Chaos happens. It happens to everyone. Some people live in a constant state of chaos. It may not serve them, but they accept and react to it like it’s normal.
Chaos is not normal. It’s practiced.
Chaos is a direct reflection of your beliefs and how you perceive a situation. In many cases, chaos is simply a perspective. In order to get out of a chaotic situation or environment, you have to step outside the chaotic energy field.
When you feel like your work is chaos, it can swallow you up into a black hole of dysfunction. One of my colleagues calls this way of living “crappy chaos.” She much prefers the happy dance.
We all should never settle for anything that feels even close to chaos.
Once you can identify and name the chaos, you’re better equipped to create a solution. But sometimes it’s the way you react to a situation that creates chaos where there was actually none before that moment.
How to move from crappy chaos to happy dance:
Objectively decide if chaos is happening around you or inside of you.
If the chaos is outside of you, do you need to organize the people, structures, or space around you to become harmonious, or do you need to remove yourself from the environment?
Getting support can relieve you of internal overwhelm. Can you delegate a project or task to someone else who isn’t emotionally involved or is more skilled than you?
Can you change your approach to feel more in control, like focusing on one step at a time and staying present on that one thing instead of leaping a week into the future and imagining you don’t have what it takes to get it all done? Or maybe you need to simply change your approach and get into a take-charge attitude.
Chaotic overwhelm can also be diminished by creating boundaries, communicating with others that you have to extend a due date, or sharing how you feel.
Another way of dealing with overwhelm, is to shift your perspective from guilt, pressure, and responsibility to getting it all done now, to doing just one thing at a time.
When you give importance to all things, chaos is inevitable.
Make powerful decisions to step out of ongoing chaos. Chaos always starts small, and if you let it go on for too long… it’ll get bigger until you’re forced to deal with it.
It builds momentum and then blows up. Finally, you wake up and realize what’s happened. You can now either sit in it or do something about it.
Grab a heaping cup of courage and do your best to focus on your well-being over what other people think if you want to bring harmony back into your life.
Experiencing crappy chaos or happy dancing is only a decision or two apart.
Don’t make the chaos worse than it is by rendering yourself helpless to it. Making powerful decisions and taking actions that back ’em up put you back in control of your life. Exactly where you belong.