5 things that are helping

Pressing Pause ep 135 5 things helping me feel calm

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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, writer, introvert and sensitive soul with an inclination to ponder over the stuff of life. Join me as I explore how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives.

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The episode is coming up but first I wanted to have a little pre-celebration because my book will be published in less than a week, on 21 December! The 1% Wellness Experiment is packed with ideas and tools to boost your mental and emotional wellbeing that take just ten minutes or 1% of your waking day, and which you can experiment with so that they work in your unique life.

You get practical actions and tools, as well as mindset shifts, to help you establish boundaries, overcome comparison, handle anxiety, deal with perfectionism, build your confidence, feel calm and joyful, get organised, sleep better and SO much more!

The years of my coaching, course creating and teaching experience have been poured into this book and also the decades of my own life experience, my own challenges, have shaped The 1% Wellness Experiment.

It’s available to pre-order now from your local bookshop or your favourite online bookstore and you’ll get it in time for Christmas! And make sure you go to thewellnessexperiment.co.uk to get your bonuses as a thank you for pre-ordering.

Okay, here’s the episode.

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Welcome to episode 135. I’ve been juggling a lot for a while now – promoting my book, running my business, working part-time for my local mental health charity, studying a Masters, volunteering at my local Foodbank, then there’s family and life stuff… It’s pretty much all good stuff, most of it is my own making and choice and I don’t resent any of it. AND there are a lot of moving parts, there are deadlines, several things that feel like priorities and have urgency attached to them, and some sensitive that feel tricky to navigate.

I used to think that because of the work I do – helping women to lower their stress and overwhelm, and to feel more calm and joy – I needed to keep quiet about any stress and overwhelm I was feeling.

Wrong!

Hiding your reality goes against what I’m really all about and presenting only the shiny side of me doesn’t serve anyone, including me. But when I share my wobbles and doubts there’s a part of me that wonders if you might think me incapable of doing this work if I don’t have everything sorted and all stress and overwhelm banished for good.

But, as I’ve said before, stress and overwhelm will not be completely eradicated from our lives, the waves won’t dry up completely but we can help them to lap at our feet more often than crash over our heads. I explain more on this analogy on my Substack, it’s the pinned post so you can find it easily if you search for my name or  the name of my substack which is The Haven and I’ll put the link in the show notes too.

My coaching, course creating and writing is all informed by study and research and, perhaps more importantly, by my own ongoing experience, how I relate firsthand to the stress and overwhelm that is created by being a human in the world right now.

So, in this episode I thought I’d share five things that have been helping me to feel calm and grounded, and keep the waves from rising above paddling level. It’s not an exhaustive list, it may not be wildly original and I don’t do all of them every day but they support me and maybe they’ll be of use to you too.

So, the first one is going for walks.

It’s basic but essential. My schedule combined with darkness falling by 4.30pm means I’m not always able to take the dog for a walk in the woods but by hook or by crook I get outside and move my legs every single day! The fresh air, the change of scene, the physical movement, looking around at my environment, noticing nature – all of it has a hugely beneficial effect on my mental and emotional state. So even if all I manage is a 15 minute walk around the back streets of town it shifts my thinking and refreshes my energy.

What also helps me is being honest.

During the pandemic, when someone asked me ‘How are you?’ I stopped giving the automatic, standard ‘Oh, fine’ and instead answered more honestly and accurately, although still succinctly, I didn’t launch into a full report on my life. Most of the time I was lucky enough to reply ‘I’m well’ because I hadn’t caught Covid, or sometimes my response would be ‘It’s pretty tricky but I’m managing okay, thanks’. With the state of the world giving the throwaway, stock answer felt too trivial, meaningless even, because even if you actually are fine that response has lost any real meaning. And when I asked other people how they were I really wanted to know, it wasn’t just a greeting.

In fact, that’s been the case for a long time – when I ask people how they are I’m interested in the answer, I’m open to their response and whatever ensuing conversation it could lead to. I appreciate they might not want to get into it of course but I’m happy to if they do want to.

