At risk of being uprooted from an oversaturated environment?

Even strong healthy trees can be uprooted if they find themselves in an environment that is not supportive. 

If you are a healthy tree with strong roots in the right environment there is no reason to fear the wind. However, if you are a healthy tree with strong roots and your environment is oversaturated with water your roots will struggle to securely anchor you to the ground.

What does oversaturated look like?

If you think of yourself as a tree, what does oversaturated ground look like? Well, when was the last time you felt overwhelmed? You know that feeling of being pushed and pulled in multiple different directions, almost like the wind from a storm is shoving you from side to side. 

If you work from home maybe you have struggled to keep your focus. You have every intention to sit down and knock out that blog post, report, or project and you find yourself getting up to get your child a drink, start a load of laundry, wash the dishes, make the bed, check some emails, and next thing you know it’s already 3 o’clock in the afternoon and you feel like you have not accomplished what you needed to. 

In relationships, you might find yourself in a position where you are always taking care of others. A child, parent, spouse, or even a relative who needs more of your attention. Maybe you are a caregiver trying to balance your own health, career, and taking care of your family. At times everything can seem in perfect harmony and then out of the blue it can feel like you are in the middle of a storm and barely able to hang on. 

When your environment becomes overwhelming sometimes you don’t recognize it right away or you tell yourself to power through it. The longer you stay in an oversaturated environment you are allowing yourself to become more vulnerable to the next big storm that comes along. 

We can’t stop the storms from coming, but unlike trees, we can change our environment and even prevent it from becoming oversaturated.

Here’s how:

1. Understand what you need to be supported and ask for it. Consider the following. Do you have all the tools and training you need to be successful at work? Do you have support from a spouse, partner or friend to be successful at home? How about your health? Are you taking time to exercise, eat healthy, or focus on your mental well-being?
2. Try changing your physical location or establishing a schedule and sticking to it. Give yourself time to test out different schedules. You may find that morning time is when your brain is most creative so move projects or meetings that require your creativity to those times.
3. Set boundaries and be unapologetic for enforcing those boundaries. It is ok to say “no”. You can check out my recent post to learn more about setting boundaries.
4. Find support and seek professional help. Whether it is a doctor, personal trainer, life coach, psychologist, find the right person to support you in the areas where you need it the most. 
5. Learn how to recognize when you are overwhelmed and identify the best calming techniques that work for you. Here are some tips from Stephanie Taylor and her blog Zencare.

Give yourself the best chance at staying rooted. Recognize if you are becoming overwhelmed and work hard to prevent your environment from getting oversaturated.