Have you ever felt overwhelmed?

LOLOLOL ROFL LMAO of course you have!!!

In the relentless world of online marketing and entrepreneurship, there are dozens of ways to feel overwhelmed every day. It takes discipline and practice and self-compassion NOT to feel overwhelmed.

If you can relate, you’re in good company. You’re normal. I’m normal. We’re normal.

First, let’s acknowledge overwhelm for what it is: fear masquerading as a socially/professionally acceptable world. We get feel overwhelmed AKA scared because of thoughts like this: I’m not doing enough. What if I’m behind? I’m doing something wrong. What if no one likes me? 

Second, these two actions help me handle my fear and keep moving forward:

Moving awareness to the heart

Yesterday I listened to this wonderful meditation for self-compassion. It reminded me to move my awareness from my head… to my heart.

When I get scared it’s usually because my thoughts are going a million miles a minute. They jump from one disaster scenario to another. They obsess over checking items off a list. It’s a tornado in there!

I can almost feel the anxious energy radiating from my skull. But if I close my eyes and get still, I can purposefully shift that energy to my heart. I immediately feel relief, like my energy heaves a big sigh.

When I center my energy and my thoughts from my heart, I realize that I’m doing enough. No one is out to get me. Nothing is as urgent as my mind thinks it is.

It’s a simple shift and a simple practice… but the impact is profound.

Breaking actions into small daily steps

I’m working with several clients in build phases of their business. They are building their Instagram following, their Pinterest audience, their podcast subscribers, their email list.

Our percentage increase goals are high. And though I’m an optimist, sometimes I get scared that we won’t reach those high goals! So I start brainstorming what to do, and then I get overwhelmed by everything we have to do and QUICKLY, and…. you get the picture.

So, after I shift my awareness from my frantic head to my centered heart, I break the actions into small steps:

• Follow 10 new people on Instagram and engage with them
• Check in on podcast community groups once a week
• Pin 10 new pins every day

I know. DUH, right? Yet how easy is it to get caught up in the whirlwind of everything you can and want to do, and feel that mind-numbing sense of urgency? It’s so easy to forget that, as Byron Katie says,

“There’s never a task too great or too small, because the only task to accomplish is the one in front of me. It might appear that there are a thousand things to do, but in fact there is never more than one.”

Just one. Follow one person. Pin one image. Comment on one thread.

This post is part of my 100 Blog Posts in 100 Days series. View the rest here.