FATT-Frazzled All The Time ?

They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they react to:

Traffic jams
Tangled Christmas tree lights
Toddler tantrums
& of course spilt milk!

These minor mishaps & countless others can lead to us feeling hassled & annoyed.

But I’ve noticed that there’s a more subtle ongoing background activity that makes many of us feel F.A.T.T.- Frazzled All The Time. We are not functioning at our optimum & feel slightly stressed a lot of the time. We are frazzled & frayed at the edges-worn away to exhaustion.

We are multitasking to a level our brain was not designed for. We scroll down through social media incessantly- at the same time as watching,cooking, talking & toileting! We are multi-tasking too much, & becoming inefficient. Indeed digital scrolling has altered the way we read

We are never unplugged! We can’t switch off so we never truly unwind.

This causes mental clutter & mind congestion & leads to us being fuzzy-headed, scattered brained …& frazzled.

We are overloaded & supersaturated with oftentimes irrelevant, useless facts. We are drained by information we don’t even need to know! Apparently, an average Sunday paper contains more information than an average medieval man acquired in his lifetime. This is the Information Age with the constant stream & newsfeed. Our minds are over fed yet undernourished.

‘That’s often the case with busyness: it robs us of the gifts right in front of us.’ (Jeff Goins)

Our daily lives can be hijacked by small things.

‘Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.’
(Song of Solomon 2:15 NIV)

In the whirl of activity, we have no time to wonder or ponder.

No time to calm your mind or search your soul.

We are easily distracted, getting dragged into the vortex- entangled in the world wide web- searching & skipping from one screen to the next.

I find myself drawn into the minutiae of ‘Friends of friends’ on Facebook & yet I run out of time to write a note to our Compassion kids. This highlights my very poor time management & skewed priorities.

There are so many {too many} good things on social media & the web, that we need to focus.

We have to form clarity in the clutter. In the same way that we de-clutter our homes or our desks, we need to de-clutter our minds.

‘We make choices & our choices make us’

We need to conscientiously choose to focus & de-frazzle!

It can be soothing to disconnect with the digital to engage fully in reality!

What can we decide to do to de-frazzle?

Here are my simple suggestions:

•No screen time before breakfast
•Always read God’s Word first
•Set a time limit before you switch on
•Ask does this really matter?
•Is there anything more important you should do instead?
•Go for a long walk- & leave your phone at home
•Read a paper book rather than Kindle/ibooks
•Go back to basics & use paper & pen to journal thoughts
•No phones out at meal times- at home or when out & about
•Consider a ‘cyber Sabbath’ i.e. no tech/gadgets for one day a week
(I haven’t managed this one yet- but it’s a great idea in theory!)

And when we quiet our minds, we can start to hear the still, small voice of Truth:

‘Be still, and know that I am God’
(Psalm 46:10 NIV)

Meditate on those words:

Be Still
Be Still & know
Be still & know that I AM
Be still & know that I AM God

‘Stillness is to the soul as de-cluttering is to the home.’
(Emily Freeman)

‘When you have an overwhelmed world, you don’t have to have an underwhelmed soul -if Christ fills the thoughts.’
(Ann Voskamp)

Blessings,

Ruthx