Ep. 165: Impatience Is Anxiety in Disguise

In this episode of the Maybe I Can Podcast, I talk about something I wrestle with regularly — impatience and the need to control outcomes.

When I decide I want something, I want it done immediately. And when progress feels slow, I feel anxious, behind, and frustrated. I share how I realized that my impatience is often anxiety in disguise — especially after seasons of life that felt out of control.

This year, I chose the word “steady” as my theme. Not slow. Not passive. But consistent without panicking.

In this episode, I share:
 • Why control can feel like safety
 • How productivity can become fear in motion
 • The burnout that comes from forcing timelines
 • What it really means to “release the stopwatch”

If you’ve been feeling behind or trying to rush your progress, this conversation is for you.

We’re not late. We’re not behind.
 We’re exactly where we need to be.

Maybe we can trust that together.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Sharing Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome back to the Maybe I Can Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Weiss, and thank you so much for joining me today. I certainly appreciate you landing on this podcast. And if you wouldn't mind if you enjoyed this show, I'd love if you share it with someone else or rate and review the podcast. Make sure you follow all the things. You know, if you're a regular podcast listener, this is, you know, what we all ask for, not just because we want our shows to become popular, but because I want my message to get to as many people as possible, right? We're all in this life together. And I want to reach others that maybe felt like I used to feel or feel like I currently feel now, and just share the struggles. So, with that said, each week I try to bring something to you that is on my mind. And so this week we're going to talk about impatience and trying to control outcomes. Because I gotta say, I struggle with this. When I make up my mind about something, I want it done yesterday. And I get so frustrated when that doesn't happen. I don't struggle with having a vision of what I want. I guess sometimes I do, but for the most part, not really. It's really that I struggle with the timing. And when progress is slow, it's almost like it eats at my insides, and I feel this pressure that I have to move faster. This year, I chose a theme for my year. And some people do this. I think I learned about it a few years ago. And if I'm being honest, one year I did try to choose a word for myself. Not try, I did choose a word for myself, but I never went back and revisited it. And I'll share with you that the word that I chose for myself this year is steady. And I chose that because I do always feel like I'm rushing. I definitely feel like I try to control the outcomes. And I hate that feeling of not progressing as fast as I would like. And so by choosing the word steady, it reminds me that it doesn't have to happen on my timeline, just as long as there's steady progress. Steady is not slow, it's not passive. It's like being consistent without panicking. And it's not about doing less, and it's not about forcing more. Because I do that. I don't know if it's the opposite of procrastination, because hey, sometimes I do that as well. Where does this come from? Well, before I jump right there, let me just talk about this whole pick a word for your year idea. You don't have to do that. Not everyone picks a word, but that doesn't mean maybe you've just never sat back and thought about what overall theme do I want this year to look like. I think last year my theme was abundance. And it was all about focusing on abundance, not necessarily abundance in money. I don't know about you, but that's what first comes to my mind. But how abundance in every area of my life. And it was like a helpful redirect so that when I was feeling, I guess, low or not abundant, to remind myself of how much abundance there actually is in my life. Now, if I'm being honest, very often in the past, even when I did pick a word, I didn't come back and revisit it. I didn't, it was like, okay, I picked a word and then I forgot about it until the end of the next year when it was like, okay, pick another word. For whatever reason, this year, I am really focusing on this because it is a pain point for me. You don't need to con you don't need to pick a word, but just think to yourself, if I did, what would it be? How am I feeling right now? Am I do I feel pressure? Is it intentional? Am I reactive? Is there something that I find myself living? And Google and AI definitely help me looking at a list. If you ask it to just give you suggestions, that is you go down that list and see what resonates. So, what is this impatience? It's often anxiety in disguise. I know that is for me. And what I started to say before about control, controlling the outcomes. I think when there's been different times in our lives where everything felt so out of control, whether it was during caregiving, whether it was during losing a loved one, whether it was getting divorced or becoming an empty nester or changing jobs, or all of a sudden your employer says, okay, we're no longer doing things this way, we're trying something new. Whatever it is, right? Idea that controlling will bring you certainty. At least in your mind, that's what you're thinking, right? Okay, if I can figure out how to make this happen the way I want it to happen, then I'll be good. I'll be safe. There won't be this unknown, this scary part, right? And that scary part is anxiety because that feeling of being out of control. If you've had a time in your life where it felt completely out of control, it doesn't feel good. And so I can say for myself, I definitely grip tightly because I can look back on my life and think of many examples where I felt that my life was spinning out of control, and I just needed to grab hold and figure out anything I can do to make it feel like I did have control. I think also that this impatience is the anxiety of maybe pressure of feeling like I should be further along. Thinking for myself, I think to myself, at this age, I should have X amount of dollars saved for retirement. And I should, I should, I should, all the different things. It's this fear that, oh my goodness, I'm behind. I've fallen behind, I am behind, my progress is too slow. And oh gosh, it's just it's scary, right? And so if I can somehow control all these things, that fear, that anxiety will dissipate. It's almost if I'm productive, it's a safety net. And when I'm not being productive, it's