INTENTION FUELS ATTENTION

HOW DO YOU STAY CALM IN THE CHAOS?

I hope you had a few days off from worry during the long weekend. You see, it's not enough to have time away from work; we must also stop worrying and let the mind focus on something other than solving problems. Of course, you might have had other choices and challenges to work with, but hopefully, they felt far less stressful and far more fun.

Solving problems is what life is about. We constantly solve problems, big or small. Sometimes they are simple choices, and other times they are complex challenges. Now, we humans don't like tension, but choosing between one thing or the other is tension. The resistance to tension can lead to overwhelm, and instead of thinking that we can get rid of it, we can instead steer through it.

Interestingly enough, we love puzzles and other complex challenges that involve making choices because it's playing. We teach kids to pick through shapes and figure out which hole they fit in. From early on, we have been learning to cut through the noise of overwhelm by understanding patterns, sorting through options, and finding the answer, one step at a time, cheering along the way as we are choosing our way towards the result.

So when things feel chaotic, taking that pause is more important than ever, and yet it's often when we abandon it because we think we don't have time. I promise you, pausing is how you save time. It's how you help your mind quiet the noise of fear that you will not figure out, hone in on the steps that help sort through the chaos and align with what you are trying to achieve. So often, we rush to fix what's urgent instead of taking a moment to reset our attention to what matters.

Remember this, intention fuels attention. 

Whenever you find yourself flooded by overwhelm, take a pause and ask yourself: what this is for, who it is for, and why it matters (to them or you). Make sure you hone in on the purpose of solving the problem, not what will happen to you if you don’t. 

Then you can ask, “What do I need so I can get closer to that, one step at a time, one choice at a time.” 

FACING WHAT COMES WITH FAITH, –IN YOURSELF

The end goal of your destination can feel far away, and once we make plans for how to get there, we might feel the relief of knowing. And yet we both know that what makes a plan work isn't that it's perfect and everything works out as planned. What makes a plan work out is that you are willing to go through it and respond at the moment to the potholes of problems that are showing up on the path along the way. We tend to get stuck in the potholes of what's not working, spending far too much time trying to get the original plan to work instead of resetting our attention on what's possible to do about it now. And I want to add that sometimes it might mean being willing to change your expectations or let something go. 

INTENTION FUELS ATTENTION

If your intention is clear, use it to stay calm and steer through the chaos by resetting your attention to the options you have now, and then allow yourself to embrace the tension of choice. It will always be there. It's not you, it's just how making choices feels. If it feels wrong, trust that and go back and revisit your options, but if it's just that you are scared of whether you are making the right choice or not, don't let that overwhelm you.

It's not the plan you need to trust, it's you that you need to trust. Trusting that you can figure it out as the reality of not knowing what's ahead becomes real. The tools you need are AAA: awareness, adaptability, and agility. That's how you reclaim agency and stay calm in and through the chaos.

You can learn more about how to use AAA to solve problems better and faster in my book, The Self-Care Mindset®.