Let Overwhelm Become a Thing of the Past

OMG, I feel so overwhelmed!!

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard those words from friends and clients.

It’s that feeling of pressure, the feeling that things are closing in on us, that we can’t complete everything we ‘have’ to do, that things around us are getting out of control. I’m sure we’ve all experienced it at one time or another.

And Yet…

…the feeling of ‘overwhelm’ is often unrelated to the reality of having a lot to do.

That might sound counter-intuitive, but there are plenty of times (right now for example) when I have a lot to do and somehow I manage to tackle one thing after another, crossing them off as I complete them. I feel busy, but I feel productive. I feel positive, not panicked.

What’s the Difference?

Whether I have a lot to do is a function of how many of my ideas I’ve decided to take forward; — whether they’ve made it from my imagination onto paper. It doesn’t always seem as if I have control over this, but I do.

Always.

An idea is only an idea until I decide to do something about it and, more and more, I wait until something really grabs me before I commit to action. If I don’t, if I act on too many of my ideas, then…