no good. Because I don't know what's gonna happen. I can't control the out the outcome. So that fear uh, I mean, that being productive is really almost like fear in motion. As long as I'm doing something, I'm good, I'm progressing, I don't have to worry, I'm not gonna be behind. This is how I make sure that I'm further along, that I'm making the progress that I quote unquote should be. I love the expression where I heard people say, stop shooting yourself. Don't we do that to ourselves all the time? We have these ideas. I think it's because we're comparing ourselves to other people, or it's the messages that we hear from society on commercials, what we read, podcasts. It makes us feel lousy about ourselves sometimes because you listen to someone else or you look at what they're doing on social media and you think, oh, what about me? I should have done this, I should be doing that. It's awful. And when we try to do that, what happens when we become impatient and we try to push the timeline or force things to move faster? What does it bring on? Burnout, of course, because we're always rushing. We're always trying to be productive every second of every day. I know for me, on the weekends sometimes, I'm thinking to myself, oh my, I should not be just sitting here on the couch watching TV. Now, let me say, it's ridiculous because I don't sit on the couch and watch TV most days. Although I did do it yesterday with my friends. Maybe I do it on the weekends for if it's not football season, because then I do watch a little more. Maybe it's a couple of hours at night. But when that happens, when I am watching, I start thinking in my head about all the things that I could be doing or that I should be doing. And I feel dissatisfied with my productivity or my lack of progress. I'm experiencing this right now, and so I want to share this with you what's going on. So, as possibly I speak to groups of people sharing my message, either about the sprinkle effect method or reinventing your life, or I've got a bunch of different things that I talk about. And this speaking for a living, it's a business. And so I'm currently in the process of changing my outreach system, creating new emails and new leads lists. That's how it works. I would love it if my phone just kept ringing, but if I'm being honest, it just doesn't happen, I guess, unless your name is Oprah Winfrey. So there's a business, there's specific outreach that needs to be done and follow-up and all the things. I have been working with a program to help with this outreach. And they have different software, and I don't know, it doesn't matter. Let's just say it's not moving fast enough for me. And over the past months, really, because I've been trying to get this up and running for months now, and I am one of the people in the program that is on the cusp of when they decided to ditch some old software that they were using before and start something new. So it's almost like I'm a guinea pig. And look, someone has to be. So every week I think, okay, this is gonna be the week that finally my process is gonna get up and running. And every week it seems like I hit another roadblock. And I'll tell you, I am so incredibly frustrated. And every week when I plan my week, I say, this is the week. This is the week that it's gonna happen. And it hasn't happened. And what happens? I'm angry, I'm frustrated, oh my goodness, frustrated beyond belief. And I feel like I'm behind. I feel like I'm never going to get this off the ground. And then I keep looking at the date. It's February 15th. I've been trying to do this since November 15th. This is ridiculous. I'm not making fast enough progress. This is never gonna happen. I am behind. Other people are far ahead of me. And I have to say, then what happens? I send these emails to the team of the program that I'm in saying, what about this? What about that? And when is this gonna work? And I'm super frustrated and I want everything to be perfect. And they're trying, which I so appreciate. The customer service is great, and so that's all I can ask for. And here's where I know this week that I need to take a step back and remind myself, I'm not falling behind. Does it really make a difference? Am I on a particular timeline? If I don't get this started until April, does that mean that I won't get any speaking engagements because I waited until April? No. It's okay. It doesn't have to progress in the same timeline that I think it should. I've got to release control. So let's go back to steady. When I revisit my word, it's a reminder. Okay. Just I gotta just show up consistently. That doesn't mean a certain number of hours. That doesn't mean pushing and pushing. Nope. I am not demanding immediate results like I have been with this speaking business stuff. Means being steady means there's no reason to panic. Nope. No reason to panic. It'll just happen. And I just have to trust that if I continue to show up in the ways that I want to, all is good. I've got to let go of that adrenaline feeling where you get yourself all worked up and you just are like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this. I'm so frustrated and I need this to happen yesterday. Doesn't mean that you don't have goals and you don't have a direction. I love this line. You are just releasing the stopwatch. Yep, you're releasing the stopwatch. Letting go of control does not mean that you're letting go of direction or your goals or anything. It's just being able to take that deep breath and have trust and faith that as long as you keep showing up, everything'll work out. It'll work out as it's supposed to. Now I'm not saying sit back on your couch doing nothing all the time. I'm just saying let things develop as they're meant to develop and stop trying to push and force things. So let me ask you, where are you rushing or trying to rush something? Is there something that you are trying to control? And what would change if you just trusted the pace of how everything was developing? I'm reminding you and I'm reminding myself. We're not behind, we're not late, we are exactly where we need to be. If you like these kinds of conversations that I have on the podcast, I want you to know that, like I said earlier, I do have it on stages as well, on organizations across the country. So if you're involved in planning an event and looking for a speaker, I would love to connect with you. Feel free to DM me on Instagram at Debbie. Shoot me an email at Debbie at DebbieRWiss.com. Thanks for listening. Steady, steady, steady, steady. You got it? I got it too. Maybe we can do this. I'll see you next week.