What To Do When Overwhelm Creeps In

Last week was….quite a week. A couple of 12 hour days may have been involved.

Is this me not practicing what I preach? Nope. This is me being real about real life…not trying to seem perfect.

Full schedules happen.
I know I’m prone to over-committing.
Sometimes old habits die hard.
None of those things make me (or anyone else who tries their best to live differently) a hypocrite or a fraud – it makes us real.

What makes me know I’m walking my talk is that I’m aware of what’s happening. By Thursday night I had a total case of the F-its, and by Friday morning I was feeling super stressed. What I’ve learned is that these are my signs that overwhelm is creeping back in. These are the times when I’m most likely to not choose my self-kindness practices. Sure, I could have skipped my morning meditation, cancelled my lunch with a friend and plowed through to get all the work done; but I know by now that those choices only push me further into overwhelm.

When I don’t choose the things that light me up, I choose overwhelm.

So I chose me. I did my morning meditation. It wasn’t my most relaxed experience, but by the time I got in the shower I was remembering that the trick is to focus on 1 thing at a time, not to get ahead of myself and stress about every-single-thing. I got lucky (thanks, Universe) and my first call ended early so I had a little more padding than I anticipated. That lunch with a friend was such a treat in the middle of the day and it turned out that she had to leave at the same time as I did.

By Friday late afternoon I was tired, but not snappy anymore. I procrastinated writing this with an Instagram story, but everything got done. I chose me and everything still got done…and I didn’t even have to break my no computer on Saturdays rule to write this post.  <3

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