The holidays are right around the corner. In many ways, it feels like the they've already begun. The lamp posts around town are decked out in white lights and snowflakes, the grocery stores are stuffed up with stuffing, and our to-do lists are getting just a little bit...longer. I currently type this article with Christmas carols playing in the background: my version of pregaming. They get me pumped up for the season I love so much - and remind me that I better prepare myself to find some calm in the storm ahead. This is my favorite time of year, largely because of the traditions associated with the season. I love the cozy predictability of it all, how I can count on certain things to be exactly the same annually when the rest of my year (and my life) is so varied and unpredictable. But I can also count on certain stressors to arise: workflow shifting in preparation for the holidays, last-minute plans being made, events popping up out of nowhere, requests to tend to, obligations to oblige, calls and texts and emails to answer. Couple this with my introverted, highly sensitive DNA and I'm just about ready to cop out and hibernate with visions of sugarplums and all that jazz dancing around in my head, 'till the first blooms of spring peek their way through the faux snow of the LA holidays. Sometimes it can seem as if the world is out to get us; that when it rains it pours and when it's sunny it's blinding. Overwhelm is not specific to the last quarter of the year in the least - but somehow, every year without fail, this is when it all seems to hit a pinnacle. No wonder the business of New Year's Resolutions is so booming: we're hit right when we're up to our flyaway-hairs in overwhelm. We're overworked, overstressed, overcommitted, overly guilt-ridden. Therein lies the main problem with overwhelm - being over it. Our tendency is to complain, and worse, commiserate over complaints. Complaints are what keep us tethered to our problems, instead of propelled toward our solutions. They're the tar that makes everything too sticky, they're the quicksand beneath our feet making each attempted step and arduous and labored process. They turn us into the worst versions of ourselves, breeding jealousy and a fear of failure. So often we treat complaints like actual action steps, and end up fooling ourselves into thinking we're actually doing something to help the thing we're complaining about. But in reality, complaints are a band-aid, a way to temporarily relieve ourselves of the burdens of the moment by acknowledging the space they take up in our brain. Whenever I catch myself in a circle of complaints about my overwhelm - my apparent busyness or my overload of question-marked tasks, I ask myself one question: So what are you going to do about it? Whether I am faced with looming assignments, I can't quite seem to get on the same page with someone in my life, or my overwhelm is leading me to doubt myself personally and professionally, posing this one simple question to myself makes me take accountability and start to set a plan of action into motion. Crushing the complaints is the first step in creating a sense of cool, collected control. Since you might already be feeling, um, overwhelmed, with long paragraphs and flowery prose (ain't nobody got time for that right now!) - here are four simple strategies, outlined in order for your convenience, to help you proactively persevere through whatever whirlwind you're facing:
from The Chalkboard http://ift.tt/1BneSOb
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment