To overwhelm or not to overwhelm?
Probably your first reaction would be – not to overwhelm.
Who would want to be overwhelmed. Right?
Well, let’s try thinking about this again. Last week, I was working with a client who decided to change quite a few things in her life. As a result, she was transitioning from one career to another and also moving states. As you can imagine, that put her whole “world” upside down. To put things back into place, we did a lot of work together…. and then, in one of our follow ups, she told me she felt overwhelmed.
And as a productivity coach, I was taken by a surprise… I teach people how to put their life back in order without stress… So frankly, Overwhelm should literally be the LAST thing I want my clients to feel.
So we got curious and started to dig deeper into the feeling of “overwhelm”. After some inner work, we realized that for her, “overwhelmed” actually meant “challenged”. And in particular, the challenge was found in doing new things for the first time. In leaving her comfort zone. Well and coincidentally, this was where, in her case, the ACTUAL change she wanted was happening.
I am certainly not saying you should feel overwhelmed every day of the year and proactively drawn yourself in stress and never ending to-do lists. As someone who went through a very public burnout, I am the first to say NO to an overwhelm.
But let’s be careful, when we feel what we verbalize as “overwhelm”. Because it might as well be a part of us / our limiting beliefs pulling us back to our comfort zone. They say it’s always the darkest before dawn afterall…
So when you feel overwhelmed,I’d suggest that instead of immediately crumbling under negative thoughts, stopping whatever is that you are doing and hectically research “how to fight overwhelm” (and no, mostly it’s not 2 days full of bubble bath and gallons of ice cream) pause for a moment.
Explore your perception:
What do I really perceive in this very moment?
What do I feel, see, hear?
What else could this mean?
What does the overwhelm mean to me?
What story am I telling to myself about my situation?
How is this story supporting me?
And then, once you have analyzed yourself thoroughly, you will probably arrive at 2 conclusions:
Yes, you really DO feel overwhelmed and you need to take care of it.
OR
No, actually you are not overwhelmed in the strict sense. You may find out that you are just chartering an uncharted territory. And that what you perceive as an overwhelm is “just” your temporary defence mechanism against change.
If that is the case, you may want to consider, what if it’s only through this feeling I can actually begin to grow? And if the situation still stresses you out – fine. Consider what options you have to minimise the stress, while keep pushing to where you ultimately want to get.
As a result, just as my client did, you can realize that the perception of an “overwhelm” is actually something to be embraced not avoided.
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