I started this post last week and never finished it or my email newsletter. I also changed the title from “How to Deal with Overwhelm” to “How To Not Feed Into Overwhelm” since then. And last week, that’s exactly what I did. I allowed myself to feed into overwhelm. It’s not the first time I’ve done this, and likely won’t be the last. It’s really easy to do this. It’s a lot harder not to. So, I’ve been challenging myself. Why am I allowing myself to feel overwhelmed right now? Can I pause and take a few deep breaths?
I’m beginning to embark on my journey as a Life and Health Coach at the end of May (something I’ve been wanting to pursue for several years), and in anticipation of that I’ve been taking a few miscellaneous classes. A few lessons and notes I’ve taken recently are:
Stress is how we react to what is happening in our life.
Your mind creates your reality, and the rest of you follows suit.
You are the only one who gets to make meaning of what happens in your life.
You must have the ability to recognize that your thoughts influence everything and your overall health.
Another opportunity I’ve had to gain some inspiration and clarity, was from an Instagram live with Eben Britton. I love following Eben’s content. He’s a former NFL player, and is now a spiritual yogi. I find all of his words and posts super helpful. Eben Britton does Instragram live videos quite frequently, and I usually tune in. This time when he asked what questions anyone had, I fired off my question in the chat immediately. My question to Eben? How to not feed into overwhelm? And I took it as a sign and a gift that he saw my question and spent the next several minutes answering it. I was watching the Instagram live on my laptop, so I took my phone and recorded his words so I wouldn’t miss his direct response to my question.
Here’s what Eben had to say to me:
Asking for our attention? They want us to get involved with it. Overwhelm is one of those feelings. So, the task really becomes when you start to feel the overwhelm do you try to do more? Or do you just surrender to the feeling that you are experiencing, the situation, and be still and do less? Create space. Knowing that the sensation, whatever it might be is going to pass. The illusion is that the overwhelm is not going anywhere unless you do something about it. That’s the illusion. The overwhelm is going to float away, whether you do anything about it or not. The task that we are constantly provided with is, when we come into adversity or when we come into some difficult situation, imagined or actual, the task is not to get into that fight or flight reaction but to be still, center yourself, create space, and give yourself the opportunity to respond in a proper fashion. A lot of overwhelm is mental noise. Because usually if you are feeling totally overwhelmed you can take a breath, you can look around and go, okay my life is not in danger in this moment. Even though my mind is convinced that because I’ve got to send that email, and talk to that person, and eat, and make money, and say hello to my children, and do x, and do this, and call that person, all of that is the overwhelm. There is so much to do and not enough time. Is that true? There’s plenty of time. Napoleon Bonaparte would wait two weeks on the battlefield to respond to messages that he received. Because he believed if it was really that important it would still be around in 2 weeks. If it is just a fleeting thing, he won’t ever hear about it again. Think about that. Napoleon on the battlefield would get a message, from the government, some authority above him, someone across the way, he would wait 2 weeks on the battlefield to respond. Dealing with overwhelm, be still give it space.
So what have I realized? Overwhelm is a choice. The reality is we are all on this floating rock we call Earth, when we think about this—why do we even allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed? It’s not the norm to be centered. It’s the norm to feed into overwhelm. To overschedule yourself. To become so busy with everything in life that you have to, should be, must be doing—that there is no space. You’ve eliminated it all. Remind yourself that you do not have to feed into overwhelm. Take a few breaths this week.