This year has been exciting and difficult at the same time. Exciting finding a new doctor and the chance to dial in approaches to more natural treatments of ongoing health issues. An easy win in the “Gratitude” category.
But difficult in the spiritual and financial side of life.
When forces beyond our control remove our independence, freedom, or finances, it’s often very hard to find anything to be grateful for. And this year, those difficulties have only increased, not only here at home, but also globally.
Yet, in the midst of all this darkness, being unwilling or unable to see anything good to give thanks is more than hard – it’s nearly impossible.
There is a reason for this…
This morning I realized why. I knew it deep inside. In fact, I’d related it to others throughout the year, and even wrote about it in a previous article. But I never thought about it when the struggles seemed overwhelming and the answers so far away.
The pent up stress only made everything worse. My eyes couldn’t see what was going on around me or what I needed to do, my mind was growing increasingly more anxious, and I began to lose hope – even though life repeatedly showed times of light and revelation after each crisis was over in the past.
So what gives?
Because human frailty find it easier to cling to negativity than to seeking something positive, it gravitates towards what seems to have less friction. As a dear priest I knew once said,
“It takes 43 muscles to frown, and only 17 muscles to smile. So smile.”
It actually not as cut and dried at this, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the energy it takes that makes the difference. And that effort for many of us seems too hard.
Because life throws problems at us, often back-to-back, our resilience declines. It takes forced effort to climb out of the hole life put us in. And we just keep digging further into the darkness instead of looking up and seeing the light above our heads.
If we don’t willingly put in the effort, any attempts to climb out of that pit only proves to us that the walls are unstable and crumbling beneath our weight – so why bother trying?
So what can we do?
We have to find a way to compel ourselves to change our perspectives. If we don’t, eventually the walls in our hole will overwhelm us and collapse on us. We will find ourselves buried in the rubble with no ability to get ourselves out without help.
I was beginning to see all my circumstances as growing too great to handle. The stress was unbearable and my body was taking the brunt of the toll. I blamed everything, from life, to God, to evil – all outside myself.
Then it dawned on me what was going on. I was spiraling. And seeing an increasing amount of negative circumstances only convinced me that I was right in my thinking. I needed to step away from it all to see the bigger picture.
I had even forgotten the article I wrote a while back, “The Battle is In The Mind”1. My own advice to others, yet I ignored it for myself – kind of like what doctors do.
So here’s what I did to revamp my life:
I spent the weekend reorganizing not only my daily routines, but creating spaces to put down my thoughts and actions in a tech-free environment. The computer and electronic calendars only added to the distractions and stress, so I needed something that would express my needs personally – and would stick because I wrote it out by hand.
1 – Defining my daily routines…
In the midst of the increasingly chaotic struggles, I realized I was having troubles remembering even the simplest of tasks – like feeding the fish in the morning. I knew I needed to get that straight for the two most important times of the day – Mornings and Evenings. These were my daily anchor points. Everything else in between could wait.
So I sat down and wrote out all the lists. I drew on a content creator’s house organizing tip (Clutterbug on Youtube):
Plan your organization for your worst day.
Every step, from feeding the animals to the even task of cleaning the kitchen at night, was on those two lists and typed out to be placed on fly-out cards for an upcoming planner. I wrote down the longest number of hours it took to do all those routines in the morning and again in the evening. That way I would be able to figure out how long I needed to set aside for those routines so that they would not interfere with the activities during the middle portion of the day as well as my designated hard stop for bed.
2 – The Daily Planners…
I realized that I’d been relying on a single planner for both personal and business tasks. Just the sheer volume of tasks became overwhelming and unmanageable! How can I distinguish between what is of utmost importance to my personal life and separate that from my important tasks in my business life? They are two separate things.
So I now separated the planner into two different journals.
No, they aren’t rigid timed planners. I hate those things. They make me feel boxed in, and if I don’t meet the deadlines of the timed criteria, I feel like a failure. None of that when I’m already stressed enough!
Here is the strategy I came up with that works for my visual brain:
a – Business only (The Finishers Journal – get link and discount code here)2
The Business Only planner helps me keep on track to complete my work goals. In my new design, I broke down all the major steps, assigning them to specific days from Monday through Thursday. I also limited the amount of time I’m allowed to work on any one of those steps so I don’t become bogged down trying to finish up a tasks without those guard rails. That gave me free time for my personal life during each one of those work days without locking me into a stress-filled, deadline crunched day.
