, I'm just saying a week off. It's not going to, to, to destroy all the things that you've built so far. Right? The whole point of our business is that we built a framework that can continue working, like continue. Like basically you hop off the framework for a second, take a nap, come back on that. It keeps going. And I always kind of use this train analogy with different coaching students. And with, um, with my core students, is that once you kind of like, it's just like a train, the train takes a really long time to get up to speed.
But once it's up to speed, it takes it miles to actually stop. This is the same thing. Once you have a train up to speed and moving along and going, it takes a really long time for you to destroy your whole business and make it stop. So taking a few days off doesn't mean there's not things running in the background, right? It doesn't mean that people won't get back to you on your LOI. It doesn't mean that your pitches aren't still being considered. It doesn't mean that your clients, aren't thinking about different things. Um, there's a whole bunch of different types of things that can happen while you take time off that are still working. They're still doing all their little magical things while you take time off. So when you're actually thinking about rest and growth, you get better results. If you focus on growth and rest within a reasonable scale, so you don't have to grow super fast and do everything everyone else is doing, and you don't have to like, um, like hustle your off and not take any rest at all.
But what you want to do is make sure you're taking the right rest when you need it. And that you're trying to make sure that you're growing the amount of time that you focus on paying attention to not just your business, but other things outside of your business. Right? We want to make sure there's a period. When we start as freelance writers, right? Where we focus on our business a lot, because we need to get it going and, and figure out how to actually run it and what to do and how to market, how to actually get our writing, done, how to meet deadlines, how to send contracts, all that stuff. But then there gets a point where like, you're kind of chugging along. You have like a framework and you have systems and processes that are going along. And we want to make sure at that point that we kind of remember like, Hey, there's other stuff here.
Like we need to maybe grow our, our like physical health. Maybe we need to grow, like working on our anxiety. We need to grow on like our, um, coping mechanisms or go to therapy or deal with our depression. Maybe the medicine that we're taking, or the strategies that we're using for depression, if you don't take medication, um, are just not working anymore. And you need to talk to someone about it. There's other places to grow outside of your business. And I know that this sounds silly. It sounds so simple. Right. But a lot of times I talk to freelance writers and they're all in on the business part. And that was my problem. And it's sometimes I get stuck in it. Like sometimes I still get stuck in it. Just honest and transparent, like being honest and transparent here. Um, is that like the business part for me is very exciting.
I love running my business. I love doing all the cool things. I like always having different projects. I like expanding in different areas. Like not just freelance writing, but like my coaching business and my course business. And um, other upcoming projects that I have planned for that side of my business. I love doing that. It is really exciting to me, but it doesn't mean that I'm growing in all the right areas. It doesn't mean I'm prioritizing my mental health and it doesn't mean that I'm like not ignoring other things. That's a big trap for me. And I know that my mental health starts suffering when I'm like, all I'm thinking about is work and all I'm thinking about our deadlines or making sure this thing is right. Or like putting all this stuff together. I know that my mental health is taking a hit or like I'm like overly anxious.
So I'm either like really hungry or not hungry. Or I have a stomach ache. I have a headache. Sometimes I end up coughing. Like I have a cough sometimes. Um, but it's just all of these different things where it's like, oh wait, I'm spending a hundred percent of my time on my business. Like I'm not walking my dogs that much. I'm not going outside very much. Um, I'm not really like taking a lot of rest time. Like basically it's like, I finished my deadline, I eat dinner and I go to sleep. Right. Or I take, um, I like finished my deadline, eat dinner and like watch TV for like an hour or two and then try to fall asleep. And it takes me like four hours because I'm anxious. Or I just like unwinding from the amount of stuff I'm doing is like too much.
And when all those things are happening, I'm like, Ugh, I need to pay attention to my mental health. Right. It's not just how you run your business, but remembering that, like there's other parts besides your business. There's other parts out there that are, you know, you need, you need them to, to build a great life. It's not, I always try to like, remind myself of this is like, you're not going to be on your death bed being like, oh yeah, I remember 1200 unread emails. Like, darn I wish I answered more emails. Like I wish I had gone back and done more, um, more of this thing, like in terms of like repetitive stuff. Like I wish I had more LinkedIn connections. Like you're not going to sit there and worry about that. You're going to like, think about all these things. Like, Hey, remember that cool trip we went on and remember those, those really cool, like milestone wins in my business and remember all those neat things we did with the dogs or like how we moved to all these different places or how we did, um, these, like, we grew our businesses to do these things.
