Overcome overwhelm…
It’s a rotten feeling, isn’t it?
Life can sometimes feel like it’s careening uncontrollably toward disaster-rather like the feeling you get when you’ve lost control of your moving car. It’s that feeling of complete helplessness and panic.
While we may be feeling overwhelmed with everything going on in our lives right now, there are some concrete steps we can take to regain a sense of control of our lives.
Expectation vs. Reality
In most cases, overwhelm is a realization that a gap exists between our expectations and reality. The greater the gap, the greater the feeling is of being overwhelmed.
This gap is often created when our expectations are too demanding or when our reality changes in a way we did not anticipate.
Think of the behavior you expected from your family at that fateful holiday dinner when it all went wrong. Think of the weather interfering with your carefully made travel plans to get across the state. Think of that illness that derailed your to-do list.
Here are some steps you can take to narrow that gap between expectation and reality!
1. Accept
It’s ironic that one of the biggest sources of overwhelm is the expectation that we ought not to be overwhelmed in the first place! But overwhelm is a natural part of life. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, it only means we are living, breathing, dynamic human beings.
For life is like a roller coaster ride with its ups, downs, twists, and turns. It’s also like the seasons with its alternating periods of relative calm and periods of varying degrees of stress and anxiety. Sometimes we forget this.
2. Adapt
No matter how much we try, we may not be able to control our reality. But we can adapt our expectations to match our reality. This may mean revising our goals, delegating tasks, quitting projects.
Adapting may be feel like failure in the moment, like giving up, but this ability is a God-given opportunity to create success in the long term. Working with reality rather than against it can give us perspective and hope.
3. Celebrate
When we’re feeling overwhelmed, we can easily fall into an all-or-nothing mindset. We may disregard the things we do manage to accomplish in the midst of the overwhelm. But celebrating our small wins creates space for gratitude to take hold in our hearts.
Tony Robbins, personal growth leader and author (of the “walking-on-hot-coals” fame!), said:
“Trade your expectations for appreciation and your whole world changes in an instant.”
Celebrating wins (whatever size!) allows us to clearly see the progress we are making.
- Appreciating our blessings,
- acknowledging our small bites, and
- celebrating our wins however small
enables us to have a more accepting perspective on the opportunities, the gifts, and the joys in our lives.
Overwhelm may be a part of life, but if we just step back a bit we can see the ups and downs of our roller coaster ride are just called LIFE!
2 Comments
Quite a Roller Coaster, isn’t it Pat!
Lea, those of us of a certain age have had lots of ups and downs. But we sure are blessed to still be here.