Overwhelmed? Make the NEXT Step (Even) Smaller

“My second-grade teacher, Ms. Edson, told us: If something feels too hard to do, it just means that the first step isn’t small enough. So often when we’re struggling, we tell ourselves that it’s a sign that we’re broken or that something is our fault, and then we freeze. But when something is too hard in the moment, tell yourself Ms. Edson’s advice.”
- Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist, parenting expert and founder of Good Inside

In the past couple of months, I’ve had many conversations that have gone something like this:

Me: Hey. How are you? (I ask out of habit but when Person gives me a stricken look, I remember that this is no longer a throw-away question. So I down-shift.) I mean, really, how are you?

Person (wide eyed): Well. Things are a mess. There is so much going on that is terrible. I don’t know what to do.

Me: Yeah, I know. I feel it, too. It’s so hard. It’s a lot. It really is.

Person (is it possible that their eyes are vibrating slightly?): I mean. I’m just one person. And I don’t have much money. Or time. I want to do something but … I don’t know where to start. *waves hands around* There’s so much. I’m trying to keep track of it all and *more waving* I want to do something to help but I don’t know what to do.

These conversations could be about something personally overwhelming – a struggling child, an aging parent, their own health issue, or a rift with a friend or partner. The conversation could be around the overwhelming sh*t show of our world right now with massive upheaval, reckless destruction, and intentional destabilization. For some, it’s both.

I’m always grateful when people tell me the truth about how they are rather than blankly (and unconvincingly) saying they are “fine.”* When we tell the truth, we understand that we are in or have been in the same overfull, overwhelmed boat.

For me, I notice two things when I feel like I’m up to my eyelashes in leach-infested water:

1. I feel a buzz and I separate from my body. For me, there is a swirling feeling in my head and I may get foggy or confused or even feel a little light-headed. When another layer of awful lands, my mind tries unsuccessfully to take it in and, like my friend’s waving hands, I float a little outside my own skin.

2. I get scattered and distracted and I’m not sure what the best next thing to do is. In writing this essay, I got pulled away a bunch of times to answer another email, respond to a question, prepare some food, answer a survey, read an article, listen to a talk, prepare for a class. I come back to writing and I can’t remember what my point was. I look at my list of things to do and everything goes a little fuzzy.

This is why I love the quote from Dr. Becky Kennedy, above, about her 2nd grade teacher’s advice to find a smaller next step. When you’re in the swirl of an overwhelming, challenging time, here are things that can help:

1 ~ Get in your body. Feel your feet on the floor, the sensation of your physical self by connecting to sensation. Look around and see color and movement. Drink some cold water or warm tea. Listen to whatever sounds are around you. Give yourself a squeeze: shoulders, hands, thighs or hold your face. And breathe. Which leads to…

2 ~ Get as calm as you can. Once you feel yourself in your body, do whatever works for you to settle your nervous system. It might be doing more of the things above, or maybe it’s intentional breathing, maybe it’s wrapping yourself in a blanket or putting a weighted pillow on your lap. Then once you feel more calm…

3 ~ Find one small thing you can do to next help (including helping yourself). This part is key: choose what your next step is and make it a small one. Super small. Embarrassingly small. Instead of calling all your representatives, just write down their names and numbers. Instead of tackling that project, just find the files you need and put them on your desk. Instead of going to visit your sick friend every day, set up a time to call them or send them a card. Instead of going to every protest that happens, commit to showing up for one...for 10 minutes. Make it small but commit to doing it.

3A ~ Ask for support or help in doing your small thing. Going to a protest for the first time (or the 100th) and feeling wobbly? Ask a friend to join you. Putting off your writing? Ask a friend to text you at a particular time to ask how it’s going. Going to get a test done or receive results from the doctor? Bring someone with you so you don’t have to do it alone. Just the asking for support can be your small next thing.

4 ~ Repeat. Then start over. It’s likely that even doing the small act can rile up your nervous system. So go back to getting in your body (if you can, while you are doing the one small thing), then settling, then choosing one more thing (which may well be taking a rest).

Life will endlessly dish up challenges and difficulties. Just LOOK at all the posts I’ve written about this very thing here, here and here. You will do no one any good, especially yourself, unless you can get in your body, settle yourself, and then choose to act in a small way.

