I was there. You feel trapped by something, you want a sweet escape. You want some space to yourself, away from all the noise. You want to calm everything, including your mind. But why does this happen in the first place? How do we get to the point in our lives where we want to escape from anything and everything?
Our minds are designed to process our environment. This includes not only what is happening in your physical environment, but also what is happening in your mind and body. In this sense, our mind is a kind of interface between our external and internal realities. When stimuli come from our environment to exceed what the mind can process, we are overwhelmed.
Mental/emotional burden
It can be overwhelmingly mental and/or emotional because our brains are basically made up of two main processing systems – cognitive and emotional.
- Mental fatigue is thinking too much and resulting in mental exhaustion.
- Emotional burnout is feeling overwhelmed and feeling emotionally drained as a result.
The worst-case scenario would be experiencing both mental and emotional overwhelm at the same time.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and looking for a break right now, you may have been processing too much information lately. Maybe you’ve been overworked, experiencing relationship or family stress, or maybe you’ve just been enjoying yourself and putting off important tasks for too long. It also depletes mental energy. Everything we do takes mental energy. Therefore, there can be too much of anything, even a good thing drainage.
To understand what interests you, ask yourself:
“What have I been thinking about lately?”
“What’s been taking up a lot of my time lately?”
Valve replacement
If you spend too much time on one thing, you will live an unbalanced life. An unbalanced outer world is an unbalanced inner world – a cognitively unbalanced life. You are spending too much of your limited mental resources on something. Because our mental resources are limited, we have developed a psychological mechanism that controls how we allocate them.
If we devote too much mental resources to a certain area of life, a mechanism kicks in and prompts us to invest in other areas as well.
Analogy of the water tank
When you fill the water tank and it is full, the alarm will go off, change the valve and fill another tank. You can’t keep filling the same, overflowing tank. Similarly, you cannot invest your mental resources in one area of life. Not only does it waste your mental resources and drain you, but it also drains you other areas of life.
So the feeling you get when you’re overwhelmed is what prompts you to stop what you’re doing (turn off the water pump) or invest in other areas of life (change the valve). If you ignore this feeling, you are putting yourself at risk for physical and mental health problems. While you may invest more in some areas of life than others, each area of life is important and requires a basic level of investment.
Related: Overstimulated vs Overwhelmed: Key differences
Recovery
If you find yourself mentally exhausted, for example with a cognitively demanding job, you need time to recover. This allows your mind to replenish its resources. If you want to take a break, listen to this alarm and take a break. By doing this, you’ll feel re-energized when you go back to work later.
To reset, you can simply turn off the water pump and return to the “zero state”. It’s a state that some achieve through meditation, where you don’t think about anything, you don’t process anything. Or you can turn the valve and chat with your friend or spouse. Or do the exercise.
The key is to rest the tired system, not the other system. If your thinking system is tired, you won’t be able to solve difficult puzzles as part of your “break” because you will tire your thinking system more and thus feel worse. You are not replacing a valve; the more you fill the tank.
Living a cognitively balanced life
Clearly, we need to manage our mental resources in the same way we manage our other resources, such as time and money. If we don’t do it consciously, our mind will do it for us, but it may be too late. Ideally, you don’t want to get to the point where you’re mentally exhausted. You spend your mental resources so carefully that your mind tells you “STOP, you’re doing too much!” signal.
Of course, this is an ideal, not a requirement. You can aim for it, but it's fine if you succeed 80% of the time.
Take a look at what’s on your calendar, daily routine, or to-do list to live a spiritually balanced life. Don’t just see these things as tasks or blocks of time. Instead, think about how much mental energy they use. Then, structure your schedule in a way that respects your mental energy. This means that you should be doing the most cognitively demanding tasks when you have the most mental energy, which is usually the morning for most people. It also means having the discipline to stop when you start to get tired, turn off the pump, or change a valve.
The role of core values
Living a balanced life doesn’t mean you have to invest equally in all areas of life. I doubt it’s even possible. It’s not like you have 100 units of mental resources and you put 25 into Work, 25 into relationships, 25 into health, and 25 into fun. People usually don’t because they have certain core values.
Having core values means you value certain areas of life more than others, and that’s okay. Instead of investing equally in all areas of life, no matter how you categorize them, you invest more in some areas and less in others. That’s what it means to have values. If people invested equally in all areas of life, they would have no values.
The key is to know what the core value ratio (CVR) is. Your CVR tells you how much to invest in each area of your life. To achieve personal CVR, you need to experiment with changing the proportions of your mental investments in different areas of life. When you live your life according to CVR, you will feel harmony and contentment. You will feel that you are living a cognitively balanced life.
An example
Jim knew that “ambition” and “achievement” were his core values. For a long time, he designed his life based on these values, worked hard and achieved his goals. He barely invested in other areas of life. At some point he got tired. He rightly took this as a signal to relax and enjoy himself more. But we have gone too far to the other side. He had a lot of fun and had a lot of fun.
In the beginning, when he was always working, he invested 80% in work, 10% in health, 10% in relationships and 0% in entertainment. His mind told him, “Hey, you need to get more rest.”
His personal CVR called for a 10% investment in entertainment, but he went overboard and invested 30%. He disrespected CVR again, so he was mentally exhausted again. As he continued to experiment, he finally invested 10% in an interesting place. He felt happy and his mind was no longer sending him warning signals.
Core values are everything
“I can’t put my mental energy into this!”
“I can’t believe I put so much mental resources into this.”
By saying this, you are actually saying that your mental resources are not compatible with CVR. If your CVR tells you it’s good to go out once a week and you do it twice a week, you’ll hear your mind protest:
“Hey! You’re doing it too much.”
Identify your 1-5 core values. Devote most of your mental resources to your top 1-3 values so you can live in harmony and experience fulfillment. Once achieved through experience and self-reflection, hone your personal CVR. Your daily routine should be a reflection of your CVR. If your main value is “Freedom”, you will not be able to spend a large part of your day in social activities. Whoever has the highest value of “Connect” can do this.
Your CVR defines what your ideal day looks like. What your ideal day looks like is who you are or want to be. It reflects your ideal self. When we close the gap between us ideal and real personwe feel happy, satisfied and satisfied.
