How to Live Life Without Feeling Overwhelmed
By Anne Mari Ramsdal
Are You Feeling Overwhelmed?
Are you ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, find balance, and give room to more happiness in your life? Today is a great day to start developing some new tools!
We are currently living in an era that highlights the importance of all areas in our lives. Career and paychecks are still important focuses, but today we are also increasingly encouraged to follow our inner passion. It is no longer just about making paychecks that cover our wants and needs. Our work should be in accordance to our inner desires and dreams. There is more to life than earning money.
In addition, our spare time is also becoming more important. This is where we strive to “feed our soul.” Taking care of our body and mind with exercise, eating correctly, having a fulfilling hobby, and so on. These are just some of the aspects with which we want to fill our spare time. Also, we pay more attention to self-development. This can happen by setting aside time to meditate, journaling, reading books, taking classes…basically anything that lets us strive to become better versions of ourselves.
Find Time for Self and Cultural Development…
The ongoing, cultural development allows us to enjoy life here and now, as opposed to seeing life as something in a distant future. The thinking has moved from, “When I’m done with this job and have acquired enough money, I can finally do what I really want,” to “Today is my life, and I will make the best of it.” And what a lovely development that is! However, that shift in focus is not always rainbows and butterflies. Trying to find time for it all, whilst figuring out what we want to do with our lives – it’s no wonder we become overwhelmed. A lot of us don’t have a (conscious) clue. Where should we start?
A great starting tool to gain more balance and enhance your happiness is to make a visual overview of the important areas of your life. This can look something like “work/career, economics, friends/family, love, self-development, spirituality (change it to fit your own life). Write down these important life areas and take a look at each one of them.
Where are you experiencing the most happiness in your life? And in which areas could you enhance balance and happiness? When you have established this, cut out a few pieces of paper and write down your personal values. Values can be explained as important and lasting beliefs about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Some examples of values are self-respect, autonomy, freedom, humor, and safety. When you have established and written down your own personal values, arrange them by number of priority and importance.
Then look at these together with your life areas. This tool may seem a bit “too easy,” but the fact is that a lot of us aren’t fully conscious of our personal values. By establishing them, we can quickly find where the shoe doesn’t fit. It is very likely that you find your values fulfilled in the areas where you are most happy, and that they are lacking in the areas you are less happy with. Now, it is time to incorporate our values in these areas.
Use the Tools…Including Honesty…
When you have established your values and compared them to your life areas, think of easy, realistic ways to include them in the areas you think they are lacking. For example, if you find that your most lacking life area is “love” and one of your most important values is self-respect, ask yourself; Am I giving myself all the respect I deserve and need in this relationship? Oftentimes, we find that we give more of this to our partner than we do to ourselves.
An easy solution to being overwhelmed here is to find small, specific things you can do to give yourself enough self-respect in the relationship. For example, giving yourself time alone, saying no to things you don’t want to do, etc. Keep doing this in all of the life areas you want to enhance. Once you start doing these little things to reinforce your values in your life, your happiness is likely to increase significantly. Becoming more conscious of your values makes it easier for you to find balance and happiness in your life, as the lack may have been due to unfulfilled values.
Have a go, and remember to make it fun!
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About the Author
Anne Mari Ramsdal is working to spread light and knowledge as far as she can reach. Her goal is to help both individuals and organizations to thrive better and become more successful. She is inspired by her educational background in Sociology, Change Management and NLP-coaching, as well as her personal life experiences. Find her at:
www.workingvalues.wordpress.com
www.challengesofaspiritualist.wordpress.com
