Life Hacks for Overwhelm

There’s no arguing that, in today’s day and age, most people are up to their eyeballs in the demands of life. We live in complex times too. Gone are the days when our professions were chosen for us by the families we were born into, like our pioneers, and gone are the days when the demands of our day started and stopped in one domain, like just working, or just mothering, or just studying. Nope, today we’re all jacked up on the ‘Shoulds’ and ‘Have-tos’ that usually come from more than one domain, like, working full-time while parenting, going to school, and supporting our church or whatever...right? Now, I don’t mean to say that long ago we humans had it easy. No, but it was a simpler time. Let us also factor in that, just a few decades ago, people were not navigating the level of technological distractions and lifestyle messaging from the media that we experience today. We are heavily influenced. What’s really remarkable about it all too, is the fact that, generally speaking, we humans just accept it all and adapt to it as though this is the plight of humanity. Life just happens to us and we respond, in turn, by taking it all on. Sink or swim right? Shoulds and Have-tos....

The expectations on people to thrive today are high and the pressure this creates is enormous for some, especially those who are disadvantaged in any way. Our youth today have huge shoes to fill and I get the sense that most of them are just drinking from a fire hose and getting swept away in it all with little chance to incorporate their true sense of self and talent into their major life decisions. I think most of us can relate to this to one degree or another. Beneath the pile on top of us lies the true essence of humanity within all of us. If we’re lucky, we’ve found a way to allow our truest self to co-exist in our lives, but for many of us it’s stuffed deep down inside waiting to be acknowledged. For some of us, when those buried parts of us dare to shine through, it often results in internal conflict. This conflict can create a lot of discomfort and uncertainty in life, because we are not always sure how to honour the demands of life while also honouring our truest most innate self. At times these two things can seem like polar opposites. But, thanks to the New Age revolution, and the many great thinkers and ponderers before us, some began to shine the light on this, reminding us that a well-lived life is about more than the hustle, the bustle and the dolla-dolla-bill-ya’ll. But again, we navigate these mixed messages daily. For many of us, we’ve seen very little evidence or example of people in our lives accomplishing this by way of our upbringing, or by way of our ‘life preparation’ in the school system. If we were lucky, our parents saw the value in sharing this life-secret with us by nurturing and encouraging our natural talents, curiosity and experiential learning all through our lives. If we were lucky, someone worked to mould our beliefs around living life ‘on purpose’, failing often and well, and how being action-oriented curious humans with enough grit to ebb and flow with life will serve us well. However, the majority of us missed out on these teachings in our early years and instead came upon these ideas on our own, if ever, later in life. We’re all at different places with this. For those of us who are ready and open to turn down the dial on all the hustle and bustle and turn up the dial on living a life with more authenticity and purpose, here are a few life-hacks to get you there.

Get to Know You and Your Ego

If you’re still reading I can safely assume that you are already at a place in your life where you are at least curious, if not fully with me, about the idea that we humans have an inner self (higher self, authentic self) that speaks quietly within us all the time about the things that really matter to us. This alone is an important first step in the journey to self-discovery and purpose-driven living. We also know that there’s another part of us that communicates in a much louder, more sure-of-itself way. A voice that’s made up of all the stories and life events that have shaped us; it’s all the Shoulds and the Shouldn’t Haves, it’s the shame and the judgement and all of the rules speaking, right? Oh, yeah, Big Brother is watching. This is our Ego self. It tends to wear the pants but it’s all for show. Yup, there are two sides of ourselves always in dialogue, and the way we know this to be true is to simply witness the back-and-forth in your mind. You’ll know your higher self because it is never mean and never judging; it’s never afraid either. Oh and boy does the Ego judge; this is a big one. If you hear judging in your mind, that is your Ego responding. But, as dominating our Ego is, it can’t hold its out-classed by our higher Self when we let her take the lead. Our higher-Self can out-wit, out-smart and out-strategize the Ego-self every time it’s given the chance because it is not blinded or distorted by the stories of our past. Our higher Self speaks from a place of knowing and truth. I don’t pretend to suggest this is easy; to really connect with and hear our high Self. It isn't’. But it isn’t hard either, not once you know the power-struggle at play and who should be in charge. The awareness of this fact alone creates a major paradigm shift and it is the right place to start. We can learn to identify and filter out the Ego by doing some profiling so-to-speak. It can take a lifetime to master this I suspect, but, even after a short time one can start to see these two aspects of ourselves as separate and as different as they really are, and further, learn that we need not identify with our Egos. We are not our Egos. To get to know your higher Self, take the time to get quiet, ask and then listen.

