‘Tis that season.
Overwhelm has featured strongly in recent coaching calls with clients.
Christmas, Chanukah, the New Year are just around the corner, but we don’t need festivities to keep us up at night. Overwhelm can occur at any time of year.
When we’re in it, overwhelm certainly doesn’t feel like a gift and it doesn’t come wrapped with a gold bow on top. But there’s intelligence in overwhelm; it’s designed to guide us back to calm.
All emotions are guides.
Light, pleasant emotions let us know that we’re in a state of coherence with our true selves. Uncomfortable emotions let us know that we’re not.
Emotions aren’t there to define us or judge us, and they don’t tell us what’s true about any situation. They tell us what’s true about our state of mind in the moment.
When our state of mind is low and we experience disharmony, even the washing up can feel like a huge struggle, something to resist or argue over.
Dirty dishes can’t make us feel uncomfortable, but our thoughts about them can. You probably agree that you don’t always feel the same way about the washing up.
"But I have this long to-do list," you may argue. "All the things that must be done and the pressure from the family are together creating overwhelm!"
This is a common and innocent misunderstanding. Lists and family members cannot create overwhelm. It’s our thoughts about them and how seriously we hold those thoughts that create discomfort. When we remember how the mind works, we open ourselves up to a different experience of lists, family members and anything else that we choose to blame.
When we feel overwhelm, it’s a sign from our body that we’ve moved into stress mode. Stress creates internal chaos. The body is designed to cope with stress for short periods. However, if stress continues, the body knows that it will interfere with our health. How brilliant that the body can send us signals to remind us that we’re walking a path away from well-being.
So, let’s look at a to-do list and let’s explore how we can have a different and less overwhelming experience of it.
In coaching sessions, I often like to remind clients that it’s useful to observe our thoughts with more full stops (periods). It helps us see where facts end and stories start.
There’s a to-do list.
It’s made up of individual tasks.
What could be more useful: focusing on the long list or the next task at hand?
It will be a disaster if you don’t complete everything on your list! Have we moved into story mode? Can you see how this idea might not be true?
Your family will be disappointed if…
Dinner won’t be as lovely without you staying up late to create…
If you delegate tasks, it will mean…
Your family and friends will talk about you all year if you celebrate the holidays that way!
In innocence, we spend so much time taking made-up stories seriously!
Overwhelm is unlikely to fall away when we try to manage thoughts and stories, or replace the ones we don’t like. That often creates a busier mind.
Overwhelm can fall away when we see more about the nature of thought: it’s fluid and we have the choice to take it seriously or not.
Even our thoughts about family members are no different. You’ve experienced the same family member in many different ways not because of the way they behaved, but because of your state of mind each time you encountered them.
Sometimes, we can see how a family member is caught up in misunderstanding and taking their thinking very seriously. Sometimes we can’t. Your experience of everyone and everything these holidays is up for change. It always is.
When we follow the signs, overwhelm and other uncomfortable feelings invite us to relax on the observer perch. On the perch, stories about the situation we're in become more apparent.
There is only one step to a calmer experience – through awareness in the moment.
However you choose to spend the holidays, I hope you can find calm with a large sprinkling of love and joy.
NOTE: You're allowed to slow down!
Wishing you a season of lightness and light.
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