For years, I asked myself the same questions over and over.
What’s my purpose?
What should I be doing?
What’s the right decision?
How do I figure this out?
Every question seemed to create another question. And with every answer I chased, the pressure grew a little heavier. Then life forced me to stop. In all honesty, my body forced me to stop.
When anxiety eventually led to depression, I didn’t have the energy to keep asking those big questions anymore.
For a while, I couldn’t. I was just too exhausted to think anymore. That inability to do some deep thinking ended up being a blessing that I didn’t know I needed. And oddly enough, that became the beginning of something new.
As I slowly started healing, one different question started coming up for me instead:
What is one thing I can do today that takes the pressure off?
That question didn’t solve my life. But it changed how I lived it because instead of adding more pressure, it actually released it. And that release helped me create some space.
Space to breathe.
Space to notice.
Space to trust that I didn’t need to have my whole life figured out before taking the next step.
Looking back now, I think we spend so much of our lives asking questions that pile more weight onto our shoulders – so much more weight than what needs to even be there.
Maybe what we need isn’t another question that demands more from us.
Maybe we need one that offers us permission to exhale, to relax a little, to take a slow breath.
So today, I’d encourage you to ask yourself:
What is one thing I can do today that takes the pressure off?
It might be a smaller to-do list. It might be asking for help. It might be saying no. It might be taking a walk. It might simply be deciding that you don’t have to solve next year before bedtime.
Sometimes peace doesn’t arrive because life gets easier.
Sometimes it arrives because we ask ourselves a kinder question.