The last several weeks have been really busy for me on the personal front. I set myself the goal this year to stretch myself to tell different stories, learn different tools and structures of narrative, and connect with people in big and small ways. Stories bring me joy and are also my bread and butter – I want to do them well!

So, I auditioned for a play. But not just any play; it was Shakespeare. And not just any Shakespeare play, but Lear. And I was cast! And I learned a lot.

That’s not what this is about.

The last few weeks were our final rehearsals, Hell Week (for those not familiar with theater parlance – I wasn’t – that means a solid week of intense dress rehearsals leading right into performances), and then two long weekends of shows.

At that time, I also moved web hosting providers – which was awful. But there is a happy ending!

While transferring my domain and hosting, I was told not fewer than half a dozen times that my entire website had been lost forever, all my files were gone, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

And my email was disconnected.

In all, my website and email were down for about ten days. As a small business owner that was… anxiety-inducing.

As a less-than-tech-savvy individual, I was angry and confused most of the time. And also felt like a complete idiot.

Like beating a dead horse and other horrible analogies.

We’ve all fallen into the shame spiral, and I was no different.

I had thoughts like: What made me think now was a good time for this? Maybe I’m not cut out for this entrepreneur thing. I should have done more research. I should have spent more time understanding the steps involved. I should have figured it all out before I got started. I’m such an idiot! Why can’t I figure this out? I understood the individual words tech support was telling me but strung all together, it might as well have been ancient Egyptian. I work with the English language every day; I should be able to understand this!

And now I would have to double down to meet my current project deadlines and also rebuild my website from scratch. While rehearsing and performing four nights a week. While keeping on top of housework. While hosting family from out of town.

And if I didn’t, well, I was just being lazy, not trying hard enough, not being productive enough. Not doing enough. Not good enough. Not enough.

Stress is a reaction NOT a solution.

Many of us – it’s not just me, right? – tend to think the way to motivate ourselves to change, to grow, to meet the next challenge, is to focus on everything we’re doing wrong; to “crack the whip,” or just “buckle down.” Just stop procrastinating, work harder, be better.

But the data show the exact opposite is true.

We procrastinate because something about our goal feels out of reach. Maybe we haven’t broken the task into small enough steps, or maybe we just need a glass of water.

We feel overwhelmed, yet spinning our wheels faster just makes us more prone to mistakes and adds more things to our to-do list when we have to clean up those messes.

And we tell ourselves we should be doing more, different, better – all things with no concrete definition, by the way, and therefore not actually achievable. We literally demand an impossible task of ourselves, and rather than motivating, a stressed mind is less focused, less creative, and less productive.

So, what do we do? I had family in town, mounting housework, project deliverables due, a nightly show, a web address showing an error of doom, and an email account connected to nowhere.

I took a nap.

And I drank water, ate healthy food, went to my favorite lake in my kayak, and spent time with my family.

The laundry got stuffed into a basket in the bedroom. The sink stayed full of dishes.

And by resting and letting go of the way things were “supposed” to be, that made room for the way things were to simply be.

I had a lot on my plate, including a lot that I just quite literally did not have the expertise to do anything about. Recognizing the simple facts of the situation and letting go of the narrative that something had gone wrong – and that I had caused or allowed something to go wrong – let my mind relax enough to see what was available to me that I could do.

The internal error message of doom.

Overwhelm, stress, and anxiety, or any “negative” emotion, are uncomfortable, and we aren’t taught to process them. As kids many of us were taught to stop crying, to be nice, to forgive and forget, and so, to “be good,” we learned to bury our more difficult emotions.

Over time, burying and avoiding those things leads us to conclude that they must be terrible, dangerous, and more than we can handle. We learn to rush into action, push ourselves harder and faster to make the feeling go away.

But science says an emotion only lasts about ninety seconds if we don’t feed into it. I don’t know about you, but I think I can handle most anything for less than two minutes.

So, I did all the “proper care and feeding” things my body needs to support my brain. I gave myself those two minutes to let myself feel frustrated and stressed. And I made a plan.

I did my shows. I talked to tech support day after day after day. I called in someone with more expertise than I had to help translate the tech support.

And I got my website back – no lost files – and my email up-and-running again.

The happy ending.

If, like me, you are hitting a wall of stress, you already know rushing to action and going harder doesn’t help. Taking the right, intentional next step is more important and more effective than just getting away from an uncomfortable feeling.

Much is said about self-care and self-compassion. But taking steps to meet your own basic needs (when was the last time you stood up from your desk and just took a deep breath?) and to have your own back (I promise there is almost nothing in the world that can go so wrong, it can’t be fixed), is the most effective way to perform at our best, whether as an employee, a freelancer, or a business owner.

Or even on stage.