3 Tips to Overcome Overwhelm
Hello my friend. Today let’s talk about overwhelm, which comes up in various ways from time to time. In my creative community overwhelm can happen when we're just getting started in my 10-week paid program, the Pattern Design Academy®. And you get worried that you won’t keep up.
You may be in that program or perhaps you just joined Stacie Bloomfield’s Leverage Your Art program. Overwhelm may be happening in your life for other reasons.
This kind of stress can arise in life for all sorts of reasons. Overwhelm may show up for you when you’re stressed by that feeling of too many spinning plates in the air, or you're taking care of more people than you have in the past, or your schedule is all of a sudden full again, or there's just too much going on.
And overwhelm may show up in the context of an online program that you purchased, and you don't want to fall behind. You're super excited about it, yet you can also become overwhelmed with concern wondering, Will I be able to keep up?
Here are three helpful tips for you, and I hope you will take them to heart.
Tip #1 – Listen to Yourself
Pay attention to what your body is telling you. Talk a walk, take a break, go sit in the garden. If you don't have a garden, visit a public garden. Proactively take some time for yourself to think about and listen to your body so you can figure out what would be most helpful to move forward.
I know first-hand that taking that break is so important. As an online educator, I teach how to use Adobe Illustrator in both my mini-course , From Doodles to Dollars®, and in my 10-week program, the Pattern Design Academy®. My students and I spend a lot of time in front of the computer. If you fall into that same category and are taking an online course, take a break, and get away from the computer.
Tip #2 – Schedule What Needs to Get Done
Tip number two is that anything that gets scheduled gets done. This is just like putting together a to-do list when you're going shopping to make sure you don't forget anything at the store. If you write it down and you don't forget the list at home, you will in fact pick up all those items at the store.
Plan out your day or your week in a similar manner. A journal or a planner would be perfect. Perhaps do this on a Sunday night and write down what you want to accomplish. I use a daily planner, and on Sunday night I plan out my week, pretty much at the daily level, so that I know what I have going on each day and when I am going to have some free time.
In this way I’ll know what’s the best day of the week to do more of my creative work, as opposed to my teaching work. I highly recommend Michael Hyatt's full focus planner (which is the one I use) since it is very well-organized and I can write down what I want to accomplish each day and keep track of everything.
Anything that you write down and can reference again later has a much higher chance of getting done. And who doesn’t love a check list?
Tip #3 – One Step at a Time
Tip number three is to remember when you're on any type of learning journey, take it one step at a time. Don't think about Step 100. If you're only on Step 2, just focus on Step 2 so that you feel really comfortable that you're ready to move onto Step 3. And then from Step 3, move onto Step 4, because Step 100 will be a whole lot easier when you're actually sitting at Step 99.
In summary, remember these steps:
· Listen to yourself, get up, get outside, get into some quiet and take deep breaths.
· Decide the best time to make a checklist, schedule your week and your breaks.
· Focus on one step at a time, small steps are easier and will get you to the goal before you know it!
I hope this week’s post has been helpful, and I'll see you next week!
P.S. Get a free 7-day trial of Adobe Illustrator . Select Illustrator 2021 CC for the version I recommend. It comes with the iPad version so you get both!
Bye for now. And I'll see you next week.
Remember,
It’s Never Too Late to Create®
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MEET ANNE
Hi…I’m Anne!
My creative inspiration comes from a lifetime of observation. I grew up in Paris on the Place St. Sulpice and walked to school through the Luxembourg gardens. And that was only the beginning… Learn more by watching the video on my About page.
