4. OWN IT AND WORK WITH IT
If you’re the kind of person who blows everything off until the last minute, and you know this about yourself, why waste your time freaking out while you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing? Go to the damn beach, have a cocktail, and when the pressure’s on, get down to business. There’s nothing worse than time wasted pretending to work or stressing out while trying to have fun—no work gets done and no fun is had. It’s the worst of both worlds. Figure out how much time you truly need to get the job done, and go do something else until the clock starts ticking.
5. LOVE YOURSELF
Right now, wherever you’re at.
I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened.
—Mark Twain; American author, humorist
When I set out to write a new book, I find it very helpful to start with a separate index card for each chapter. I put the chapter title at the top of each card, write my notes in the space underneath, and then spread them all out on a table so I can see the whole thing at once. I just did this a few days ago and it was so exciting. Behold! My glorious new book! About two seconds later, however, I was seized by panic.
OMG that is a lot of chapters how the hell am I going to get it all done in time my deadline is speeding around the corner and I’m not even entirely sure what I’m putting in each section yet what was I thinking how come I didn’t start this eight months ago is it too early for wine someone help me I am sinking . . .
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Just. Do. One. Chapter. At. A. Time
. So I pulled a random card off the table, opened my eyes, and it was, of course: The Drama of Overwhelm.
I’d like to remind you, and me, that the majority of the pain and suffering in our lives is caused by the unnecessary drama that we create. If we happen to find ourselves, for example, in a catatonic state of overwhelm, hugging our knees while rocking back and forth with our mouths hanging open, just like everything else in our lives, all it takes is a shift in perception to create a new reality.
Life is but a dream. Don’t turn it into a nightmare.
We are so unbelievably blessed to have all the things we have, all the opportunities and ideas and people and tasks and interests and experiences and responsibilities—choosing to freak out about it all, rather than enjoying the living of our lives, is like throwing pearls before swine. Such a waste of such a glorious gift.
In the interest of helping you get a more pleasant perspective on your massive to-do list, let’s take the three most common complaints about overwhelm and pretty them up:
1. THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TIME
Thanks to the hard work of people with big brains, we now know that time is an illusion. While most people have no idea what the hell that means, there is another angle that’s a lot easier to grasp; not having time is an illusion. For example:
I don’t have time to find a real parking spot so I’ll park in this loading zone. Oh, look at that, I just spent three hours I don’t have getting my car out of the tow garage, another two getting lost on the way home, and forty-five minutes complaining about it to my wife.
I don’t have time to clean my office. Oh, look at that, I just spent a half an hour that I don’t have looking for my phone that was buried beneath a pile of crap. Oh, and look at that, my phone is dead, which means I’m about to waste even more time I don’t have looking for the damn charger which might be under this pile of books over here please I hope . . .
When we’re forced to do something, suddenly the time is there. Which means it’s there all the time, but we’ve just chosen to limit ourselves by believing that it isn’t. Ever notice how if you’ve got six months to do something, it’ll take you six months to do it, but if you have a week, it’ll take you a week? Once you understand that time, like the rest of your reality, is in your mind, you can make it work for you instead of being its slave.
Here are some things you can do right now to start wrangling time into submission:
SHOW SOME RESPECT
If you want more time in your life, show time some respect. If you’re constantly late, if you blow things off or if you’re a flake, you’re not sending a message to The Universe—or others, or yourself—that you value this precious time that you crave and are trying to create more of for yourself.
You can create anything you desire, but you have to truly want it.
If you act like time isn’t important, that it’s fully worth wasting and disrespecting, you’re not in alignment with what you say you want so you’re gonna have a hard time getting it. I mean, think of time as a person. Would you expect time to keep showing up for you if you constantly treated it like it was just some dumb thing that didn’t matter? I should think not.
If you’re always late, start being early. If you constantly cancel or flake or forget your dates with people, get it together. Write down your appointments and keep them. Set your alarm on your cell phone to remind you to get ready. Early. Write things on the back of your hands. Keep your word if you say you’re going to do something. It’s not rocket science—if you want to have a good relationship with time, have a good relationship with time. Not only will this help you create more time in your own life, but you’ll stop being one of those rude people who constantly wastes everyone else’s.
KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE
AND YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER
What do you find yourself doing instead of doing what you’re supposed to be doing? Screwing around on Facebook? Answering e-mails? Eating even though you’re not hungry? Once you know what your favorite distractions are, you can build up a good defense against them. Turn off the Internet and phone while you’re working. Make the kitchen off-limits until you’re done if you constantly find yourself standing in front of the open refrigerator door in a stupor. We get into such bad habits that half the time we don’t even realize what we’re doing. Once you become aware of what your weak spots are, you can start to protect yourself against them.
CHUNK IT DOWN
There’s nothing more deflating than looking at some giant task and wondering how you’ll ever get it all done. So don’t try and eat the whole elephant at once, break it down into bite-sized bits. For example, instead of walking around your entire house, from one catastrophically messy room to the next, wondering how you’re ever going to clean the whole gigantic thing (and trying to figure out how you can justify not doing it instead of trying to figure out how you’re going to do it) break it down and just focus on one room at a time. Our brains can only handle so much information at once without exploding, so by looking at each task separately, the larger task suddenly becomes more manageable.
Brains love chunks.
