Words for when you’re feeling overwhelmed

Author of Kind Words for Unkind Days and founder and CEO of The Blurt Foundation shares 5 words to say to yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Don’t worry about winning the day – go smaller

“Let’s be clear, we’re not even thinking about winning the day; it’s even more micro than that – it’s winning the minutes. Despite what’s going on, doesn’t winning a minute feel suddenly so much more manageable as we fling back our shoulders and take a deep breath? Sixty seconds versus you. Bets are on you – always, no matter what.”

Switch it all off

There are opinions, expectations, alerts, notifications, apps, perspectives and oh-so much more, which flood our senses and our headspace with everything that’s outside of us. In order to switch back into who we are, we need to learn to switch off all that external chatter. We can do this by creating moments of quietude throughout the day, by leaning into spells of silence, by turning off alerts and notifications, by actively looking for the stillness that naturally existed in a pre-smartphone era.

You’re a human ‘being’

“In our quest to get everything completed, we’ve stopped hearing how we feel and what we need, we’ve become a spluttering metaphorical energy tank that’s running on dredges. But we can press pause. We can. Really. Pressing pause gives us that breather, that breath, that space to hear and heed what’s going on for us before we’re forced to stop, because nobody can keep on keeping on without a maintenance break.”

You are the boss of you

“When our lives are filled with obligations, responsibilities and to-do lists, overwhelm can set in. That overwhelm can bring with it a feeling of loss of control. When everything feels out of control we can choose to take charge. To empower ourselves to say ‘stop!’ To get off the bandwagon. To redress, to remedy and to readjust to who we are and who we want to be. To renegotiate, renew and to reconnect to what it is that matters to us.”

There’s no time machine

“Time is a wily ol’ beast because it’ll pass no matter how we choose to spend it. What experience, connection, restorative thing have you put off and off and off and off, so much so that you’ve given up on it a bit? Assess what, why, how and when? What would we like to be doing instead? How can we renegotiate how we’re spending our time? And when are we going to start giving ourselves the very best of ourselves?”

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