Donna Doyon Gilbert
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  • Ep023: Obsessing Over Things That Don’t Matter

There are times when I spend too many hours obsessing over things that I know are silly. Things like should I cut my hair short or keep it long? Does it matter? Does anyone care? Do YOU care? Probably not.

In this week's episode I share my dilemma AND my interpretation of what's really going on in my brain.

If you find your mental energy consumed with making a decision on something that you know really isn't important, then perhaps this week's episode will give you a new perspective on how to deal with it.


Show Notes:

Would you like to have more time in your day to explore and achieve your goals? Would you like to have time to relax or hang out with friends or family members? If you have always thought there just aren't enough hours in a day, I challenge you to reclaim your time!

My brand new 5-Day "Reclaim Your Time" Challenge is waiting to show you the hidden traps that are stealing your valuable time each time. If you are ready to reclaim an hour or more each day, take the few seconds required to sign up below!

Read the Transcript

Note: This is a computer-generated transcript. That means it's pretty good, but not perfect. If you read something weird or confusing, first laugh, then use the time stamp to hop into the podcast to find out what I REALLY said. 🙂

[00:00:00.000]

Welcome to another episode of Reflections of a Recovering Ugly Duckling, a podcast dedicated to helping you discover and develop your full potential as a unique individual. Each week, I'll share my experiences, challenges, doubts, and fears, as well as the lessons I've learned that keep me moving forward toward my dreams. This is Episode 23, and I'm your host, Donna Doyon. Once upon a time, there was a lovely 54 year old woman. She was not a woman who typically paid much attention to appearances. Oh, sure, she might notice when another woman looked especially lovely. She occasionally noticed if someone's makeup was a bit lighter or heavier than usual. She might notice if a coworker changed her lifestyle, although that usually took a couple of weeks. For the most part, this lovely woman didn't pay attention to such things. There were times, though, when her own appearance suddenly became relevant. If she thought someone might take her picture, she suddenly wondered if her makeupless face would be photogenic enough. If she was going to any type of social or business event, she suddenly worried about her clothing. As for her lovely but thin and baby fine mousey brownish gray hair, she only cared that she could pull it off her neck when hiking in the woods.

[00:01:30.900]

But one day, this lovely 54 year old woman declared to the world that she was going to do something big, something bold, and something scary. She declared that she was going to start creating videos. She recognized that videos would make it easier for her to connect with women who also wanted to do things that were big, bold, and even a bit scary. So just like that, this woman suddenly cared about her lack of makeup skills, her clothing, and her hair. And then she realized just how silly and nonsensical this was. She was wise enough to know that how you look on the outside doesn't define who you are or how beautiful you are on the inside. Because she knows that the inner beauty, that's the secret to living happily ever after. Okay, it's confession time. Yes, the woman in the story is me, as if you hadn't already figured that out, right? But yes, lately I have been totally obsessing over my hair. Now, my hair is mousey brown with gray in it. And for many years, I didn't even know what color it really was because I was always coloring it. And a few years ago, Earl challenged me to just let it go natural and to stop coloring it.

[00:02:58.400]

And so I did. My hair is a little bit beyond shoulder length, and it's very fine, and I don't have much of it. So I have thin, fine, mousey brownish grayish hair. It's not bad hair. I enjoy my hair. I like being able to pull it back in a pony tail. But the thought of doing videos and as I've started doing videos, oh, my goodness, the anxiety I have felt over my hair has been ridiculous. So I thought today I would share a little bit about some of the struggles and the stresses that we go through based on our appearance. And I just want to put the question out there, does it really matter? Is it worth the time and the energy and the stress that we're putting ourselves under? Now, I am in no way suggesting that women that wear makeup, that do their hair beautifully each and every day, and who spend time on their wardrobes, that there's anything wrong with that. I totally appreciate and recognize that for some of us, that is a way that we celebrate and honor who we are. It's not stressful for those women. It's a part of who they are, and it's a part of themselves that they love.

