This photo was one of our first sights of Australia a few years ago. It was one of those times when I looked out and was completely overwhelmed by what I saw.
Looking out at life and feeling overwhelmed is a frequent thing for me. While the vista may be stunning, it can also be frightening and just a little too much to take in. Over the years I've learned some coping strategies I thought I'd share.
My first strategy, when I'm too close to the edge, is to just step back and breathe. I just take a minute to look away and get my balance.
The second thing I do is break it down. When I was a kid I remember a little poem that went like this:
Little drops of water
Little grains of sand
Make the might ocean
And the pleasant land.
( Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney)
It really helps me to break the whole picture down into little pieces, Then I can manage and narrow my focus. There are two questions I ask myself:
"What's most important?" and "What's next?"
When I was a school administrator, I had a notebook with a page, or sometimes two, for each day. I divided it into at least four quadrants. One was simply my schedule. Another quadrant was a list for the classroom, the third a list for the office and the fourth, a list for home and family. In that way I was able to keep a lot of balls in the air at once.
Now I'm retired, I still have a lot of things I want to accomplish and find I need structure in my day. I've started making a goal sheet for the week. It's divided into the different areas in which I want or need to work. Each area has a list of things I'd like to accomplish that week. The thing I like about this is that it gives me flexibility within the structure. Some things still have a deadline or an urgency, but others are choices I can make depending on where I want to focus my energy. At the end of the day or the week, I have a feeling of accomplishment when I can check things off that are done and see that I'm actually making progress, even when it's slow.
What this beautiful photo off the coast of Australia doesn't show is the hordes of little black flies that enveloped us as soon as we stepped out of our vehicle. They were incredibly annoying and made it hard to focus on the view. That's the other thing I struggle with sometimes, the myriad little distractions that get in the way of my goals. Over the years I've learned to sift through those as well.
If the distractions are people, they're important. Sometimes I just have to set my work aside and give my time and attention to some else. If they are simply distractions, I find ways to shut them down and out. Every once in a while it's nice to relax and choose to be distracted by something that's just simply enjoyable.
Do you have any strategies you use when feeling over the top? I'm always interested in new ideas!
Great ideas! I really need to get better organized myself. With some events in life, most recently my husband's heart attack two weeks ago, but also in the past with various crises involving children, grandchildren, church members, work problems and so on, it's easy to get caught up in the tyrrany of the Urgent - all the extras that need to be done to quell the crisis, like picking up new prescriptions, organizing them into the 7 day am and pm boxes according to a four page sheet from the hospital, recording and then attending follow-up appointments, handling phone calls from well-wishers, making sure meals are low fat, low salt, low cholesterol (luckily not much change required here), and so on. In the meantime laundry, household tasks, church callings and the garden get left on the back burner simmering away until I discover we have nothing to wear, too many tomatoes are ripe, and there's no milk left. Oh well. But for coping - I like the to use the pause. It's similar to what you described when you mentioned breaking the big picture into little pieces, but a little different. It's taking time to think before responding to something, pausing when you have absolutely no idea what to do in a situation I can recall a few work meetings where this happened to me! Especially facilitating school transitions. The whole committee looked to me to anticipate and solve every possible problem my little client might have. Amazingly, 'the pause' often gave me just enough time to receive a little inspiration to help us move forward. It also has the advantage of preventing one from making imprudent and ill advised remarks - and gives everyone else time to settle their thoughts as well.
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