I know from my own journey that when you’re in the thick of stress, feeling overwhelmed, rushed, busy, shattered, bordering on burnout or just plain knackered, the thought of trying to fit in a seven week course can seem insane, or at least like just another pressure, something else to do and find time for. It’s hard to feel even remotely interested when you’d rather use a spare hour to sleep, slob in front of Netflix or lie in the garden staring at the sky (this used to be one of my sanity-go-to’s!).

The thing is, it’s a dangerous trap because not taking new and different action keeps you in the same cycle. It’s a true adage that change begins at the end of your comfort zone – and believe it or not, where you’re at now is your comfort zone. It might be uncomfortable and annoying and stressful, but it is your current comfort zone. It’s familiar, known and all you can manage right now. 

I totally get it.

However, the reality is that blobbing out or avoiding a new activity like this course or a yoga class or whatever you might be contemplating is staying in your comfort zone. It’s keeping the status quo because it’s too hard, scary or daunting to make a change, even a seemingly small one.

Here’s the other thing. It can actually feel like if you add one more thing to your day or your week, you might actually break. And that is a scary feeling.

It’s that feeling I want to encourage you to overcome and override – and not let it stop you. You won’t break. You might feel really stretched at times or you might find you’re kicking yourself one day thinking ‘Why did I sign up for this? What was I thinking?!’  In the next moment, remember that you did it because you were choosing you. 

And when you’re not used to choosing you, and when you’re used to choosing other people, trying to keep others happy and not letting them down, and getting done what you want to get done – and all those things that keep us in the stress cycle – it takes time after time after time to keep coming back to you and what you need. It is not an overnight job.

You won’t break. 

But there’s a good chance you will have a breakthrough.

And then there’s toleration. We get really good at tolerating stuff. We tolerate the worn out dish-brush at the sink because we never quite get around to writing it on the shopping list (even though we use that brush every day and get frustrated by it every time we wash the dishes). We tolerate the seatbelt rubbing against our neck and our good silk blouse because we haven’t quite got around to buying a $20 wrap for the seatbelt (they are a Godsend, I swear). We tolerate the way our colleague hands us work with unnecessarily short deadlines because he is constantly disorganised, instead of speaking up and pushing back and forcing him to get his sweet s#*t together. We tolerate being stressed and worn out and pressured and totally fed up because we don’t know where to start, we never have the time to take a pause and it’s just too hard. (And quite frankly, because we’re too nice). 

So my friend, this is the moment to seize for YOURSELF. To say:

I am going to find one hour this week, and next week and the week after, for ME. For me to take care of me. For me to learn, to try some new tools, and to take one tiny step at a time to climb my way out of this stress soup I’m in. Because I bloody well deserve it and my life is short enough without having it feel even shorter because I am flying along at break-neck speed like a summertime mosquito.

I want my life back. I want calm. I want to actually enjoy my work day, my week … hell I want to enjoy my life again.

All you need to do right now is decide when you’re going to spend that hour for yourself. A Thursday evening? Saturday morning? One morning before work and go in slightly later? After your Sunday afternoon yoga class? Straight after the kids leave in the morning on a Tuesday? Find an hour you can make yours. Then put it in your diary – both diaries if you run a personal one and a work one. Claim the space.

Now decide what you’re going to do with that hour – maybe it’s this course (start here ☺) and maybe it’s something else. But go do it, dear one. Go do it for you.

It’s never too late to get out of the cycle of stress, so even if you’re not feeling that way yourself, I promise you – from one stress junkie to another – that you can beat stress, build resilience and be brilliant – at work and in life.