Chunking it down works great for time too. For example, if you’re working on designing a new website, instead of setting aside the entire day to work, decide that you’ll work in hour-long chunks. During this time you are unauthorized to get up to use the bathroom, get something to eat, check your texts, go online, etc. Once your sixty minutes is up, you can take a break and do whatever you want until your next sixty-minute chunk. We can do anything for sixty minutes. Our brains go into overwhelm when we try to do it all in one big block of time.
2. THERE’S TOO MUCH TO DO
Ever notice that whenever you ask someone how they’re doing, about 99 percent of the time they say something like “Good. Really busy, but good.” “Busy” has become the new “Fine, thanks.” I mean, where’s the
fun in that? What kind of message does that send out to the world and ourselves? No wonder we all feel like we’re living pinned beneath a giant, cement slab of a to-do list. So, yes, the first task is to:
WATCH YOUR MOUTH
Stop talking about how busy you are. Focus on what you enjoy about what you do and the spaces in between the doing instead of feeling weighed down by it all. Decide that you live an awesome, relaxed life full of interesting projects that you love doing and communicate that to the world and yourself. And then go out and merrily do it.
GET SOME HELP
If you’re feeling totally confused and disorganized and don’t know where to start or what to do next, get some outside perspective. A lot of times we’re so tangled up in our own lives that we can’t see something that’s totally obvious to someone else. Ever spend some quality time searching for your glasses when they’re sitting right on your head? It’s sort of like that. You could spend hours or days or months (or forever) trying to figure out how to re-do your website or plotting out an exercise regimen or figuring out how to organize your office, when someone who isn’t as buried alive by all the moving parts as you are can nail it right away. Get a new pair of eyeballs on the situation.
And get someone who knows what they’re doing please. Don’t get money advice from someone who’s as broke as you are or dating advice from the terminally single or decide that someone’s main qualification for helping you is that they’ll do it for free or trade. Working with a pro will save you time and money in the long run because you
won’t have to spend time undoing, or doing over, whatever your wimpy first attempt was.
Hire a business coach, ask a friend who is totally together and successful to sit with you, hire a clutter consultant, and if none of this makes sense for your particular situation, read on:
GET INTO REALITY
Sometimes we take on more than we can chew because we think we have to do it all. Or that the world will fall apart if we don’t do everything. Or that we are bad, unlovable people if we don’t do the eight million things we’re trying to do. So get very real with yourself here— why are you doing all the things you’re doing? Is it absolutely necessary that you do it all? Do you need to do it all at the same time? Can some of it wait? Be handed off to someone else? Dropped altogether? And if you must do it all, what would make it more enjoyable?
Just like chunking down your time, chunking down your tasks takes you out of freak-out and puts things into manageable, bite-sized pieces. Here’s how to break it down:
Make your to-do list. Look at it.
What needs to happen right now?
What can wait?
Put these on two separate lists. Hide the Wait list.
What are the big important tasks on the Now list?
What are the little piddly ones?
Give the piddly ones to someone else or save them for off hours and spend the day doing the most important tasks. It’s called prioritizing people!
The shorter the list you’re working with, the better you’ll feel.
And remember:
You’re never gonna get it all done
. So stop stressing about it.
Do what you can do in joy, instead of trying to do it all in misery.
DELEGATE OR DIE
One of the best ways to lighten your load is to stop being a control freak and/or a tightwad and hire someone to help you. Or delegate to those around you (see below).
You absolutely cannot grow a business, get promoted or be a cool parent, and you absolutely will go gray before your time, if you try and do every single little thing by yourself.
Figure out which tasks you hate doing or have always been bad at or just don’t have time to do and find someone else to do them. I realize the reason you may not have done this yet is because you can’t afford to hire someone, or because you think you’re the best at it, or because you’re a control freak, but, like many other excuses, the answer is often there, you’re just not looking at it properly. If you absolutely
had to get some help, if it was a matter of life or death, what would you do? You could get an intern from your local college. You could get a friend or family member to help you out. You could hire someone for just thirty minutes a week and increase as you go. You could sell something to bring in the money to pay someone. Or borrow it. Or push yourself to make it. You could hand it over to human resources and make it their problem. You could ask your husband to empty the dishwasher and get your teenager to clean out the garage so you’d have more time. Help is all around us, sometimes receiving it is simply a matter of looking at it differently, or not giving up so easily.
Deciding that you can’t have something you need or want instantly cuts you off from the flow of manifesting it, as well as distances you from the part that lit you up about it in the first place. Once you think “I can’t,” The Universe is like, “Alrighty then, no assistance needed here, see you later.” Even if you have no idea where it’s going to come from, stay open to the possibility of support presenting itself and you may be surprised by what you can create and how much help you can get. Decide you must have it, trust that it’s available to you, do everything you can to figure out a way to make it happen and trust that
how
it’s going to happen will be revealed.
REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE #1
Put your priorities first—don’t check e-mails or voice messages or Facebook until you’ve gotten into your day and accomplished some of the tasks you want to do. Don’t answer the phone or texts while you’re busy. Other people’s needs can occupy several lifetimes’ worth of our attention, and if you let them, they will.
3. I’M EXHAUSTED
The belief that taking time off will cause your entire life to collapse is not only unhealthy, but it’s arrogant (the world will go on if you stop working, you see). If you don’t take time off, your body will eventually put its foot down and make you sick. Bodies do it all the time. Stress is a leading cause of cancer, heart attacks, liver failure, stupid accidents, grouchiness, and suddenly not being able to breathe.