Krapsakas

Sometimes I look at people and shake my head myself.
A person has pushed themselves to the limit—rushing around, attending one meeting, then another, then going to training, already registering for school, reading books, and dealing with daily logistics, all while attending family or friends’ gatherings. And they just keep running and running.

Their nervous system is at its limit.
Steam is coming out of their ears like a steam locomotive.
Their mind can’t take it anymore.
And they keep running.
They run and run.
Where the hell are you running to!?
Sit down!

Sit down and breathe!
Take a few deep, calm, breaths.
Where are you rushing to!?
Who is chasing you?
Who or what are you running away from?

Do you understand that you don’t have to know or be able to do everything in the world?Do you understand that you can’t learn everything in the world?
Do you understand that less is more?
Do you understand that it’s not important to exist for everyone and everything, but for yourself?

You are the most important thing!

If your vitality battery is empty or has been showing red for the last month or even several months and is barely 15-20%.
Then dear person! You are truly burned out. It’s time to start saying “no” to things!

Don’t think that I’ve been able to keep myself from this topic. I haven’t.
I’ve burned out and also simply overloaded my brain with huge amounts of learning repeatedly.
Until one moment my body said, “Agnes! That’s it! If you can’t say “no” yourself, then I’ll do it for you!”.
Believe me! If your body (including your mind) starts saying “no” for you, then recovering from it will be many times worse than if you had said “no” at the right time. Because the brakes created by the body are such that they will severely worsen your life for a while.

But what happens now?

What happens 😃? Start unplugging your wires (read: accumulated obligations) one by one.

Look.

When you’re sitting at the Christmas table or at a birthday party. There’s a lot of food. Grandma comes and says to you “Oh! Little one! Help yourself to more! This salad is especially good! And Aunt Bella’s overcooked meat is even better!”.

And then your plate is once full to the brim – you eat almost all of it.

But already that plate has become full again without you noticing. You eat the plate. You get full and say that you can’t eat anymore.

And after 10 minutes you’ll be nibbling on pickles, chicken snacks, and fresh cucumbers from the table as you pass by.

After 30 minutes you’re ready to either die or stick your fingers in your throat, because your stomach and intestines are full to the brim. You can’t take it anymore! Death, please have mercy on me!

But after an hour and a half, a gorgeous dessert is brought to the table, grandma raises it under your nose and you can’t or won’t refuse.
And you eat it.
And your gut? Your stomach!? She asks you— do you, as a human, even think about what you’re doing to yourself, to me!?

Does this sound familiar?

I used to be like that. When we talk about anniversaries, celebrations, and eating at that time.
Until I got full of all the lemits and I couldn’t stand it anymore that I felt sick at such events.
And then I made a decision that at such events I would put, at the beginning of the event, as many things on my plate as I wanted to eat that night, and not add any more. And that also includes the snacks on the table, etc.

Why?

Because I realized at some point that my mind can’t understand how much I’ve already eaten and how full my stomach really is if I can’t see the amount visually at once.

You may have heard the expression “What’s out of sight, you can’t remember anymore”. In other words, things that we can’t see visually, we forget. 

When I started serving myself food at events in this way, I often got questioning, wide-eyed looks— “Why are you so greedy?”.
At first, I bothered to explain my theory to people, but at some point, I felt like it wasn’t someone else’s business and I stopped explaining.
I lifted my plate as half-full or full as I wanted and calmly ate that food all evening. When it ran out, I rarely nibbled on more snacks from the platters on the table.

The result? While others were fussing and their stomachs hurt because they had overeaten, I was able to be calm and light— my stomach was quite full ☺️. 

So. Now coming back to this real-life example.
When you overload your mind (plate) with things, activities, obligations, etc., then you will have a hard and bad time.
You can’t see the simple things in life— colors, textures, smells, and feel different tastes.
Because you are so busy in the tangle of your obligations.

Put things on your plate (agenda) in moderation, delegate, say “no”, give things time to digest, and feel if this thing or activity is something you want to do or is really necessary for you?

In summary

Don’t worry at all. I don’t consider myself the navel of the world or the smartest person in this area.
I have rattled the same bucket many times myself.

But this is a good reminder that hoarding/collecting activities does you no good in the long run. Quite the opposite.

And here it is important to distinguish whether it is a short-term period, which is more intense, or whether it has already become a habit that lasts for months or even years.

By the way— usually the root of such behavior is that we want to escape from our feelings or some situation in life that we don’t like and don’t want to look at.

Then it’s good to hide ourselves in activities.
But instead, you should do the opposite, sit down, calm down, and start looking at that piled-up plate more closely.

So stop running! Sit down! Look at your life and think— Is this what I truly want in my heart, or am I hiding from something in my actions?

With love,
Krapsakas Agnes