It may be that your small act leads naturally and easily to another. And it may be that your body and mind will need a lot of support to take each small step. Whatever is true for you, you will only know that truth if you stay in your body and let it show you the next small thing you can do.

* Ironically, one of the ways I know that I’m definitely NOT fine is when I tell myself and other people, “I’m fine. I’mfineI’mfineI’mfine.” Ha!

Three Questions For When You Don’t Know What To Do

"Do what you do best. To the best of your ability. For the good of others." ~ Charles Handy

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

In talking to people recently, the most common thing I hear is, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where to start.”

For many, this concern is about the suffering that is happening all around us: from increased hatred and harm toward marginalized folks, to the repercussions of climate change, to the degradation of democracy. There is so much that we care about and the sheer magnitude can leave us paralyzed.

And this same “don’t know what to do” feeling can be personal, closer to home. Maybe children are launching. Maybe marriages and jobs are ending. Maybe a diagnosis has us reevaluating our health. Maybe a loss has left us questioning our priorities.

In heavy, confusing times, Glennon Doyle suggests to “just do the next right thing, one thing at a time.” But sometimes, the needs are so pressing and so enormous that we struggle to know what the next right thing even is.

Keep Going Together, a grassroots group supporting non-profit organizations working to reduce harm and suffering in Charlottesville, had its first meeting last week. We began our approach to the staggering need and our passion to be of service with three questions that were inspired, in part, by Charles Handy’s quote above.

Three Questions For When You Don’t Know What To Do:

1. What is good? What is working? What is beautiful?

2. What are you passionate about? What issues or people do you feel compelled to stand up for and take action on?

3. What is your superpower? What makes you come alive? What do you do with joy?

Any time things feel wildly messy and you don’t know what to do, these three questions are a good place to start, and here’s why:

Why These Three Questions When You Don’t Know What To Do?

1. What is good? What is working? What is beautiful?

If things are hard and stuck, it can be easy to mire ourselves even further in every.single.thing. that is wrong and broken and cruel in the world. Because there is so much that is a mess. And. AND there is so much that is good (even people!), working (warm water out of the tap!), and beautiful (the sky! squirrels! hot coffee!).

When you feel paralyzed, the best place to start is not on what needs fixing but what is already whole and amazing. Moving forward in dark times requires us to hold both simultaneously: the beautiful and the horrible, the harmful and the healing, the broken and the fully functioning. This first question helps us open our eyes and take in all of it. It helps us be with the Both/And of living in the world.

2. What are you passionate about? What issues or people do you feel compelled to stand up for and take action on?

There is so much to do in our personal lives and in the larger world. We can’t work on all of it at once. The best place to start is where your passion is. What lights you up? What sets a fire in you? It might be your health or supporting someone in your life or it might be the LBGTQ kids at the local high school or the polluted river that runs through your town or your underfunded city library. Whatever it is, personal or public, start there.

This second question helps us identify your values and what specifically matters to you most right now. And if *everything* fires you up, remember the words of Ursula Wolfe-Rocca:

“It can be overwhelming to witness / experience / take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that they’re all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.”

3. What is your SUPERPOWER? What makes you come alive? What do you do with joy?

The second most common thing I hear from folks these days is that they don’t know what their superpower is and don’t know how they can contribute. Maybe “superpower” is too strong a term for some, so let me put it this way, what is the thing that you do easily but when others remark upon its wonder, you say, “Oh that? That’s nothing.”

When you don’t know what to do, trust those things that you do with energy and joy. Twentieth-century philosopher and theologian Howard Thurman said,

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

When you don’t know what to do, start with your own aliveness. Start with what you would do if the world wasn’t burning down. Start with what you love to do and do well ... and go from there.

It’s natural to feel stuck and uncertain about how to proceed in the face of daunting challenges and overwhelming problems. Whether those issues are in the private or public sphere, it makes sense that there are many times when we don’t know what to do.

These three questions can help to unlock our eyes and our energy. They can thaw our frozen parts and invite in some breath and life. Come back to these three questions over and over. The answers might shift over time; they likely will. It’s in the asking that the ice jam shifts and movement happens again.