There are Times in Our Lives...
Where Life Hits Us...
And It Feels like it is just Too Much to Handle.
Indeed...
It May Actually be Too Much for Us to Handle in that Moment.
As Humans, We have a Stress Threshold.
What does this Mean?
We can Only Handle a Certain Amount of Total Stressor at Any Given Time...
And when We Go "Past" that Threshold...
We Begin to Move into Dis-Stress.
Within Dis-Stress...
There are Points where We can Begin to Become Simply Too Overwhelmed.
There are Different Levels of This...
Some Being Significant...
But it is in These Moments where Things in Life Begin to Feel Like they are Too Much.
It's in these Moments where there is a Temporary Solution that can Be Tremendously Helpful...
But I Need to Warn You...
This is Specifically a "Temporary" Solution, "Not" a Long-Term Solution.
What is the Technique...
To Walk Away.
To Breathe.
To Relax.
It is Subtle, but in Overwhelm it is Helpful.
Why?
It again has to Do with the Stress Threshold.
When We Move Past Our Stress Threshold...
We Begin to Move Into Fight-Or-Flight States or Sympathetic States.
When we are In these States, We Struggle in All of Our Endeavors.
We Cannot Process Emotions...
We Cannot Think Clearly...
We Cannot Find Effective Solutions to Our Problems.
There is Just Too Many Simultaneous Stressors for Us to Be Effective.
So...
If You take a Short Period of Time and Walk Away...
Breathe...
Relax...
What You can Effectively Do is Lower Your Immediate Stressors "Just" Enough to Get Below Your Stress Threshold.
The Result?
You can Begin to Process Your Emotions More Clearly...
Think More Clearly...
And Find Better Solutions to Your Problems.
Then....
Once You Figure Things Out Better...
You are Able to Come Back to Whatever is at Hand without the Overwhelm.
You can Call These Micro-Recoveries.
However...
Understand that This is "Not" a Long-Term Solution.
If We Attempt to "Walk Away" in the Long-Term...
We Ironically Create "More" Stressors in Our Lives.
I Discussed this Further in a Previous Article.
But in Small Amounts...
It can be a Really Powerful Tool.
It also becomes a Necessary Tool when You Frequently Find Flow States.
Why?
You can Only Stay in Flow States for a Limited Amount of Time.
Assuming No Distractions...
You can get Fifty to Ninety Minutes from Any Individual Flow State.
The Reason it Cannot Last Longer is that Flow States Require High Energy (Mg-ATP) to Maintain...
And We Cannot "Create" Enough Energy (Mg-ATP) to Maintain the Flow State.
After the Fifty to Ninety Minutes...
You Need a Short Recovery Break, between Ten to Thirty Minutes, Before You can Jump into the Next Flow State.
You Need to Step Away...
Breathe...
Relax...
Before Getting to Your Best.
There is also Another Thing that can Occur within this Micro-Recovery.
Integration.
Basically, when We Experience a Significant Amount of Things...
Our Brains Need to be Able to Process the Information before it can Figure Out How to Utilize the Information.
This Processing of Information is Known as Integration.
But...
Integration Does Not Happen Effective in the Conscious Brain.
Integration is Far More Effective in the Subconscious Brain.
It has been Described like this...
The Conscious Brain is like working on Sticky Notes by Hand...
Versus the Subconscious is like working on a NASA Supercomputer.
If You want Faster Integration...
You Need Information to Go Out of the Conscious and Into the Subconscious.
This Means You Need Your Conscious Mind to Focus on Something Else...
Which is Easiest if You Walk Away from whatever is Causing the Overwhelm.
This is a Part of the Reason Why Many People have their Best Ideas in the Shower...
Their Conscious Mind is Focused on the Shower...
Allowing their Subconscious to Integrate Information.
So Sometimes...
It is Ok to Walk Away from the Overwhelm...
Collect Yourself...
Allow Your Mind to Integrate the Information...
Process the Emotions...
So that You can Get to Your Best Self.
Allow Yourself the Time to Transform the Situation into Something New.
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