2022 March 29 Overwhelmed? One Step at a Time!

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website by, for, and about Baby Boomers. Thanks for joining me tonight for another quick tip. This time for dealing with overwhelm. We talked a little bit before about it, but this is a different way. Knowing the task list just seems endless. Just start at one end and make some progress. 

So, let’s get started on our own list. Remember, I’m not a medical professional, and I’ll just be talking about things that I personally find useful and helpful in my life. If you find yourself truly overwhelmed, hopeless, or depressed, please seek medical help, or just dial 911. Also, starting July 16th of 2022, and available now in some areas, dialing 988 will connect you with immediate assistance. Good to know for yourself or a friend, and the National Suicide Hotline is (800) 273-8255. 

It seems like all the many ways we have in life to stay in touch, and to find out about things and new events, it seems pretty easy to get ourselves into this state of overwhelm with so many things to do, things that need to be completed, just all sorts of ways to kind of drive ourselves batty with just too much to do and, then feeling all upset because we have so many things to do.

For example, if you are in the US, it’s getting close to Tax Day. It’s now a little over 2 weeks away.  If you have non-trivial taxes still to do, or maybe any taxes at all, just the thought of forms and numbers, it's enough to make you run and go hide in your Netflix series! But how about doing this instead? If you have a bunch of tasks that you have to do, don’t start with your biggest task. Just start with the very next thing that you think of. Maybe it’s a little tiny real easy task, and just do it. Just start it. Do it. Finish it. Clean the kitchen table. You know, maybe write your Aunt Mary, whatever you’ve been putting off. Oil that squeaking door, whatever it is, just do it. And when you’re done, remember to be pleased with your accomplishment, and don’t forget to reward yourself. Maybe an extra piece of candy, a walk around the lake outside, whatever it is that you find is a rewarding experience. Think about that for a second. You started something. Now, it’s finished. and you say, Wow, I actually got something done. Pretty nice, huh? So, tonight or tomorrow or on the weekend, do it again. Pretty nice again, right? 

So, it’s very important. Don’t forget to reward yourself every time. It can be a little teeny reward, but it’s really important that you do something special because what we’re doing is we’re training our brains to take pleasure in completing something that initially just seemed like a negative experience. That’s why the self reward is so important, because now you get this double dose of dopamine endorphins. First, from getting something negative off your mind, just a load off your mind. Then it’s reinforced by associating that action, that good action, with a real and tangible reward. 

Before you know it, you’ll be thinking of ways to actually do something so you can get the reward. And that’s okay, because something else is happening, too. This is really important. You’re forming a habit of action. An action to more action, and many actions lead to success. But best of all, success leads to being calm and being competent. How cool is that? You started off being overwhelmed, to being calm and confident in ourselves just by doing one little thing after another. I was explaining to one of my friends saying, If you want something done, ask a busy person. I was explaining that if someone is not busy, it may be because they just never really do much of anything. If you ask them to do something, they may say yes, but it’ll probably just go in this pile of things that have never gotten done. However, a busy person will always make time to get one more thing done. 

So, by just training your brain to find pleasure in removing some of those pesky tasks out of the to-do list, all of a sudden, you’re acting like a busy person. You’ll be one of those people that has this magical power who can always add and find time to do one more thing to your task list. That's the real sleeper benefit in being busy. Now, you have time to do all the things that really fulfill your life and make life happy. Because it won’t just be the thing you wanted to do. It won’t just be added to this overwhelming backlog of tasks. It’s just one more little item that you know you can do and be pleased with yourself for getting it done. Hopefully you’re helping other people at the same time. So you get these multiple benefits, which makes you just want to do more things. So if you make a little progress all the time, suddenly you’ll have the time and the energy to do everything and anything that really excites and makes life a lot of fun. 

Whether it’s a trip with friends, or starting a new hobby, or teaching others how to find life more fulfilling, like I try todo, with the backlog gone, every new action becomes easy and quick. More importantly, it’s kind of self-energizing because it’s leading you to fulfill your own goals, your true passion, your life, meaning, and that’s something that always is easy to do. 

