Nothing sucks the joy out of your coaching business like that over-burdened feeling:
- An endless to do list
- The overflowing inbox, and
- Too many learning curves to climb
Most often overwhelm is just a bad habit wanting to be broken.
Whatever your reasons, some part of you is choosing to feel overwhelmed.
It’s a choice. But it’s not a conscious choice. Your brain and body have been trained to perceive challenges as emergencies.
But challenges are what give you a bigger comfort zone. You’re actually OK, but you don’t believe that you are OK.
You have an opportunity now to teach yourself how to be conscious and not choose overwhelm.
4 Reasons Coaches Get Stuck in Overwhelm
The are 4 main reasons overwhelm occurs that I’m tracking:
- Non-stop stimulation (LISTEN TO EPISODE 313)
- Chronic disorganization (LISTEN TO EPISODE 340)
- Scarcity consciousness
- Lack of inner resources or the ability to resource
There’s so much pain and sorrow in the energetic field right now.
There is so much fear and hope about what has and what could happen. That takes energy. It actually means you can’t do as much as before.
Sure, you can push through but there are consequences to that and it won’t help the sense of overwhelm. It makes it worse.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I do encourage you to keep moving forward on your business as you can during these times. Be gentle with yourself.
Coach, Turn Off the Firehouse of Information
There’s so much coming into our psychic space all the time — we’re rarely without connection to global media (much of it anxiety-ridden especially right now).
So first, to rehabilitate your brain and overwhelm habit, consider a media diet a few times each week. Thoughtfully control what you watch, read and listen to.
You need mental downtime to get ready to effectively learn and grow.
Think of it this way—your brain like a basin. Information coming in is like the flow coming from a faucet. If you leave the flow on full, your brain, that basin, is soon overflowing and then you’re in overwhelm, having to clean all that off.
If find yourself signing up on lists, attending lots of free courses, purchasing too many programs (LISTEN TO EPISODE 359) chances are you’re going to feel overwhelm really fast.
I know these things are tempting. But most likely it’s increasing not decreasing overwhelm.
How often are you actually implementing what’s taught in those emails, posts and programs?
Most coaches cannot possibly take action on the amount of how-to information that they have been accessing on a daily basis.
There’s this other habit that drives us to think it’s easier to go get more information than to implement what we’ve already got in front of us.
Taking in information is passive and seems risk-free. Taking action on information is like the drain of the basin letting some of that information out. It’s what makes the space for more useful information like allowing what you’re learning to be integrating
Leveraged information, leverage learning and action rocks!
Turn off your info jones.
- Develop the habit of mining your own wisdom, experience and knowledge first.
- Reach only for information you need right now to inspire or take the next immediate step. That’s it!
Taking action is also the key to beating those twin progress killers – disorganization and procrastination, which amps up overwhelm.
Get Your Coaching Business Organized
The key to a disorganized mind or process is so simple … focus on only one step at a time.
- Clear the decks.
- Block out your time.
- Do 1 thing.
- Do it well.
- Take a break.
- Then do another thing.
Procrastination is mostly a reluctance to make decisions and take risks.
Business is about agility not perfection.
There may be a place for delaying a decision in your personal life, but when you are faced with a decision in your coaching business, it’s usually best to make it quickly.
Is Scarcity Driving You, Coach?
Scarcity could be driving you.
Taoists say that wherever your attention goes, that’s where your life energy goes. Whatever you focus on expands.
Modern life trains us to focus on what is missing, what is not going right. Building a business redoubles that training, demanding that we fill the gaps and fix the problems in order to get results.
If you allow your mind to become fixated on what is wrong, then overwhelm has you in its grip.
- Maybe you don’t believe you are enough (not good enough, not up to it).
- Maybe you believe you don’t have enough knowledge.
My own favorite version of scarcity is “It will take so much time to do this.” I’ve learned to get over that knee jerk reaction to a challenge because if I set a power hour and focus on my task list one at a time, I blow through it so fast.
If you find yourself running this racket, the most important thing is to catch yourself in these thoughts, and consciously choose the beliefs you want to hold. No one is the master of their thoughts all the time, so be willing to repeat this process over and over. Often it helps to write it down:
- the old tape you’re running, and
- the powerful statement you are choosing in its place.
Then (again), move into action – one deliberate step at a time. When overwhelm starts brewing, take a five-minute break from whatever you’re doing, and move away from as many sources of stimulation as you can. Do nothing else but move and breathe. You’ll quickly come back to center, refreshed and resourced.