As I came back to work after a month off, I noticed myself feeling overwhelmed by the mountain of work in front of me.
I felt a ton of resistance, and stress about how much work had to be done.
A perfect practice ground for me!
In this article, I’m going to share how I’ve been practicing with the overwhelm with some delight.
There are two practices that have helped me:
- One breath at a time.
- Finding delight in the task.
Let’s talk about each one.
One Breath at a Time
When there’s a pile of undone things, it can feel overwhelming — how in the world can we tackle all of that? It can be stressful and shut us down to actually doing the work.
The way that I practice with this is simple.
First, I make a list of things I need to do. Possibly a long list. Making a simple list like this can really help get everything out in plain sight and let you know what you’re up against. This is where people often feel overwhelmed, so if you start to get stuck here, just move to the next part.
Second, I make a short list of what I want to focus on for today. I can’t do the whole list today, so I chop it down to what I would love to accomplish for today. I try to keep this list short so I don’t get too overwhelmed and it feels doable. If it doesn’t feel doable, make it shorter!
Finally, I pick one task and really just focus on that. One small one, something doable that I can use to get some momentum.
Then that task become my whole world. It’s the same as meditation — one breath at a time, one task at a time. When my mind starts to go to all the other things on the list … I simply return to that one task and give it my full focus.
Often you might still feel overwhelmed, because you still have a big pile left. The way I think about it is: I have millions of breaths left to take in my life. I can’t take them all at once, nor would I want to! So I take one at a time.
One breath at a time — don’t try to take them all at once.