If you ever feel overwhelmed, here is a six-step approach to regaining control quickly.
1) Catch yourself in the act of feeling out of control and admit it.
2) Take two or three long, slow inhalations letting your stomach expand and contract. Feel yourself breathe in relaxation and exhale any tension you feel.
3) Repeat with conviction, “I am in control. I can handle this,” three or four times. Think about the meaning of the words.
4) List everything you know or feel you must do now to regain control. List why you feel uneasy. It does not matter how long the list is.
5) Rank your list, what is the most important? Which is second, third, etc? Be careful when ranking your list. It is very important to regaining control.
6) Start with the top priority on your list and spend up to 30 minutes of concentrated effort on solving or improving that item. It might take you longer than 30 minutes. However, getting started and working in manageable blocks will reduce your anxiety. What you want to do is to make some progress. Once you’ve completed item one, or spent 30 minutes on it, take a five-minute break. Then either work more on item one or begin item two. Work like this until you have completed your list. Or, until you have no more time left that day. Do you feel more in control?
Often you will feel better and more in control simply by writing your list. Why? Most of us have a tendency to keep everything in our mind and not on a list. This causes anxiety when we remember multiple tasks we must do. We want to focus on a single task, but we don’t want to forget the others either. The list helps us remember what we have to do. The list allows us to concentrate on what is most important.
When you work from your list on your main priorities first, you practice what business people call management by objectives. When you leave everything floating anxiously in your mind and work on tasks randomly, you will likely practice what business people call crisis management. This happens when we feel everything is equally important. Everything must happen now. Nothing can wait..
Remember to take regular breaks, even if only five minutes every hour or two. If you begin to feel even more overwhelmed, take a longer break if possible. Get away from the situation to stop the fixation on the problem. Ideas, not hours, are often the real solution to a problem. Ask for help if you’ve made your list, have worked on it and still feel out of control.
Tim O’Brien writes continuing-education courses and presents seminars on stress management.
Comments are no longer available on this story