When you need to turn a mountain back into a molehill

Don't let your challenges become a mountain, tackle them whilst they're still molehills!

I've felt completely overwhelmed this week, there's lots going on in my life right now and it seemed like all the balls I'd been juggling had come crashing down around me.

It all came to a head on Thursday evening; I'd not completed half the things I wanted to at work, me and the lovely Mr Bob had still not decided on some big decisions for our new house and we needed to get things moving, I hadn't done any French practise, I'd not done the running mileage that I needed to do this week for my upcoming half marathon and I still had to complete my fitness planning for the next morning!  I felt like I was scrambling up the side of an icy mountain, getting so far and then sliding back down to the bottom.  It was time to flatten this mountain back down to a molehill.

When faced with challenges, it often forces you to re-think the situation and ask the following questions:

• What are my priorities?
• Why am I actually doing this?
• What can I do differently?

In other words, you start thinking 'outside the box', which is really annoying because I only seem to be able to do this when I'm under pressure!  Why can't I do this on a regular basis?!!

A perfect example was Friday evening when me and the lovely Mr Bob were on our weekly 'date night' and discussing the new house.  We were getting concerned about the layout of the kitchen and whether we were doing the right thing in trying to move the sink, the fridge and the oven and in the process knock a hole in the wall to create another door.  So, we went back to basics and thought about it in a simple and logical manner by asking the questions "why are we doing this" and "what can we do differently"?  In the end, we came up with a solution that provided us with all we needed but didn't involve moving anything or creating another door.  The answer was staring us in the face but in our eagerness to sort things, we hadn't seen the simplest of solutions.

In terms of the other things I was trying to deal with, I tackled them as follows:

• Work - it was still going to be there on Monday morning but what I didn't want to happen was to walk back into the chaos I'd created.  So I spent Saturday afternoon consolidating all my numerous 'to do' lists and came up with 3 priorities that I'm going to sort out first thing on Monday.  At the same time I also created a spreadsheet of all my daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and 'other' tasks which will help me going forwards.
• French - instead of beating myself up for not doing any practise all week, I took the opportunity the next morning to listen to a podcast whilst driving to see my first fitness client.  It's an easy way to do some learning and it takes your mind off the traffic too.
• Running mileage - despite getting home late from work on Thursday evening and feeling sorry for myself in how the week had gone, I didn't use this as an excuse.  Alright, so I couldn't do as much as I'd wanted to do in the time I now had, but I could still do something.  So I put on my trainers, headed out the door and did a short but intense session.
• Fitness planning - I have a whole library of sessions so there was no reason to feel guilty about not creating brand new ones.  I could quite easily cut and paste and still come up with new sessions that these particular clients hadn't done before.  To be honest, I'm usually at my best when I'm 'winging it' anyway, although my clients seem to think I'm more evil than normal when I do this!

If you're having a challenging day, week, month, year you can still smash that mountain back down to a molehill by going back to basics, taking stock of the situation and doing some creative but simplistic thinking to get you back on track.

In my job as a PA I work for a company who helps people get out of debt.  My problems are minor compared to theirs, but based just on this week alone, it's easy to see how some people can become completely overwhelmed by their situation and choose to ignore the problem.  Their molehills become mountains in a very short space of time.

In my job as a Fitness Instructor I help people find the right path to a healthy lifestyle.  But from time to time my clients struggle and if they miss a few sessions they lose their confidence.  Same again, their molehills become mountains again in a very short space of time.

It's never an easy thing to face your challenges head on but when you do, it helps to keep those molehills under control.  If you know you've got some challenges on the horizon, choose to confront them, look them right in the eyes and say to yourself "I got this".

#2020