Are you feeling defeated and overwhelmed? Life can feel like a treadmill sometimes. You’re running, exerting effort, but don’t feel you’re going anywhere.
And feeling as if you’re going nowhere, despite energy output, can be discouraging and defeating. Your motivation begins to wane and anxious or depressed feelings creep in. If you are experiencing this kind of repetitive cycle, if you find yourself tending to a to-do list that never ends or working day in/day out to no financial or emotional avail, here are five things you may want to do to change your experience.
1. Take a break when feeling defeated and overwhelmed
Take a break. In order to get perspective, it is imperative that you take a break from your routine, even if for twenty minutes. Get out of the office, the house, wherever you usually spend your time and pause.
Pausing creates space and time so you can sit and breathe without attending to anything—no phone, no to-do list, no interaction with others. Pausing and simply breathing disrupts the treadmill running just enough to change course. It can decrease the stress hormone, cortisol, it can lower your blood pressure and it can give you clarity of mind.
2. Ask yourself how you are
Ask yourself how you are. Now that you have broken the relentless running and replaced it with sitting and breathing, ask yourself how you are. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Are you sad? Are you worried?
Tune into yourself with non-judgmental compassion. In other words, don’t criticize how you should be feeling. Just listen to how you are feeling and be kind to yourself in response.
3. Tend to the feeling
Tend to the feeling. If you’re tired, close your eyes and let yourself rest. If you’re hungry, take the time to get some healthy food. If you’re sad, find out why and offer yourself words of encouragement. And if you’re worried, bring yourself to the present moment and take in what is right, what is good, what is going well.
4. Create a vision
Create a vision. It is imperative that you define what it is you desire in life. Is it more sleep, more time with your children, a less demanding job? Think about what is really important to you and imagine it.
Even better, write about it. In a paragraph or two, write about how you want your life to look. This exercise can clarify your values and create a realizable dream or goal that, perhaps, you thought was unattainable or had forgotten about. Be thoughtful, not reactionary, when you write so as to be true to yourself.
5. Start with one thing
Start with one thing. Read the vision you’ve written and take a step today toward changing your life for the better. If you want more time with your children, perhaps you turn off your phone at a designated time every day and spend an hour playing with them.
Set an alarm to make sure this happens. If you want more sleep, perhaps you start winding down earlier in the evening so as to move up bedtime by thirty minutes.
Starting small means more likelihood of success. If you want a different job, perhaps you begin by perusing job openings, talking to others in your desired field or revamping your resume.
Start with one thing and take action every day toward this goal. In this way, you won’t overwhelm yourself with a full life overhaul or set yourself up for failure because you’ve written too tall of an order.
Feeling defeated and overwhelmed: Conclusion
While you sometimes may feel that you are at the mercy of your circumstances, the above five steps can help you take charge of your life. Take the time to tune into yourself, listen to yourself and respond to yourself with compassion and agency.
In this way, not only do you build a more solid relationship with yourself, you free yourself from feeling overwhelmed and defeated. The key is to step off the treadmill, for just twenty minutes, so as to implement steps two through five.
If you don’t take the break, you won’t get off the merry-go-round of overwhelm and defeat. So, make the decision to do it today, perhaps even right now and take back the wheel of your life.
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Dr. Van Deusen received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles in 1992. She has cultivated deep knowledge of attachment theory and stress and has worked with various populations over her two and a half decade career. Her practice is in Seattle, Washington. Buy her book Stressed in the U.S.: 12 Tools to Tackle Anxiety, Loneliness, Tech-Addiction and More here