When life feels overwhelming, it’s really easy to start thinking about all the things you should be doing differently.
You should be sleeping more. Exercising. Eating better. Setting boundaries. Answering that email. Making that appointment. Figuring out what you’re doing with your life.
And suddenly, the list is so long that you don’t want to do any of it.
This is something I talk about a lot in therapy: you don’t have to climb the whole staircase. You just need to figure out the next step.
And sometimes that step is really small.
Take a shower. Reply to one email. Go outside for ten minutes. Make the phone call you’ve been avoiding. Put one thing away. Get through today.
It might not feel like much, especially when there are bigger things you want to change. But small things still count.
I think we sometimes get stuck because we expect progress to look bigger than it actually does. We imagine that we need a plan, motivation, consistency and enough energy to follow through with all of it.
But most change doesn’t happen like that.
It happens in small decisions, made over and over again. Some days you’ll have more capacity and you’ll do more. Other days, getting one thing done might be enough.
When you’re already overwhelmed, expecting yourself to function the way you do when you’re feeling good usually just makes things worse.
A better question might be: What is actually realistic for me today?
Not what should be realistic.
Not what someone else can manage.
What can I manage, today, with the capacity I have right now?
Then start there.
You don’t need to fix everything at once. You don’t need a perfect plan, and you definitely don’t need to wait until you feel motivated.
Just figure out the next step.
Then you can worry about the one after that.
Alison Gervais
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