Coping with life’s demands.
This week I asked the cards to give some advice about coping with life’s demands. Every day it seems life is getting busier with more demands coming in on our time. How do we navigate these demands and cope with the overwhelming amount of stuff that is thrown at us each day?
Life has got really, really busy. For me anyway, it’s definitely got manic. I know from speaking to people at one of my classes yesterday, they were saying that they have felt really under pressure. It’s almost like we’re in a race against ourselves. That we’re constantly trying to play catch up. Trying to keep going and all this stuff is coming at us left right and centre. I know personally, I feel like I’m spinning so many plates at the moment. And I’m scared that something’s going to come crashing down. Inevitably it will. Particularly if we don’t take a breath, and pause.
So the question I asked for guidance on today for myself and you is, “How do we cope with life’s demands?” How do we still manage to keep going without feeling completely overwhelmed. Without feeling so emotionally stressed and ready just to crawl on under a rock and hide until it’s all over. I’ve used the Wisdom from the Hidden Realms Oracle Deck. The cards that came up were The Chess Queen, The Arrow Master and Gaia’s Garden.
The Chess Queen
The first card that came up is The Chess Queen. This card really speaks to me – I love to play chess. My dad taught me how to play chess when I was a little girl. I always find it really fascinating. You have to really think ahead. You have to think maybe four or five moves ahead of yourself. And also try and second guess what is coming in from the other player. I find that is quite appropriate because that’s kind of where I find myself at the moment.
The situation I’m in with my house move is that we’re we’re trying to juggle things. Trying to keep everybody happy. To keep trying to sort ourselves out. Trying to manage the house that we’re buying. Managing our temporary accommodation in the meantime. Organising our children. Essentially trying to second guess what everybody else wants. Because everything’s still slightly just out of reach. Our completion date is not yet clear. So it’s it’s good that this card has come up. Because in the game of chess you would have to strategize. You would have to try and understand or have a think about what moves might come your way. What things might happen and then have a plan. So it’s like having plan A, plan B, and plan C. However, when you’re constantly thinking like that, about what if, what if, what if, it’s exhausting. It’s mentally draining, and emotionally exhausting as well.
Just for Today
Personally, I find that is a big drain on my energy. When I’m constantly thinking in the future. Thinking “what if?” The Reiki principles tell us “Just for today, do not worry.” That’s one of the principles in the Reiki system. So when you’re constantly thinking ahead of yourself, you’re actually worrying. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s okay to have a broad view and have a look at life. To see what’s coming and have a couple of plans in place – contingency plans.
For example, taking it back to my situation. I’m moving house, the house we’re buying will not be available for us to move into by the time we have to leave this property that we’re currently in. So we have a little window of having to be in a temporary accommodation. At this moment can we don’t know the exact dates. However, we do need to know that we have a contingency plan. So we need to know that we have somewhere to go. And for how long we may have need of the temporary place so that we can plan as best we can. That’s where it needs to stop. Because if you start to then think “but what if?”, you start to get really exhausted.
Soul Path vs Ego Path
So the Chess Queen says yes. Strategize but then trust. Trust in the divine timing trust that everything will fall into place exactly as it’s meant to. Also, consider whether your little plan is in alignment with the bigger plan. If your little plan is in alignment with the bigger plan, then it will flow. If it’s not, you will find that you come up against closed doors. Or blockages. Is it in alignment with the bigger plan, the divine plan or your soul plan? Then you will receive confirmation messages. You will receive guidance and support. Perhaps you’ll start to notice that support around you. And life will start to flow. The difficulty is when life is so busy, we don’t stop to notice. We don’t stop and pause long enough to notice whether we’re receiving those confirmation thumbs up signals. Or whether we’re having doors slammed in our face. Because we just allow it all to overwhelm us.
So this card reminds us to take a breath. To absolutely look at the bigger picture and have a broad plan. But we don’t need to nail down every individual little detail. Check in with your Soul. Is this right for me or am I trying to force this plan? Trying to force my intentions and my plans to make this happen? If you are forcing it, maybe it’s not meant to be. Take some time out and think again.
