It’s the beginning of the week and if yours is anything like mine, it’s rammed with stuff that needs doing.
How do we avoid becoming overwhelmed? How do we avoid slipping into despair, or procrastination, or denial?
This weekend away with my daughter really brought that home for me, once again.
The packing, the prep, the organisation, the clothing choices, the food prep, the readying of our steeds, the mitigating for circumstance and weather (all for two people)… to try and look at it in the whole was what led to me losing my patience, or reaching for my phone to procrastinate away the overwhelm.
But to see, “Well, this thing needs doing, I can narrow my focus to that; commit to doing a really good job on it,” was profoundly liberating. It released me from the thinking about everything else, brought me back to the here and now, and saw the overall task come one step closer to completion.
This idea had already been formulating in my mind, when I fell into the trap again. At the beginning of Day 2, a little tired, under time pressure, I looked at the contents of the bike luggage that had been exploded across the room I was in.
The content of two people’s temporary lives, that needed to be compartmentalised and stashed away neatly inside panniers for the impending departure, was instead scattered everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, on the table, on the chair, over the door.
I felt a rising panic as the suddenly overwhelmed mind bleated,
📦🗣️ “But I don’t even know where where to begin!” 😩
So I began by doing one thing at a time:
- This goes here
- This needs to be put with this and goes in there
- This might be required on the road, so needs to be near the top of that bag
One thing… and then another thing… and then another.
Each a complete task, in its own right. Each exclusively attended to; rewarded with presence.
And then it was all done.
💁🏻♂️
You’ll have seen this same situation playing out in your own life, when doing something like tidying up a messy kitchen, or moving house.
But it applies equally to anything: a project, a job, a difficult situation, a recovery, a loss.
The feeling of overwhelm comes from the mind spinning out into the big picture; creating stories that it finds scary.
The reality—and your salvation, in all these situations—is doing…
One
Thing
At
A
Time
💘
Giles
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Giles P Croft
OMG so much to learn from bike luggage!! 😆