6 Tricks to Beat Overwhelm

Overwhelm is a type of emotional paralysis where you feel as though you’re unable to cope with or handle your circumstances. You feel as though you’re lacking control, which leads to indecision.

It’s a horrible feeling being overwhelmed by your task list. What you need is a way to get back on top quickly by starting to prioritize what to do and when to do it.

Here are some tips to beat overwhelm and take your control back.

Clear Your Head

You might be feeling overwhelmed because you are trying to do more than you can physically and emotionally handle. On top of this, you are trying to account for absolutely everything. You have too many things on your mind, too many responsibilities, too many commitments, and absolutely no hope in the world of doing everything yourself.

Your perspective is simply too wide, and as a result, you are unable to handle everything successfully. A better option would be to let go of your need for control or eliminate things from your life. As a result, you can hone-in your focus and concentration on smaller areas of your life that you are better able to control and influence.

Determine Which Tasks are Most Important

The biggest tip for you is to take note of which tasks are most important. Try to put your tasks on your to-do list. Once you know what you absolutely need to get done, you’ll have a starting place for when you sit down to focus. That way, if you don’t have time to finish everything, the tasks that’ll suffer will be some of the least necessary ones. This helps make sure you can keep everything up and running at the bare minimum, even when you get super busy.

One Step at a Time

Forget about multi-tasking. Multi-tasking can quickly get overwhelming. It’s impossible to multi-task and give your full effort and attention to everything at once. Instead, focus on doing one thing at a time for a set period of time before moving onto something else.

Take Your Time

Don’t always be in a rush. Take your time to relax, to take regular breaks from your work, or to just chill-out and gain some needed clarification. It’s when you’re working at a breakneck speed that you are prone to get caught-up in overwhelm. However, if you balance your time and take baby steps along the way, you will always feel in control, and with control will come a sense of satisfaction that you can get things done without the need to rush. Patience is the key.

Avoid Perfection

Perfection will force you to spend much more time than is required to get things done. This means that you won’t be able to get a lot done, which means that things will pile up and you will eventually end up in a state of overwhelm.

You must understand that nothing will ever be perfect. It’s just not possible. Perfection is not possible. There will always be a flaw.

Focus on the Right Things

First of all, focus on what you want and on what you can control. Often you will become overwhelmed when you are focusing on the things that you don’t want and the things you have absolutely no control over. It’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed if you’re focusing on uncontrollable circumstances.

Focus on setting priorities for your activities. Without priorities, you have very little sense of direction. You’ll get caught up focusing on the urgent things instead of on the most important things. And by ignoring the important things, they will eventually become urgent and important in the future, and that is when overwhelm will set-in.