Recovering The SelfA Journal of Hope and Healing

Anxiety and Depression

Pause Between Tasks

Guest Blogger: Nancy Oelklaus

Journey From Head to Heart: Living and Working Authentically

A couple of weeks ago I was preparing to lead a small retreat for which I had a lot of responsibility, including food preparation. I completed the most important thing–the retreat design–early and left grocery shopping and cooking until last. I was working all of this into an already-busy schedule, but I could see from my lists and plans that there was enough time to accomplish everything if I remained calm and steady.

To stay in a calm, steady state of mind, I did two things:

  1. I paused between tasks to clear my mind. Sometimes that meant I drank water or sat down for a minute. Sometimes it meant I walked out on the deck to water my plants and check on the garden. Once or twice it meant taking a short nap when I was tired.
  2. I kept priorities clear, not worrying about what was ahead, just keeping my mind on the task at hand. So each time I paused between tasks, I was resetting my priorities, checking off the one just completed and bringing a new one forward.

What surprised me about this experience is that, while my prior experience with food preparation had always been exhausting, this time I found I actually enjoyed it!

May this simple process bring more ease and enjoyment into your life, as it did mine!

About the Author

Nancy Oelklaus

Nancy Oelklaus is a personal life coach based in Austin, Texas and the author of Journey From Head to Heart: Living and Working Authentically as well as Alphabet Meditations for Teachers and co-author of Rewriting Life Scripts, with Liliane Desjardins and Irene Watson.

Nancy Oelklaus leads Hye Road Retreats with horseman Lindy Segall. Learn more at www.HeadtoHeart.com.

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Recovering The Self is a forum for people to tell their stories. Individual contributors accept complete responsibility for the veracity, accuracy, and non-infringement of their reporting.
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