As a life and mindset coach, one of the common challenges I see my clients face is navigating overwhelm – ie having a lot going on in their lives and not enough brain space and/or time to manage it all.
Overwhelm is a big topic and too nuanced to go into too much detail in this blog post but generally speaking, think of it as a mis-match of the demands you’re facing (work, kids sports, relationships, your own sport/fitness, your own wellbeing to name some examples) and the resources you have available to meet those demands (time, money, mental energy).
The interwebs are rife with loads of tips and hacks on navigating overwhelm so I’m going to share just the one (underrated) tip in this post since the point is to help you manage overwhelm, not add to it…
I call it underrated because it sounds so common sense but when we’re in a can’t see the forrest type of situation, it might not be that obvious:
Choose to deliberately deprioritise tasks.
Give yourself a free pass for the day, week or whatever timeframe you need to NOT do the thing(s) – use your critical thinking skills here because there will be things you cannot deprioritise (the point is to deprioritise the optional stuff).
You will catch yourself thinking about doing it and your brain might try to bully you into doing it BUT that’s when you can remind yourself that you’ve already made the decision to NOT do it.
This can look like making a list of all the tasks you’re not going to do or deciding to not work out for 2 weeks when you’re in the middle of exam season (a personal example from earlier this year…).
Making a decision like this ahead of time can be super helpful when you’re working on being kinder to yourself (instead of being your worst critic – or a dick to yourself as I like to say 😉).
So – what can you deliberately deprioritise today?
PS: if you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy working with me too – head to the coaching page to find out more
PPS: for more info on overwhelm, this We Can Do Hard Things podcast episode is a great listen too!
mindset coach nz
