Use a sat-nav approach to manage overwhelm: pick a clear destination like one hour daily for reading, then focus only on the next immediate step. Outsource small tasks like cleaning or bookkeeping. You don't need the whole route, just the next turn.
Chapters
One of our biggest sources of stress is often overwhelm, and the sat-nav approach is the best approach that I find that helps with overwhelm. So when you get in your car, say for example I wanted to go from Salisbury to, let's say, Glasgow, I wouldn't have a clue how to get there, and if I didn't have a sat-nav, that would be quite stressful. But what we do is I could put in Glasgow into my sat nav, and yeah, it would get me north, but within quite a big geographical radius. I could put in a street name, but it could be quite a long street. Or I could put in a very specific address and it would get me to the door. And then as soon as I got in my car, I didn't need to worry about what's going on in Oxford or where I need to turn off the A1. I just focus on the bit of the road in front of me that I am driving on and perhaps have an awareness of what the next decision may be, the next roundabout, what exit I need. So we transfer this principle into real life. Step 1 is, what's your end destination? So let's say, for example, I want to carve out an hour a day that's purely for me to relax and sit and read a book. Now, for many people, I'm sure they're thinking, an hour a day? Yeah, right! Have you seen my to-do list? But that's the whole point. You may not know how you're going to get there. It's a long way away. But by having that as an end destination, you will get there. But then you start focusing on what's the next piece of the journey that you can do. So it may be, I don't know, find some cleaners so you can cross that off your to-do list, and you step forward. You've made progress on your journey. The next thing may be to outsource your bookkeeping to a VA. You step forward, and each time you step forward, you're getting closer to that end destination, but more importantly, further away from where you were. And these steps all build on each other. The thing I find most powerful about this particular technique— it's not necessarily about achieving the goal, even though you will. It's more about bringing the planning framework into something that you can control. I don't know what's going on in Oxford because I'm not there yet. I don't need to worry about it. I just need to focus on what the car's doing ahead of me and what I need to do at the next roundabout. That's things that I can do. And that's the power of this particular technique. Don't worry about how you're going to get that whole hour a day, just focus on when you can get the next 5 minutes and then the next 5 minutes, and before you know it, you've got half an hour, and that becomes 40 minutes, and you get the point. Now there is a longer video on the Sat Nav Approach that I recorded a while back, so if you find this technique is one that you'd like to get a bit more adept at— and it's a good one— then I will put the link to that YouTube video, uh, in the, in the post below. So do go and check that out as well. But this is a really powerful technique and one that certainly I use For those big things like getting to Glasgow, but I can also use it for those smaller things as well, because to be honest, I'm not even sure how I'd get to Oxford. So putting in those smaller goals can also help you, and you just get there a lot, lot quicker. So thank you for listening to this video. I hope you're thoroughly enjoying the course. Do put some comments into the Facebook group, and if there's anything you'd like more information on, send me a quick message, email. I'd love to help you reduce your stress. And I'll be back tomorrow for our next one. So bye-bye for now.
