All I wanna be is everything at once !

As warm as the sun, as silly as fun

As cool as a tree, as scary as the sea

As hot as fire, cold as ice Sweet as sugar and everything nice?

All I wanna be Oh-oh-oh, all I wanna be Oh-oh-oh, all I wanna be Is everything Everything at once !

Every time I hear this song, I think Lenka is singing this for me. Have you felt this way, where you are torn between multiple conflicting priorities. What is your helicopter maneuver, how do you know when to zoom out when to dive in and how to do balance this urge to be it all.

Here is my recent experience: Your home, where your parents live is always a place where you will be cared for. Your favorite meals topped with plenty of mother’s love, dad competing by serving his latest culinary experiments, afternoon naps, visiting family in my case also a quiet evening at the family temple completes a perfect trip. I made a quick visit last week to spend some quality time with my parents and my ailing aunt who recently moved in with my folks. Needless to say, many changes were being made to my parents’ way of life to accommodate the needs of my aunt and her health condition. This included an additional room to aid her limited mobility issues, a full-time support person to care for my aunt during the night and other changes to their daily routine including TV hours, meal timings etc. I made the mistake of deciding to work from home while I was there. Very quickly, I realized I was not being helpful as I was not ‘Present’, I was working full time and was fully absorbed in it. Slowly, I started to feel anxious and also guilty and neither of these two emotions I was able to immediately recognize, the only emotion I felt was – helplessness.

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Luckily for me, I had a planned coaching session with my executive coach that day (Thank you Accenture!!) and in conversation with her, we nailed the feeling- was anxiety and guilt. She made a small suggestion; she asked me if I can ‘BE PRESENT’ and not just ‘BE AROUND’. It seems so basic but, I suddenly had this Aha moment. I sent a note to my lead and colleagues and said I need a few hours off work, the following day to deal with anxiety. I immediately got a response from my lead to do what I must and some interesting views from colleagues who felt it was bold to talk about anxiety. ?The time off really helped, I got to sort out some things that needed my attention. Additionally, just spending quality time with my parents helped them relax and I was in a much better place when I left.

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I have had many such instances in the past, where I want to be everywhere and do everything – Family vacation, girls trips, projects covering US hours and ANZ hours, strategizing my next move at work, playing badminton in the community, trying my luck with ariel yoga, sudden urges to give the yard a makeover, long conversations with my husband, scrolling on insta and all of this sometimes at the same time ! Result- Anxiety, Guilt, and half-baked conversations with the husband.

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While being ‘PRESENT’ helped me last week, I am really keen to know what other tested and tried methods you have used, that has worked to recognize signs of burn out and course correct in time.

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I have had my pillars of strength who have helped me many a times and saved me from being my own enemy. I am grateful for Naveen Gullapalli , Muralidhar Prabhakaran , Asha K. , Vaishali Tejani Nanditha Seetharamaiah , Anthony Castaldo , @Krishnan Somasundaram, Bhuvna Kasinathan , Manoj Shroff , Rajeshwar Reddy Pagidela , Mallet Easow Amit Chitlangia , Karuna Budhraja Sharma , Saurabh Akhauri Kerstin Graebner , Srinivasa Rao K Hyderabad , Jai A. , Sonia Thakur , Shikha Palaparthy , Archana Attalury (She/Her) , Rajni Ravindran , Caleb Shireesh Jacobs , Balachander Natarajan , Vijay Bala , Rashmi Ramachandran for always having my back.

Happy 2024 !