[00:04:18.940]

They love that creativity, and they love that opportunity to present a better self to the world. I can admire that. And in fact, I will honestly say that I am a little bit envious of women who can do that, who've mastered the fine art of applying makeup and doing their hair. Over the years, I have bought dozens of hairbrushes that I've used once or twice, and then they just get put in a drawer until I go through a clutter busting period and then they get thrown away. But then a few years later, I'll buy another brush. And true story, yesterday I went out and I bought a hair brush. I don't know why. I don't use brushes. I use a comb, a wide tooth comb. That's what I use on my hair, except for when I'm hiking because I am very weight conscious and my wide tooth comb is fairly large so I have a little baby comb that I use when I'm hiking. But suddenly I felt the urge to buy a brush. And of course, I bought a cheap brush because I know it's going to get put into a drawer. So my dilemma these past few weeks, if not a month or so, has been bangs or no bangs, short or keep it long.

[00:05:34.720]

And as I said in the intro story, one of my big conveniences that I would like to keep with my hair is the ability to keep pulling it up when I'm out hiking, so it doesn't get in the way. And also when we're on multi day hikes, I don't have the luxury of worrying about what my hair looks like, but yet I don't want it to look horrible either. Yes, I do have that little bit of vanity in me, and so it would be nice to keep it long enough so that I can pull it back, keep it off my face. So all this obsessing I have been doing recently over my hair, it makes me wonder how much mental energy and how much time have I spent worrying about something as inconsequential as my hair when I could be using that time more productively for developing my online courses that I'm working on, the ones I want the videos for, or how much time and energy is it taking from doing some of the other things that will move my new business forward? How am I letting my obsession over my appearance, my sudden obsession over my appearance, keep me from creating the videos that I want to build a connection with an audience of women who could use the messages that I want to share.

[00:06:53.440]

And I think the answer to that is too much time, too much mental energy, because I know some things about myself. I know that I try to be true to myself, but yet when I get into this appearance focused area, it's so foreign to me and it's so not who I am that I don't quite know how to handle it. So I'm not being true to myself. And then I think if you've watched any of my videos, I talk about the reflections on my eyeglasses. So this is another thing is I've started doing videos because you want the lighting right so that you can show your face off and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you want good lighting so that you as the audience can see the person that's speaking and the eyes there, the connection to the soul, right? So you want to be able to see the person's eyes. Well, I wear eyegasses and I kept having problems with the light reflecting on my glasses. And that was keeping me from making videos. I was spending so much time and mental energy focused on how to overcome the reflections on my eyeglasses.

[00:08:02.760]

I tried doing videos a couple of times without my glasses on, but it just didn't even look like me. I felt very inauthentic and I felt very uncomfortable not having my glasses on. Just yesterday, I was playing around with this and I found a pretty good solution, but I have to make sure I have my chin angle down, which makes my double chin look a little bit more pronounced and it causes a shadow on my chin, but it takes care of the reflection on my glasses. All of these things I'm focused on because I want to produce a quality product but it's taking up a lot of time and brain energy. I know that once I have the lighting dialed in, I will just set it and forget it and just move on. And sometimes we do have to spend the mental time and the real time figuring out solutions to some of these problems. The reality is that, yes, glare on my eyegasses could be distracting to a viewer, and they might tune out because they're not feeling that connection. But will you tune out if my hair is not perfect? I don't think so.

[00:09:14.720]

Perhaps if I were doing beauty videos, you might look at me and say, Yeah, not so much. And click, go over to the next one on YouTube. That would be valid. My concern is that I'm spending too much time on things that really don't matter, and we have such a limited amount of time. Which reminds me, I do have a five day Reclaim Your Time challenge that you can learn more about if you visit my website, this podcast, Show Notes, donna doyan. Com forward slash 023. I'll have information on that five day reclaim your time challenge, because if time is a struggle for you, then this will help you reclaim an hour or more every day. It's going to be powerful for you, so get ready to free up some time. That you hopefully will not spend obsessing over your hair or the lighting for videos. But we all have our own challenges and our own issues. There are times when we allow ourselves to obsess over something that in the grand scheme of things really is not important. Do we do it to avoid what we really want to be working on, what we really should be doing?

