Feeling Overwhelmed?
3 Simple Steps to Regain Your Confidence
There won’t be anything in this essay that you haven’t heard before. So why bother reading it? Because you’re feeling overwhelmed, right? And when we’re feeling overwhelmed, we tend to forget all the simple life lessons we’ve learned. We need some reminders.
At least I know I do. I was feeling overwhelmed most of last week, and when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I don’t feel very confident. Do you find yourself experiencing that too? That combination of feelings can make these 3 simple steps seem difficult. But they’re really not.
And, I’ll bet as soon as you finish them, you’ll feel immediate relief. You’ll immediately feel more confident. Because that’s exactly what happened to me when I followed these steps a couple of days ago.
You see, I usually go through this process every Sunday, to prepare myself for the week ahead. But, I’ve had a couple disruptions in my life, so I hadn’t followed these steps in about a month and a half. Until I ran across a reminder that I needed to. So I did, and I immediately felt the overwhelm melt away.
Hopefully you will too when you carry out these 3 simple steps:
- Capture Your To-Dos: Get all those pesky thoughts out of your head and onto paper. You can tackle this step in whatever way serves you the best. Maybe you write down only your work to-dos. Maybe you write down only your personal to-dos. Maybe you write them all down. But, to keep this simple step from feeling overwhelming in and of itself, start by focusing on the area of your life you are feeling the least confident in.
- Pick Your Priorities: I carry this step out by first figuring out which to-dos have a hard deadline or will support a hard deadline that’s coming up. Those have to make it to Step 3. Next, I remind myself of my core values and the intentions I’ve set for myself and make sure to pick some tasks that support growth in these areas. And, of course, I pick the self-care activities that will empower me to carry out my other to-dos.
Keep scrolling for the 3rd simple step — the most empowering one.
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The 3rd & Most Empowering
Simple Step
#3 – Create Your Blueprint: Now it’s time to get specific about the how/when of those priorities you picked in Step 2. You need to get them into your schedule somehow. There are tons of ways you can go about doing this, but here’s what I do with my work to-dos. I decide how many hours I am going to work each day. Then, I create time blocks within each day, say 2 hours for writing, 2 hours for video editing, 2 hours for my accounting work, etc. And, finally, I fill each time block with the to-dos from Step 2.
Step #3.5 – Continually Re-Prioritize: Of course, life never goes as planned, so this is not a stagnant blueprint that you created in Step 3. You will need to periodically review your priorities from Step 2 and your time constraints. You’ll inevitably have to add and remove to-dos, but that’s the whole point of the blueprint — to make that task easier. I review mine at the end of each day and re-prioritize my to-dos for the next day.
And one last tip: you may want to consider adding a few easy to-dos that won’t take much time because completing these to-dos will help you create some momentum and confidence to tackle your other tasks.
If you’re looking for more personal development inspiration and support, you might enjoy these full-length posts:
Be Decisive: Practice This Powerful 3-Step Process
Do You Have Control of Your Life?
The Secret to Happiness: Let Go of the Desire to Be Happy
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or would like me to point you in the direction of more tools you can use on your personal development journey. Here’s my email: amanda@theexpectationgaps.com.
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And until next time . . . have an UNDER-WHELMING day!
SCREENSHOT TIME!
Take a screenshot for a quick reminder of the 3-Simple Steps to Beat Overwhelm & Regain Your Confidence:
- Capture your to-dos in whatever way serves you the best.
- Pick your priorities, and make sure some of them support your personal development and self-care.
- Create your blueprint — your how/when — and revise it periodically.
HOW THE EXPECTATION GAPS WORKS
YOU'RE HERE
You have a knot in your stomach telling you that something is missing from your life, but you don’t know what it is. On the surface, you have everything you could ever want. Yet . . .
You’re frustrated…overwhelmed…”crazy busy”…burned out…unfulfilled…
I'VE BEEN THERE!
That’s why I’ve been focused on living with intention and becoming a Deliberate Thinker for ~ 10 years.
I want to help you with your journey by sharing mine.
PIN IT!