For the last 6 weeks, I have been trying to find the time to sit down and write a blog about the challenges of work-life balance and the feeling of overwhelm. As I sit down to write now, after a long day of work and then an important family phone call, the dogs are pushing at my hands over the keyboard letting me know it’s time for their walk. And then there’s dinner. Yes, even life coaches manage overwhelm, overload, and juggling too much.
Overwhelm comes in all shapes and sizes. And quite honestly it touches all of us, young and old, middle-aged, parents with young children, empty nesters, college students, even those on the verge of retirement.
In April, I attended the 24th annual ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. The theme of this year’s conference was “Work/Life Challenge.” Keynote and breakout speakers all centered around the theme of work-life balance and finding time in our lives for work, love and play. One speaker – Brigid Schulte - captured my attention. It turned out I was her escort for the day and I had the privilege of chatting with her in bits and spurts. We walked the halls at the conference, navigated long lines, and found her a quiet spot to recharge before speaking to an audience that spilled out of the breakout room, lining the floor, back walls and even the hallway. Clearly, people wanted to hear what she had to say.
Brigid is an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post, director of the Better Life Lab with the New America Foundation, wife, mother, and daughter and recent author of Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time. Brigid was the overly busy mother of two who realized she was living a life of all work and no play and decided to find out why she felt so overwhelmed. Sound familiar?
Brigid spent several years investigating the topic of “busyness” – a way of life that afflicts many of us in the U.S. Her book maps out the policies and societal pressures that are literally shredding our leisure time into what she calls, useless bits of “time confetti” and urges us to examine what it means to create a well-lived life. Americans are some of the most anxious and overwhelmed people, according to Schulte’s research. What does it cost individuals, families, communities, businesses and even the economy? How can we feel less scattered, making life more meaningful—with time for work, love and play?
Neuroscientists at the Yale Stress Center, says Schulte, discovered that “overwhelm” can physically shrink the thinking brain. Operating under so much continued stress, the prefrontal lobe begins to shut down. A different group of neuroscientists at Harvard found that people’s gray matter expanded after only 8 weeks when they practiced meditation and yoga for as little as 27 minutes a day. The point, says Schulte, is that overwhelm never goes away. But, you can change how you think about it. Changing your perspective and focusing on the present can make your brain grow. “As the brain grows,” says Schulte,” the better you are able to see the swirl of overwhelm without getting swept away by it."
“Getting out of the overwhelm”, says Tara Brach, a mindfulness expert interviewed by Schulte, “means waking up. Waking up to life. Waking up to the fact that it is fleeting. Because when you forget, I’ll remind you that life is going to be over quickly and that this is an amazingly beautiful day.”
DO ONE THING
As you ponder what you need in order to calm your overwhelm, here are a some of my favorite tips from Brigid Schulte to get you started. For more suggestions about how to turn your time confetti into time serenity, grab a copy of her book and read it!
Work
- Doing good work, having time for family and enjoying meaningful relationships, as well as getting a space to refresh the soul is about having a good life – it's not a mom issue, its an equity issue!
- “Overwhelm” happens when a lack of control and unpredictability in work (or life) couple with anxiety.
Love
- When you make decisions about life & love, check your unconscious bias. Are you favoring the male partner’s career for fear he would suffer more if he left the workplace or cut back? Ask questions to see if its true.
- Create systems and automate family routines to cut down on issues – and share the load!
Play
- Make time for silence every day – even if its just taking 5 breaths.
- Try something new to get your of your comfort zone.
Here’s to finding time and reclaiming our amazingly precious lives.
--Dawn