Take a Time Out

It’s not natural for us to push ourselves the way we do but there’s something of a reward at the end of it all so this motivates us in many ways. How very human of us. But, pushing hard without feeling a deeper sense of purpose often leads to feelings of disappointment, usually at mid-life, and an overwhelming need to understand what’s it all for? When you make a commitment in your life to really connect with and know your inner Self, you’ll find yourself naturally drawn to the need to regularly take some time out for yourself, you become as though it is a need…..because it is. Conversely, when you don’t take time out to just be with yourself and nothing more, you’ll find over time that a haze of uninspired existence will come over you….you’ll feel bored, like life is mundane and you’ll start to question it all. You may even become angry or depressed. When we live without taking time out, we move further and further away from who we really are and start to feel lost. “Such is life”, we often say, and we chalk-up these moments in life where things derail a little, or a lot, to the the popular saying, “That's Life!”, then we get on with it the best way we know how, lost and unsure for the most part. And yes, “That’s Life!”, indeed. This is the human condition, and we are not conditioned to see it in a simpler way. When we take time out to just quiet the mind, we quiet the Ego and connect to Self; we can then get direction. Sages, sufis, mystics, philosophers and even some scientists are telling us, we actually do have answers inside of us, maybe not of exactly what we think we need to know (like fortune telling), but enough of a knowing to nudge us along the best path for us as we navigate life through our years. This is often referred to as your intuition. I say, your intuition is the essence of you whispering to you on the wind.

Get Creative

Have you ever been going along in life and then found yourself remembering something that you used to love to do, a lot, and the memory seemed so long ago? Or, you found yourself thinking, “Boy I’ve really changed”, or, “When did that happen?”. In most cases, that thing we used to do but stopped doing as life took over was some sort of creative expression that delighted us. Think about it, what was yours? It’s true right? It was some sort of creative expression wasn’t it? I remember one day not too long ago realizing that all I wanted to listen to in the car was talk radio!! Draaaastically different than the audiophile I used to be. These creative expressions are windows into our humanity and sacred Self. They naturally held enough influence over us at that time in our lives when we felt we could make space for it. Slowly though, the life grind and Ego tend to win out, and we find ourselves noticing one day we’ve let that part of ourselves go. Sure, we grow out of some things and we gotta pay the bills, right? So, we’ve got to grow up. It takes hard work and perseverance to pull it all off too...the career, your business, the mortgage, the marriage, the family, etc. We place a lot of trust that these things we strive for, and go all-in for, will bring us all the happiness that we need and crave. In many ways, they do, except, what happens is, we continue to look outside of ourselves for fulfillment and while building our lives overlook how we can and should weave our true selves into every aspect and relationship in our lives to experience fulfillment from the inside. We often become too preoccupied trying to keep up with it all, because, hello, it takes a lot of work to be a fully functioning human being. We keep moving because that is what we think life is expecting from us. So, when the things that really matter to us enter the picture, we often shortchange them to some extent, because we need to keep up with ALL of our obligations. This is where the internal conflict comes in. ‘Oh, but wait...the things that matter? But, wait….the things I must do!’. Thank goodness for vacation time, weekends, helpful spouses, and for some of us...Covid...so we can STOP and attend to the things that matter in our lives, even if just a little bit, enough to endure. The dance for balance seems to be our life-pursuit doesn’t it? When we feel as though we are stealing time for time-outs, that our life just doesn’t naturally have enough time-outs built into it, we become really off-kilter and start to struggle, as do others in our lives. So, how does one get back into balance? We start to make time for creative expression, like we make time for everything else; like our life depends on it, that’s how. When we take our time-outs to creatively express in whatever way speaks to us, we can get back to centre because we are getting back to Self. When we are creatively expressing ourselves we are as close as we can get to our higher self. Do the thing you love.

Connecting with Others

Connecting with others is also a form of creative expression because there are endless ways our interactions with others can evoke emotion within us. We can use our creativity and other higher senses of Self to engage with the people in our lives. Consider the possible exchanges when approaching a lover seductively, chasing a child in a game of tag, throwing a ball with your dog, or listening to a friend tell a hilarious story of how her shoe got stuck on the escalator. Human connection fulfills us in so many ways. It entertains us and it stimulates us emotionally, physically and mentally. Connecting with the people we feel the safest with allows us to let go of our attachments, be light and remember our humanity. When we embrace human connection as a need, we find ourselves making a persistent effort to connect with others even if we lack a community of our own. Work in the service industry, or committing to a life of service in your own way, are ways to ensure that the gifts of human connection are always available to us.

