There’s probably a lot of people who feel like me, right now. That is, feeling overwhelmed and stressed with my business. It’s not every day I feel this way of course, but when it hits, it hits hard. So I want to share with you the four things that I do when I’m feeling really overwhelmed and how I sort of get myself out of that overwhelmed state.
Shift my environment
Sometimes when you get overwhelmed and you’re just stuck in the same space, you just can’t shift yourself out of it. So for me, it always helps to just walk outside. If you can’t actually get outside, then at least move to a different room, away from your work, and and just shift the environment you’re in. Sometimes it just takes going outside, getting some fresh air, going for a little bit of a light walk, getting that light exercise to calm me down and bring me back to reality.
Angry journaling exercise
If after I come back from my walk and I’m still feeling super overwhelmed, I do what I like to call the angry journaling exercise. Basically I open up my journal to a blank page and I write down every single thing that I’m feeling frustrated about. All the crap running through your brain – put it on paper. If you went through my angry journal, you would think I’m a pretty negative person, but that’s just the way I kind of pull all the sort of negativity and anger and frustration and overwhelm out of my body.
Rip all the pages
Once I have got everything out on paper, I have spent as much time as I needed anger vomiting everything I need to on paper, I take the journal and I rip all those pages out. And then I light this mother up. I put it in the fire because there’s something that is very therapeutic about seeing all my frustration that I’ve just regurgitated onto paper and then burning it.
Adult coloring book
If I still feel overwhelmed after all this, then I pull out my adult coloring book and I color. It’s super therapeutic and very relaxing. And it helps me express the more creative side of me that I really haven’t found an outlet for other than the business.
Breathe
The final thing I do is I do breath work. So if all those things don’t work, then I do my breathing exercises that I learned from Wim Holf. I also find just having a regular practice of breath work also preventatively helps me with stress and overwhelm.
So that is what I do when I feel incredibly stressed and overwhelmed. Take what makes sense for you to take what feels aligned. In the end you have to find the strategy that works best for you.