Think about it. Think if you want to get up, walk across the kitchen and you know, clean the counter, get up, walk across the kitchen, and have some of your favorite dessert. Which one are you more likely to do? One of those is self-energizing because it brings you pleasure. If you learn to get all these little tasks out of the way, now you have time to do the things you really like. It becomes one of those self-energizing tasks. It’s something you want to do because you know it’s going to make your life more fun. 

So we’ve talked before about how to set goals and how to set priorities, to prioritize all the list of things that you want to do and accomplish, and how to reach those goals. But in between the spaces, in between the big goals, there’s all of life’s little chores. We talked about drilling down on your goals and getting smaller and smaller goals. There’s a to-do list to do. Well, this is how to make the to-do list go away. This technique of just doing something and then remembering to reward yourself for your successes, sweeps all those little chores away and leaves you the time and the energy and the motivation to actually go and do all those things that really make life satisfying. 

So, that’s the quick tip for the week. I hope you try it. Just start writing down all the little things you got done this week, or today, or this month, and you’ll be amazed at how many things you get done with seemingly no effort, because if you just do it and get it out of the way, it just becomes a little tiny effort. It’s nothing whatsoever, but when you look at all that list, you look at everything you got done today, and everything you got done this week, you say, Wow! Before, I would’ve at the end of the week been looking at this whole big list still to do, and now I can go out on Saturday night with friends and not feel guilty about all the things I didn’t do because I already got them done! 

Two reminders:  7em.link/Congress << That link takes you to a page where you can get your contact information for your representatives. It’s directly from the congressional office. So, I really have nothing to do with it, and I’m just pointing that to the Congressional Office of the United States. If there’s something you want to support, I’m very impassioned about the war in Ukraine right now, but, if you have anything, any goal that you want to really support, I would encourage you to take down that information, give ’em a write, talk to your representative, talk to your senator, and and tell them that this is important to you and how you would like them to vote for you, please. 

Now, it may seem like an inconsequential step, but it does help steer policy, and it lets them know that if they vote that way, you’re going to be one of the people that’s supporting them. You’ve got their back when someone else says, I don’t know why they voted that way. You can say, Well, I do!  because you’re familiar with the issue, and you can explain it to other people because acting even in a small way, but particularly acting in a manner consistent with your core beliefs. You’ll find that you feel less threatened by things and more confident in your actions and in life, and just more involved, and that makes you more excited about things overall. 

Then of course, this one’s really important. UKR7.com. It goes on to a page that we have on our website, 7EveryMinute.com, but it’s only a page with links to where you can donate and support the Ukraine people. It’s super important to me. It's not a little thing. It has basically world-changing ramifications. Don’t forget that the war is still going on there. 

They’re just pounding the heck out of Ukraine for no reason. They’re targeting what are clearly humanitarian targets, hospitals, schools; it’s completely unjustifiable. There’s links for all sorts of things. Some of them are humanitarian only. Whether it’s supporting the pets or getting food in, helping get people out who need to get out, getting medicines in or out and getting people out to get medicine. 

Some are for passively protecting the Ukraine defenders with things like body armor and helmets and things like that. There’s links of all types there. So, remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. So, I encourage you to please check out ukr7.com. If anybody asks, I wish I knew where I could donate. Just tell them to go to UKR7.com, and that will have links to a lot of places where you can donate. Links supported by CNN. Links supported by GoFundMe. There are a lot of links there. So check them out. 

This isn’t a promo for my website or my business. It’s just to get that information out there, because we have to keep everyone involved in this needless Russian-led conflict. Please keep everyone in the Ukraine in your prayers and in your thoughts, because it really does have worldwide implications. 

So, as always, be true to yourself, and live your life aligned with your true goals and your feelings. Now, you have one more way to make progress on your way towards your big goals by just banishing all those little goals right from your life forever. Just take them one step at a time. One teeny little step, and if you keep doing that, pretty soon all those things will be gone and you can really focus on the things that excite you and make life fun. 

So, that’s it for the week. Thanks for stopping by. If you found something interesting, please pass it along. If you didn’t, please drop me a line, and tell me what you’d like to hear about. Have a great week. Thanks for visiting. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that’s the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everybody!