Finding Calm in Chaos 🌪️🪷
This week, the Long View is in the thick of it – as are, probably, many of you. Everywhere I look, and everyone I speak to, is just a little bit overwhelmed, just now.
Maybe you are optimistically trying to clear your work “to do” list before the end of the year – whilst keeping a wary eye on the looming holiday “to do” list and juggling those December festive events that keep rolling around – 🎄lunches, brunches, dinners and drinks 🥂.
Personally, I love December – my birthday month – but it’s always a hectic time of year, and I think it’s a pity that people seem to reach the promised land of winter holidays, utterly depleted and nearly rigid with stress.
For those of us who deliver frontline services to people living with destitution, struggling with health and mental health and at the margins of our societies, wrapping up work in December is also stressful because service closures can cause acute crises for individuals and stretch thin the capacity of the few emergency services that do remain open.
Remember this? 🦠
But, we all need a break sometime. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when I was locked down in my small flat with two furious (and mischievous) tween-age children, I started trying different meditation apps in a desperate bid to do something positive for my own mental health.
One day, I listened to a teaching by Cory Muscara who flipped the idea of “managing chaos” in a way that actually changed my life:
Calm is not the absence of chaos; it’s being able to exist in the chaos and noise and finding your peaceful centre.
I loved this reframing because blocking out the chaos was not only totally unrealistic – given my responsibilities as well as the physical reality of our lockdown – it was also tiring and unending.
The reframing gave me some hope of finding a way to hold those responsibilities and get some sleep at night. (The good sleep habits took a while longer, but I learned some important tricks between 2020-23 which wanted to share with you now.)
Find your calm in chaos 🪷
This is going to be a short one, because – see above ☝🏽- but here are some top tips for finding calm in chaos (with paired book recommendations)
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🗑️ lose the unimportant stuff – kick it into the long grass, roll that appointment into next year … be real about what you can do in the next two weeks.
Have a frank conversation with “yesterday you” about what “today you” is and is not going to do. Also, while you’re at it, try and spare a thought for “tomorrow you”!
🤔Need some help reassessing your priorities? I really like David Allen book Getting Things Done – I know that the GTD method has been associated with “hustle culture” and unhealthy glorification of “fitting it all in,” but it works for me. And I think like all tools, what you get out of it has a lot to do with what you bring to it. For me, learning to prioritise and reprioritise with GTD has been liberating, and not exhausting.
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📅 make time for the important stuff – make an appointment with yourself to do something you love, every day.
During the Covid years, I took the kids climbing in Holyrood Park at 4pm every day. Not gonna lie, sometimes these outings were also stressful, but it was the different kind of stress that made it important, and worthwhile.
🤔Think you don’t have time? Try reading about Einstein Time in Gay Hendricks best-selling book The Big Leap. Bonus if you do? You’ll also get better at cultivating your personal superpowers: what you love to do, and what you do best.
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🏆celebrate yourself – we don’t congratulate ourselves enough, and instead tend to pin our feelings of self worth and success to the opinion, or regard, of others.
The problem is, other people have got stuff on their minds too, and they don’t always have the time or space or perspective to thank you for having a significant impact on their day, or congratulate you on a job well done.
There is exactly one person who knows how good you did today, and that is you. So go ahead, give yourself the credit you deserve (even if you do this privately, silently, in your head or in your secret journal at the end of the day).
Some days, my “private wins” include: not leaving my packed lunch in the fridge, not losing my rag when faced with a totally unreasonable demand, or doing a half decent (but still not brilliant) job of a task that I had been putting off.
🤔Find it hard to treat yourself with compassion? Take 10 minutes to listen to legend Thich Nhat Hanh‘s calming and deeply loving sermon about why you are amazing and worthy of celebration.
Sending all the warmest wishes for finding your way 🌪️ and getting through your “list” for December.
👋🏽 Thanks for reading again this week, and please feel free to share what brings you comfort, calm and a smooth finish at the end of year 🪷
First published on LinkedIn on 6 December 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/finding-calm-chaos-jen-ang-wn09e
