I’ll admit it. I’m one of those nutty people who’s always over scheduled and tend to fill every waking moment with some activity or task. It seems like my MO is to teeter totter between being bored and being completely frazzled. What I do is this. I add things to my life one thing after another until I can’t keep up with everything anymore. I then start to feel overwhelmed. Then I say, “this is nuts” and I start slashing the activities back out again until I feel like I’m back under control once more. I’m sure it’ll go back and forth like this until I’m worm food.
To add to my happiness is independence post, I want to expand on one of the things that I find in unhappy people. This is the feeling life is not in their control to change. Murphy is always lurking around the corner and everyone else is lucky as hell and they just can’t seem to have things go their way, ever. Everything seems to go wrong all the time.
To me, there are two reasons for this:
Misery Seeking
I’m personally guilty of this. When I hit a rough patch I always tell myself bad things come in threes and I start looking out for that 3rd bad thing to happen to me. It’s like when you get a new car and all of a sudden you start noticing it all over town. If you’ve convinced yourself that your life is full of bad events happening back to back, then you will be looking out for that next thing to justify your theory. The reality is that things don’t always go as planned, but there are also wonderful things that happen too. If you’re just looking for the bad stuff, that is all you will see.
Chaos Creation
There are a few types of chaos creation:
- Self Imposed – these are things that are not essential to running your life but you do them anyway because you believe that’s what a person in your position is supposed to do. In this category is scratch cooking, 8 million kid’s sports, social commitments, volunteering, hobbies, family commitments, etc. Sometimes when there’s too much to do, you have to edit some of these out. It’s okay having these things in your life as long as you know that if poop hits the fan, you realize that it’s not something you HAVE to do but WANT to do. It’s okay to take a break for a while.
- Procrastination – this is when you put off something to the point where it becomes a problem. You don’t pay your bills on time and your utilities get shut off, or your house is a mess and you can’t find things you need. This is usually remedied by reassessing your priorities and/or creating a reasonable way to organize your must do tasks. If bills are a problem, put them on auto pay. If money for the bills is a problem, then spending less or earning more has to go to the top of the priority list.
- Delusions – this is a self created expectation of what you think your standard of living should be. Living beyond your means often leads to chaos in terms of not being able to keep up with your bills, having too much stuff and feeling stressed about not being able to keep up with your perceived level of success in life.
So How Do You Get Back in Control?
First, try to re-adjust your senses to notice the good things that are going on around you instead of the bad.
Second, when the next bad thing happens, tell yourself that eventually things will get better again. It’s just not possible for things to go badly forever.
Third, analyze whether you could have prevented the bad thing from occurring. Is it your own fault and please be honest with yourself. (Yes, I threw my back out yesterday, but I know it’s because I haven’t been doing my exercises. I can’t tell you how much I hate ab work, but hating doing plank doesn’t make me unlucky or Murphy’s latest victim. It’s my own fault for having my priorities out of whack.)
Fourth – figure out if minor changes will do the trick. If not, don’t rule out some major ones. Quit your job, move to a smaller house, dump your loser significant other, go back to school, etc. Anything is possible as long as you believe in yourself and take action.
As the new year approaches, what changes are you contemplating to make you life less chaotic? Or have you found that perfect balance already?
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