Feeling Overwhelmed? How to Do a (Non-New Age) Life Cleanse
As someone who spends most days in front of the internet, runs their own business (and now two websites) and is currently prepping to leave the UK to travel permanently, overwhelm is on my radar. Over the years, I've become pretty good at recognising when I'm slipping from "calmly active" into "OMFGlookateverythingIhavetodo" and taking action to remedy it, stat. Here are four things I do when it's time for some breathing space:
1. Take a media break
No news, no radio, no Facebook or Twitter. Definitely no gossip rags. Nada.
If there is one thing you take away from this post, let it be this. The media is a business, and they are in the business of unadulterated drama. And nothing causes overwhelm quite like drama. Very little news is good news, and very little is accurate anyway.
One of the most frequent objections I hear about media breaks is along the lines of "But what if something really important happens?" I haven't owned a TV for several years now, I never read the newspaper and I look at Google News maybe once per month. When important things happen, I still hear about them, I just don't have to deal with all the non-important but high-drama stuff in between.
2. Declutter your physical space
This tip comes directly from psychologist Roy Baumeister, author of the book Willpower. One of the key points in the book is that willpower is finite and that every decision we make in a day weakens it a little. He also says that our environment impacts our willpower and even seemingly harmless factors like a messy desk can have a detrimental effect on our work ethic.
3. Stop saying "have to"
One of the leading causes of overwhelm is saying "yes" when we really want to say "no" and over-committing. We can get a pretty good gauge of the things we've wrongly committed to by switching out the phrase "have to" and using the phrase "choose to" instead.
This is a subtle shift but by noticing how we feel when we say "I choose to clean my flat every Saturday morning" (Empowered! Like a responsible adult!) and "I choose to see that friend who is still whining about her break-up from two years ago and is never really interested in what's happening in my life" (Er, why?), we can start to identify which commitments it's time to say sayonara to — and take more self-ownership when it comes to doing the rest.
4. Keep a "have done" list
Last week, I decided to spend some time on Wednesday morning cleaning some of my paperwork. As part of going abroad, I am going paperless, which means I need to scan all my physical paperwork and turn it into digital versions. Time passed, I scanned, I managed to clog up the shredder and spent a couple of hours picking bits of paper out with a fork, and then it was 5pm. I felt totally bummed out about the fact that I hadn't got anything on my to-do list done that day, until my husband pointed out that I'd nearly scanned all my paperwork, I'd also found travel insurance for us, done a few other necessary and important things for travelling, and that these were all one-off projects, not things I'd need to do every week.
Most of us have a to-do list (and if you don't: how do you function? Tell me your secret). While to-do lists can be helpful, they are also never-ending. There's nothing quite as overwhelm-inducing as getting to the end of a busy day and seeing all the things that are still left to do. Sometimes, we also encounter projects where, up to a certain point, we don't have a lot to show for our hard work.
This is where we need a have-done list. It's really very simple: at the end of each day, sit down and spend a few minutes writing down everything you have done that day. I promise, whatever kind of day you've had, you will be surprised and pleasantly relieved.
Image: Thomas Brault via Unsplash