Читать книгу Comfortable Chaos - Carolyn Harvey & Beth Herrild - Страница 21

You know the feeling: You start your week with a fine-tuned plan without much margin for error, and it all works great until something unexpected happens. As soon as a child-care plan blows up, the dog gets sick, or an aging parent needs help, the whole world is upside down and it feels as though it will take a miracle to right yourself. Even seemingly minor events such as heavy traffic or an unexpected telephone call can tip you over. If you are always teetering on the edge of overwhelmed, then when something unexpected happens you simply don’t have any reserve brain space, energy, and of course, time, to handle it without great physical and emotional stress.

Katherine is involved in a start-up software company with her husband. She has two young children and was making everything work reasonably well despite a horrendous schedule until her babysitter quit unexpectedly and her children got ringworm. “I felt as though my whole world had caved in,” she recalled. Katherine is a low CFC. She had been operating past her threshold for chaos for quite a long time, but, given the progression of events, she was making it work pretty well and really did not want to pull back — until it was too late and she was tipped out of the raft. Now she is slowly recovering, but the toll it has taken is visible when she speaks. She still believes in what she is doing but she is tired, both physically and emotionally, and a little bit of the spark that was there when she first described her new venture in the software company has been temporarily dimmed.

Not only do we schedule ourselves to the maximum, like Katherine, and fail to leave room for problems and delays, but many of us have also fallen prey to the contemporary social pressure that busyness equals importance and status. We book an exhausting amount into every day, relying on adrenaline and drive (and sometimes caffeine) to get it all done. Where is the point where busyness tips over to insanely out of control and unhealthy? That point is different for everyone. But a key question to ask is, “How often am I tipping out of the raft?” Because it takes a great deal of energy to right yourself while in the rapids, this is an area to really scrutinize. Would you rate yourself as a frequently tipped out of the raft? (At least once a day.) Occasionally tipped out of the raft? (Once or twice a week.) Or are you rarely tipped out of the raft? (Once or twice a month.)

If you are frequently soaked to the bone with cold water and have to go through the process of righting your raft, bailing out the excess water, and then drying your clothes and gear, then it’s time to learn how to recognize the warning signs that you are about to capsize.