Overwhelmed Parents

Working from home, multi-tasking with kids who are being educated from home online, managing meals, laundry overload - I don't need to list it all, you get my drift.

Overwhelm.

Overwhelm is not what we would call a peaceful or fun experience. It's not an experience that we really want to "settle in" as a lifestyle, right? In truth, we really wish our circumstances were otherwise, but yet, day after day we find ourselves overwhelmed.

Are you able to see the contradiction?

We know it's not peaceful or fun to experience overwhelm, and it's not something we wish as our lifestyle, but day in and day out we succumb to the overwhelm.

Why would we do that to ourselves? Why would we continually agree to experience something that we truly don't wish to experience?

You might say "I have no choice." "There's not enough time in the day for all that needs to be done."

Many of us have heard the idea of letting go. However, most do not understand what letting go really means.

Letting go is actually letting go of the part of us that seeks to overwhelm us by constantly telling us we are overwhelmed, that we need to get 1000 things done in a day, and that we have to do 10 things at once.

That dialogue itself (in our mind) isn't overwhelming - it's just dialogue. However, if the dialogue is unconsciously agreed to by us, we then create and experience the very overwhelm that we say we don't want. We fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

Fell for it is a great way of putting it, because in that moment, we have fallen into it's grip instead of remaining present to ourselves and seeing the bait. Our attention on it actually creates the very thing we say we don't want to experience.

I am in no way saying that parents don't have their hands full these days, they certainly do. But all any of us can do moment to moment is what is within our power to do so and and to refuse to do what's not, which is something Guy Finley (a truth teacher) always says to his students.

Time is an interesting thing. When we work to be present in the moment, time isn't the same as we typically experience it when we are living unconscious to the moment (in thought). In presence, time expands.

Each individual has to find out these truths for ourselves, but all I can say from my own experience is that the mind causes all overwhelm. When we truly work to be present to ourselves and to our children and family - when we work to do what's in our power and refuse to do what's not, what we find is that we actually are able to take care of what is needed moment to moment.

Overwhelm is never something we need to feel and experience.

When we start to feel its temptation during the day, take a deep breath, come back into your body and know that you exist. Watch the thoughts and feelings that are swirling around you trying to bait you into their calling.

We have to want to be present more than we want anything else in the world, anything, and at any cost.

The wonderful thing we find in putting presence first is that overwhelm can't live there.

Image courtesy of: Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels