500 Words a Week - Not making our situation worse
My wife and I were in the apple store the other day, she was transferring some old data onto a new phone. We were brought to a table with several other people also doing a similar transfer. However, everyone was having an issue. The transfers were going nowhere, there were staff going back and forth between customers, cancelling the transfer to try do it via a cable, then returning a few minutes later to cancel and try again with WIFI. Customers began to get agitated, frustrated with the wait, frustrated with the constant changing. When then a new staff member came over. This person instantly addressed the group, easing worries and stating we were going to get everything sorted. She then said something that stuck with, she began saying how we are going back to basics, she then went around and plugged everyone’s phone on charge. She stopped people endlessly switching from transferring via cable to then WIFI. A few minutes later, progress began to rear its head. The frozen loading bar slow began to thaw itself out and creep along.
In times of heightened stress or anxiety, basics go out the window. When we feel overwhelmed, the basic aspects of life we normally do well on a day-to-day basis that make us feel good, get pushed to the side. Yet it’s during these times we most need to pay attention to the basics. Think back to a moment you felt truly busy, or a maybe a little stressed. Specifically, a period of a few days. When you don’t feel you’ve any time. You’re running from thing to thing, maybe going from work to then some form of event, to bed and then repeating on the next day. It’s times like this we need to remind ourselves of the basics we do that normally make us feel at ease or make the world feel manageable. More often than not, during these heightened times of stress we do have those little pockets of time we could make better decisions with that will ultimately allow us to feel better. We have the option of fulfilling some of our basics needs during this time that make us feel better, a simple thing is we can choose to eat well. It’s not that this will have a huge effect on us, but when we compare it with the opposite. You’re stressed and running about, so you eat poorly, as what you’ve eaten isn’t great, you don’t feel great, adding to the stress you were already feeling.
Too often we obsess with trying to make everything better, when sometimes we just need to focus on not making things worse. Not adding extra stress onto us because we’ve been scrolling through social media and comparing ourself to everyone around us when we were already feeling poor. Saying to ourselves that we need some time to chill out after a long day, so you end up staying up late watching Netflix, you then sleep poorly as you’ve been staying up late and you carry on feeling sluggish into the next day. Saying to ourselves we’ve no time to do the things that normally make us feel good, be that exercise, reading or having a conversation with someone close to us, yet when we look at our screentime for the day we’ve somehow accumulated 30-45 minutes of aimless scrolling.
Like the woman at Apple exuded, sometimes we just need to go back to focusing on the basics in times of stress and angst. We need to focus on not making our situation worse, so we can help ourselves get through stressful or busy times.
