-Albert Einstein

3. Article: The Calm After the Storm

By Lance Brown

We’ve all heard of the so-called “calm before the storm”. Personally, I’ve had a lot more experience with the calm after the storm.

Perhaps you’ve had this happen to you.

Your life gets so hectic or overwhelming that things actually start to crack and fail. You miss things you shouldn’t miss, or get behind, or over-committed, in a way that you feel you can’t resolve. You get caught up in a frazzled mindset which stretches out until it feels like a way of life (and not a good one). And at some point in the process, you realize that it just doesn’t add up—something has to change, before you start doing real damage (to your state of mind, your career, your family, etc.)

Or alternatively, you finally wrap up some giant burdening drama in your life, having essentially “lost” weeks or months to some all-consuming, stress-radiating, life-crunching conflict (like one involving court, or high emotion, or family perhaps).

Haven’t had anything like that in your life? Consider yourself lucky. But if you have ever found yourself getting stretched or stressed to what feels like the breaking point, or if you are right now, I hope you’ll take advantage of the calm after the storm. It’s that period just after all the craziness has ended, or the time when you’ve finally cleared your schedule enough to take a deep breath and a fresh look around you.

To get to the calm after the storm, of course, the storm has to stop.

Clearing the Air

If you’re burdened by an overload that you can control, you have to de-commit until the air starts to clear, or you have to change your circumstances to something that you can live with (and keep up with). It might not be easy, but better to do it by choice than to start having serious breakdowns in certain areas because you literally can’t keep up with your self-imposed agenda.

Possibly, the storm is not something you can necessarily control, like a divorce or other serious legal proceeding, or a major family crisis. I’m not going to try and “talk you down” from inside something like that…I haven’t entirely mastered riding the actual storm itself, to be honest. But every crisis eventually has an end, or at least a chance to catch a breath and reposition oneself.

When you do find the calm after the storm (or in between waves of it), you have a great chance to help yourself out, so as to be better prepared for any future bad weather.

What’s so great about the calm after the storm? Perspective.

A chance to replay things in slo-mo

Let’s take the example of being self-overloaded or over-committed, to the point where burnout occurs or is imminent. As I said above, the solution to that is to de-commit from that which you have saddled yourself. You’re no good to anyone if you break yourself in half doing too much. Your commitment to being happy and healthy in your life has to come first, ultimately. (Feel free to quote me here when telling folks, “No, I can’t help out this time.” :-))

So you’ve cut down your commitments and cleared out your schedule as much as possible, and you’re breathing the clear air of peace and quiet for at least a little while. What a perfect time to examine the “crash site” and learn how you can avoid ending up there again. All your overwhelming commitments are fresh in your mind (perhaps even still trying to fill up your voicemail and inbox), and yet you have the free time and quiet mindspace you need to come to terms with what’s most important to you.

Heightened sensibilities

You’re never a more cautious driver than in the time just after you’ve had an accident. For a while, your awareness of the various perils of driving is heightened, as is (hopefully) your awareness of ways in which you could potentially be a safer driver. Well, a near-burnout situation in life can be the same way. …

(Continued)

Click here to read the rest of this article.

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Lance Brown is Co-Editor of The Weekly Simplifier

4. This Week’s Simplification Tip

When in crises, simply maintain

When in a crises, be nice to yourself and accept help! Your psyche needs a lot of extra TLC in these times.

You may be a “get things done” “charge forward” kind of person normally, but when crises is happening, shift into “maintain” mode.

A good friend very kindly pointed this out to me when I was engulfed by a major emotional crises 2 years ago. She gave me the mantra, “simply maintain” to hold on to like a life raft. For example, take care of current clients but don’t take on any new clients.

It also meant allowing more downtime in the schedule, or better yet, scheduling “health appointments”– massage, counseling, or afternoons at the river.

Since it can be tough to remember these things when in a freaked out mindset, ask a friend to help. They can help you identify priorities for the week, write them down, and follow up on progress.

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5. In the News & On the Web

If you know of something in the news or on the web that should be featured here, let us know!

In The News

The financial and psychological costs of disorganization (Knight-Ridder Newspapers)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/h9wkb
If you hear all this esoteric-sounding stuff about simplifying and mindspace, and wonder, “What’s the practical impact of it all?”, this article is for you.

Creating flow helps a firm go (The Kansas City Star)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/j5wo9
The organizer in this article “helped identify the reasons he procrastinates and restructured his daily schedule to better focus on priorities and “high payoff” activities, such as finding new clients. And it’s worked, he said. ‘Instead of 20 percent of my time being extremely productive, I’m about 80 percent productive.’”
[Note: Shawn brought up “flow” in The Weekly Simplifier #8.]

Want more free time? (The Oregonian)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/koypj
This article is about organizing for parents–especially, the benefits of making a family schedule, and tips on doing it. One tip: if you fear adopting a full-fledged super-schedule, try just setting maybe two or three regularly-scheduled activities during the week. The benefit? You can stop concerning yourself about the item, knowing that you’ve blocked out a time to make sure you do it.
[Note: Some demographic info (but not registration) is required by OregonLive.com in order to read this article.]

6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com

Adding Comments

Comments are one of the big things that distinguish blogs from ordinary websites. Readers can give feedback, agree or disagree, or point out resources or references that are related to an entry on the site. Sometimes, whole conversations will unfold in the comments area of an entry, with dozens of people bouncing ideas off each other, or debating the merits of this or that position. Often, the author of the post will join in, responding to critics or questions; sometimes, the blog author responds to comments in a subsequent entry.

We allow comments on our blog posts at ProjectSimplify.com, and we encourage you to chime in with your feelings or experiences if you read something on the site that you find compelling. Or if you disagree, or have constructive criticism to offer, we’d love to hear that. The comments feature is your opportunity to sound off and join in the conversation!

You’ll find the comments area down below the entry on a single-entry page, and there’s a an “Add a comment” link below each post on the home page. It has two cool features worth mentioning - spell checking if you need it, and a “live preview”, which shows you exactly how your comment will look on the page as you’re typing it. You can also include hyperlinks and some basic formatting to help you make your point(s).

To give folks a low-pressure way to try out this feature, we’ve started a comments testing post. Feel free to post whatever you want there, without having to worry about cluttering things up. Then, if you find something on the site you want to comment on, you’ll already be warmed up on how to do it!

7. Keep Smiling

Words from the Wise-el, Theodore Geisel

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”

-Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel

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Thanks for reading - see you next week!

Publication Information
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The Weekly Simplifier is published by:

Project Simplify
P.O. Box 597
Nevada City, CA 95959
phone: 530.205.5775
web: www.projectsimplify.com
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