When May Feels Like a Lot:

4 Small Things to Do When Overwhelm Hits.

If May feels like a lot right now — friend, you are not the only one.

I sat down this morning with a long, sweet list of everything I wanted to get to this week. A blog post. A newsletter. Emails sitting there since Tuesday. And underneath it, the actual life part — graduations, end-of-school programs, family in town, brunches, birthdays. The everyday things that don't pause for any of it.

By 10 a.m., I was already done. Not done with the list. Done in a different way. Tired in my shoulders. Trying to decide what to do next and feeling like I couldn't decide anything at all.

Maybe you know that feeling. The May version of it is its own thing — somehow the year sneaks up on you, and every weekend turns into a ceremony or a celebration or a moving box, and the regular life part keeps showing up next to all of it.

So if that's where you are this week, here is what I want to tell you. Overwhelm isn't weakness. It isn't a sign that you can't handle your life. It's just real life stacked on top of real life. And there are four small, ordinary things you can do, right now, to come back to yourself.

1. Stop.

Before you do one more thing — stop.

I mean really stop. Sit down. Put the phone down somewhere you can't see it light up. Stop trying to decide for two whole minutes what to do next.

The to-do list will still be there. I promise. It does not vanish if you ignore it for one hundred and twenty seconds. What does vanish, when we keep pushing through, is our ability to feel anything that isn't urgent. Stopping is how you let your nervous system catch up with your calendar.

Two minutes. That's all I'm asking for.

2. Breathe.

Now take a real breath. The kind you can feel land in your shoulders. Not the shallow ones we take all day between texts and tabs.

Here is the only breathing exercise you need to remember:

Four counts in. Six counts out. Three times.

That's it. That's the whole practice. The longer exhale signals to your body that it's safe to relax. You don't need an app, a candle, or a quiet room. You can do this in your car, in line at Target, in the bathroom at a brunch you didn't want to go to. (No judgment. We've all been there.)

You will be surprised how much clearer the next thing becomes after twenty seconds of actual breathing.

3. Say no to one thing.

Look at the week in front of you. Just this week. And find one thing — even something small — that you can say no to.

Maybe it's the second graduation party you said yes to before you looked at the calendar. Maybe it's the newsletter you don't have words for. Maybe it's coffee with the friend you love but cannot squeeze in this Saturday. Maybe it's just the gym class you keep dragging yourself to even though it makes you cry in the parking lot.

Cancel one thing. Reschedule one thing. Let one thing go.

Letting it go isn't failure. It's how you make room for the things that actually matter to you. You are not a machine. You are a woman, in a season, with a finite number of hours.

4. Say yes to what matters.

Now the harder part. Once you make a little room, say a bigger yes to the thing that actually mattered to you all along.

Your kid walking across the stage. The slow Sunday. Sitting outside with someone you love and nowhere you have to be next. The phone call with your mom. A walk in the neighborhood with no podcast on.

It is so easy, in a busy month, to do the urgent things and somehow miss the meaningful ones. The point of saying no is not to do less for its own sake. The point is to make sure the yeses are the ones you'll remember.

A real-life example, from my week

I had a full list this week. A blog post. A newsletter. Emails waiting.

Instead, I went on a walk with my daughter-in-law, Jennifer, and my new grandson, Charlie. Fresh air. Pushing the stroller. Talking about absolutely nothing important. Exactly what I needed.

I'm skipping the newsletter this week. And it's okay. The blog post you're reading right now? It's this one — short and honest, instead of the one I had on my list. The world will keep turning. My business will keep being a business. And I will remember the walk for a lot longer than I would have remembered the newsletter.

That is the whole point.

You don't have to do May perfectly.

Here is the thing I want you to take with you when you close this tab and go back to whatever's waiting for you.

You don't have to do May perfectly. You don't have to do any of it perfectly. You just have to keep coming back to yourself — over and over, in small ways, in the middle of the hard weeks.

Stop. Breathe. Say no to one thing. Say yes to what matters.

That's the whole practice. That's enough.

🤍If this helped, save it for the next overwhelmed afternoon — and tell me in the comments: what are you saying no to this week? I read every one.

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