It’s the end of the financial year (EOFY) and you’re exhausted.

We’ve been bombarded with marketing designed to relieve us of our money in the disguise of “Have I got a deal for you”. There have been all those work deadlines and you’ve been working late to make sure you get over the line in time.​ ​You​ might find yourself​ questioning your work, and how you’re spending your time, not to mention money.

​Your first step to getting past the stress and finding solace is a good laugh. See how Kitty Flanagan is revamping ​income ​t​ax​.​

Now that you’re in a better headspace, here are 5 ways to regain your sanity and figure out why you’re here.

1. Find a way to escape.

It can be 5 minutes, a day, a weekend or a week. But do something rejuvenating, fun or meaningful, whether alone or a friend or loved one.

My father liked fishing, he found it restful and also social. He got time with his friends that way.

Absolutely NO VEGGING in front of TV!

I’m not telling you to cut out TV altogether, just limit it because we know that too much screen time from any electronic equipment is not good for out brains.

2. Take a long walk – 800km will do.

I’m half joking about because I recently did just that. I’ve recently returned from walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and that gave me a huge amount of time to reflect on my life, “the good, the bad and the ugly”. Although I have to say that the more stuff that’s clogging your brain the longer it takes to clear. However even a little bit of down time can make a big difference. You might think you are too tired and too busy to do that, but it pays off. It refreshes you and then you can see clearly again.

3. Write out everything that’s cheesing you off.

Handwriting is better because it opens up more links to the parts of your brain that give you perspective. Just get it all out without worrying about spelling, punctuation or grammar. Just write totally freeform about everything that comes to mind.

Separate the ones you CAN do something about and examine the ones you CAN’T and ask if you really can’t. A highlighter or two can help with this, use one colour for the things you can do something about, another for the hard stuff or anything that seems unmovable.

You will know in your heart what you can fix. Then make a plan for changing just one small thing. Walking for 10 minutes the morning might even seem too hard. Try just wearing comfortable walking shoes for a day or two and see if that makes a difference before you even try training for a marathon. The idea is that if you make the goal too hard you definitely won’t succeed.

Maybe there is something in your difficult list that you can take one small step towards correcting. Perhaps it would be better to set it aside and sleep on it. It’s amazing how many challenges are resolved that way.

Then think about how you can mitigate the effects of the parts you can’t do anything about.

4.Take a naughty weekend away. Or if you don’t have a significant other then take time with friends.

A vacation might be timely, if you can manage not taking work with you. Perhaps time to yourself. My favourite thing is a place where I can take long walks on the beach. What’s yours?

5. Revisit your goals (remember those?)

Moving away from what is meaningful to you is a stress factor in itself.

Happy people have bigger things in their plans, the things that make life meaningful. More quality time with family perhaps? Is your life in sync with your values? Are those things that keep getting shelved ​when you’re too busy or tired?

​In my recent trip to Europe​ where I took a long multi-day walk, one thing I found magnificent ​were the ​old buildings, like cathedrals, that took hundreds, even thousands of years to complete. They all started with an idea, then people worked steadily in small sections over multiple lifetimes until the project came to fruition.​ I’m sure they were happy with accomplishing that goal – I sure am.​

However you go about regaining your sanity, do the best you can with what you’ve got.

Ask yourself, What’s one thing you can do today​ to regain sanity​?

If you have developed some bad sleep habits, unrelated to health or crisis issues, that you would like some help to address then coaching could be the answer. You can contact me here.