Start with One
I have to do this now. This past week for me has been one in which I have succumbed to and been overcome by stress and anxiety and multiple times have been immobilized. Some days this week have been about just making it through the day: staying awake, attending the meetings I had scheduled, loving my children and being happy and positive to reassure them, and managing things as they came until bed time. Wake up, repeat. You know, you can beat yourself up about this, and being unfocused and unable to check off big items on your to-do-list, but at the end of the work week, this morning, with a whole Friday ahead of me, I have to say, on those days that I described, resilience for me was just about making it through. The fact that I didn’t just stay in bed and eschew all duties, was a part of me toughing it out in my own way on those days in the way that I could.
I submitted a huge grant last week that took a prodigious effort to complete over the course of the past few months with every possible obstacle and challenge thrown at me in the process. I think this week was an example of me just needing recovery, and that is a biologically important part of adaptation to stress, too. I forget that sometimes.
So this morning, I start with one … lots of ones… really:
One idea that I did make it through and was successful in walking through a firestorm of burdens, challenges, tasks, emotional bombs, and workload. The fact that I did not check off a huge grant or manuscript completed, or clean the whole house, is ok. I made it through days, one by one. Well-earned participation trophy to me.
One task that I have to do this morning for a deadline, no matter that my house is a complete wreck filled with dirty laundry, unfortunately indistinguishable piles of clean laundry, piles of papers representing projects that I need to work on, tons of open tabs and files on my desktop representing writing and work I need to move forward on, etc. I have to focus on the one thing so I can move forward, somewhere in my jungle of a life right now.
One good decision to support my health, which was this morning, not to start with my typical giant cup of coffee, but at least to have a healthy antioxidant drink (Thanks Tohi) and tea, and THEN start my constant oral infusion of coffee.
Everything can’t be perfect. We start with one, then the next one, then the next one, and remind yourself of one good thing, and then the next good thing, and we just pull the string at the end to untangle this mess of stress we have got in front of us sometimes. Good luck.
don’t try to untangle every aspect of your life at once
pull one end of one line of work and just keep slowly moving forward
your pace today is what you can do and accept even your smallest accomplishments
replace something ok with something better at least once today
one Tohi instead of one coffee
one short walk instead of one coffee
only 98 coffees instead of 100 coffees
