Overcoming Overwhelm and Feeling Stuck *QUICKLY*

Most of the time, you know that I like to bring you something that is alive for my community and my clients. So here is the help rescue message that I got from this help Bunny. I'm overwhelmed. Anybody else feeling that way, don't worry, Super Bunny is here to help. That wasn't a very good superhero pose at all. But luckily I'm a really good therapist and really good business coach. Maybe not great at posing as a superhero. So when you are looking at overwhelm, it's really simple to break it down. You have too much on your plate. This is the part where you get to go wah wah and roll your eyes. You know that already, right? Well, one of the conversations that I was having was about somebody who had just gotten back from vacation and they knew they were going to be on vacation. So when they got back, they scheduled everything to catch up on. Not catch up, but all the meetings that they were going to miss while they were on vacation. They scheduled them for the four days that they were coming back. Surprise, surprise. Come Friday, they were feeling overwhelmed. We have a really hard time with allowing ourselves the grace and space to transition. When you're coming back from vacation, you're at a 2, 2, a 3. And then when you get into work, it's taking yourself up to an 8. And allow yourself that time to really progress through the needle. When you think mentally and logically, it makes sense. I'm going to be back from vacation on this day at this time, and so I can schedule all of my meetings. But that's not how it really works. You're back physically from vacation, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially, you need time to catch up. People are going to ask, how was your vacation? Each one of those conversations, even if it takes two minutes and you have 10 of them, that's 20 minutes out of your day. So give yourself that grace and time. Sometimes we convince ourselves that we can't take that time because we're coming back from vacation. My challenge to that is, who are you showing up as when you come back from vacation and you're throwing yourself into this abyss and you're overwhelmed, you're showing up as maybe 20%, 30%. I'll give you 40% of the person that you would be if you just gave yourself this grace and time? We do it every single time we go on vacation. We come back and we know we've got emails to catch up on the meetings, catch up on the people to talk to, and yet we still do it every single time. Now say it's not vacation. You're just feeling overwhelmed. Take a deep breath because what is overwhelming you is your relationship with the things that you have to get done. You could not possibly be overwhelmed if you only thought about the very next thing that you have to do. Overwhelm comes from having too many things on our mind for that divided attention. And we can't do. Less than 3% of the population can actually multitask. Did you know that? And yet how many tabs do you have open on your computer right now? So being able to take a breath, take a step back and ask yourself, what is the one thing that I need to be focused on right now and allowing everything else that's overwhelming you to melt away and dissolve. It doesn't need your mental bandwidth right now because you're not focused on it. So focus on that one thing and allow everything else to be put on the back burner and don't think about it again. It's impossible to be overwhelmed when you have that one, one thing. The second part of it is turn your notifications on when you are working on a project and your emails are pinging and Slack's messages are popping up and imessage is popping up. That's a lot of overwhelm. Just take a look at this screen. You have every right to be overwhelmed. And so how can you take responsibility for your own overwhelm and put your computer on do not disturb for an hour. The final trick to overwhelm is that it's mental, not physical, it's not emotional, it can turn emotional, it's not spiritual. So get up out of your seat and go for a walk, get some sunlight, get some water, get some food. When you are overwhelmed mentally, give yourself a mental break and be able to recharge. We sometimes use our brain so much, but we don't use our bodies, we don't use those. 90% of the rest of ourselves that has knowledge. Did you know that our stomach has a brain too? So when you are starving yourself in order to get more done, you're actually starving one of your brains. So be able to take care of yourself and give yourself that mental break. Because overwhelm only exists in your mind and it's your mind saying, I'm exhausted. If I had you run 26 miles and your body became physically exhausted where you could not take another step, does it make any sense to keep going? No. You're going to end up hurting yourself. So it's a good thing that your mind is giving you that information that you are overwhelmed and it's giving you that signal and opportunity to rest and recover and take a break so you can finish the race. Hopefully these tips were super helpful for you. I want to link another video up here that's just for you. And remember, we have the playlist on Mental Health at Work that has a ton of tools just like this one to be able to help you have better mental health at work and in life. And if I'm your favorite business therapist, I want you to know it's my honor and pleasure to be able to do these videos for you. Please like subscribe and comment. Subscribe so that I know what it is that you would like from these videos as well as I love seeing you guys interact in this amazing community of difference makers and starfish. I will see you in the next video. And as always, thank you for making the world a better place. Bye.