Riding the Whelm

Being overwhelmed is an inside job, a perception, a choice.

Over the past 18+ months of swimming in the changing tides of running a coaching and consulting business remotely, my understanding of overwhelm has changed dramatically. Frequently faced with the reality that even without external (away from home) distractions and (gratefully) working in a home environment well suited for focus, I still felt overwhelmed at times. 

Although I craved momentum and inspiration, I felt pulled in too many directions, off center, and unfocused. 

Maybe you experienced something similar? Perhaps distractions you never noticed before began to reignite your overwhelm: your new rescue animal, you and your partner now learning to work side by side, your temptation to garden. Things that used to fade into the recesses of your mind when you left the house were clamoring for your attention instead.

For me, life quickly provided reminders that if I wanted something different, I needed to take more responsibility for how I responded to my environment, my commitments and my dreams. 

You can hide behind overwhelm or claim boredom to avoid failure.  Conveniently, if you don’t start, you’re never at risk. 

Additionally, you can lose yourself in discipline as easily as in freedom. Getting stuck in the weeds of details and hyper discipline is a sure path to self-sabotage and ending up stuck.

How can you get out of overwhelm and into flow?

Getting out of overwhelm makes me think of driving a manual German sports car on a winding road on a beautiful day.

Will you brake through the curves, jolting and sputtering out of fear and uncertainty? Or downshift, upshift, and, breezing through neutral, feel the road?  Can you enjoy the scenery, be present, and become one with the experience of driving?

Driving this way reminds me of being in flow on the ice as a figure skater, where the sense of freedom and fearlessness required to trust yourself during a busy freestyle session is a lot like finding your way through the middle of a circus. On any given day there could be as many as 30 people doing jumps, spins, and lifts, and generally going different directions at varying speeds. 

Amazingly, accidents were infrequent. 

There’s a freedom in trusting your peripheral vision, your innate sense of time and space.

The way out of overwhelm is not accomplishment; ticking off the boxes on an ever-growing to-do list doesn’t lead us out of overwhelm.  Presence is the way through. 

Feel your way through the day, reclaiming yourself and your dreams as you stay present. Take one choice at a time, one thing at a time, and you will progress.

Instead of drowning, you ride the whelm, an abundant surge, the flow of a tide. In doing so, you rise above the artificial margins you set for yourself that get you stuck. You’re no longer limited by behaviors based in polarized concepts such as boredom and overwhelm, discipline and freedom. You can move from rigidity to flow.

The way up onto the whelm is to leap out of these kinds of inner conflicts, transcending dichotomies into a third place of possibility, the portal to new learnings. 

And, you must first believe it’s possible.

Up on the whelm, you have leaped from have to to want to.  You can create an initial scaffolding for yourself, a soft structure for productivity and creativity, from which you can more easily see what you need. Then, you can modify your strategy as needed.  You can become more nimble.

After intentionally re-imagining  your approach to work and life, overcoming some key self-limitations, your  experience and definition of overwhelm will transform.  

You’ll feel more in charge, take inspired action, be in flow more often, and  appreciate yourself more.  

Through presence and gratitude, riding the whelm instead of dropping into overwhelm creates more creativity, flow, and magic.

I’d love to hear what resonated with you here.  If you feel inspired, please reach out to me at katie@katiepeuvrelle.com.