“I Am Overwhelmed”

What causes overwhelm? Overwhelm is a feeling. For me, overwhelm starts in my chest and radiates into my head. I feel a pressure sensation pushing in on me and there’s nowhere to go. I feel trapped. Overwhelm is a doom and gloom, dark and stormy, grey feeling. It moves slowly, which makes it hard to get past. It seems like it’s going to be there forever.

Now, we all know that our thoughts create our feelings, so let’s talk about some of the thoughts that can make us feel overwhelmed.

●      There’s too much to do.

●      There’s no one to help me.

●      I have no choice.

●      Everyone’s depending on me.

●      I have to do this perfectly.

Typically thoughts of the “all or none” variety lead us toward overwhelm. Because overwhelm creates a tremendous amount of pressure. And when do you feel pressure? Well, when you have to get things done quickly and efficiently, and you’re managing a lot at once. We’re all wearing so many hats: doctor, partner, parent, friend, daughter, pet owner.

If this resonates with you, know that you can decrease the intensity of overwhelm just by admitting that you have a lot on your plate. Because here is the kicker: overwhelm is a choice. We just don’t know that we’re choosing to feel overwhelmed because of something called automatic thoughts.

Automatic Thoughts

All of these thoughts we have that make us feel overwhelmed are automatic, ingrained in our psyche. Our job today is to start identifying what these automatic thoughts are for you. To start, you can sit down for five minutes and write down every thought that is coming up for you. When you start to see the same thoughts again and again, you know that those are the ones to work on. Because all of our results ultimately come from our thoughts. If we want different results and feelings and actions, we have to have different thoughts.

Long-Term Solution and Buy-In

You may think hiring a coach is about somebody telling you what actions to take. But the truth is that if you don’t have thoughts that support and make you feel a certain way to help you do what your action plan says, then you’ll do it for a week or two until your willpower runs out. It’s not a long-term solution.

You have to remember that any time we set goals for ourselves, we need to start thinking about them in terms of long-term solution. And long-term solution is all about creating a system. If something isn’t working, it’s just the system that’s not right, because you’re not able to get your thoughts around it. So either you can change your thoughts and buy into the system you’ve adopted, which will take more time because you have to retrain your brain, or you can modify the system in a way that you can get your thoughts behind it. Either way, you have to have the buy-in. You need to believe that you have the choice to be overwhelmed or not overwhelmed.

Content

Now let’s look at the opposite emotion. When you’re not overwhelmed, maybe you’re content. What would it take for you to feel content today? Content for me is right in my chest. It’s airy and light blue. It feels fun. Here are the thoughts that make me feel content:

●      I have a realistic plan.

●      I’m choosing to do things that I want to do today.

●      Everything is happening exactly as it should.

●      Everything is just as it should be.

 High achievers tend to flip easily from content to overwhelm, but that means you can just as easily flip back. All it takes is the awareness that it’s happening and that you can change it. It’s about owning the idea that you have the choice. When you believe that you have control of your emotions, that’s called emotional adulthood.

Emotional Adulthood

Emotional adulthood is when we take ourselves out of the victim role and say, “I’m in charge here. I have the ability to be content or overwhelmed. No circumstance can make me feel. It’s my thoughts about these things that create a feeling.”

The relationships that tend to be most uplifting and not draining are ones between two people who accept emotional adulthood. That’s a thought-provoking relationship, one that’s primed for growth and causes less conflict.

On the other hand, emotional childhood is when you’re constantly putting yourself in the victim role, thinking, “This happened to me. Nothing good ever happens.” Everyone’s human. We all live in emotional childhood sometimes and emotional adulthood sometimes. It’s all about choosing where you want to live.

Scarcity and Abundance

In overwhelm, you start believing you don’t have time, money, or friends. You jump into this scarcity zone. But a scarcity mindset can cause you to have even less time, money, and friends because you’re believing that’s how it is. In contrast, if you can maintain an abundant mindset, overwhelm, by default, will decrease. 

If we believe that we have just the right amount of money, we can start thinking about our money situation as abundant. A lot of the time, people will say, “I just don’t have the money.” But I want to challenge you to think about if you choose to have the money for this thing or not.

It’s the same way with time. Because when we talk about time, our all-or-none mentality takes full effect and we think we need hours upon hours to dedicate to this one thing. But what if I told you you only need five minutes to make a tiny step in the right direction? It’s all about progress over perfection. The perfection zone is the all or none zone. The progress zone will keep you in the content mode.

When people set big goals, like putting on ten pounds of muscle, there are so many variables to manage: time, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and relationships. There are so many moving components that can lead you to overwhelm. Automatically, you’ll have feelings of overwhelm before you’re able to even scratch the surface of your goal.

So it’s all about progress. What is one step you can take to get there?

The 3-2-1 Rule

Here’s something you can implement immediately to start cracking down on incremental progress to create contentment right here and now and choose to stay out of the overwhelm.

I recommend giving yourself five minutes in the morning to write down:

●      Three things that need to get done today, outside of having to go to work

●      Two things you want to do today for yourself. You may not think you have time for yourself every day, but you do, even if it’s just a few minutes.

●      One thing you think you have to get done today but will leave for tomorrow. This will help you get comfortable with the fact that our to-do lists never end.

Here’s my list for today:

Need:

●      Pay the bills

●      Schedule an appointment

●      Take an hour to plan out my month

Want:

●      Sit in my massage chair

●      Take a walk outside

Leave:

●      Leave 1 thing on the todo list and be ok with it. The truth is - the to do list doesn’t end- so let’s just be ok with it.

We choose if we want to stay in overwhelm or not. Feeling overwhelmed comes from our thoughts. A simple strategy like 3-2-1 can help us own our contentment right here and now. If you implement 3-2-1, it will slow down time for you. You can choose to jump out of the overwhelm and into the contentment.