A how-to potpourri

How to stop feeling overwhelmed

STOP SAYING YOU ARE.

Seriously. Stop labeling that feeling you're having about your situation.

Once you attach a label, you make it this Whole Thing; you solidify it and take ownership over it and it becomes who and how you are. You continue to collect evidence to support it and the feeling grows.

We love labeling things.

"I'm anxious," we say.

"I'm a chronic procrastinator."

"I have an addictive personality."

We give a name to it and it becomes part of our identity. And once we see it as part of our identity, it's infinitely harder for us to show up fresh to each moment.

"I'm overwhelmed" is no different.

Don't claim it for your own.

Instead of seeing the mess of things that need your attention and feeling any which way about it (after all, feeling is highly irrelevant in these situations), ask yourself, What needs to be done? And then do that—just one thing at a time, knowing that you're not effective or efficient when you're unfocused.

How to better handle your problems

It always helps if we first understand that problems don't have to be problematic.

Shift your perspective.

Instead of seeing a problem as an upsetting inconvenience or as something that shouldn't happen, decide right now that problems are going to occur and there's nothing wrong with that.

When a problem arises, avoid the temptation to catastrophize. (This kind of pattern-interruption takes practice, so don't expect to remedy it instantly.)

Adopt the go-to response: What action can I take? Or, What needs to happen here?

Be on the lookout for a partial solution. Resist the all-or-nothing game since it's likely to keep you mired in the problem for far longer than is necessary or desirable.

Finally, consider ways to convert the problem into a project. As the brilliant coach Steve Chandler writes: "A project is a lot more fun, emotionally. A person can have a favorite project. A person will never have a favorite problem. Words carry emotional histories" (Time Warrior, 60).

How to improve at anything

Give it more of your time and attention.

It's not more complicated than that, though we often make it so.

How to find your purpose

Spoiler alert: We all have the same purpose.

The purpose of a human BEING is to EXIST. That's it.

None of us did anything to get here, so how could it be that there's some singular purpose that each of us has to magically discover and then fulfill in our lifetimes?

If what you're curious about is what you ought to be doing with your life, try coming at it from a different angle. Instead of asking, What's my purpose?, try asking, What am I on a mission to do?

The great thing about the latter is: Missions can change! You might be on one particular mission at this point in your life—and, at a future juncture, perhaps in a different season of life, you might choose an entirely different mission for yourself.

Missions leave room to grow.

In other words, you get to conjure up that drive to do something. Being on a mission is a supremely active, engaged, and empowering way of relating to what you can do with you life. You don't have to wait for anything to reveal itself to you, and you don't have to tirelessly quest after some mysterious and often elusive calling that may or may not suit you in a few years' time.

How to approach the end of a decade

Don't get too worked up about the end of this decade.

Yes, ten years is a notable chunk of time.

Yes, reflecting on the last ten years could be a worthwhile (or at least interesting) exercise and might turn up some useful information for how you want to approach the next ten.

Yes, it can be fun to join in on the collective buzz, posting pictures of yourself from 2009 or sharing all that you've achieved and overcome since.

But also?

The end of this decade doesn't actually mean anything.

The end of any decade—hell, any year or month or week or day!—doesn't actually mean anything. It’s simply the passage of time.

It doesn't mean anything beyond what you make it mean.

Beyond what you want it to mean.

What are you making it mean?

What do you want it to mean, if anything?

If you feel up to it, share your answers below.

New rules!

I finally got a haircut, but I haven't exercised for the better part of a week.

I'm on top of the laundry, but dust bunnies are accumulating along the baseboards.

I returned a phone call from months ago, but I still haven't finished writing the thank-you notes for all the thoughtful baby gifts that arrived back in May.

I'm getting this newsletter out to you, but my email inbox is in desperate need of triaging. (If yours is one of my as yet unanswered emails, thanks for your patience.)

In other words: Trade-offs come with the territory of being human and not machine.

This is not a failure on your part.

I repeat: This is not a failure on your part.

(Did you suspect I said that more for myself than for you? You were right. But I know there's a handful of you who need to hear this, too, so listen up.)

This is one of the Big Lessons of new parenthood for me, so far.

What if I told you it was actually impossible to keep all the plates spinning, all the time? (PHEW.)