Like it'll be milestone things where it's not like you're sitting there and like worrying about all these tedious things that we're worried about now. Like you're not going to look back and be like, I should have been nicer on that email. I sent on June 16th, 2017 or whatever we have to think about managing the time in our business, if it's expanding and how that's really affecting our mental health. And it's not just like thinking about how would does it affect our mental health, but like being aware and paying attention to all of our little things that pop up. Like, I, it took me, gosh, you see me years to find all the little things that start popping up. When I know my mental health is suffering and it's not always apparent to me, like I need it to be pointed out to me, like, um, my significant other will point things out to me and be like, Hey, you're being a curmudgeon or, Hey, you're being a pain or like you're being mean, or, um, you're doing this, that or the other thing, or you're being really persnickety, like things that I do in my work.
Right? Like that just carry over to my personal life where like, when I do my work, I get very, very particular about things. I get, um, very specific about how I want that puzzle to go together. And what happens is I end up like, just starting to do that. Like, it's, it's just like a wave. It just starts cutting. Like, oh my gosh, Charlotte's nails are too long. Or like, oh my gosh, they need a bath because their allergies are bad. Or, oh my gosh, we have to order this thing. We forgot to do. Like, it just starts washing over everything. And I know that when that happens, I'm like, whoa, hold on a second. I need to take a step back. I'm being crazy, not crazy. But like I'm, I'm letting all of my weird business things that like help me with my writing wash over into my personal life where they don't belong.
So there's that, um, I had one more point I wanted to make. So, um, yeah. So whenever you're you find yourself in a position with your mental health and your writing, where you find that everything, this is, these are some of my things, like if I started feeling like things are annoying or irritating or that, um, like one of the things is like, when I feel like I'm being asked too much when I'm really not being asked too much, it just feels like a lot. Cause I'm already dealing with a lot. Um, or I feel like there's just a ton of stuff. Just like snowed, like I'm snowed in. Uh, or I just feel not interested in writing or I end up pushing my deadlines. Like I ended up saying like, not pushing my deadlines, but pushing my work. So I'm like, I'm going to work on it on Monday.
I'm gonna work on a Tuesday. I'm gonna work on in a Wednesday. Like I keep pushing it off. All of those things are signals that I need to deal with my mental health. It's not like I'm waking up in an excited to go work on my work. It's not like I'm excited to go find new clients or talk to new clients, have onboarded or do my cool work that I'm usually really excited about. I just get up and I'm just like, well, I got to do this today. And I got him to this day, I got to do this and it just weighs on me. And that weight ends up making me anxious and makes me not a good partner. It makes me not a great dog mom. Right. I'm not, you know, I don't walk them as much because I'm just like chained to my keyboard.
Right. Um, I'm like, like my keyboard and my fingers have now become one. Uh, I get in this place where like I spend a lot of time silently sitting alone in a room, right. That can't be healthy for anybody silently sitting alone in a room connected to a keyboard. Like not talking to people that much. Right? Like not talking to your friends or not seeing your friends, like even on a zoom call, um, or missing phone calls that, you know, I only have, or lucky for me. Charlotte is shaking the camera right now. Cause she's sitting underneath it scratching. So if you just saw the camera move around, which I definitely did on this end, that was Charlotte. Maybe we have to move her.
Come here. Where's Charlotte.
This is just the wild, wild west we're living in right now. All right, let's get you into a pub date.
Hey buddy. Charlotte, can you go to your, have a whole truck,
Have a whole video. The whole go to your Hobbit hole.
Come on, come on, come here. No. Okay. Well now she wants to just
Hang out under the desk and be uttered. No, you have to get out of there. Cause you're going to shake the camera. You have to go to your Hobbit hole. So you're have a hole. There we go. We did it. There we go. Good job everybody. We've solved all of our problems for the day.
Alright,
Cool. Good job guys. All right. So few things. So, um, I think I went through all of the notes that I want to do. So if you feel like, um, your time is getting away from you and you feel like your deadlines are getting like closing in on you, if you feel like you're getting snowed in by your inbox, or if you feel like people are asking too much of you, when you already know they're not, this is just regular stuff, right? This is just regular stuff that people are asking for. But because you're tired and you're overworked and you have too many things on your mind, it just feels like a lot pay attention to those things. What are those things for you? What signs, what awareness things can you see? Like personality things. You do, physical things, food, things, stress, stress-relieving things I'm missing out on stuff that you normally like to do. Like that kind of stuff. You need to pay attention to your mental health. And they're not just like, oh my gosh, you may have a serious problem. Like you're depressed or you're anxious. It's not always as serious as that.
Sometimes it's just like, you need a break. Sometimes you just need a good cry. Like, I can't tell you how many times where like, I'm normally don't cry. Like I just go through long stretches and then all of a sudden I'm just kind of like break down and cry about it. And then like, oh gosh, like I feel so much better. Sometimes that's all you need is just release all of that stress, intention and frustration and sadness and all the hard stuff. Freelance writing is hard. There's just no way around it. Like, that's why a lot of people think they can just because they type on a keyboard or they write an email or they wrote a report once that they can write. But that's not what it is. Being a writer is a hard job. Not everyone can do it and not everyone can do it very well.
