Overwhelm -- the word itself sounds oppressive, doesn’t it? When I hear “overwhelm,” I feel a heaviness in my chest, some tension in my shoulders. 

There was a time when I lived in overwhelm. I actually prided myself on how well I could work under pressure. Don’t get me wrong, the ability to work under pressure is a great skill to have, but don’t kid yourself into thinking that your body is cool with you living under pressure all the time. Eventually, if you don’t slow down, your body will make you slow down, like mine did. You don’t want that to happen.

I work with outstanding people. They’re go-getters. But sometimes they go, go, go so much that they end up feeling paralyzed in overwhelm. Do you know the paralysis of overwhelm, when you have so much to do that you don’t even know where to start? Yeah, I thought you did. It can happen to the best of us.

In NLP, we talk about “chunking up” (looking at the abstract) and “chunking down” (looking at specifics). When you’re in overwhelm, you might have a to-do list, but you’re so caught up in everything that you can’t focus on any one thing. It’s all too abstract. You don’t know where to start, and that feeling of paralysis creeps in.

That’s when you need to chunk down. Get specific. Focus on one thing. Just one little thing that you can do right now. 

Don’t let yourself look at the entire list. Just the one thing that you can do right now.

I don’t want you to live in a general state of overwhelm. Your very health depends on you not allowing that to happen. And it’s all about focus. 

Say no to some things so that you can build focus into your day. Meditate or relax or walk the dog -- there are lots of ways you can slow down, recognize where you are, remember your goals, and appreciate how far you’ve come. Doing that just might be the most important thing you do today.  

Thanks for listening!

 

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• Episode 2 -- We learned about internal representations
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