You Can’t Have It All (And That’s Okay): How to Build Your Business Without Feeling Like You’re Settling for Less

A woman on Instagram snapped a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook called It’s All Easy.

She posted it in jest because, at that moment, things didn’t feel so easy! She was shuffling around town with three kids, nursing a teething baby, and craving a much-needed cup of coffee.

I get it. In a world that tells us we can have it all, do it all, and be it all, on days when life doesn’t feel easy, we wonder what’s wrong with us.

Is it inevitable that we have to struggle in life?

This is a big topic, one that doesn’t get talked about often enough.

Although what I have to share might not be popular, we have to start talking about it, so let’s start right now.

Fighting with Reality

There’s one word that sums up this daily struggle: reality.

The reality that our bank account is what it is. The reality that we have an unhappy child in the back of the minivan. The reality that the bed is unmade, the sink is full of dishes, and the laundry hamper is overflowing.

Or the reality that the weather is gloomy, the Atlanta Falcons lost the Super Bowl (Go, Pats!), and Newsroom didn’t get renewed for a fourth season.

Yet everyday, we fight with these things. We fight with reality.

Somehow, we think that arguing with what is will change it.

We all do it. Even though, in truth, we know better.

For me, my recent fights have been with Lyme disease… and the weather.

Winters in Oregon are pretty dreary. Even after 17 years of living here, the gray skies can still get to me.

This year, when chatting with a fellow Oregonian about the gloomy weather, she said, “I learned to make peace with it.”

Something clicked in my brain. What would happen if I simply accepted the dreary Oregon winters? Afterall, I choose to live in Oregon, and this is the way that winters are.

Wouldn’t it be easier if I didn’t fight reality?

I fill you in on how my experiment of accepting Oregon’s weather is going, as well as how I struggled to grow my business with Lyme disease here:

While it’s nice to dream about being able to control our circumstances, it’s simply not possible. Sure, there are things you can do to be more productive and hit your goals, but there is a limit to how much time and energy you have.

When I get in the habit of fighting with reality, I remind myself of something Byron Katie says: “When you argue with reality, you lose but only 100% of the time.”

Click to Tweet“When you argue with reality, you lose — but only 100% of the time.” Byron Katie

So what’s my trick to stop fighting reality? I think about how to use my 100 units of energy.

You Have 100 Units of Energy

Whenever you notice you’re fighting with reality, you have the opportunity to take all that energy and put it toward creating something you actually want to create.

Here’s how I look at it.

You can spend those units scrolling Facebook, resisting the weather, wishing you were doing something else… Or you can focus on creating whatever you want most in your life.

In this episode, I talk more about the concept of 100 units of energy, including how to apply it to your values:

Notice where you’re spending your 100 units and how much of your energy is spent fighting reality.

Expect Huge Shifts When You Accept the Truth

What I love most about evaluating my units of energy is that I can start to take back my life.

For a long time I’ve wanted to remodel our house, but I’m not at all skilled at visual aesthetics. Even so, for years I tried to channel my inner interior designer and fought with myself for not being good at decorating my home.

I finally embraced the fact that I’m not good at decorating, and I was able to move on, hire a designer, and create the feel I wanted in my home.

Could I have learned to get better at decorating? Sure! But I don’t care to use my energy doing that.

By the way, I’m just as inept with fashion as I am with decorating, so I ask for help there, too. Thank you Kelly, my go-to gal for clothes shopping!

If you want to hear how I went from nearly being in tears before a photo shoot to feeling way more confident about my clothes, listen here:

When you embrace reality, you free up time and energy to focus on what matters most to you. And that’s when the life you want becomes… reality.

Thoughts?

This is a big topic, and I’d love to hear from you.

Where do you tend to fight reality?

How would you rather spend your 100 units of energy?

What area of your life would benefit from you accepting the truth of the situation?

Fill me in below.