16 tips for when you’re feeling overwhelmed
By Ladies Get Paid Founder Claire Wasserman - Follow Claire for more expert career advice
You’re feeling overwhelmed. Your heart starts pounding, your face gets hot, and your armpits are sweaty. When I get overwhelmed, I usually feel it first in my body. But then my mind starts racing. All of the things I need to get done that I’ll never find the time for. And so instead of doing anything, I do nothing.?
My default when I’m feeling overwhelmed has often been to shut down (usually in the form of a nap or watching Bravo); however, I realized that in my attempt to avoid my to-do’s, I was still spending energy thinking about them, and so figured I’d just try to power through it. But trying to power through didn’t always work. So I took a deeper look into where, when, and why I was feeling overwhelmed, and what I could do, both proactively and in the moment, to find a way of handling feeling overwhelmed that would honor my need to rest but also keep me moving.?
Here’s 16 tips to help you when you’re feeling overwhelmed:
1. Explore if (and why!) you might be taking on too much
Track your time and energy for the next two weeks when, where, why, and how you start feeling overwhelmed. Note if you’re overworking or overcommitting and if so, is it because of something internal, like imposter syndrome or perfectionism? Or is it because you have a boss or colleagues whose expectations are unreasonable? This is an indicator of deeper emotional work to do plus boundaries you may need to enforce. Speaking of which…