Handing It Over
The weight of my responsibilities, interests, hopes, dreams, worries, fears and more can really pile up. I tend to feel it in my shoulders, my back, on my head.
Pushing me down. Holding me back from the light, free and joyous life I really want to live.
We all have “to do” lists. We all have places we “have” to be, tasks we “have” to accomplish and roles we “have” to fill.
We all also have a seemingly interminable stream of thoughts that crowd our minds, often filled with worrisome or hopeful projections for the future as well as worrisome and wistful memories of the past.
This whole “being a human thing” can get pretty heavy, pretty fast.
When I long for a break from feeling overwhelmed and overburdened, my reaction sometimes includes any or some combination of the following…
– I take the whole thing as a kind of endurance test.
– I push myself and ignore how stressed out and overwhelmed I feel.
– I turn to coping mechanisms such as controlling others, becoming hyperorganized and chocolate.
– I succumb to some illness or a headache which provides a back-handed sort of escape.
You probably have your own array of habitual reactions when you feel weighed down by your life’s responsibilities. Like my usual reactions, yours probably don’t serve you either.
Getting sick, gritting my teeth and forging head and scarfing down chocolate are NOT my idea of a satisfying life.
I suppose that there is also the option of shirking my responsibilities or passing things off onto others. This is not preferable to me either.
So, what is an overburdened person supposed to do?
Hand it over.
Nope, this isn’t a stick up. This is a way out of feeling exhausted and weighed down. It is all about loosening the hold of all of those “shoulds” and “have tos” and starting to live as free and joyous as any of us want to live…AND getting stuff done in the process.
Try these 3 ways to hand it over and pay close attention to how your life can transform as a result…
#1: Figure out what truly is your business.
Byron Katie brings it home with this question: “Is this MY business?” The first thing you might do when you feel overwhelmed and overburdened by something in particular is to ask yourself if it really is your business.
Yes, you might be worried about a dear friend or family member. This person may even be in a dire situation. But, is it your business to take on this person’s problems? It’s clear that you can’t change another person, you can’t “fix” him or her and you can’t solve the problem for your loved one.
You can certainly extend your love and compassion. You can also make specific offers to help him or her if that is wanted. But, you don’t have to make what is happening in someone else’s life YOUR business when it’s not.
In fact, you can usually be more helpful to another person when you don’t take on his or her problems.
#2: Get support.
Too many of us falsely believe that it’s a sign of weakness to ask for help. It can be uncomfortable to go to another person with a request for help. In fact, it can go against everything you might have been taught (or thought you were taught).
Give yourself this option anyway.
Trust that the people whom you ask to help you will give you an honest “Yes” or “No.”
If you hold back on asking for support because you’re worried about owing or somehow being beholden to somebody else, question that assumption. Quite often, the act of giving another person support fulfills a need for the giver as well as the one who receives. Honor that exchange.
Grant yourself permission to ask for support in specific ways when you need it and then fully receive that support.
#3: Hand it over to the Universe.
There are times when handing over a problem to God, Source, Goddess, Higher Power or the Universe is the most powerful thing you can do for yourself and the situation itself.
This will, of course, depend on your spiritual or religious beliefs. For many people, there is room in their belief system for something bigger than they are. It might even be just casting the vexing problem out to the winds.
I find that handing it over to Source works especially well when I am all bound up by worries about things that are far beyond my control. When I feel weighed down by a problem that I literally can do nothing about at this moment (or ever), this is a time when handing it over to Source can bring some ease and release.
The well-known “Serenity Prayer” comes to my mind here. Reminding myself of what I can directly influence change about and inviting myself to release the rest to the Universe most definitely lightens my load.
What I actually find is that problems get resolved more quickly, solutions make themselves known to me and I can more fully enjoy my life– even the challenging times– when I hand it over.
