How To Escape When You Feel Like You Can't

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Let me paint a picture for you. Yours might be similar, but the details are just filled in with events that pertain to your particular season in life.

Reading emails to find that a large order for your company falls through, another company you worked with is trying to take advantage and pay you less than agreed on, you realize you have a couple hours to meet a really important deadline, ah, crap but you have a church event you are partially in charge of in just a couple of hours…

texts go off: is this person seriously telling me this right now? Oh my gosh I'm going to have anxiety if one more thing…

phone rings.

more emails come.

what are you feeding your kids for dinner? 

oh man, have I even eaten yet today?

My sons birthday party is in 3 days, and we're having a Halloween party the night before. WHY did I ever think that was a good idea?

more emails come in: aghhh, I forgot I'm leaving town next weekend.

and every weekend in November for work.

but we have so much to do… I'm not ready…

Okay, I just let you in on merely the past TEN MINUTES inside of my life/head.

I'm getting better at handling these types of instant life attacks, but don't always confront them with suave. I refer to them as life attacks because dang it, sometimes too much life happens way too fast and at the same time and who in the world knew that suddenly 10 things could go wrong at the drop of a hat? And in these moments, all I want to do is escape. I want to crawl under the storage space beneath my stairs or hop on a plane to Hawaii or turn everything off and pet my dog until my husband comes home with ice cream and a new outfit for me and tells me he'll fix all my problems.

But this is real life.

And a life attack is in the process of happening.

So none of those things are feasible or sane to do at the moment.

So here are a couple of the ways I escape the sanity for just a moment, until I am able to relax and continue saving everything in my little world from exploding:

1- Shut off your phone, turn everything off for a moment, and be still. There's a special thing that Buddhists do to live happy lives. They become very in touch with everything thats happening around them. They take in colors, focus on smells, listen to the airplane above or the lawn mower outside. Everything becomes a soothing experience because they use their surroundings to calmly experience life. This has been my number one go to method to escaping my stress, even if its just for a moment. Somedays, when I try extra hard to pay attention to everything around me, stressful moments will happen but I don't feel them as intensely because I've been careful to not get too distracted throughout the day. When you drive, look at the colors, letters, and cars that surround you. When you eat, soak up the colors, the smells, the action that you are doing. You might think I'm crazy, and I am in a lot of ways ;), but try this. It has helped tremendously.

2- Start a "locked away" email folder or note box. Have you just received a horrible phone call, text or email? Do you want to just tell the other person off and are so irate you don't even know what to do with yourself? I think that's my least favorite feeling…ever. Release your anger. Get everything out that you could possibly say. Write it down, allow yourself to go through the process of being upset. Address that letter to them, and then lock it in a box under your bed, never to be opened again. Sometimes you just need to unwind by expressing your most candid feelings, but a lot of times those feelings would destroy relationships if said too harshly. So, write it down, and lock it away.

3- Read an email, article, scripture, old text message, etc, that you know will brings you peace, happiness, and remind you as to why you do what you do. Read an old note from someone who you have positively impacted, go look at art your child has made at school, or focus on what you've done recently that has been of benefit to someone else. See, you're not so bad.

4- Pray. Ask God for peace. Ask Him how you can best handle your situation. Ask Him for more strength, more patience, more faith, and help. He'll give it to you.

And then, get back to doing the work that you were made to do.

You can do it.

Promise.