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Naomi has a day ahead of her. She needs to get both kids up, dressed, fed, and out the door by 8 o’clock. Drop Keely at the middle school by 8:15, Josh at the high school by 8:30, roll through Starbucks and get to the office by 9. Three conference calls before lunch, team meeting after lunch, presentation to the bosses at 2, another conference call, mobile order for Starbucks, finish the proposal for Thursday’s pitch to Kaufman, Kaufman & Linklatter. Then the evening routine begins. All of this runs through Naomi’s mind as she stands at the bathroom sink, 6:30 in the morning, toothbrush hanging limply in her hand, thinking, There’s no way I can possibly do this. Naomi is feeling paralyzed by overwhelm.
What’s going on when we experience this thing called overwhelm? And what can we do about it, rather than crawl under the nearest rock and pretend we don’t exist? If you pay attention when you’re feeling overwhelm, you’ll notice the mind is doing a few key things. I call them Emotion Rules. For most people, like Naomi, overwhelm is associated with having too much to do. The endless list of stuff you need to get to, and it just never stops, right? Scratch one thing off the list and three more appear. But the truth is, overwhelm has nothing to do with the number of to-do’s or the length of the list. It’s about how we approach the list in the first place.
Something occurred to me when I was looking to evolve overwhelm for myself. I was building my company and I had a full time practice, driving hard, sleeping four or five hours a night, going day after day, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the things that needed to get done. One day, I asked myself, What does the President have on his plate today? Does he have less than me? How about Elon Musk? What does his to-do list look like? I thought about all the high-achievers out there, regardless of what field they’re in, from the CEO of a Fortune 100 company to the guy that runs his own plumbing business, and I asked myself, Do all of these people have less to do than me? I was pretty sure the answer was no. All these individuals seem to get a lot more done than me and they're not overwhelmed, right? Or at least they don't seem to be overwhelmed.
I realized, overwhelm is not there because we have a lot to do. We all have a lot to do. And if you want to succeed and you want to progress in your life, you're going to have to figure out how to do more, not less. Overwhelm shows up not because we have too much to do, but because we try to focus on all of it at the same time. Like the title of that movie, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. That’s the recipe for overwhelm. Naomi has a lot to do because she wants to achieve a lot of things. Rather than wishing for fewer to-do’s on her list, she needs to train herself to focus on just one to-do at a time.
Priority one: get the kids ready and off to school. That’s it. The conference calls, the meetings, the proposals will still be there. Why is she fretting over a 2 o’clock sit down with Jackie and Estelle before she’s even cleaned the gunk from her eyes? If the answer is because she’s not prepared for the meeting, then that’s a topic for another post. More likely, the answer is something like, Because I always have too much to do and if I’m not constantly thinking about all of it something really, really bad is going to happen! And then here comes the overwhelm and here comes the anxiety and the panic and now we’re shutting down and looking for that rock to crawl under. Instead, Naomi can recognize when overwhelm is there, then shift her focus to the present moment, secure in the knowledge that she’ll navigate Jackie and Estelle when the time comes. And she might even find some joy and fulfillment in helping her kids get ready for school rather than obsessing over the next thing and the thing after that.
The second rule around overwhelm is closely related to the first. Because what do we do when we feel like we just have too many things on our list? Do them all at once, of course. A major source of overwhelm is doing something we think is going to relieve the overwhelm: multi-tasking. You’re on a Zoom call with your team leader, muted, you’re writing an email to a new client, and you’re dictating a text to your health insurance company. Why not? Kill three birds with one stone. Problem is, you keep typing into the email what you’re speaking into the text and you don’t need the new client to know that your stool sample was normal. You drop a couple f-bombs when you catch your mistake and now Siri is cursing at Marie from Blue Cross. In the meantime, you haven’t heard much of the Zoom meeting and now your boss is calling on you for your input.
The idea of multi-tasking is appealing. And sometimes we even trick ourselves into believing that we’re really killing it, which is why we keep thinking we can pull it off. The truth is, the brain is incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. Simple as that. We may be able to move back and forth between several different things, but to truly focus on more than one thing at a time is simply impossible, and the result is a feeling of overwhelm. How can anyone possibly expect me to do all of this? The likely answer is, no one expects you to. This is a monster of your own creation.
Instead of multitasking, get clear on what actions you need to fulfill today. Create a list and when you're executing the items on the list, execute them one at a time. You're going to eliminate overwhelm by being focused 100% on the task at hand and fully present with that task. It's going to train a sense of confidence and certainty because you're going to be certain that you can fulfill the task in front of you.
Finally, we experience overwhelm when we try to execute on something we don’t know how to do. Travis is a smart guy. He started his own business five years ago and has grown it to the point that it’s time to take it to the next level. The problem is, Travis isn’t really sure how to go about doing that. Building the business to where it is now has exhausted his skill set, but the business is Travis’s baby, his creation, who could be more qualified to take it into the next chapter? So he keeps pushing forward without any real direction and in the process, he’s feeling completely overwhelmed. So much so that he’s starting to doubt it’s even possible. I don’t know how to do this, I’m out of my depth, let’s call the whole thing off.
Travis needs to recalibrate how he’s relating to the task of growing his business rather than focusing on, I don’t know how to do this. For starters, he can consider hiring an expert to guide him and the business through the process. But if Travis is determined to stay in the driver’s seat, that’s fine too. He can acknowledge where his skills are lacking, then set about learning and improving those skills. He doesn’t have to hire on a full time expert, but he can certainly consult with some. He can research and study, with all the information available today he can probably find online courses that are specific to the challenges he’s facing. Whatever the case may be, focusing on what he can do will alleviate the overwhelm that comes with focusing on what he can’t do. It might even become an inspiring journey, a joyful adventure learning new things rather than a stressful, painful experience.
If overwhelm is a recurring theme in your life, join us for a Power Series program. We’ll provide you with the tools, techniques, and strategies for recognizing when overwhelm is present and how to shift your emotions, thoughts and nervous system toward achieving the results you’re looking for. Click HERE to learn more about the Power Series and sign up today!
