11 ways to beat your overwhelm

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Do you deal with overwhelm a lot? Do you often feel like you have no control over your mind nor your life in general? You want to accomplish so many things, but at the end of the day, you feel like you have achieved nothing? I totally feel you.

That’s why I sat down and came up with 11 ways to beat your overwhelm, so you can be productive and achieve your goals without the overwhelm!

1. Decide not to stay in the overwhelm

First step to stop feeling overwhelmed: decide not to stay in the overwhelm. As Natalie Bacon puts it:

Overwhelm is a negative emotion that is not useful

Natalie Bacon

So the best you can do once you feel overwhelmed is to consciously decide to do something against it, because else, you may even go deeper into it, and as we’re established, that’s not useful at all.

This means:

1. Stop pitying yourself
2. Decide to take responsibility for yourself
3. Take action!

2. Know that YOU choose the way you feel

YOU are the leader in your head because YOU are the only one there, meaning you are the one who decides the way you feel by choosing your own thoughts. It is important to know that you always have the power of choice!

This now may sound too easy to you, but believe me, I am the first one to agree that it’s not. It requires a lot of practice, and I personally must say I am only slowly beginning to gain a little control over my own thoughts.

If you don’t know what to do, here is a simple exercise to get you started:

Ask yourself these questions:

• What am I thinking?
• What thoughts cause my overwhelm?
• Why do I choose to think those thoughts?

And here are some example decisions to take:

• I can do this
• I am in control
• There is no rush or danger
• I choose thoughts that benefit me
• …

3. Focus on one thing at a time

Define your priorities. Look at your goals and define which ones are most important. Then, plan and schedule the different tasks in accordance with your priorities. Then start with ONE thing, focus on it without distraction. No multitasking. Just go all in on that one task.

I know from personal experience -as I’m a total multi-tasker myself- that whenever I manage to focus on only one thing at a time, I get a lot more done in one day.

For further reading on setting priorities, here’s a post from Nadalie Bardoo: How to set your priorities: Sacrifies, struggles and “success”

4. Step by step

Be clear that each big goal needs to be broken down into small steps. As they say in Germany: “No master has yet fallen from the sky.”

Successful people know that success lies in the small steps you do every single day. Success is a process, not an achievement. Success is a mindset. Masters aren’t born, they are made. So take it step by step.

5. Take deep breaths

Whenever you feel overwhelmed, your mind and body are in constant excitation, jumping from one action to the next, one thought to the next, never pausing. You aren’t truly present within your body, neither aware of your mind. You have no real focus, no center, no balance…

Here is an incredibly simple way to deal with that: pause and take some deep breaths.

Feel the air streaming in and out of your lungs, giving your body the essential oxygen. Voilà, you’ve gained new energy and you feel centered again.

You may want to try some breathing exercises, for example the pranayama Nadi Shodana, or alternative nostril breathing. Check it out here. This pranayama helps to gain back focus, relieve stress and anxiety, return to a state of overall well-being, center, connect your soul and body … I recommend you to give it a try!

6. Do sports / Yoga

When I feel overwhelmed, physical activity always helps. You may want to protest now and say it is impossible to get moving when you have so much work and overwhelm to deal with… but I promise you, the time you dedicate to sports or Yoga is NEVER lost time, because it increases your energy and motivation and helps you focus again.

Sports: Check out blogilates. I’ve been doing her workouts on youtube for years, and she never fails to motivate me! She also has a truly amazing program called PIIT28 (Personal intense interval training), a 28-day-plan that provides quick 28-minute-workouts, 7 moves, 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off, without any equipment! 28 minutes and you are DONE! Doesn’t that sound great? If you’re interested, check it out here!

Yoga: For some awesome Yoga practices, I recommend the Journey Junkie, she’s giving you free Yoga sequences on Youtube!

7. Trust yourself and the process

For so many struggles that we encounter in life, there is one simple solution: TRUST.

Everything is how it’s supposed to be, and you’re always only moving forwards, never backwards.

I was always fighting against myself rather than working with and for myself in life, until I finally learned to TRUST myself and the process of life.

Find out more about that in my number one way to boost your self-confidence, or read about my personal self-love journey here.

8. You have time

You have more time than you think you have. In the end, you’re the one creating your stress and overwhelm. Take a look at why you are stressing: Do you think you don’t have enough time to get it all done, life is a huge chaos, and you have no control?

You set your expectations and deadlines. You create your own stress. Decide that there’s enough time and no real deadline to miss.

If there are deadlines from the outside, speaking of deadlines at work; you are free to choose whether you let them decide over your well-being or not. If you trust enough and work with a calm attitude, you can meet them. If you don’t, the world keeps turning, and you probably won’t get fired. And even if you will, then it was time for something new.

9. Do a brain dump

I did it just yesterday morning to fight my own overwhelm. A brain dump. I sat down and just wrote everything from inside my mind down.

I then suddenly understood better what actually was going on in my mind, which helped me analyze and organize it.

Read more on how to do a brain dump in this great post from theinspirationlady.com!

10. Create a plan for your goals

I assume that you’re overwhelmed because you have too many goals you’re trying to accomplish at once, and you have no actual clue how to accomplish them over time.

I am so guilty of this, and improving my planning definitely takes up a big part of my personal growth to-do-list. That’s why I choose to not write advice on planning, but give that responsibility on to some amazing other bloggers:

• How to achieve goals – My 8 step process by Natalie Bacon
• How to plan your week like a boss from Laura

11. Take a break

You aren’t a machine, and you can’t pour from an empty cup. Breaks are at least as vital as work, you simply can’t do one without the other.

When you feel overwhelmed and just can’t focus at all, take a break. And use your break to either do some self-care (click here for some ideas from Erin!), do sports/Yoga or take some deep breaths as mentioned above.

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If you liked these tips, feel free to share the post with your friends! Do you have any other tips? Write a comment to tell me!

Love,