So one of the answers then to the question “How do we cope with life’s demands?” We need to take a breath. We need to stop even it that feels really counterintuitive. You think may think you have to constantly be on the move. That you have to constantly be doing something. And this brings me to the next card.
The Arrow Master
We’ve had this card before. This card is very much about setting your intention. Detaching from the outcome and then letting the arrow fly. It’s a little bit like The Chess Queen here. Firstly we work out our plan. Then check if it is in alignment with the bigger plan. Then we take aim. Like the arrow master – we draw back the arrow. And set it into flight. We don’t get in the way of the arrow. Nor do we try and push the arrow and tell it which way to go. Because that would make it jump out of the sky. That would also injure us quite badly. You don’t want to get in front of thae moving arrow!
We need to let go of controlling how it actually unfolds. The other part of this is when someone is taking aim with an arrow, they draw back. And they pause as they set their intention. You can see them taking a moment to breathe. Then they’re pulling back the arrow. They pause, looking directly at where they want the arrow to go. And then they let it go. They don’t just go throw these arrows off in all different directions.
Life Demands – Just do one thing at a time
However when we are busy and really overwhelmed, we think that multitasking is the way forward. By doing lots of different things at once we will through our to do list. But let me tell you something, it’s really not the way. Because actually research has shown that every time you stop doing one task and start to flip to another task, you actually lose 10 minutes of concentration and focus. For example, you could be working on a particular project. So you are focusing on a task. Doing just one thing, and you get interrupted. Maybe you have to speak to someone who’s come to your desk. Or you maybe have an email that’s popped up that you feel you need to answer straight away. Maybe the phone rings or something else interrupts you. You deal with that and then you try and get your focus back into what it was you were doing before. It takes about 10 minutes for your brain to readjust. To get back into the same level of concentration that it was in before you were interrupted. So look at your day. How many times do you do that to yourself?
Multi-Tasking does not help
How many times do you interrupt yourself by doing three or four things at once? Or how many times are you interrupted by other people? How many times are you interrupted by your phone? Consider how many times in the day are you losing little 10 minute chunks? I would say you’re probably losing quite a lot. Personally, I have had to really set some really good boundaries when it comes to this because I work from home. I’ve had to be very very disciplined with starting work at a certain time. And finishing work at a certain time and closing the doors. But I’ve also had to be disciplined through that working day. It’s very tempting to have all the tabs open at the top of your computer. To have your email sitting in the background. Then you see it pops up on your screen. Simple little notifications that are distractions. There’s something to do. You’ve got your phone usually sitting beside you and it’s pinging away as well. Somebody’s text or messaged you. You get a Facebook notification about something you couldn’t care less about. All these things are little interruptions.
Turn off the distractions
What if you actually turn off those notifications? Or only have one tab open at a time. Set yourself a challenge to only check your email once in the morning, maybe once at lunchtime and once at the end of the day. Email is the biggest waste of time ever. Because we get sucked into other people’s priorities and their time demands rather than our own priorities. So this Arrow Master Card, whilst it’s really about letting go of the attachment to how something will unfold, it’s also a reminder to pause. To take a breath and actually set things in motion that work so that you’re not distracted. Because the person firing this arrow is not distracted. They are setting their intention and are letting the arrow fly. So are you are you letting your arrows fly straight? Or are you trying to correct their course?
Gaia’s Garden
The last card that came up is Gaia’s Garden. This is all about the abundance and the total fruitfulness of life. Again, sometimes when we are stressed and overwhelmed we start to think that there isn’t enough. There’s not enough time. I can’t do that. I’m too stressed or too busy. We say “I haven’t got time.” How many times in the last couple of weeks have you said the words “I don’t have time”? And then you manifest the fact that you don’t have time!
Gaia’s Garden reminds us that there’s a total abundance of everything we need. And that includes time. It’s just about how we manage our time. How we set ourselves up for success by looking at what we can do today, that will buy us time tomorrow. What will free us up a little bit? By actually taking a moment to breathe. Thinking about what it is we actually want to achieve. Getting clear on that vision. Recognising all the abundance that’s around us. That will help to bring that vision to a full harvest, in due course – once we plant those seeds.
