No more lessons please.

“Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”  Hunter S. Thompson

“Done is better than perfect.” Sheryl Sandberg

There are mornings I wake up and I am ready to take on the world. My morning routine is done, a visit to the gym has me energized, my creative juices are flowing and my calendar load is just right. Then there are other day’s where I am thrown off kilter and the lessons just keep coming. Life lessons, business lessons, limitations and expectations lessons. Seems like I just clear the bend of one steep learning curve when I see another one on the horizon, leading to that familiar feeling of overwhelm.

On a visit to my Gramma Tiny in her 98^th year she said “oh lord, I am so tired of learning lessons, spare me over for another day”. It surprised me, surely she, who had lived the most incredible life, having witnessed the birth of every invention I can think of and survived the great depression, wars, and bad marriages had learned all that she needed to in her 98 years. When I asked her about it she told me,  “one of the greatest joy’s in this life is that there is always more to learn.”

One of the reasons we feel overwhelmed in our day to day life is not because our plate is too full, although that surely isn’t helping, it is because of Attention Residue. When you try to fit in too much and jump from task to task, a portion of your thoughts stay with the last task you were working on, while another focuses forward onto the next task. Now when I feel that creeping sense of overwhelm, I take a deep breath and re-center myself and check to see where my thoughts are. Are they with a client who is on my calendar later in the week? With the full dishwasher that needs to be emptied? Am I still thinking about that finished podcast that is done, but not perfect?

The feeling of overwhelm might not seem like a gift, but it’s lessons are, and this is a lesson I am often reminded of, like Gramma Tiny used to say “If you don’t learn the lesson the first time, you will be given ample opportunity to learn it the next.”