Overwhelm
What it is telling youYou are fighting the storm. Look for the eye of it instead.
How He Sees It.
Eric describes overwhelm as a spiral: something goes wrong, then another thing, then a plan falls apart, and it becomes hard to see how life could get better. He credits his friend Valeria Rios with naming the distractions that cloud a hard season.
His answer is not to push harder. You cannot fight a storm or swim upstream. You can find your calm, get to the eye of it, and look up long enough to see a piece of the bigger picture.
On Overwhelm, Word for Word.
Each line links to the moment it was said or written.
“We can’t fight a storm. We can’t swim upstream.”
“Instead, we have to find our calm, find our way to the eye of the storm, and look up to see a glimpse of the sky above us.”
“Take a step back and realize that the little things don’t matter to the big picture.”
What He Does With It.
Stops resisting and looks for calm first, before trying to solve anything.
Episode 7: Where Confidence Comes From, Following Our Own Timelines, and MoreRemembers earlier low points that did get better, as evidence that this one can too.
Episode 7: Where Confidence Comes From, Following Our Own Timelines, and MoreSeparates a bad five minutes from a bad day, so one small thing does not set the tone for the rest of it.
Chow’s Choice: Self Improvement and Self Love