Hello Coaches!

This morning, I decided to work on my coaching business when slack messages came in for my other contractor work.

Here’s the model I created from this situation.

C: Slack message from client
T: I should be replying back to this instead of working on my coaching work
F: guilt
A: heart beats faster, start thinking about what the message could have said, thinking about other to do items of the day related to the contract work, not being able to focus on my coaching work, being indecisive about how to spend time (question if I can use this time for my coaching), think of worst case scenarios where my colleagues asks me why I didn’t reply earlier morning, I set an imaginary manual on myself
R: Im not focusing on neither coaching work or contract work?

I realized that I have this imaginary manual for myself and in that manual it says, if I don’t reply, then that means I’m not a good contractor.

But when I question myself if that is true, I know the answer is no. I believe I’m overdelivering so one message returned with a time lag shouldn’t affect my value as a good contractor.

But this thought keeps coming back and it’s almost like a trigger.

Should I think of this as a thought error? Or as a habit?

I’m not sure if I got the R line correct either.

Also, I tend to have thoughts that start with “I should…” and whenever I have these, it creates the feeling of guilt.

Is there a result that tends to be created from these “I should” thoughts?

Any advice is much appreciated!