It's Really Hard to Do All the Things

Sometimes, my life looks like this. Puke.

This weekend, I gave a workshop for a conference in Bozeman called Girls for a Change. The conference is put on every year by a non-profit called Thrive, which seeks to empower youth and strengthen families through community-based programming. The Girls for a Change conference brings local leaders together to give presentations and workshops that are fun and informative.

And holy hell, it was such a blast. Sometimes I forget that teenage girls aren't too far away from college age. I forget that they're sort of like little sisters. That some of them are dealing with some of the same problems that I'm facing right now at 27. Like boys. And what they want to do with their lives. And their relationships with their families. Did I mention boys?

So we chatted a little bit about what stresses us out in our daily lives. Me?

1. Having so. many. things. to. do. Writing, working, pitching to clients, networking, teaching yoga, getting a ski in now and then, and maintaining a semblance of a social life? It's enough to make me cross-eyed at my To Do list.

2. Making decisions among many, many good decisions. Sometimes I want to hang with friends, sometimes I want to go skiing, sometimes I want to watch entirely too many episodes of Law + Order. And then my brain shuts down and I can't pick one so I pick none.

3. Seeing others "have it all". Even though I know they don't have it ALL. But I get a serious case of the jealousy when I watch other people effortlessly float through their lives when I'm a puddle of indecision on my kitchen floor.

After we talked about what stresses us the eff out, we talked about ways to identify when we're feeling super overwhelmed. Which for me is when I feel like drinking an entire bottle of wine. But more importantly, we talked about strategies to cope with that overwhelming, crying on the bathroom floor stress.

1. Do something you love. Turn the brain off for, like, 60 minutes and do something you love. Cuddle a puppy, dance around to Justin Timberlake, go for a run, bake a pile of cookies (try not to eat all of them).

2. Write it down. Stream of consciousness, drawing pictures, writing an essay on why you are the worst friend in the world -- it doesn't matter. But getting it out does matter, and however you can do that to allow your brain to go back to a pseudo-sense of calm is better.

3. Talk about it. Call your sister. Or your best friend. Or your very favorite roommate from across the country. There are times when we have our shit together and there are times that we don't, and sometimes, getting to let it all out to someone who will understand, listen, and even kick you in the pants and tell you how awesome you are is worth every daytime minute you can spare.

What do you do when your life becomes a big knot of stress and you want to pull out all of your eyebrows?