Don’t you just hate that anxiety you get when there’s chaos in your life? When you’re all churned up inside; never mind butterflies, with all that adrenalin you’ve got a flock of budgerigars in there, fluttering up a storm.
And being a life coach doesn’t give me immunity. Oh no. What’s slightly uncomfortable to report is that even though I know a great cure for this, a simple, ‘blimey it was staring me in the face’ solution, I can still be utterly blocked, suffering from overwhelm, near panic.
So what is this magical cure then? What form does my salvation take? What’s going to pop a cover over the bird cage and bring me some peace?
(And at this point I’m shuffling my feet and going a bit pink knowing I’ve built up an expectation of something world shattering.)
Ok, here goes, it’s… pen and paper. That’s all. The most powerful dynamic duo I know. With their sidekick, the diary. Together they are the route to immediate change.
Starting with, the trusty list! If I know what I need to do, but its morphed into the budgies, 10 minutes spent creating a list clears my brain and allows me to plan, to break down the tasks and divvy them up in my diary. It works every time. Calm ensues. The tasks are the same size they were, and yet somehow they’re smaller.
Sometimes though, I know there’s a lot to do, but I’ve no idea what the constituent parts of ‘a lot’ are. That’s a really tough place to be and the only answer for me is my list’s more sophisticated cousin, the mind-map. Using a sheet of flip chart paper and a few coloured pens I generally start with an overview, looking across my life and everything there is to do within the next few weeks. Having identified the areas I need to look at, I can take each in turn and build a mini mind map around it. I end up with another list of tasks which I can transfer into the diary.
So that’s it, pens, paper, diary. That’s how I get the budgies to stop tweeting a storm… and gift myself some much needed space to get on with things. How about you? Have you got any tried and tested solutions that work for you – preferably of the quick, simple and free-or-if-not-at-least-dirt-cheap variety?”
You may be interested in these posts, too:
- Writing to learn, and writing to understand what the learning is I’d like to share a story with you. It starts kind of sad, but the ending is very joyful, very...
- The gift, or what does your journal mean to you? What does your journal mean to you? Mine is my intimate, it never gets bored with me. It is silent,...
- Art for a change We all create every day, they say. It’s true: we do. You do. And yet: there’s more. I’ve heard it,...
- Writing from somewhere else Just before you start reading Please understand This is not art. It’s not literature. I don’t read much poetry; Not...
This comment was...
