5 things to focus on when life feels like too much:
Today I tried to de-stress by taking a hot bath and instead flooded my bathroom.
My daughter has been waking up at 5 am lately and for lack of a better term, it’s hell. It’s always hell when she does it but this week in particular has been extra stressful. My husband’s work schedule has been obscenely more full than usual and when that happens I end up solo-parenting for days on end. At first I get a little stressed trying to plan how I’m going to squeeze it all in: being a present parent, keeping the kids alive and fed, making sure everyone is reasonably clean and has clean clothes to go with, making sure the house doesn’t turn into utter chaos, handling the kids schedule, handling my schedule, trying to run my business, making sure I actually take care of myself and move my body, etc. It always starts with me feeling very overwhelmed by the prospect of all this, and then I adopt a plucky can-do attitude and hype myself up. “I can do this! I can do anything.” *Narrator in the background: she could not do it.* So after the pep talk I created a schedule, one that included being up at 4:30 AM to squeeze in some yoga and some work before my daughter woke up, god willing, hopefully closer to 6 am. Did she though? You guessed it, she sure didn’t. In fact, instead of waking up somewhere between 5 and 6 AM, she woke up at 4:55 AM. Because you make a plan and God laughs and all that.
So today, on this particular day, I was feeling the stress of not actually being able to squeeze all those aforementioned things into my days. My kids of course took priority so what fell through the cracks? Taking care of myself and my business. I started to spiral. I made a big list of everything I thought I needed to get done and tried to figure out what to prioritize so I had a starting point. I had two hours before I had an appointment to get to and both my kids were in school so I could finally accomplish something! Instead of moving forward and starting on that list I froze up in a panic, I had stressed myself out so much I couldn’t handle one simple task. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
Anyways, once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get work done at the level I wanted to in the state I was in I decided I needed to de-stress before I got to work. I poured some of my favorite CBD bath salts into our tub and turned it on as hot as it would go. While it was filling I meditated for a few minutes and worked on some stress relieving affirmations. When I finally walked into the bathroom I was feeling a little bit calmer.
I know what you’re all probably thinking, I walked into the bathroom calmer and then immediately saw that I had overfilled the tub and flooded the floor and went right back to being stressed out. However, that’s not what happened. You see, I’m a tall person and our tub is very shallow. So I tried to fill the tub to the perfect level so that I could cover hopefully at least 80% of my body without it spilling over. When I started to get in I realized the mistake I had made. I have sloshed water out of the tub before so I had put some towels at the base of it just in case. However this time around was different, I lowered myself all the way in and watched as water cascaded over the edge and continued to watch as it just kept moving. It flowed over my bathroom tile and under the various toys my kids had left on the ground that I was too stressed to clean up before the bath and it saturated the clothes I had discarded on the floor instead of putting them in the hamper. I just sat their staring at my flooded bathroom floor and I laughed. Yes, I laughed. It was the perfect metaphor: I was so desperate to manage it all and make it work that all I did was flood myself with stress to the point of bursting.
Watching this all go down and having this realization slam into me was honestly cathartic. After that I was able to breathe and find peace in my too-small bathtub until the water became cold.
How do we avoid getting to the point of hitting that level of stress? I obviously struggle with this in a day and age when I was raised in the girl-boss, hustle-culture era. I love that people are embracing slowing down and slow living and shining a spotlight on being mindful and meditating. But those of us who are detoxing from hustle-culture and girl-bossing to close to the sun, how do we stay on track?
- Use your “why” to stay grounded. I know there’s a lot of ways to ground yourself; there’s grounding mats, there’s walking barefoot on grass or sand, there’s getting yourself out in nature, etc. But what happens when you can’t make those things happen or don’t have grounding mat? You have to use the tools you do have. I ground myself in “why” I’m doing life or basically my biggest priorities in my life. Yes, other things in life are important , like money, health, food, etc. But if you take a moment to think of the things in your life that are truly important to you, you realize the rest is background noise and life will sort itself out the way it always does. The way I ground myself in my “why” is by thinking of my children, my husband and myself as a whole and knowing that as long as I have these things/people in my life, everything else will be okay.
- Take on one thing at a time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and freeze up when you have a million to-do’s on your mind. What I try to do in these scenarios is “brain dump” all the to-do’s wherever they go for you, mine is usually a notebook or my phone if I’m not at home, and then really look at them and pick 3-5 that actually need to be done that day. Odds are, most of the other things don’t need to be done right that second or could be delegated to someone else. But actually looking down and visually seeing what needs to be done can help bring things into perspective. Pick those 3-5 things that need to be done and start with one, move onto the next once that thing is done and keep that pattern going as long as you need.
- Take a break. Yes, it’s completely alright to take breaks. I heard once that, “rest is a radical form of self-care” and I try to remind myself that every time I have the thought, “I need to keep going and be productive.” In a world where your worth can feel measured by how much you accomplish taking a break can feel completely and utterly wrong. But it isn’t! It’s so important to give your body, mind and nervous system actual breaks. That can be whatever you need it to be: breathing, reading, sitting in quiet, scrolling your phone, etc. Whatever you need to do to let yourself recharge for a minute. One of my coaches actually gave me a form of this called the “Pardo Principle”, the first part is similar to what I wrote above: making a list and narrowing it down to a certain few that you absolutely need to do then working your way through it. But the way that it suggests you work through it is by working on a task for 30 minutes then taking a 5 minute break, continuing to work for 30 minutes then another 5 minute break, and so on until you complete your work. You can do whatever form of this works for you, but the important part is to unapologetically take that break!
- Give yourself Grace and look for your ‘wins’. It’s no secret, the person that’s hardest on yourself is you. It’s why whenever a friend of mine comes over I apologize profusely for the state of my house, when guess what? My friends usually don’t care. But I’m trying to hold myself to a certain standard even when I have variables in my life that make that standard almost impossible to meet, it’s my children in case you were wondering what variables. The point being, at a certain point you need to give yourself grace and accept that you’re not going to be perfect at everything. I find it helpful to counterbalance the ‘failure’ internalizations with what my wins are! For example, I’m terrible at keeping my house clean because I have young kids and I care more about reading dragon fantasy books than cleaning a toilet, BUT I’m great at making healthy homemade meals for my family. Look for your wins and the rest will feel a lot easier!
- Lean in to your lack of control. In a Liz Moody podcast where she interviewed someone about stress and cortisol the interviewee stated, “humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future.” And how true is that? We spend all this time over thinking what could possibly happen and causing ourselves great stress and anxiety when we honestly have no idea what’s going to happen! When I hit this point I try to sit back and tell myself, “only God knows my plan, and I trust he’ll get me through it” whether you’re spiritual or not, you can always come up with your own version of this! Or honestly just anything you can do or tell yourself to let go of what you cannot control.
No matter what age you are or what phase of life you’re in, big stressors tend to come in waves (and sometimes those waves roll right out of your bathtub) and it can all feel like too much. It can make you feel like you just want to crawl into bed and sleep. It can make you feel like you’re being crushed by a 1,000 pound weight. It can make you feel a lot of things, just know you’re strong enough to get through it and still thrive instead of just survive.
