Limits are not a sign that something is wrong with you. It's information that tells you what's sustainable and what's not. Knowing your limits can also mean having boundaries and saying no before you've met your limit.
A lot of us don't know our limits until we've already blown past them. Limits are not a sign that something is wrong with you. It's information that tells you what's sustainable and what's not. Now I try to treat those signals when they happen earlier.
Knowing your limits can also mean having boundaries and saying no before you've met your limit. Let me know in the comments some ways that you know you've overextended yourself. I'd love to know what it looks like for you.
I think a lot of us don't actually know our limits until we've already blown past them. Like, we keep going, saying yes, keep pushing through, and then one day we're just completely fried and wondering how we got here. I am the queen of this. And for me, my body usually knows before my brain does. This can show up like injuries, falling, dropping things, physical manifestations of me moving too fast or going beyond my limits. I'll start feeling really tired or weirdly irritable or like everything feels overwhelming, even if nothing really big is happening.
And that is usually a sign that I've been pushing past my capacity for a while. But for a long time, I interpreted that as being a failure. Like, why can't I handle all this? Other people seem fine. Why do I get so overwhelmed? But now I understand that that's actually not the case. It's not that I don't have capacity to manage a lot of things or manage hard things. Limits are not a sign that something is wrong with you. It's just information. It's information that tells you what's sustainable and what's not.
So the problem is, a lot of us were taught to ignore those limits. We were taught to push through when we're tired, to be incredibly reliable and always show up, to always say yes, to not be difficult, to not let people down. So we have a tendency to override what our body is telling us. And eventually the limits will show up anyways. But they're a lot more difficult to manage because. Because it's burnout, it's emotional exhaustion, or literally shutting down. So now I try to treat those signals when they happen earlier.
So if I notice I'm getting really overwhelmed by life, but I feel like I shouldn't be, I ask myself, okay, what's actually going on here? Am I doing too much? Am I taking on things or people's emotions that aren't mine? Do I need to rest? Because respecting your limits is not quitting. It's adjusting. It's saying, okay, this is what I realistically have capacity for right now, and then honoring that. So when you start listening to those signals sooner, you actually protect your energy a lot better.
And then you can actually show up in ways that you want to without feeling burned out. You also don't have to wait until you're completely depleted to acknowledge that something is too much. Knowing your limits can also mean having boundaries and saying no before you've met your limit. Let me know in the comments some ways that you know that you've overextended yourself or that you've gone beyond your own personal limits. I'd love to know what it looks like for you. Love you so much. And I'll see you next time.
