I’m finally learning (I know – It’s about time…) that I shouldn’t let things overwhelm me. As I age, feeling overwhelmed is my first gut reaction. Thankfully, nowadays it’s not my ONLY reaction. Fast on the heels of my more immature feeling, I’m learning to break things down into doable chunks – or ‘what do I need to do first’ questions. Even, walk away for a couple of minutes, calm down, and THEN do the above.
This gut reaction has been with me all my life. I’m NOT the person who calmly deals with things in a crisis. My eyes glaze over and I’m engulfed by panic. A small example: Years ago, when my husband and I lived in our first home in Tulsa, OK, the garage apartment caught fire. I called my MOTHER first – before I called the fire department! (Yeah, I’m still embarrassed.)
So, when I’m feeling very small, overwhelmed, like the small child above looking up, I am consciously trying to keep my head and put one foot in front of the other, starting to deal with whatever happens as well as I can.
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are” – attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but HE attributes it to Squire Bill Widener of Widener’s Valley, Virginia.
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