When Overwhelmed Simplify

This is a powerful slogan. When you find yourself overwhelmed it’s easy to panic. Panicking can exacerbate the situation, making matters appear more difficult, and impossible to sort out. This is when you need to take some action to simplify your life and do your best to create some kind of order.

 We can so easily scare ourselves with all the things that are competing for our attention. At this point, procrastination can creep in, with what I call ‘I’ll deal with this tomorrow syndrome.’ We put off making a start on anything, until another time, assuming that it will be easier then.

 I find that the best way to simplify my life when I’m overwhelmed is to make a list. Don’t laugh!  It works for me every time. Try it for yourself.

 Making lists is a useful tool for releasing the stress created by overwhelm. When you feel swamped with all the things you have to do, at some level you’re out of balance. The key is to get all the competing urgencies, rattling around in your head, down onto paper and produce a random list.

Then you can create some kind of priority order, and proposed timescale for each entry. Doing this allows you to regain a sense of objectivity about what you can and can’t do. What is realistic for you to achieve in one day? What needs to be done first? What can wait? 

 If you re-write the list according to your chosen order of importance, you now have the specific actions that you can take step by step. Your mind becomes free to take stock and focus on the first activity on that list.

 These actions can help your turbulent thoughts to slow down. All that is required is for you to just do one thing at a time. Slowly your anxiety will subside and you can move through the day with more serenity.

 One thing I haven’t mentioned is the sheer joy to be felt in crossing things off the list. Such a sense of completion. Better than eating a Belgian bun, and that’s my favourite cake.

 A good example of the power in ‘simplifying when overwhelmed’ is my experience of writing the first draft of my book, ‘Wearing Red’. Sometimes I had paralysing doubts about what I was writing, convincing myself that it was rubbish and I should give up. The task ahead of me seemed huge and impossible.

 My old mindset kicked in and my inner critic harped on that I was simply not good enough and should quit now before I wasted any more time on a project doomed for disaster. If I’d given in to the negative self-talk, there would have been no book written.

 At this point I had to simplify, and just focus on moving forward in small steps. Wrote a sentence, then a paragraph, and before long I’d produced a chapter. It didn’t matter what I was writing or how good it might be. The key was to just get my thoughts down on the page and make sense of it later in the second draft. That is how the book appeared. Slow and steady progress. Step by step. Word by word.

 Creating a list can help achieve some respite from the chaotic jumble in your head. Some calm from the storm of being overwhelmed. You now have a concrete plan, outside of your mind, from which you can make sensible and practical choices.