Stop Juggling everything! Tips to help you avoid overwhelm
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? When you’re in situations like:
- You can’t focus
- You don’t have the time to do a huge project
- You’re sideswiped by a personal illness or injury of one of your loved ones
- There’s a death in your family
- You’re affected by the pandemic
There are immediate actions that you can take or do to prepare for this happening so that you can stay on top of things and not be overwhelmed.
Last year, my father passed away. When that happened, I wasn’t able to do my other tasks such as podcasting because I needed to take care of myself and frankly, I didn’t care about any business tasks. Even answering an email felt like a big task. The only thing I could do well and feel like myself was coaching.
In reflection, it's not just about taking care of yourself, it's knowing what to do when life gets overwhelming. How can you prepare for this? I want you to know what to do.
How you could feel
Life changes in many ways. Problems arise. Problems like:
- A spouse is diagnosed with some sort of illness
- Your son gets into an accident
- Coronavirus happened
- The company you’re working for goes under
After life changes in these ways, you can have many feelings. You feel overwhelmed, stressed, annoyed, frustrated, angry, or lost. For me, it was lower patience! I just didn’t have patience with my children. I had to do some mommy timeouts!
What is this causing us? Imagine you're juggling all 10 areas of life. You're juggling the kids, your marriage, your house, your health, etc. When one of those balls becomes heavier or more demanding, you tend to drop the other balls!
The issue with dropping the balls is that some of them are made of glass. When you drop them, they will break! When you drop them, you are going to have trouble. You're going to have potentially long-lasting negative effects from it.
For instance, when you end up dropping a ball, you’re breaking relationships, losing some clients in your business, not responding to emails, not being prepared for a presentation, not landing a client because you’re showing up in a different way, etc.
You don't want that to happen. I know I didn’t.
Why this could happen + the negativities
So why do you struggle? You struggle because one area of life that's only supposed to be a certain size has now become bigger. When it's bigger, it takes more of your time. It takes more of your mental capacity.
This can happen at work, whether you're in a nine to five or a business. When you're working harder in your business or in your job, you have less time for your health, you're not sleeping as well, you're eating poorly, you don't see your friends, you're not eating properly, etc. All these negative things come in!
When you're not at your peak in your performance or in your health, it starts to affect confidence and it affects your ability to deal with challenges, it lowers your brain capacity, and how well you can complete your tasks.
You struggle because there's limited time and limited mental capacity that you have. Plus, the emotional strain. You may have encountered a problem and you’re not solid emotionally. You’re not where you need to be. That affects you in many other areas.
What you can do to get going
Ideally, you have this prepared in advance, so you know what to do when s$&t hits the fan.
When life gets crazy and you feel like it’s too much, you just need to stop and think:
- What are the most important things in life right now?
- What are my priorities?
- What are the things that HAVE to get done?
- What things need to get done?
- And what do I need to be able to function?
At that moment, you might think that you need to sleep, take care of your kids, or finish a project. For you, those are the three things that need to happen. There, you’ve just decided on the most important balls. Those are the glass balls that you can’t drop.
The cool thing is, you can let all the other things sit on the back burner. You don't have to worry about them. You can take them off your plate. You don't even have to think about them.
When my dad got sick, I set aside some tasks:
- My marketing calendar didn’t really matter.
- My assistant put out existing videos instead of doing Facebook Lives.
- I postponed meetings and interviews.
- I put aside mastermind calls and training classes that I was a participant in.
I focused on my family, my well-being, and my clients. I checked in with my husband and friends a little bit, but everything else I let go.
This is called MAINTENANCE MODE!
Go into maintenance mode. What do you need to just maintain your life?
This is not meant to be long-term, but if you're experiencing this right now, what areas of life are super important at the moment that you need to prioritize?
What I see in my 1:1 clients is they get into chaos. They are trying to juggle every single ball as if they're all glass balls, but they're not. YOU CAN DROP SOME! Your house can be dirty. You don't have to make every meal from scratch. Your landscaping can slide.
Maybe you do prioritize your marriage, your health, your kids, or whatever it may be for you. You need to figure out what maintenance mode is for you. Usually, that's three or four areas of life. (Note: different maintenance mode times will need different areas of life.)
Here are the different areas of life to help you choose:
- Friends
- Family
- Significant other/Romance
- Fun and recreation
- Finances
- Personal development/Education
- Spiritual Life
- Career
- Health
- Physical Environment
Decide which three or four areas that you need your focus. I encourage you to devise a plan for when things get crazy and when you can't juggle everything anymore.
If you already know what you're going to do when s$&t hits the fan, it's so much easier. You can just go on autopilot. You have a plan you can rely on.
Remember: You can say “no” to say “yes.” It means you:
- Say “no” to things that aren't as important.
- Say “no” to things that just aren't in alignment with you.
- Say “no” to things so that you can say “yes” to the things that you love, to the things that matter, and to those glass balls you need to be able to say “yes” to.
Let me know what was most important for you in what I shared today.
If you'd like to make your maintenance mode plan and go through your Wheel of Life, or if you need to process a challenge on your life, then reach out to me. Email me at [email protected].
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