Let the seeds do their thing!
Just a reminder as well. When you plant the seeds in an actual garden, you don’t check in to see what’s happening with the seed every 2 minutes. You just let it grow and you water it. Simply, you let it grow you – you don’t hoke in the soil looking to see what’s happening with seed. So this card is about getting clear on your intentions. And then planting the seeds.
Get clear on the vision for what it is you want. If you don’t know what it is that you want then reflect on it until you do. Life gets busy and overwhelming because everybody else throws demands our way. Are they actually are they things that you want to do? Are they things that are in alignment with your Soul? If they’re not then why are you spending time doing them?
Shadow Work
Now that might throw up a whole set of shadow work that might need looked at. Why do you let other people’s demands be more important than yours? There may be a lot of limiting belief work that needs done there too. Maybe there might be a lot of confidence work that needs done to build you up. To help you be able to say no. No, I won’t do that because this is my this is my task for today. I think we need to ask ourselves these questions.
We need to ask ourselves these questions because if we don’t, then all of a sudden we find ourselves at the mercy of everybody else’s schedule. And our plan goes to pot. So as I said, I asked the cards to help me understand how to deal with life’s demands.
Summary
Well, firstly we got the Chess Queen. So we have to trust that everything’s unfolding exactly as it should. But we need to have a plan. We need to know what it is that we want. And we need to then visualise that and create that. But we don’t need to focus on exactly how it’s all going to fall into place. Then we need to check in with ourselves and that means taking some time to check in. Does this feel in alignment with what is right for my soul? Is this part of the Divine higher plan for my life? Or am I trying to force the issue and do stuff that’s not really in alignment with who I am?
Then we have the Arrow Master who comes along and says okay, now you know what you’re going for. You need to take a breath you need to pull back the arrow. Pause, focus and then take action. Let the arrow fly. But then don’t get in the way. Don’t try and nudge the arrow the way you want it to go. Let the divine timing take the arrow to its destination. It may not go the way we expect it to. But it will still hit its mark. When we attach expectation to how we think something should unfold, and it doesn’t go that way – that causes a stress response. So we need to detach from the outcome.
Trust the process
And then finally, we need to trust that the seeds we are planting will come to full fruition. Without us having to constantly check what’s happening. We need to check in with ourselves and notice what words were using. I was working on this yesterday with my shamanic class. About the energetic vibration of words. So when we say things like “I don’t have time”, or “I’m so stressed” or “I’m so tired”, it is heavy. And then we start to manifest that heavier energy which doesn’t help us. So we need to pause and remember there’s an abundance of everything we need. And that includes time. We just need to maybe look at our boundaries. Or look at where we are losing time. Where we’re maybe doing things that aren’t in alignment with our soul.
Check in with yourself and check in with your spirit support team. Remember the cards this week have come from wisdom of the hidden realms. So these are nature spirits. Part of the spiritual support that’s all around you. They are constantly giving you little nudges and little pieces of advice. Are you maybe too busy to listen?
Challenge yourself to slow down
So this week, why not challenge yourself to spend five minutes. Just five minutes every morning, taking a breath. And visualising your day ahead. Going how it’s meant to be – looking at the bigger picture. Taking a breath and checking in. Is what you have on the schedule for today actually what’s in alignment with your soul?
And then maybe take another five minutes at the end of the day. Give thanks. Be full of gratitude for the abundance of life that’s all around you. Then watch how this practice changes your life from being busy and overwhelming. Because when we slow down and we give ourselves permission to focus on one thing at a time, we multiply our time. We stop losing those little 10 minute chunks that I talked about earlier. And we actually then can stay in the moment. Rather than constantly thinking 10 steps ahead of ourselves, which is emotionally and spiritually draining.
Let me know if that resonated with you. I know it certainly resonates with me and it’s advice that I also need to take. So I’m going to do that. I look forward to seeing what you have to say in the comments. Have a fabulous week, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.
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