Overwhelmed is one of the best books I have read. I don’t feel that I am a person who sits in overwhelm very often but I learned a lot from Kathi and Cheri’s book.
The goal of the book is to help us learn to: expand our capacity for joy regardless of life circumstances, make intentional choices today that serve us tomorrow, trade the to do list that controls us for a calendar that creates space for our lives, decide whose feedback to forget and whose input to invite, and finally replace fear of the future with peace in the present.
Kathi and Cheri break down the 5 reasons we reach a point of overwhelm.
- Decision fatigue
- Lack of understanding your true self
- Not being true to your true self
- Doing too much for too many with too little for too long.
- Unexpected emergencies.
- Disappointment and worry.
[bctt tweet=”Gaining understanding of the fact that my overwhelm is not the same as others around me helped me grow in compassion for others. ” username=”raynaneises”]
Since, I am not prone to overwhelm as I had defined it the 6 kinds of overwhelm was very helpful.
The second part of the book went into realistic ideas to help overcome overwhelm.
I appreciated that they were all practical and logical suggestions. I will share just a few highlights in this review.
Kathi does an amazing job explaining how routine helps us avoid overwhelm by preparing ourselves for what is to come. She talks about being nice to our future selves. I really like thinking of taking the time to do something now as being nice to me tomorrow.
We set ourselves up for overwhelming failure when we place unrealistic expectations on our future selves. The best way to take care of our future self is by predeciding.
The concept of predeciding is one that really made an impact on me and challenged my mindset. Predeciding is done before you face an overwhelming situation.
Predeciding who you are as a person, what your core values are and how you will act save you time energy and agony. Deciding in the moment to do the right thing is exhausting and completely overwhelming at times. “Predeciding makes sure your future self is your very best self.”
Another impactful section was around living in crisis. Cheri describes her life as going from crisis to crisis but she learned from Kathi that the overwhelm is not the only way to live even in crisis.
If a short-term crisis is dragging on for so long that it is starting to become your new normal then don’t wait for things to get back to normal, they might not. Find a healthy new normal you can live with. Stop living as if you are in a crisis.
One more area that stuck out to me was self care. Making self care a nonnegotiable is a must. Taking care of others seems to be expected but we were never taught to care for ourselves.
Many times, we can become overwhelmed because we are too busy caring for everyone else. I know that this is when I most often find myself feeling overwhelmed. I want to help and I don’t want to disappoint anyone SO self care is overlooked and overwhelm soon follows.
Finally, I really enjoyed Kathi’s perspective on her different Kathis in Chapter 13 but to be honest it is too hard to explain here, so you are just going to have to read it yourself.
I find I often tell you to run out and read the books I review and I always mean it, today I think if you ever feel overwhelmed this is a MUST READ for you.
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