Even people who are freelance writers, like it's always about honing your skills and getting better. And if you find that your writing is slipping in terms of quality or you're running up against deadlines, or you just like not into it, pay attention to your mental health. Um, and like I said, like my anxiety just goes through the roof. Um, it just like, I just get really anxious. I get stomach aches, I get an, any stomach, I get a lot of headaches. I have a lot of physical symptoms. Um, but I also had a lot of personality symptoms. Like I can be, um, like I have been told many times that I can be a curmudgeon or that I can just like, get like two in like, I'm like, oh, well what about this? And what about like, I just get too into all these details.
And I like try to control things like the control piece, right. For me, I start feeling like my business is out of control. Cause I'm like trying to handle all these things at once. Like I'm trying too many balls in the air and then I'm like, well, if I can't control my business, I need to control everything else. Like I'm trying to control the business and trying to control this. And for me, that's a symptom of like, Ooh, I need to pay attention to like, it's something that I need to be aware of and be like, Hey, whoa, calm down. It's going to be all gay. We need break. That's all we need. We just need a break to kind of like, let it go a little bit. So if you find yourself in a place where your time management isn't working very well, you're not growing very quickly.
Um, you find that you're just like frustrated all the time or you're like not into it. Pay attention to your business, time management, your schedule, how your deadlines look, when is your next available rest time? Like not a weekend, not a three-day weekend, but like actually purposefully scheduled vacation time. When is that? How is that going to work for you? Pay attention, all those things. So I know this is kind of a complex topic because it's, it's personal to everybody, right? Everybody's situation is different. Everybody deals with different stresses. Um, but one thing I kind of want to end with is that we don't know what's going on in someone else's life, no matter what they're telling you, or you see on Instagram or they tell you on a call, like you don't know what's going on in someone's life. So remember like there's a lot of different factors that go into this.
So be nice to people. And then to everybody has their. This is something I told someone recently like a bunch of different someones recently. It's like, everybody has their. Your is different than someone else's. My shade is anxiety. My is a bunch of other things. Like, like I said, like I have, I get anxious. I want to control things. I'm just like, Ugh, like, and, or I'm grumpy and I'm a pain in the butt. Right? So those are things that I deal with. Those are just a song. Um, there's a lot of them, I'm a regular human. Like I have a lot of issues just like everybody else. Right. But your looks different than someone else's. And just because they're like getting a gold star in the category, that's your doesn't mean you're not getting a gold star in the category.
That's their. Right. It's just a matter of where that is at the time everybody has something, everybody on the planet, like, you know, it's just kind of like when you find out that like a fitness star that you're following has this like severe eating disorder, that's their. They, they have poor body image, even though they're in great shape. Or, um, for example, like you see someone who's killing it, freelance writing and you find out like behind the scenes, they have severe anxiety and that's a mental health thing they have to deal with. Uh, sometimes what happens is that people build the wrong business, right? They make millions of dollars. And then they're like, oh, I built the wrong business. I hate my life. I gotta start over. Um, sometimes people have really hard health. Like they have chronic pain. They have to deal with that every single day.
Everybody has their, no matter who it is on the planet, they, there is some thing that bothers them. That's hard for them. That's difficult. Nobody is without struggle. Like, just remember that it doesn't mean you're broken or something's wrong with you, but you need to pay attention to different things in your business, in different things with your mental health, to make sure that you have like a good balance or as much of a balance as you can. Um, I don't think the 50 50 thing is where should we should be going. But I think just generally not being a hundred percent on your business or even 80% on your business is like, that's too much. You need at least some time to yourself. So I hope this was helpful. If you feel like it was give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about freelance writing, hit the subscribe button below, uh, I would do a pup date.
We've done a bunch of updates today, but we've gotten a little grumpy store down here. She's not in, not in her hub, a whole party or a bunch of times to try to go into a rabbit hole. And she's just not having it today. So, all right. I hope this was helpful. Wishing you all the good mental health, if you need mental health help, if you feel like, like for me, it took me a long time to get help for my anxiety. And it took me a long time to become health, uh, comfortable with taking medication for my anxiety, but it's really made my life a lot better. So if you ever need help, reach out to someone, um, find an organization with like an anonymous helpline that you can talk to. If you feel really uncomfortable talking to people, um, about what you're going through, but make sure that you reach out for help. Like I don't ever want people to feel like they have to suffer alone. So hope this was helpful. I hope you have a great Friday and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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