When You Don't Know Where to Start, Start Here...

There are a million tasks to do, but not enough time to do them all.  What is the best solution to this problem? Prioritize your tasks and complete the most important ones first.  An old piece of advice that we’ve heard time and time again.

But what do you do when your life feels like your spinning plates and simply trying not to drop any of them?

Easy, put some of those plates down.  

Sometimes it feels like difficult times come in clusters, with many parts of your life spiraling in chaos at once.  Life may be asking a lot of you, but that does not mean you have to be available to every request.

Sounds simple.  But this is one of the most difficult things to do.  To look at our life’s to do list, and decide that you will prioritize the important tasks first.  This means that you will focus on some things, while simply letting go of others… 

Letting go of things in life has one down side.  It requires us to accept that although we may be superheroes, our super power doesn’t lie in being able to do everything at once.  We will never be able to do it all.  But what we will be able to do is act on the things that are most important to us with sincerity and passion.    

As soon as we give ourselves permission to focus on some concerns, while letting go of others, we allow ourselves the opportunity to unlock our true strength.  The strength of self-preservation.  Self preservation is the power that comes from accepting our limits and focusing on how to carry on in life, regardless of the chaos we may be experiencing.

When we preserve our body, mind, and soul we allow ourselves to exist.  When we exist, we can continue to make a difference in this world.

It is true that we are given 24 hours in a day, and a lot can be accomplished in this time.  But it is also true that what you do each day, accumulates in your body.  If you are taking on too much in one day, 24 hours of spiking cortisol (a stress related hormone) levels will gather and eventually make their impact known.  As author Gabor Mate describes, illness is our body’s way of saying no to life’s demands (Mate, 2004).  Therefore, we must be mindful of saying no before our bodies are forced to communicate for us.

If your life feels like you are juggling plates, I encourage you to ask yourself – What can I put down and pick back up later?

There is a good chance that if you focus on what is most important to you, what brings you the most happiness, and what you can control – you will be making the right decision.

References:

Mate, Gabor. (2004). When the Body Says No. Knopf Canada.