Oftentimes when I am “in the overwhelm” it is difficult to connect with what is good in life. It is easy to connect to what is wrong.

Whether it is a feeling or a thought or a belief or a behavior, it is easy to stick with what is familiar…what has been practiced.

A thought held for 17 seconds without contradiction will attract another thought similar in nature creating much stronger more evolved thoughts. This process continues creating quite the momentum in the direction of the thought.¹ 

So when in the overwhelm, I tend to hold thoughts and emotions and beliefs that focus on what isn’t working. What isn’t possible.

Yesterday, there was one single thought coupled with one single feeling that I practiced much more than 17 seconds. What I focused on expanded for over a day. It expanded so much that I couldn’t process it internally anymore, I needed to process it externally (i.e. a minor eruption of feelings and words) to make space so that I could come back to myself, re-align my H-IOS components and experience life better again!

I am being gentle with myself as I process through the past day and how I experienced the overwhelm. Because I could say to myself, “You live and breathe the tools to move through this everyday, how dare you erupt!!!” “You are not enough.”

“Blah, blah, blah.”

Instead I say, “I am human.” And what I know to be true is that this is “all normal human stuff.” 

What I also know to be true is that when I can catch myself at the start of the overwhelm, practicing a pause (through breath, mostly) will disrupt the “what isn’t working” thoughts and emotions and beliefs and allow me to focus on “what is working.”

Then I find myself out of the overwhelm. I find myself back into being and experiencing life better.

That must be important to me, “experiencing life better,” because I mentioned it twice in this article.

How do you want to experience life better? I can’t imagine that you prefer the overwhelm.

¹Thrive Human Progress Training™