overwhelm

The feeling of being overwhelmed is extremely common in the people I talk to, and it’s becoming more and more clear to me that this is the default state for most of us.

We’re overwhelmed by it all: all the things we have on our plates, all the interruptions and messages and emails, all the things online and on social media, all the news and chaos of the world, all the things going on in our relationships.

It’s a lot! We can celebrate the abundance of our lives, but often we bemoan it.

The problem isn’t the abundance, but our fear and anxiety about all of it. Actually, for most of us, the fear is that we’ll let people down. We’ll drop one of the many balls we have in the air and let people down … or worse yet, we’ll drop them all and we’ll be exposed as inadequate!

We feel overwhelm when we often have too many commitments. We take on more than we have time for, often out of optimism for how much we can do in a day. It’s a lot less than we usually think. We say Yes to too many things, partly out of optimism, but also because we are uncomfortable saying No to people.

So how do we deal with it?

Well, first, we’ll probably always have somewhat ‘too many things to do’, no matter what. We can relish in the abundance of it if we like — can you imagine what would it be like to never have anything to do? We’re blessed with abundance!

Second, we can start saying No more. A Sacred No, that honours our boundaries and honours that we want to be a Hell Yes to things. A Sacred No that is a gift to the other person, because then they don’t have to be a burden on us. A Sacred No that is a gift to us, because then we can be a Hell Yes to what we truly want.

This will bring up fear for many of us. We know how to practice that fear (see the first simplicity practice if you’ve forgotten). Honour it, but don’t let it drive you to say Yes to something you don’t want to do.

What would life be like if you let your Sacred No protect your time and the commitments you cared most about?

And as you practice with simplicity, you might recite a kind of mantra: When you’re overwhelmed, simplify.
Namaste