Stop, Drop and Roll Out of Overwhelm

Do you feel anxious, stressed and overwhelmed? Are you exhausted at the end of the day?

Grace started coaching with me a few years ago. She is a dentist with two thriving dental offices, a mom of two adorable children below age six, a devoted Sunday school teacher and a loving wife. As you can imagine, it’s no small feat for her to manage her business, family life and balance everything. Before coaching with me, she often felt stressed when her life throws her a curve ball.

One time when she called me, she was overwhelmed by the constant bickering of her staff. “It’s like I’m always trying to put out fires!” She said with a sigh, “Sometimes I feel like I’m on fire too!” I jokingly replied, “If you are on fire, perhaps you should stop, drop and roll.” And we both laughed.

That got me thinking. When my clients feel overwhelmed and stressed, their survival instinct is to try to “put out the fire” by frantically working harder and faster, hoping to cross off more items from their ever-growing to-do list. They bury themselves in the tasks, forego “non-essential” activity such as self-care and leisure time with friends and family… until they either successfully resolve the crisis, or run themselves down. If you have come down with a nasty flu or other illnesses after completing a major project, you know what I’m talking about.

So, what can you do instead? I suggest that you try my STOP, DROP and ROLL approach.

STOP
When you are stressed and overwhelmed, stop, and take stock of the situation. Assess your stress level and acknowledge your feelings of overwhelm. This is important, since suppressed emotions don’t go away. They only get buried in your body and will show up someday as a physical dis-ease.

Identify the source of your stress. Is it from external circumstances (such as job, relationship, finance, illness), or internal sources (such as unrealistic expectations or perfectionism)? Evaluate your situation carefully. What are the things you can control? What’s out of your control? What are you willing to let go and release in order to have peace?

Take a few minutes to breathe deeply and center yourself. This is a perfect time to take a break for Intensive Self-Care. Do something to pamper your body, mind and spirit.

DROP
Now that you are calm, take a look at your to-do list. Use The 3-D Principle (Do it, Delegate it, Dump it) to assess each and every task on your list. Dump whatever is not aligned with your long-term goals and core values. Delegate the ones that can be done by others, and only perform the tasks that are aligned with your goals, core values, or can only be done by you.

ROLL
Now that you have pared down your to-do list, let’s roll out an action plan to get things done! I suggest you break down each task on your to-do list to the smallest action step possible. This will give you a flowchart of action steps and a more accurate estimate of time needed to complete each task. Once you have all the action steps determined and know how much time you need, plug them into your calendar.

Occasionally, things don’t go as planned. In order to achieve your goal without stressing yourself out, you need to be willing to roll with the punches. Be flexible about how things get done. When you are totally open and detached from the outcome, sometimes things work out in a way that you would never have imagined

P.S. “Stop, Drop & Roll Out of Overwhelm” is key #1 in Intensive Care for the Nurturer’s Soul: 7 Keys to Nurture Yourself While Caring for Others by Hueina Su, The Nurturer’s Coach. This article is adapted from the book.

When you buy Intensive Care for the Nurturer’s Soul on April 22, 2010, you will receive dozens of BONUS gifts from Hueina and many leading experts! All details are here: http://bit.ly/NurturersSoul

P.P.S. WATCH VIDEO: Stop, Drop & Roll Out of Overwhelm with Hueina Su