More List than Day?
A solopreneur with an holistic business has to wear so many hats – marketing manager, customer service, scheduling, personal training, creation of products or services, delivering product or service, secretary, bookkeeper, webmaster, blog writer – this list can go on and on. And then there are the personal hats – family, self-care, self-development and more. How can a day get any more full?
All of these hats can lead to a bundle of confusion, chaos and lack of focus. There’s usually more list than day!
The result of this chaos often leads to feeling overwhelmed. If this happens occasionally, your body is designed to return to normal healthy functioning quickly, which gives you back your focus, positive mood, strong immune system, good digestion and so on.
The 90 Second Rule
One of my favorite descriptions of this process of ‘trigger emotional response’ and ‘return to harmony’ is from a book called My Stroke of Insight by neuroscientist, Jill Bolte Taylor. Here is her description of what she calls the 90 second rule:
“When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop. Something happens in the external world and chemicals are flushed through your body which puts it on full alert. For those chemicals to totally flush out of the body it takes less than 90 seconds. This means that for 90 seconds you can watch the process happening, you can feel it happening, and then you can watch it go away. After that, if you continue to feel fear, anger, and so on, you need to look at the thoughts that you’re thinking that are re-stimulating the circuitry that is resulting in you having this physiological response over and over again.”
If you stay in an emotional state of overwhelm for extended periods of time, there can be serious consequences to your health and wellbeing. Some of these consequences include being easily agitated, racing thoughts, inability to focus, poor judgment, low energy, headaches or stomachaches, frequent colds and so much more.
You began your holistic business for a very important reason. This business is deeply connected to your purpose in life. It’s so easy to lose track of that purpose when overwhelm starts to set in.
Harmony Moments
Whenever I start to feel a sense of overwhelm beginning, I remind myself of Jill Bolte Taylor’s 90-second rule. It helps me to remember that the body is designed to work in perfect harmony.
This remembering is now a place of choice. A place of power. A place where there is a space available to choose a favorite self-care strategy. Here are some of my favorite, less than a minute, harmony moments:
take a deep, slow breath
hum a favorite tune
tap my favorite Tibetan bowl (One of the things the sound of a Tibetan singing bowl does is to reset the body to its natural state of harmony.)
sigh 2 or 3 vocalized sighs to stimulate the relaxation response
tap my Perfect 5th tuning forks and listen to them
tone ahhhhh for a few moments
smell a flower
stand in the grass with bare feet
I encourage you to have a list of your favorite harmony moments, written or in your mind. Use them whenever you feel a sense of overwhelm beginning, so you can return to sharing your passion and gifts with those who need them.
About Sharon Carne:
Sharon Carne, BMus, M.F.A. is an author, speaker, musician, recording artist, sound healer, Reiki master and consultant. Sharon is the founder of Sound Wellness, whose programs are at the forefront of education in how sound and music can be easily applied to your everyday life – to reduce stress, help you concentrate, energize you, inspire you, support your health and so much more.