And working Monday through Thursday assured I’d have a three-day weekend every week.
If any week required a day to work around the schedule, then I could juggle those days as needed without the rigidity of a typical planner
b – Personal only (the Bullet Journal, or Bujo for short)
The Personal Only planner was designed in a creative Bujo format. But instead of filling in all the pages as I used to do, I leave that creativity to be done on a Friday when I need to preplan the upcoming week. Only the necessary calendars (current and future for planning each week with fixed activities, like birthdays, meetings, and appointments), a mood tracker, and habit tracker are completed.
It not only is the daily overview journal, but it also forces me back into a creative, more relaxed state of mind instead of the linear focus needed for business.
C – And both planners reflect each other…
I use time blocking in both journals to clearly delineate between Personal and Business activities. It is a literal, visual method to separate both my worlds into different areas of my life as a whole. That alone freed my mind to be able to have boundaries in place so they no longer overlap when I am viewing either journal. Without that distinction, the single journal method was blurring the lines between work and real life.
These two journals have become my literal, visual method to separate both worlds into the two crucial areas of my life.
This step alone freed my mind to be able to have both physical and time-fenced boundaries so they no longer overlapped. I don’t have to think about when something needs to be done because they are separated both by time and locations (space).
3 – Gratitude journal…
In the new healing protocol, one of the tools I am urged use is to practice Gratitude every morning. It wasn’t something I hadn’t done before. I have a “Gratitude Journal graveyard” to prove it. But I’d always abandoned the task when it felt too great an effort to add it to my already-overwhelmed day.
So I found an unused journal book in my stash, decorated it to make it appealing, and stuck it in a place I wouldn’t miss seeing it. Now with both an external accountability partner (doctor and coaches) and a need to stop the downhill trend, I began again. I take my breakfast and coffee outside in the early morning after my chores were done and listened to the sounds of nature. If the weather was too bad outside, I’d do this inside at the kitchen table, lighting a candle and maybe some incense to set the tone.
After a few 4-7-8 breaths (a destressing technique), I was ready to find at least three things to be grateful for, date the page, and wrote them down.
4 – Reflections and Wins journal…
Like the Gratitude journal, I knew that I needed to come up with something to end the day on a positive note. So I scrounged up another blank journal book. Unlike the morning book, I didn’t decorate this one. Instead, I leave it on my nightstand with a pen, ready to go beside my bed.
Each evening, I take about 5-10 minutes to fill in this journal. I add the date to a new page, and journal my day’s events, outcomes, and find at least one win, or something I overcame, during the day.
Both the Gratitude and Reflections journals are my bookends for the day. Both help me begin and end each day by practicing awareness of what is really happening in my life. Because both help me to look at the present, and blot out regrets of the past or fears of the future unknowns, I can retrain my neuroplastic mind to focus on what is good in my life instead of what is going wrong.
You can develop your own method…
I never liked it when some influencer says you will have some sort of wonderful success following their method. What worked for them might not work for me, or you. But seeing what they did can be something you can take pieces of that resonate with your methodology.
The different physical journal system, for me, created a visual queue for my neurospicy brain. Now I could transition between work and life, literally seeing them in physical form in two separate spaces. It forced me to take action in the two main areas of my life without conflating the two.
It also created the opportunities to incorporate the necessary habits to keep me aware of where my thoughts are being directed in the moment. Ultimately, it forces me to stop the train of negativity and reroute it back on a more positive track.
Perhaps some or all of this method may work for you – perhaps not. We are all unique in our approaches and needs. But I’m hoping that it might stir up a curiosity in you to start exploring different ways of organizing your world.
But whatever way you choose to go, having a mentor who understands what you are doing and what your needs are will help give you that accountability for yourself. They can be there for you to relay your wins and changes, monitoring your progress along the way.
Having someone beside you will help to instill your habit of keeping your chaotic life in check. And that is better than trying to do it all alone and never realize you have gotten off course, as I had.
Footnotes:
1-https://thedignityofman.net/2024/10/16/the-battle-in-the-mind/