During times of overwhelm, it is easy to get lost in your thoughts and feelings. Get too deep into it and you might even forget what is actually causing your own overwhelm. April Shprintz has experienced the same dilemma herself. She now shares three simple ways to escape this intense mindset and make yourself feel better.
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Feeling Overwhelmed? 3 Ways To Fix It Right Now
Thank you for joining me. Have you ever wondered if you are causing your own overwhelm, or is it possible that when you feel overwhelmed, you could make it better, but you don’t know how? I have experienced quite a bit of overwhelm over the past couple of weeks, and it has reminded me of the process that I use for it. I want to share it with you because I think it’ll make a big difference.
The first part is to go and take it into a reframe. When we’re overwhelmed, whether it’s personal things, work things, your business, your friendships, or whatever it is, you are almost always getting everything you ever wanted all at once. Let me explain. It’s a little different if you have an illness in the family or someone has passed away, but in most cases, everything that’s causing you this overwhelming feeling of stress is something that you want.
When we are overwhelmed, it might be because we getting everything we ever wanted all at once and do not know how to handle them. Share on XThink back to when there was a time when you were overloaded with client requests and lots and lots of work that you wanted more clients. You have so much responsibility in your role in your company. There was a time when if you just got this promotion, you’d be happy. You were completely stressed, running your kids back and forth, helping with homework, and all of the different things that you have to do for the holidays. Remember there was a time that you absolutely couldn’t wait to be a parent.
The reason that we need to think about that, think about the gratitude that we have for those things that we want, and also just take that 30,000-foot view of there was a time when I chose this. There was a time when I really wanted it. It’s all happening at once, but now I’ve got to do some traffic management and see how I can get it all to fit in at the same time. The first step is that realization, and that is key.
The second step is to check in with yourself. Overwhelm always causes us stress. Some stress is good. You can get a small amount of stress that motivates you. You perform at the top of your game, and a lot of folks who like deadlines are those kinds of people. You can get to a level where the stress is not helping you, and you’re feeling like you’re overwhelmed. When that happens, I want you to check your temperature. Whether you think of this as a thermostat in your house or like me, if you think of it as an oven, a lot of times we react to things, and we turn that oven up to 500 degrees. We’re just going to broil it. We are going to put all of our energy into it and go after it.
What can be a bad thing about that is a lot of things don’t require that much heat. Think about it. Everything we cook does not go into 500 degrees. Much of it is fine at 350. When we’re reheating something, we might go 180. The same thing for your energy and your reaction to all of these things that you’re looking to do. If you go after everything at 500 degrees, full speed, and super stressed, you’re going to burn out. You’re also going to use more energy than you need for each one of these things. By checking in with yourself and pulling that energy level down, you’ll be able to accomplish a lot more.
The third thing is we have to make sure that our to-dos are working for us. Here’s what I mean. Some folks never have a to-do list. They never document the different things that they’ve got to handle either on paper or electronically, and they keep that to-do list in their head. It’s pretty impressive that they can remember everything, but they are subconsciously sabotaging themselves for a few reasons. Number one, they’re constantly running through that list in their head. When you do that, you can unconsciously be berating yourself that you’re not done yet, saying, “I forgot this and I shouldn’t have,” and wasting a lot of time rolling through that every time. If you’re one of those folks who doesn’t write those things down, consider documenting them in whatever way that works for you.
The system doesn’t matter. What matters is how you feel about it and how it helps you get the things that you want to get done. There are also those people who write down everything they ever have to do. I had a client who had a rolling to-do list on a Microsoft Word document that had gotten three pages long because it wasn’t just to-dos, it was also ideas and things that he wanted to revisit. He felt like he would never get through it. He always felt like he was not ever making any progress, and it was super demotivating.
I said, “That’s it. We’re whacking that list and let’s move to a task-based system.” He got to keep the Word document, but it was ideas and things I might want to do. He was told to revisit that whether it be monthly or quarterly, whatever inspired him to pull some things from the list and see if he wanted to try them because he might change his mind later.
What we then did is what I do myself, which is to put tasks on a Google Calendar. What I love about the tasks, and again, it’s not the system that you use, it’s using a system that works for you, but what I love about it is I can put it on the date that it’s due, that I need to deliver it, and then if I get some flexibility with it, I can move it very easily without documenting it again. That system has worked well for me. I look to prioritize.
Some people want to write down every single little thing they might need to do. For me, I want to look at and prioritize those things that are most important. For me, the top three things to accomplish for my business or my life today, and then also take the time to think, “If I only got one of these done, my at least goal, if I only did one of these things, I could still feel good about today. What is that thing?”
I will tend to try and put that first so that when you’re in that place of overwhelm, you won’t need this much structure all the time, but when you’re in that place of overwhelm, that can keep you in the right mindset to get things done and to start generating a momentum that makes you excited, having fun with it, and getting more and more accomplished until you can’t even remember why you felt overwhelmed in the first place.
By focusing on doing just one thing in your long list of goals, you can get out of the place of overwhelm. Share on XThese three things work well for me, and I had to use them because I went to this fantastic seminar. I learned some amazing things I wanted to implement in my business, Even though I knew all these things, I threw them all into tasks over the next two or three weeks. Looking at that list, I was like, “I don’t even know where to start.” It was super demotivating.
The whole reason for this episode is that you need to remember what you do when you’re overwhelmed. Applying those three things to the process and getting myself back into a good headspace made me think, “Somebody else might need these.” We are right around the holidays. We are at a time when people are pushing for the fourth quarter. Let’s see if this can help. Let me know if it does.
I love it when you guys get to my website at WinningMindsetMasteryPodcast.com and leave me a message at the very bottom with Ask April. I love talking to you. I enjoy it so much. If this works for you or if you have a different question and you want to have that private one-on-one conversation with me, head on over there and leave me a message. I will get right back to you. Until then, here’s to your success.