If you feel like you are drowning underneath your responsibilities, worries, and stress, you might be dealing with a bad case of overwhelm. This can seem like something everyone deals with, but it does affect your mental and physical health, which means you don’t have to just deal with it. There are ways to reduce your overwhelm, starting with mindfulness.

You might have heard of mindfulness before, as it has been a hot topic recently. Ryan Holliday has recently published a new book Stillness which emphasizes being steady of mind in the present moment.

The Stoics practiced prosoche, mindfulness that requires constant attention to onself and the actions. This vigilance is emphasized by Seneca

Moral Letters 16.1 you know also that a happy life is reached when our wisdom is brought to completion, but that life is at least endurable even when our wisdom is only begun. This idea, however, clear though it is, must be strengthened and implanted more deeply by daily reflection; it is more important for you to keep the resolutions you have already made than to go on and make noble ones. You must persevere, must develop new strength by continuous study, until that which is only a good inclination becomes a good settled purpose.

He writes further “Examine yourself; scrutinize and observe yourself in divers ways; but mark, before all else, whether it is in philosophy or merely in life itself.”

It can sound intimidating, but is nothing more than living and thinking in the present and helping your mindset to reflect that. There are many benefits of mindfulness, including helping to reduce stress and overwhelm.