It is easy to feel overwhelmed these days. You have a lot on your plate. It seems that each day you put off some task or responsibility until tomorrow, until you have such a backlog of things to do that you feel like your brain is going to explode.
It is difficult under these circumstances to relax.
However, putting aside anxiety and stress is crucial for a lot of reasons. Simple daily stress and anxiety can build up, and lead to a medical diagnosis of overwhelm. When someone is clinically diagnosed as overwhelmed, they have reached the point where they cannot function normally, and they cannot get through the simplest of daily routines.
You Have to Add Stress Relief to Your Schedule
The key to relaxing in today’s hectic, stress-filled, “Go, Go, Go!” world is to prioritize time for stress-relief. You must make time in your daily and weekly schedule planning for “down time” and de-stressing. This could mean adding to 10 minute sessions of meditation to your daily routine.
To keep from being overwhelmed, you may choose quiet contemplation, aromatherapy, music therapy or reading a good book as your stress-relievers. Whatever calms your mind and takes you to your “happy place”, make sure you schedule enough of that activity. This means actually writing down these stress-relieving sessions in your scheduler, and not skipping a single one of them.
De-Clutter and Outsource
Clutter kills productivity, and unconsciously causes your brain to stress out. Your brain automatically tries to deal with every bit of sensory input you receive. This means that the things you see, touch, hear, smell and taste all have to be dealt with by your brain. When you have too much input coming in, especially when it is unnecessary, this clutter creates anxiety and stress.
Avoiding overwhelm is always preferred to having to deal with it once it develops.
This means delegating and outsourcing those tasks you do on a regular basis which you really shouldn’t be worrying with. If you are a micro-manager, you feel like you have to do everything. Stop believing that. The reason a lot of people feel stressed and overwhelmed is they attempt to do too much. Delegate the menial tasks in your life, and you can keep overwhelm at bay.
Another way to relax when you are feeling overwhelmed is to use visual cues. This could mean placing post-it notes in your home and office reminding you to calm down and enjoy a deep breathing session. It could be as simple as placing happy pictures of the ones you love where you can see them as you move throughout the day. These positive visual cues that make you feel good are simple stress-relievers that can keep you from giving in to feelings of overwhelm.
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Originally published at medium.com