Work Life Balance: Tips for Managing Overwhelm

If you feel that your work life balance is teetering on the edge; isn't it time to make changes before the problems overwhelm you ? Whether or not you own your own business, life is often overwhelmingly rich. I wish you joy in the dance as you move with order and disorder, discipline and insight, gracefully maintaining work life balance.

Here are my secrets and strategies for dealing with overwhelm.

1. Everything is perfect, and there is room for improvement and regaining work life balance. It takes time and energy to resist reality. The foundation managing overwhelm is to accept what is and take it from there.

2. Putter. Puttering orients you in time and space of your life while making mental room for you to notice what really wants to be top priority. Tip: Set a time limit on puttering if you are worried that you will lose the entire working day to it.

3. Take the attitude that you will, of course, do what is most important, even if you do not yet know what it is or how you will do it. Be curious about what you don't know how to do rather than worrying about it.

4. Clean house. When your insides are churning with anxiety/stress over multiple commitments, create order outside. Tip: This seems to work best if you clean with a light heart, though I have worked through some pretty gnarly problems while fiercely scrubbing the kitchen floor!

5. Use every means available. Make plans and act spontaneously. Make lists and do what needs to be done whether or not it is on the list. Managing overwhelm means mingling both direct and indirect ways of moving forward.

6. Be real. However linear or spontaneous, ground your choices in your real life and work experience. It doesn't make sense to simply ignore a deadline or to pretend that a complex piece of work can be done in 10 minutes.

7. Revise your commitments. Promises are not made to be broken, but some are made to be revised. Act promptly to revise commitments that you cannot or will not keep.

8. First things first. Take time for exercise, prayer, meditation, and simply "defragging" no matter how busy you are. Doing these things first each day enlivens you and gives you the resilience and resourcefulness to do your best.

9. Breathe. First, last, and always, let a rising bubble of anxiety/stress be your reminder to breathe.

Whether or not you own your own business, life is often overwhelmingly rich. I wish you joy in the dance as you move with order and disorder, discipline and insight, gracefully maintaining work life balance.

3 Tips To Overcome Overwhelm

One of the biggest issues I hear from entrepreneurs is how much they struggle with overwhelm. Unfortunately there's no easy answer to get you out of overwhelm completely, but if you start making a habit of the following 3 tips, chances are your life is going to get a lot easier. Read on to get started.

1. Get very clear on exactly what you personally should be doing. Look I get it. For years I had a very busy feast-or-famine freelance copywriting business. I know what it's like to go at your business alone and just how many tasks you're trying to squeeze into your days.

But the reality is there are only so many hours a day. And there are so many things you can do in one day. And if you're not clear on the top activities you should be doing, you can quickly find yourself spending hours on tasks that other people should really be doing (or maybe even things that don't need to get done at all).

Now once you're clear on what you should and shouldn't be doing, what do you do with the tasks you shouldn't be doing but still need to be done? Well that's where tip #2 comes in.

2. Surround yourself with a team that supports you because they do the tasks you shouldn't be doing. It's not just enough to build a team if that team isn't actually taking things off your plate. The entire point is to have a team that frees you up to focus on your highest-payoff activities.

Now what do you do when you can't afford a team? Well, what I always say is start small. Maybe 10 hours a month for bookkeeping or to start scheduling appointments. And then you make sure you take those 10 hours and do something that brings you income.

However, for this to work, you need to really make sure you do devote 10 hours to revenue-generating activities, which leads me to my third tip.

3. Set and maintain boundaries. This is probably the biggest tip of all. From my experience, entrepreneurs who are suffer the least from overwhelm are also the best at setting boundaries.

So what do I mean by setting and maintaining boundaries? Here's a partial list:

• If you've committed to 10 hours a month of revenue-generating activities to pay for your monthly bookkeeper, then you spend that time doing revenue-generating activities.

• You allow your team to do their work and support you -- YOU don't start doing their work because it's "easier" than delegating

• You work during those times you designated as working time, and you don't work during those times you have other plans. Now, that doesn't mean you can't get up early in the morning or stay up late to finish a project -- what this means is you discipline yourself to work when you're supposed to (and don't allow distractions to keep you from getting your work done) and don't work when you should be doing something else -- for instance skipping your workout class or cancelling girl's night out or not showing up for your child's soccer game.

This one is probably the hardest to do but if you can master it, it will do wonders to helping you get out of overwhelm.

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