You know those weeks where everything seems to hit at once?
Not just busy — chaotic. The kind that creeps up until you suddenly realise you’ve stopped breathing properly. You’re holding it all together with grit and caffeine, still convincing yourself you’ve got it under control.
I’ve had those weeks more times than I’d like to admit.
One thing demands your full attention, so you give it everything you’ve got. You get so focused on fixing what’s right in front of you that you stop noticing what’s quietly slipping away behind you.
That’s how chaos works. It doesn’t kick the door in. It just shifts your attention until you forget to come back.
For me, it looked like this: I was juggling the business, the kids, the house, and the mental load of a dozen conversations that hadn’t even happened yet.
I’d lie in bed rehearsing arguments, trying to find the perfect words that would finally make people understand. I’d rewrite the same explanations in my head, over and over, like somehow the next version would fix everything.
And underneath it all was this quiet thought: if I can just control this one thing, maybe everything else will settle.
That’s the lie chaos whispers, that if you just control it hard enough, it’ll calm down.
But control doesn’t calm chaos, it feeds it.
It keeps your mind in the fight, searching for perfect logic in a situation that’s already emotional.
What has made the last two weeks so hard wasn’t the work itself.
It was watching myself lose control of my own focus.
Every time I tried to think clearly, my mind just raced back to what wasn’t working — like it had its own pull.
And that’s the catch: when you care deeply, chaos doesn’t always feel wrong. It feels responsible. It feels like love. You’re doing what needs to be done, right?
Until you realise that giving everything to one fire means you’ve stopped tending to every other part of your life that keeps you steady.
Sleep slips first. Then exercise. Then patience.
And when patience goes, everything gets louder.
At some point, I caught myself. I can’t even tell you what triggered it, maybe exhaustion, maybe awareness.
I sat down with my journal, opened a blank page, and wrote exactly what was in my head. No structure, no edits, just the noise.
I wrote until my thoughts started making sense again.
Until I could see what was mine to carry and what wasn’t.
That’s when I noticed the swing, how far I’d drifted from centre.
Journaling doesn’t fix chaos. But it helps me tell the difference between what’s happening around me and what’s happening inside.
It gives my thoughts somewhere else to live.
After that, I started rebuilding small. Nothing fancy.
I went to bed earlier. I moved my body. I ate food that would actually fuel me instead of just fill me.
It’s not self-care, it’s self-leadership.
Because when you’re centred, you think better. You speak clearer. You react slower. You start responding to life instead of wrestling it.
And here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: realignment isn’t about perfect balance.
It’s about noticing when you’ve swung too far and giving yourself permission to course-correct without guilt.
The more times you’ve been through it, the faster you spot it coming. You can almost feel it rising, that creeping tension in your shoulders, the overthinking, the emotional noise.
That awareness is power.
It’s evidence that you’ve grown.
So if you find yourself in your own version of chaos right now, take a moment.
Step back.
Write down what’s in your head.
Look at the full picture, what you’ve been fighting for, and what you’ve quietly been losing sight of.
And then, find one small promise you can keep today that makes tomorrow lighter.
You’ve done this before.
You’ve survived other storms.
Those moments are your quiet proof, reminders that you can realign, again and again.
Chaos doesn’t define you.
How you come back does.