What would change in how you approach the events and tasks that make up your life? (I would make choices more quickly, move on them, and then celebrate their completion—instead of deliberating endlessly, feeling like it's all lose-lose, and berating myself for my inaction.)

What would change inside your mind? (Mine would become a more pleasant place to hang out.)

How would you feel? (I'd feel at peace. Open to joy.)

Okay, so, here's something to chew on: Who ever said it was possible to keep all the plates spinning, all the time?

I don't know about you and your situation, but no one told me it was possible. I guess I just assumed? Which means full-fledged plate-spinning is an invention of my mind, a standard I've set, a fantasy I'm touting as reality.

Oof.

The impulse here might be to feel shame. ("Dammit, Helen, you created this untenable dynamic with yourself, for yourself. You are, quite literally, the source of your own suffering.")

But I'm resisting that entirely and I think you should, too. Because you know what this realization really means?

It means we're capable of changing the rules. After all, we're in charge around here. We're the creators of the narrative whether it's screwy and impossible and makes us feel like miserable failures...or it's wonderfully sound and leaves room for us to live life joyfully, if imperfectly.

What's a new rule we should write? Share it below.

Resilience: not just for the birds

We encountered a robin who was insistent on making her nest atop the light fixture by the side garage door—the door we use to get to and from our car.

In theory, this is the perfect spot for a nest; it's covered by the overhang of the garage roof and it's a relatively low-traffic area; it's high enough off the ground, but completely inaccessible to the acrobatics of squirrels and mostly hidden from the hungry eyes of crows.

There is one problem, however.

We have to walk through that doorway multiple times a day.

And while we've no predatory intentions whatsoever, we do know that once eggs are laid and, later, baby birds are present, no robin will be happy with us for repeatedly getting close to the nest. We'll seem predatory no matter the benevolence in our hearts.

Plus, the last thing we want is to carry a new baby over that threshold, ever fearful of a bird who's equally protective of her own new hatchlings.

So, last week, my husband removed the beginnings of a nest: some dried-up strings of plant matter that were loosely, but expertly coiled around the spire of the light fixture. I watched from the kitchen window and felt guilty for disturbing nature, even as I saw that it needed to happen.

Well, the robin wasn't giving up so easily.

Within an hour, a new nest was well underway.

I watched from the kitchen window as the robin swooped by, making trip after trip with streamers of raffia hanging from her beak. She was adept and efficient, and things started to take shape much quicker this time around.

"We've got another situation," I called out to my husband.

He headed outside, stuffing his hands into the gardening gloves, just as the bird flitted away to secure more building materials.

This second nest was more substantial than the first, which could almost be brushed away—and after he brought it to the window to show me, he walked it to the back of the garage and deposited it among the weed trees and the wild lilies that are just starting to emerge from the earth after our long Wisconsin winter.

Naturally, I felt some kinship with the robin. I'm in a period of nesting, too. Maybe even slightly frantic nesting.

A baby is coming!

There's urgency!

Things have to be in place!

So, did it really surprise me when, the following morning, I looked out the kitchen window to see the robin working on a nearly complete nest?

Not truly.

She was spending more time inside the nest, itself, instead of flying back and forth to collect and assemble.

Pressing her body into the bowl of dried grass systematically, mud on her breast like a sculptor, this robin's determination seemed hardwired.

Things were taking shape.

Our light fixture wore the nest like a crown.

When my husband went outside, he peeked behind the garage and saw that the bird's second nest was missing.

She must've lifted it from the ground and replaced it on the light fixture.

Thanks to some overnight rain, she laid mud within the fragments, gluing them together.

The current nest was her attempt to salvage the previous day's efforts.

You know how this story (unfortunately) ends.

Our decision* was to remove the nest.

To be consistent in our signaling to the bird, pre-eggs, that this particular location wasn't an ideal spot, after all.

Nesting high up in the exposed rafter tails of our roof would be better for everyone (in fact, a few of those spots are already occupied by other robins—and we get along quite well with those neighbors).

Still, we had to admire the robin's repeated efforts to make a nest where she wanted to make a nest.

Wallowing wasn't an option.

No one was throwing a pity party.

