Rebalancing After an Emergency |
Have you ever had to push almost everything in your life to the back burner to take care of an emergency? If so, you probably know how hard it can be to get back on track afterward. For me, it feels a bit like having a 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces the same color. Where do I begin?
I’m just coming out of one of those periods. Thankfully, it wasn’t a life-or-death situation, but it still required putting most of my life on hold for an extended period of time.
In addition to being a life coach, I also write books for educational publishers. The books, which are used to teach children to read, may be as few as 50 words (for first graders) to over 15,000 words (for sixth graders). This summer I took on two sixth-grade books, both on topics I love to write about -- endangered animals and progressive politics. Both assignments took considerably longer than I expected and required massive amounts of focus and discipline. I worked 8-hour days, 7 days a week, for about nine weeks, in addition to maintaining my coaching practice.
As the weeks rolled by, I let go of most everything in my life that wasn’t about work. I stopped reading recreationally and stopped having lunch with friends. I avoided doing laundry for a month at a time by stocking up in advance on undies and socks. At some point in the blur of the last two months, I stopped washing dishes after each meal. I stopped vacuuming. I even stopped making my bed.
Midway through the marathon, I quit going to the health food store (10 miles away) and opted instead for Safeway (just across the street). I knew it was bad when I stopped taking my morning walks, a mainstay of my sanity. Almost everything in my life was geared toward meeting my deadlines.
Which, I’m happy to say, I did.
Then I spent two days napping and watching old West Wing episodes, doing my utmost to accomplish absolutely nothing.
And then I had the unpleasant task of looking around at the wreckage of the rest of my life. Sorting it out and catching up felt like an insurmountable task -- until a buddy coached me using the life wheel .
Our goal was to look at each part of my life to see what needed attention and to create a prioritized list of items to handle. We started with health, since that one was screaming at me. Here’s what I came up with:
High Priority (I agreed to do these on the day of the coaching session)
• Fill out and mail my health insurance renewal form before the deadline.
• Make two doctor’s appointments.
Medium Priority
• Start slowly to get back into exercising. We came up with the idea of me doing one thing each day for even 10-15 minutes (walking, core exercises, strength training, or riding my stationary bike). The point was to make space in my life for exercise again without becoming overwhelmed by goals that were too ambitious.
• Cut down on caffeine, which I’d been relying on to get me through the long workdays. I committed to limit myself to 2 cups a day of caffeinated tea for two months and to then cut back to 1 cup a day. If I feel like drinking caffeine in the afternoon, I’m going to take a nap instead. Since I also sometimes use caffeine to avoid my emotions, another option when I feel the urge is to sit with my feelings or draw them.
I was feeling pretty good after we covered health; I felt an inner sigh of relief that a lot of important stuff had been addressed. Next I chose to look at physical environment, since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d given it much attention. I have a fondness for order and a general habit of putting things away regularly, so it wasn’t that I was living in chaos. My apartment was fairly neat but not clean. I came up with two goals in this area:
High Priority
• Clean my apartment over the weekend. My coach wisely asked me how I could achieve this without feeling overwhelmed, since I’m still feeling pretty fried from my work marathon. I outlined a plan for doing little tasks throughout the weekend, with long, lazy breaks in between.
Medium Priority
• Clean my balcony. I have several bird feeders, and those crazy little birds think that eating the food I put out gives them license to poop indiscriminately. I intensely hate cleaning up bird poop, but I love sitting out on my balcony when it’s clean, so I have a lot of motivation to clean it. I made a commitment to my coach to clean it during the next week.
Before the coaching session, my whole life felt out of control. After we talked about physical environment, I had a big “aha” when I realized that I had handled the only two parts of my life that were, in fact, out of control. In less than an hour, I had moved past a great source of stress and worked out a realistic plan for taking care of the things that needed attention.
To stay on track, I asked my coach if I could send her e-mails letting her know when I had finished each item, which she agreed to. Accountability supports me to follow through with my plans. I sent her an e-mail on Friday after handling the two high-priority health things. Sunday evening I let her know I finished cleaning my apartment. And on Thursday evening, I’ll notify her that I cleaned my balcony, exercised daily, and limited my caffeine intake to two cups a day. I know I’ll accomplish these things because:
• I said I would, and my word is good.
• My coach and I worked together to come up with a realistic, workable plan.
• My coach helped me get in touch with why I want to do all these things. Having a healthy body, having a clean home, and sitting peacefully on my balcony all contribute to living a joyful life, so my motivation quotient is way up there.
In a one-hour session, my coach supported me to create a map to make a seemingly overwhelming task manageable, as well as to realign my life with my values and priorities. Coaching works! |
Kira Freed |
| About the author: |
| Kira Freed is a Certified Life Coach (CLC) and former psychotherapist with master's degrees in counseling psychology and anthropology. She has been passionate about personal growth since her teenage years and has been fortunate to attend a wealth of professional trainings and workshops. She has worked in the field of human development since 1990 and is inspired by and honored to collaborate with coaching clients in the emergence and expression of their authentic selves. Kira lives in Tucson, Arizona, and most of her clients work with her by telephone. She can be reached at
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for more information or to book a coaching session. She offers a sliding scale, and the first session is free. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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