[00:10:26.100]

Oh, hate that word. What we really could be doing? That's something for you to think about. You may not be obsessing over your hair or your makeupless face or the clothes that you're wearing, but you may be obsessing about the clutter that's in your home. You may be working on a project that involves picking out a new color that you want to paint your bathroom or your kitchen. You may be obsessing over what shoes to wear for a special event and thinking you don't have the perfect pair of shoes to match the dress that you want to wear. There are so many inconsequential things that take up our brain power. So this week, I encourage you... No, I challenge you. When you find yourself obsessing and constantly thinking about what your options are and what choice you want to make. Just make a decision. I love the old decision making trick of flipping a coin because when you flip a coin, there's heads or tails. There is no in between. The choice is made. You designate the two choices as heads or tails, and then you flip the coin and whichever one it lands on, whichever side of that coin is face up, that's the answer to the question.

[00:11:47.880]

And the great thing about flipping a coin is it really does help you make a decision. Do you know why? It's because when the coin lands and it lands on the side that you unconsciously or subconsciously, whichever consciously it is, when it lands on the one that you really did not want, your mind is going to say best two out of three, because you want that opportunity to change your mind. And in that case, do not stick with the results of the flip the coin. The purpose of that exercise is to help you make a decision. And when you really feel like you're sitting on the fence, when you've flipped a coin and it gives you the answer, suddenly you will know whether you like the answer and you accept it, or you say best two out of three. Whichever result you get, you will know your answer. And so when you find yourself worried about, Is the paint color right? Should I keep my hair long or short? Whatever is going on that is taking up your brain power, make a decision, act upon it, and move on. Too often we let these stupid, for lack of a better word, anxieties get the best of us, and they really hold us back.

[00:13:11.040]

Make a decision, move on, because there is never going to be a going to be a perfect answer. You will never know exactly which the best choice could be. I don't know if I will look better in videos should I get my hair cut really short, or if I keep it shoulder length, add more layers and change the style. I don't know if I will look better on videos if I learn how to use that magical new bristle brush, because what it comes down to is it really isn't about my hair at all. It isn't about the fact that I wear no makeup. It isn't about the fact that my clothes represent the person that I am, which is a production supervisor in a factory. But what it does represent are my fears and my insecurities about pursuing a dream. I'm holding back and I'm finding excuses not to move forward. I made a commitment and now suddenly I'm obsessing over reasons why I can't. It's not perfect yet. My hair isn't perfect. My clothes are not perfect. I have reflections on my eyegasses. These are little things that you and I do to keep from moving forward.

[00:14:28.060]

There will never be a perfect time, a perfect opportunity. One of my mentors always says, If you wait until it's perfect, you've waited too long. Because we just need to put ourselves out there doing the very best we can. We can improve and we can adapt and we can modify as we go along. But until we actually move forward toward our goals, we don't know what changes, what modifications we need to make. Perhaps no one will ever say anything about my mousey brown hair. Perhaps no one will ever notice the reflections on my eyegasses, but yet I'm spending all of this time worried about it. And it is something that in the past would hold me back. But I've become big and I've become bold, and I'm doing scary things this year, and I'm not letting it hold me back. I'm putting myself out there with all my imperfections so that you can see that I'm human too. You're human too. What are you resisting? What's holding you back? And if it's something that you're somewhat obsessing over, acknowledge it, and then find the courage and the strength to move on. Because moving on, that's the secret to living happily ever after.

[00:15:46.400]

Hey there, it's Donna. If you're listening to this outro, it means I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that I'm no longer recording new episodes of this podcast. The good news is that all 165 episodes will remain available to you. While creating this podcast has been an amazing adventure, I feel like the lessons have been learned and my quest has been completed. In my heart, it's telling me it's time to move on to something new, something different, and maybe something that's even more challenging. Now, while my heart tells me to get ready for my next adventure, I'm resisting it. I don't feel ready. So what I'm going to do is take some time to organize all of the self development materials I've created over the past several decades. I'm going to put them into an online library of sorts. And who knows, maybe the answers I'm looking for will be found in the content that I created decades ago. Imagine that. Messages that impacted my life's journey way back then, they might impact my life's journey once again. And at the very least, I will have cleaned out and organized my computer files and created this online library that will allow people access to most of my self development materials.

[00:17:10.040]

If you want to learn more about this library or just find out what I'm up to now, drop by my website, donna doyan. Com for a visit. Remember, enjoying every adventure, that's the secret to living happily ever after. The music for this podcast is Drifting Upstream by Hyson.

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The music for this podcast is Drifting Upstream by Hyson. The music was slightly remixed and fit to needed duration.
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0


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