A Thought Exercise to Help You Break Free from Overwhelm
Censorious Cow definitely thinks we need to stop doing things we don't want to do.
During the years that I was suffering from severe burnout, I didn’t have to worry about cutting things out of my life that were causing me stress – my depression took care of that for me. I functioned, or rather, I didn’t function, at the bare minimum, doing only what I absolutely had to. It wasn’t much of a life, but one good thing came out of that time: I learned how to be ruthless about saying no. After I recovered, avoiding relapse became my priority. I knew I had to avoid overwhelm at all costs, but I also wanted to avoid those difficult feelings that arise when you say no and downsize your life (Am I missing out? Am I lazy? What will people think?). So I developed a formula to help me do just that. What makes this formula effective is that it doesn’t require you to give anything up you don’t want to, or say no to something you really want to do. Because here’s what I think: if the goal is to feel better, then this has to feel like it’s adding value to your life, not subtracting it, right?
This formula relies on a thought exercise, so in the beginning you don’t have to do anything except think things through. You only take action when you feel ready. There is no pushing or forcing involved, because that’s how stress comes into your life. It may seem counterintuitive to make changes in your life by doing nothing, but it’s an incredibly powerful method. The underlying mechanism is this: when your mind is changed, action naturally follows. You will do something if you feel enthusiastic about it. The key is getting your brain there.
Here’s the thought exercise:
Mentally identify something you hate doing but feel you have to. The more you think about this, the more things you’ll come up with. Anything that makes you tense up and gives you a sense of dread belongs on the list.
Ask yourself if doing this thing will get you what you want, expect, or hope for. This is the difficult part of the thought exercise, and you’ll need to dig deep to figure out your real reasons for doing it. Sometimes we do things we don’t want to because it’s a clear case of A leads to B and we want B. But these cases are actually rare. Usually when we do things we don’t want to it’s because we’re hoping for results that are unlikely to happen, because they are either:
too abstract (maybe if I do this it will make people like me),
illogical (if I stay in this job I hate maybe it will get better eventually), or
too complex or distant to work (if I post on Twitter every day maybe I’ll get more followers and maybe then when I finally publish my novel it will translate into more sales).
Now, these may all be good reasons to do something, if you are enjoying doing that thing. If you love posting on Twitter every day, have at it! But if it’s draining joy from your life for the sake of an unlikely outcome, that means it it has a very low ROI (return on investment). That’s all you need to know for now. Practice analyzing and evaluating things this way for awhile.
The next step is to apply this process to situations you feel powerless in. Say your job is making you miserable. When you ask yourself if doing your job gets you the results you hope for, you’re probably tempted to say that it does: it makes you money. But this answer doesn’t explain why you are doing that particular job. The answer to that question is probably something more like you hope it will get better somehow or you’ll somehow start to like it. Neither are likely. You may be thinking, well I can’t just up and quit. Agreed. Remember, this is only a thought exercise!
At this point, broaden your field of inquiry. Are there aspects of your job you do derive enjoyment from? Is it the actual tasks you have to do that make you miserable, or the context you have to do them in? Is the environment toxic? The point is to move yourself from “I hate my job but if I quit everything will fall apart,” to “I hate this part of my job,” to “But I like doing this,” to “How can I do more of that, or find a different job that has more of that?” Or something along those lines. The point here isn’t to make some grand decision about your job and your life, it’s to shift your perspective enough that your resourceful, creative brain starts working on possible solutions.
The final step of the thought experiment is both the easiest and hardest. Once you understand that something you don’t want to do won’t likely lead to the results you hope for anyway, the obvious solution is to cut that thing out. But actually doing that can feel impossible, especially if it’s a big thing, like a job. That’s why this is just a thought exercise! You don’t have to actually do it! Just think about doing it. What would your life look like if you cut this thing out? What does your life look like going forward if you continue to do it, knowing it’s not taking you where you want to go? What are your other options? Is there something you do want to do that could get you a positive result, even if it’s just that you like doing it and your life is happier overall when you do more things you like doing? Wait – that’s actually a major result! Because isn’t that what we’re talking about? Feeling better about our lives?
The truth is, feeling overwhelmed isn’t really about having too much to do. It’s caused by doing too much of what we don’t want to do. It’s a self-imposed condition. Sure, we’re at the mercy of many constraining factors in life, but we absolutely can develop the power to stop the overwhelm. We push ourselves to do so many things we don’t want to do, that harm us in the long term, because we hope they’ll result in certain outcomes that won’t happen. There have been studies that show that about 85% of the things we worry about won’t ever happen. It’s logical to assume the numbers are similar for things we wish will happen. If you can learn to identify where and how you are draining your emotional energy on low-ROI activities, you can refocus it on activities you actually enjoy that still lead you in the general direction you want to go. Which for most of us, when it comes down to it, is greater life satisfaction – which often really is just a matter of doing more of what we like, and less of what we don’t.