It’s just past the middle of January and you know what that means, don’t you? It’s time to take that vacation to some place warm, with water and beachfront right out your window.

No, that’s only for the few and fortunate! For the rest of us, mid January signals time for the winter blahs.

The best some of us can do, in the words of the song by Smash Mouth, is take a “Holiday in my Head”. We can only dream of taking off, leaving work and responsibilities behind, for some carefree recreation and rest.

Many of us get out of bed in the mornings in the middle of January and have an overwhelming sense of overload … and dread.

You’ve got too much work to do, and dread that your goals and plans for the year are not going to be reached. You even feel like throwing in the towel and giving up, like there’s a looming catastrophe just around the corner.

Is that how you feel right now? You didn’t get in this place all of a sudden, even though it seems like one day you just woke up and, BAM!, all life is crashing around you.

No, it happens slowly and over time. You miss a deadline; you schedule it but don’t get it done. So you push that work off to the next day or the next, and soon it becomes critical.

That same sequence of events happens over and over with other things in your life, your goals your plans, your commitments, demands and requests from others.

And every day the build-up goes unnoticed until one day you wake up and it all seems like it’s crashing down on you, like a waterfall cascading over the rocks, thundering to the pool of water below.

You’re standing in that pool of water with that waterfall beating down on you. It seems hopeless to get out of it and it’s pounding you down.

It’s only mid January! You have the whole year still ahead of you, but all you can think about is that the whole year is a bust. You’ve blown it, or circumstances have made it impossible for you to have a profitable year.

What do you do when you are in that place? How do you get out from under such an intense feeling of utter defeat?

Well, there are a couple of things you can do when you feel that way. First, you can just forget about some of those things; they may not be as important as you made them out to be.

Second, write everything down, so you can see them all together. When your work and demands are just swirling around in your head, it seems like more than it really is. Seeing all your tasks before you gives you perspective.

Then focus on one thing at a time. Complete it and move on to the next, not thinking of all you have to do, but just the one thing that’s next.

Here’s the thing: To even get to the place where you are able to write everything down and then work on one thing, first turn to God and ask Him for help. Seek His guidance and wisdom to get out from under the downpour. Request His protection to stand over you so that the water beats on Him and you just experience the spray. Then you will find the calm, the presence of mind to do what you have to do.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has got you overwhelmed at this time?  Leave your comment below.