I had weekends booked up for a solid 8 weeks.
I took on the biggest project of my career at work.
I got engaged.
I bumped my workload up to managing 12 projects.
That not so unfamiliar feeling was coming back. That "all these awesome things are happening and I don't want to miss out on any of them but I am on the edge of an emotional breakdown" feeling.
I am a constant offender of over-commitment. My parents have been hearing about how "busy" my schedule is since the second grade. I would venture to say that my life up to 23 has led a pretty continuous cycle of "try to do everything, try to be good at everything, have fun, get overwhelmed, get frazzled, maintain an exhausted and overwhelmed state for given amount of time, admit that I am too busy and reassess, start over."
This worked okay for me until I took a step in the real world. I learned it was a lot hard to start over, and that sometimes people take advantage of someone who is willing to try to do "everything." I found myself incredibly unhappy, and once I got out of the situation, I took some time to do some serious self reflection.
Now that I am finding myself in the heart of a phase in life that could threaten to be overwhelming; focusing on the following has helped me to stay happy and relatively unfrazzled:
1.) Never lose site of the reason I'm so busy - if its work related it is most likely because of an opportunity I feel very lucky to have been given
2.) Focus on the good - on exceptionally bad days, I like take 5 minutes to write down a list of all the good things going on in my life
3.) Be self aware - knowing enough about myself to identify when I need to take things down a notch is critical
4.) Make the little things that make me happy a priority (staying in shape, watching my favorite shows, time with my hubbs)
5.) Taking time to make others happy (and making an effort not bring others down even when I am cranky and stressed)
