How do you stop the feeling of New Year’s and even general overwhelm when your inbox is full of messages that tout perfect goal setting ideals and resolutions you aren’t willing to write down because some are the same as last year and still not quite accomplished or you just don’t have that loving feeling for fully rewriting your life and perhaps actually exercising five times per week.
What if you’re a business and life coach and you’re suppose to be helping others not feel that way but you are currently feeling that way yourself? Oh Crap!
Instead of allowing feelings of overwhelm, “why bother” and “non publicly admitted failure” maybe it’s time for a personal intervention.
What’s a Personal Intervention?
I think of it like “What Not To Wear” but for your daily life so that you can give your self the necessary kick in the butt and get out of overwhelm and the often resulting apathy and paralysis. In fact I’m finding I could use one myself – and instead of pretending it doesn’t exist I’m finally ready and willing to expose myself (yikes) and jump in (double yikes).
Signs you need a personal intervention and are in overwhelm.
- Your head feels like there’s an extra large funnel with a huge amount of ideas, responsibilities, commitments, to do items, etc. that are all fighting to come out the tiny hole in the bottom and it’s giving you one big ass headache
- You complain
- You procrastinate
- You are talking about action but taking little action that is meaningful
- You find your self being short tempered with those you love the most
- Your to do list gets bigger instead of smaller
- Your life circumstances seem out of your control aka another curve ball just got thrown your way and in invite to go have a large glass of wine sounds more appealing than what is really needed at the moment
- Your not even sure where to really start and create some traction
Okay, I could go on and you get the point.
For me it looks like – I’m self employed- clients, projects and income all started shifting and colliding and needed time and attention, at the same time my mother came to visit and was diagnosed with breast cancer which meant she was temporarily moving in with us for five months. Her living arrangement moved our young son out of his room and into dad’s office – oh he works from home too.
Having been through breast cancer myself I knew the time and attention it would take which meant work would get pushed back so that we could keep focus on mom and our family. Anyone living with their elderly parent aka mom or dad knows it has it’s challenges and newly discovered memorable points.
Just when we thought we were closing that chapter and moving back into a semblance of life as we knew it we discovered at Christmas that mom needs a full knee replacement before being able to move back across the country and into her home. This will extend her stay another five months, until May of this new year. So that two week visit just became 10 months and our lovely quaint aka small bungalow suddenly feels majorly inadequate.
It was at this point I fell over the edge into the dark abyss of overwhelm and I can hear my young son telling me how many quarters I owe him for muttering “swear” words like “oh crap!” on a more regular basis.
It feels as if each of the bullet points above are in a bold font and end in exclamation points in my life.
It’s with this knowledge that I know I’m my own perfect client and need a personal intervention. Interestingly this post was suppose to be different and entirely self help for other, but I’m trusting my feeling that it’s perfect not to be writing only about new year resolutions and overwhelm and to go with it.
Personal Intervention Actions
Now I feel like I’m channeling myself on one of the hundreds of calls I’ve had with clients – first I simply listen, then I help them shift so that they can focus, break it down, take action. But before we would even go there it’s important to understand current actions and lack of actions.
Complaining is the #1 way you know you are not in conflict with and not in alignment with your core values.
Procrastination is a way you can tell you are overwhelmed, feel a lack of control and don’t have clarity
Lack of action often happens because you don’t have a vision of what you are really wanting, hence it hard to get started and into action. When you’re not moving it’s sometimes not even important to have it all mapped out, rather to take one step, almost any step in the desired direction.
If these three things are showing up you need
-
Focus (on what’s most important, vision)
-
Break It down (smart goal setting)
-
Take Action – celebrate it all
-
Rinse and Repeat
Following My Own Advice and Goal Setting Formula
Writing is a form of meditation for myself which helps me gain clarity. You probably have a tool you consciously use to help you get out of overwhelm and / or unstuck.
In following my own advice – I’m going to start with some more writing and follow my 4 steps above – whether it’s in public on this blog (even though I may be the only reader :0) or not I haven’t decided.
Step 1: Focus – I haven’t completed the Values Clarification Worksheet in the past year so I’m going to start there – and hope you take the opportunity to download this goal setting worksheet yourself.
Here’s my new year’s wish for us – we get out of overwhelm if we are there – and we stop it if it tries to creep in and get focused on what’s most important. I’d love to hear what you’ve tried.
