How to Combat Feeling Overwhelmed

St. Josep Blouse – Merlette | Levis Vintage Denim – Reformation Vintage | The 2814 in Marmalade – Margi Gaba

I’ve had this really great few months where I’ve felt motivated, driven, inspired to create and work on projects and basically get shit done. I am absolutely grateful that I have been feeling that way but at the same time I realized all of these things I was planning, networking events I was attending, shoots I was partaking in were beginning to give me exactly what I wanted…more work. Now I am in no way complaining but when it comes to planning days where you have back to back meetings in LA, driving in traffic, and having a household to maintain, it’s pretty easy to get extremely overwhelmed.

With each day I planned more things, the more I fell behind on my day to day life. Cleaning the house, unpacking bags, giving attention to my dog. I realized the other day that I was incredibly overwhelmed and had to finally look at myself and admit I needed to cancel some things and regroup. So with that being said here are a few tips I have for combating feeling overwhelmed.

Work from a new spot.

I’ve realized I am the most productive when I get out of my comfort zone. That being said, when I feel overwhelmed the last thing I want to do is go through my emails and plan / negotiate even more things/work. When I separated myself from my house (which is unorganized, dirty and messy) I found a lot more focus and inspiration. Sometimes when you are surrounded by things that are sitting on a list of to-dos you need to find a new space to work from so you can have a clear mind.

Make Lists

This sounds kind of silly but writing down everything I need to get done seems less daunting than me remembering random things at random times and feeling more overwhelmed. If I can separate these tasks into lists it means I can check them off, which is the best feeling of all.

Make larger more daunting tasks into smaller manageable ones

This one is HUGE for me. Especially when it comes to cleaning my house. When I literally have to clean EVERYTHING it’s extremely overwhelming and I just shut down and give up. But if I plan on cleaning the upstairs bathrooms one day, Swiffer the house the next, and organize my office the following day I feel a lot more at ease knowing these things WILL be taken care of but when I can manage it.

Do What Makes You Happy

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and do what makes you happy. Whether it’s taking an hour to read a book totally unplugged. Go out and see a movie. Go out to dinner and disconnect with friends or family. We all need a little recharge and it’s important to remember to take that on when things get crazy.

CRY (or however you express your overwhelming feelings)

Ok so my final piece of advice is to let your feelings out. For me, it’s just giving into feeling overwhelmed and having a good cry. Now for others it might be different, it might be screaming into your pillow or say writing in a journal. But for me, when I stop holding back from the tears and just let them flow I feel sooo much weight lifted and ready to get back into the swing of things. It also makes me realize how I need to check in with my emotions more often so I don’t get to such intense breaking points.

Hope this helped you guys in some way! I was feeling overwhelmed yesterday and I think it helps me to actually write down my own advice for myself here haha. A good constant reminder for when I am feeling this way.