Surrendering didn't occur to her—until, of course, it became very apparent that a stable nest was needed as soon as possible...and in the span of 12 hours, no such nest existed.

On this, my final day in the office before my maternity leave begins, I want to leave you with a few things to chew on:

• How quick have you been to give up, historically?

• After your nest disappears, do you find yourself collecting more twigs and grass and mud—and beginning again? Or are you too busy collecting evidence that your plan won't work? that you're a failure? that it isn't meant to be?

• How many times are you willing to endure everything falling to pieces?

• In your mind, is 'square one' ever an opportunity, or is it always a catastrophe?

• If determination were a hardwired trait of yours, how would things be different for you? Going forward, are you willing to operate as though it's hardwired?

You won't be hearing from me for a good long while, as I become a mother and navigate this new chapter of life with my family.

Without a doubt, though, I'll be back on the blog come fall and we'll get to reconnecting.

In the meantime, here's wishing you tenacity, resilience, and a finely developed intuition that guides you in determining both when to stay the course and when to apply your efforts elsewhere.

*In sharing this story with you, I worried about the response I might get for participating in disturbing wildlife. My husband willingly takes the blame here, since he wanted the nest gone from the get-go—but I won't let him. Bleeding heart that I am, I initially thought we could leave things alone—that is, until I considered our little baby's bald head, exposed to possible territorial dive-bombing when we return from the hospital and then as we make our first trips to the pediatrician...and simply can't avoid the walkway between the house and the garage. That's when it became our decision. And I stand by it. Thank you for respecting my judgment call.

What my childbirth preparation class has to do with you

We attended our first childbirth preparation class last week.

In case you're not familiar: It's the sort of thing someone signs up for in her third trimester of pregnancy, usually through her local hospital or birthing center, with the express purpose of learning about the labor and delivery process.

You might've seen such classes portrayed on TV or in the movies—couples scattered around a room; heavily pregnant females reclined against their partners, eyes closed, engaged in some sort of relaxation or breathing technique.

"It's a rite of passage," I keep telling my husband, though neither of us is particularly jazzed about spending two and a half hours every week in a hospital conference room.

Did I mention it takes place on a weeknight?

And that it'll go on like this for the next month or so?

Still, we willingly signed up for this and we'll see our commitment through to the end.

Plus, I'm sure we'll learn something.

Something that, no doubt, we can get from a book or a website, but in this age of information accessibility and internet searchability, it can be really nice to return to the analog—to being taught and guided by someone who has real-life experience and knowledge, and wants to share it.

Just like us, eight other couples are bringing pillows and blankets, a snack, and their attention to the class—and we sit together in this liminal space, all of us on the brink of becoming parents for the first time.

Of course there's a slide deck and a PVC pelvis model and a baby doll and a molded plastic cervical effacement and dilation chart...but there's something else in the room, too.

(And maybe that's the thing we're actually there for, you know? The unpinpointable thing that has nothing to do with the facts of what lies ahead for all of us.)

In what other gathering of people can we expect to find this same collective mix of joy and terror?

When else do we get the opportunity to sit with others who are about to have their lives changed in the same profound way?

Come to think of it: When else do we actually know ahead of time that life is about to change profoundly for us, and when else do we get to prepare for it (probably more like “prepare” for it) in a way such as this?

Kind of cool, no?

So, the childbirth prep class—and my own feelings about attending it—have me once again considering the importance of mindset.

You might not be looking forward to that all-staff meeting at the end of the week.

Or maybe it's parent-teacher conferences.

Your kid's spring recital.

An organization you belong to that's convening to vote on something.

When you think about going, it feels like a drag.

You'll be tired.

It'll take longer than you want to give it.

You'd rather stay home.

The challenge here for you is to identify some element of the experience that transcends the event, itself.

What else might be happening at the gathering that's, perhaps, less obvious?

Is there a deeper meaning to it—some virtue that's being pursued collectively (or one that you can at least choose to connect with, to inspire some personal investment in it)?

Maybe there's nothing.

Maybe you look and plumb and consider...and it really is just a meeting you don't feel like attending.

Nothing else, nothing more.

But maybe you've found your access point, your way in.

Maybe you can transform your experience of this thing, now that you're willing to see it for what else it is or could be.

Does this resonate with you? Share with me below.