My thanks to Evan Hadkins for this guest post. Evan is a blogger with a major interest in health, broadly defined – including the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and social aspects of our lives. He concentrates on writing about simple things we can do to improve our health. His blog is www.wellbeingandhealth.net. He enjoys suggestions for topics and how to improve the blog as well as reading the comments on his posts.

Sometimes it all gets too much. And there are things we can do. What we do will depend on how the complication came about. To make our life less complicated or handle the complications better may mean changing the situation, changing what we do; or even a bit of both.

Changing Ourselves

1. It may be because we have said yes to too many things. And we usually say yes to too many things for good reason. Reasons like: we don’t want to offend people, others have been kind to us, we want to be kind to others. All good reasons. And the result can be that we simply have too much to do. As long as we keep saying yes we will keep having too much to do and all the organization in the world won’t help.

If this is the reason for our complicated life then we need to learn new behavior: saying no. It is possible to say ‘no’ graciously. It may be that you know someone who can do this; they would probably be happy to talk about how they do it (it is very likely that they have had to learn how to do it – it doesn’t come naturally to many of us). It may be that you need to find little things to try out. Saying no to little things that don’t matter much, and with people who you think won’t mind. (If you had an upbringing where saying no was genuinely dangerous you may need to enlist the help of a counselor.) And it is possible to learn that you are as valuable as others (no more, no less). That considering others is important – and so is considering ourselves.

2. Competing Desires. It may be that our life is complicated because we want things that, at first look at least, seem incompatible. We want fun and peace, we want children and a career, we want to help others and have time for ourselves. Then there are qualities in ourselves that we desire: to be strong and vulnerable, to be kind and assertive, to be calm and joyous.

If we fight with ourselves we lose – even if we ‘win’. With competing desires it is important to listen to both desires: they are both part of us. Usually what they both want is quite healthy (though the way this is expressed may not be). Our anger may be expressed poorly but the desire to have time to ourselves can be healthy. We may manipulate with sadness but our desire for sympathy from a good friend can be entirely appropriate.

There are a couple of approaches when we have competing desires.

Firstly, some competing desires can be compatible: being both strong and vulnerable is a soft and flexible strength, combining kindness and assertiveness produces a gracious presence, calmness and joy together leads to an abiding elated calmness that bubbles along throughout our day (if not absolutely every day at least most days). The insight required is to get beyond the behavior to what is wanted, the need to be met. Once you can get to the needs you will usually find that they are compatible.

One is a kind of time tabling (as the wise man said: there is a time for everything under heaven). This means having enough time for our work and enough time for recreation too. Having the time for contemplation as well as action. This means finding our own flow – and then gradually finding ways to organize our lives in accord with our own rhythm – which brings us to changing the situation.

Dealing With the Situation

3. It may be because the situation we are in has too many things to juggle. Here all the advice about prioritizing and goal setting and scheduling comes into its own. A couple of tips.

Allow time for disasters. We can all too easily slip into thinking we are omnipotent, unconsciously. We don’t control everyone and everything in the world. So we need to allow time for all the other stuff that will probably come along and not fit our plans. If we find that we have allocated too much time for a task then a reward is in order.

You and your health are a priority. So much of the time our goals are about external accomplishments. Don’t forget that you count more than your achievements.

The goals and schedule are only as useful as the priorities. Take time to be clear about your priorities. It may be that you get the job done but find that it cost too much time away from friends and family. It may be that your friends and family really like how much you have done for them but your health has suffered. It is the priorities that are the priority.

4. It may be because we have let things get out of hand. This is really a variation on having too many things to juggle. It may require a revision of the goals or schedule. More seriously it may mean a need to look again at priorities. Was it that other things came along turned out to be more important? Was it that something unpredictable came up and we hadn’t allowed enough time for the unexpected. Perhaps we need to have the goals broken down into sub-goals so that they are manageable chunks. It helps me to have weekly tasks to move toward a goal. This will depend on what you need to achieve and the kind of work involved. For me a week is specific enough to know what I have to get done and enough flexibility to handle what comes up. For others it will need to be daily or even less. For others with different goals a year may be the appropriate time period.

5. It may be because we don’t have the ability or resources to get the outcome we want. This is especially a problem, such as employment, when we have been assigned a task by others. At worst, we can only find ways to provide relief and restoration for ourselves. We reward ourselves for coping with an impossible situation. (This can also apply to situations not given us by others – such as being a single parent.)

At best we may get the task re-designed or be able to enlist assistance.

In between we may be able to re-negotiate the schedule or some of the standards to be met.

If it is not a task assigned by others we may be simply able to drop it. If it was something we valued, then we may need to allow ourselves the time to be sad.

In summary when our lives get complicated there are simple things we can do:

• Learning to say no.
• Taking the time to listen to ourselves and find what we want and need.
• Taking the time to know our real priorities.
• Revising out goals and schedules to be more realistic.
• Re-negotiating where we can.
• Rewarding ourselves as often as we can: all of us cope with a complicated world – and most of the time we do it well. We deserve some acknowledgement for doing well – sometimes from ourselves most of all.

Photo by scol22.

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