Joy

Do what brings you joy. At the very least, do what you enjoy as a hobby and even better as a career. What we need more of in this life are people making a living feeling engaged and passionate about what they’re doing, because what results are engaged, passionate people contributing to society. Sound too good to be true? I see your point, but only because I know that mindset. It’s the, ‘we can’t earn a living being an artist’ mindset that we are conditioned to believe. For sure, it is not easy to earn a living as an artist, not every one of them can. But it is possible for us to organically grow toward, and reach, a place of fulfillment in life by applying a persistent curious and exploratory nature toward the things that bring us joy. Amazing things can happen when we do this. It’s as though the Universe starts to support us in our efforts to succeed. We start to tap into a divine intelligence when we work from a place of inner knowing and purpose. Interesting experiences and opportunities start to show up when we take time to express ourselves through our work. It’s almost as though joy begets joy. When we explore our passions we learn new skills and we learn more about ourselves and what we enjoy. Quite organically we can happen-upon careers that pay us well because we’re damn good at doing them!

Contemplate the Cosmos

We don’t need to move through life on autopilot. I know it certainly feels like we don’t have a lot of choice, like instead of living life, LIFE is living us. But we can choose to acknowledge this, to realize we aren’t really the ones steering. We can choose to grab the wheel, and maybe take our foot off the gas too. The demands of our daily grind and the intensity of it all disguises itself as ‘really important’ work. We get convinced that we have very few options. When life starts to feel a little too bossy and controlling for you, I challenge you shut it all down and briefly consider the cosmos….our ancestors….all those that came before us...the mysteries of mankind…. our earth’s history…. and just sit with that a while. Better yet, stare up at the night sky at the stars if you can see them, or the moon, and after some time, try to tell yourself just how important your hustle and bustle really is. A lot of what we spend our time on can start to seem really insignificant really fast when you do this. I get it, very hard to relate to the ancients, and I’m not suggesting that you can or that you should. What I am suggesting though is that you take a birds-eye view of your life and everything that is happening in the world, and that has happened in the world lately (ahem Covid) and get some perspective. This exercise can make things seem a little wobbly. This is because your reality is really just a perception of thoughts and beliefs you hold. Change your thoughts and beliefs and you can change your reality. This deep level of contemplation can at the very least help you to lighten up. Even better if it helps you to put what really matters to you…..what you really want, into perspective.

Acceptance

If you can learn to accept that there are aspects of your life that you’ll always need to give up some amount of control over, you can reduce resistance and the conflict that arises within you when things don’t go your way. On the flip-side of this coin, learning to accept that you have a lot of control over your life can help you ebb and flow in life - learning when to let go and when to push for something is a true art-form. For starters, consider how you spend your time and how you use your knowledge are completely within your control. Practicing acceptance helps you to achieve a form of flexibility that helps you to engage in the game of life as a both participant and a witness. The secret sauce to life is this: Participate in life by weaving influence from your higher Self as much as possible into all that you do so that you can manifest a life on purpose. Your higher Self wants harmony for you and for all things and people in your life. Your higher self knows what you truly want. Accept that you must be malleable and participate in life to thrive.

The Payoff

What some thought leaders in the industry of human potential have come to convince me of is this idea that now more than ever we humans need to learn how to let the true essence of our human-nature come through so that we can learn to live more consciously and authentically in the world today - as a collective. When we choose to live a more conscious Iife and make more conscientious decisions, both within our lives and within our industries, there is a ripple effect. Parenting is a prime example of the powerful influence we can have over others. I think Covid has helped us to really swing the pendulum in this direction by showing us that we don’t need to live so rigidly, that it’s possible to create more balance in our lives, that when we break the mould and live differently we’ll be OK. We don’t have to work in small cubicles, in tall towers, for 7.5 hours and two timed 30-minute breaks a day to run successful businesses. We can choose to draw outside the lines in many more ways than we have ever before been led to believe possible, and using creativity and innovation, we can succeed, if not supersede, in new and exciting ways. We can challenge our existing paradigms and this includes the paradigms of our identity. We can dismantle them and build them back up in ways that lead to more fulfilling and purpose-driven lives.