Everyone saying they’re fine when they may not be keeps us all at arms’ length, and of course it’s your choice to do that if you want. But giving a more honest reply can give us a moment of connection with the other person, we show our reality, not the sanitised version we think we’re supposed to give. So recently when I’ve replied, ‘I’m a bit brain-fried actually, got quite a lot going on but I’m getting there’ I’ve let them know I’m not about to crumple into a heap before them, which I’m not, that’s the truth, so they don’t have to come to my rescue, AND I’ve given a real, honest answer. More often than not it’s elicited an empathetic response and they’ve shared how they’re feeling beyond the sterile, ‘Oh, fine’. When we’re honest we give permission to other people to be so too.

We may not exchange more than a few sentences or dive deep into discussing our inner worlds, but in that moment there’s a connection which feeds our souls and hearts far more than if we had stuck to surface-level pleasantries. Plus, pretending to be what we’re not takes up energy and I’m not willing to spend my, energy that way!

So it makes sense that something else that helps me is spending time with other humans.

When life is feeling a bit much my first instinct is to retreat. To hole myself up at home, get my head down and plough through all that needs to be done. And yes, focus is good and needed but only doing that increases the likelihood of feeling overwhelmed. Talking to other people, hearing about what’s going on in their lives gets me out of my own little bubble. I get different opinions and perspectives, I get the opportunity to use different parts of my brain or switch off or tap into the lighter side of me.

As an introvert spending time with people does use up my energy and I need time alone to recharge but I also get so much through rich conversation, through connecting with others on the phone, on Zoom and in person it’s worth needing the quiet time afterwards. It takes extra organising to create the space around the ever-lengthening to do list but it makes it more likely I can keep working through the to do list without imploding.

Number four is meditation.

This might be an obvious one, maybe it’s prompted an eyeroll as you listen but meditation really does help me when my mind is whirring with so much to think about and remember and do. Depending on the day the only time of stillness, of taking deep breaths, of feeling properly calm and rooted is when I meditate. I do like to sit, but not cross-legged on a cushion, I haven’t the good posture or core strength to sustain that, and in the past few months I’ve departed from my usual silence to listening to guided meditations on InsightTimer. I find having a voice to listen to and a mantra to repeat in particular makes it easier to focus when my brain is especially busy.

In the spirit of the old saying, ‘You should meditate for 20 minutes a day unless you’re really busy. Then you should sit for an hour’, I have doubled my time meditating from ten minutes to 20 a day because I’m busy. No, it’s not an hour, but it is twice as long as I’m used to and that feels both nourishing and a stretch.

And the last thing that’s helping me to feel calm and grounded is trusting that 80%, or sometimes 70% or 60%, is good enough.

This is probably the stretchiest supportive act because knowing what’s good enough and truly believing it’s okay to stop at good enough are not necessarily one and the same. But practice makes progress! Good enough is not inadequate. Good enough is not uncaring. Good enough is not lazy. Good enough is not slapdash. Good enough is not second rate.

Good enough is GOOD ENOUGH.

And actually I’ll sneak in a sixth one which is reminding myself that everything I currently have on my plate won’t be there forever. This is a busy season of my life and some things will come to an end or slow down and the pressure will ease.

So, how are you doing? I’m really asking and I’m here for your answer if you’d like to email me at [email protected]. What do you find makes a big difference to you when you’re juggling all the things?

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Thank you for listening to Pressing Pause, you can find the show notes at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast.

As I said at the start, my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment – Micro-gains to change your life in 10 minutes a day, will be published in less than a week, on 21 December. You can pre-order now from your local bookshop or online and it will be delivered in time Christmas. And you can get bonuses, only available to those pre-ordering, as a thank you at thewellnessexperiment.co.uk.

And as always I love to hear from you so do email me at [email protected].

Thanks again for listening, until next time.