We all feel overwhelmed at times. Life hits us full force, stuff happens, we take on too much and can’t say no, everyone in the household is frantically busy and you don’t have the time to turn around and scream “Stop”! How do you get out of the feeling of overwhelm and take back control of your time and sanity?

Step 1. Take a deep breath. Really, do it you’ll feel better. Take another one. Now grab a pen and paper, along with a coffee or other beverage of your choice.

Step 2. List down everything that you need to do. It may be a long list, that’s ok. Now look at what’s most important and what is most urgent, not always the same thing! Is there anything on the list that you can ignore or delegate?

Step 3. Rewrite the list in priority order. Look at it. Do you have time to actually do everything on your list, or do you need to reshedule or outsource (even just to your partner!) some items?

Step 4. Start at the first item and work down. Use a big black texta or sharpie marker to cross items off the list as they are completed. Remember to congratulate yourself on another item done and dusted, and feel proud of your achievements. Do this for EVERY item on the list! Why? Because when you’re feeling overwhelmed and under pressure you desperately need that sense of achievement and completion, even for the little things. That’s what keeps you going and motivated for the next item.

Step 5. If you think of things to add to the list on the way, write them in and then forget them. Deal with them when their turn comes up.

Step 6. If this process is on-going over several days, review your list daily. Remind yourself of what you’ve already done and the process you’ve made.

Overwhelm is an emotion, it prevents you from being effective and slows you down. Keep the overwhelm beast under control and you’ll be much more productive and relaxed.

How many times has someone said to you “You should… buy a new car, dye your hair, go to this restaurant, get a better job, buy a bigger house, have more kids… ad infinitum”.

The phrase “You Should…” is one I really really dislike, and one that comes up in regularly in coaching. A client will say “I should do xyz” and when asked “Why should you, what will xyz do for you?” it often comes out that they’re not really clear on the benefit of that thing that they ’should’ do. It’s peer pressure for adults!

When the word should is used, it is almost always is a reflection of someone else’s perception and judgement of what they would do. Like keeping up with the Joneses, a lot things that we do are considered to be normal because of our culture and we follow the trend without considering what is best for us, how that action fits withour values and goals (Habit 2 - Begin with the end in mind), and our core reason for doing that.

A case in point, the other day I was talking to a friend who I work with and she mentioned that she had bought a new laptop. Knowing that she and her partner had at least two other computers less than two years old I was really curious to know why she thought she needed another laptop. Her answer was “Well, you got one recently and then (another co-worker) got hers last week so I thought I should get one too.” Note the ’should’? She’s now committed to three years of paying leasing on that laptop, and she admitted the leasing was costing her nearly $1500 over and above the cash price of the computer because she hadn’t wanted to wait to save for it.

This person didn’t consider the facts: that I had purchased a new laptop to replace my seven year old computer, and in my case it was paid for in cash and is a tax deductible business expense. In the case of the co-worker, hers was also paid for in cash, and is a tax deductible expense! My friend admitted that she hadn’t really needed another computer, she just wanted one when she saw others buying new.

Maybe your ’shoulds’ aren’t as financially detrimental as my friends, maybe your shoulds are as simple as you ’should’ help out at home more, you ’should’ dye your hair (I was told that last week!) or something equally mundane and normal. Before you act on that ’should’, take time to think about it, specifically why should you? What benefit will you get from that action? What will it cost you in time, effort, money or other? Is this action in line with your long term goals and values?

Omendr asked me on a previous post how I went about following the 7 Habits. Here’s what I’ve been doing:

I planned to begin on the 1st of July, so in June I read the first part of the book which gives the whole background and foundation for the 7 Habits. I also read the chapter on ‘Habit 1 - Be Proactive’ twice. During the month I read and reviewed the chapter again, to remind me of the principles of the habit and to see what I was achieving and what I was missing.

On the 1st of July I consciously began looking for areas in my life where I was not being proactive at present and could start to implement the tools from the book. I actually started doing this from when I first read the book, however from the beginning of July I consciously and deliberately began reviewing areas of my life and judging it if you will, against how I wanted to act in accordance with the habit of being proactive.

I didn’t always act how I would have really liked to. Often, I missed the mark and would look back and feel annoyed at myself because there had been an opportunity to be proactive and I had acted re-actively and from past experience. On those occasions I would remind myself that this was a process, I was replacing old habits with new ones and being aware of my behaviour was the first part of that process.

As the month went on I found myself improving and acting more proactively. I was also noticing with others and particularly my clients, instances where they could act proactively as well, and would coach them to take a more active role.

Being in the second month and the second habit, I don’t get it right all the time. As I said earlier, it’s a process. I’m being more proactive than I was previously, which is what I wanted, and as time goes on I will improve more and more.

I’m internalising ‘Habit 2 - Begin with the end in mind’ in the same manner. Being aware of my behaviour, consciously looking for situations and areas of my life where I can bring this habit into action. And that’s a topic for another post in the next day or so!

Habit 2 “Begin With the End in Mind” is my focus for August. This chapter walks the reader through creating and using a personal mission statement. I’ve done this before, several years ago, however I have never reviewed that statement and honestly can’t even remember what I wrote on it. So this month, I’ll be doing a lot of soul-searching and introspection and crafting a new personal mission statement. I’ll be sharing the process on the blog later this month if you’d like to check it out!

Funnily enough, it was while reading through this chapter that I began thinking about how I had never revisited my first mission statement for Excellence Coaching, and through that process came the change in focus to Living an Excellent Life!

Pretty much everyone these days has heard about affirmations. If you’re one who hasn’t yet, hang on because you’re about to! If you have heard of and/or used affirmations in the past, keep reading because you’re going to understand why they often don’t work, and how you can make affirmations work for you!

So what are affirmations exactly? At their most basic, affirmations are simply a statement that is repeated verbally and mentally to yourself about something you want to do, be or have. They can be in relation to money, habits, behaviour, possessions, almost anything at all!

The reason that the majority of affirmations fail, is because they are simply a statement about something that doesn’t exist yet, that you don’t have yet, repeated over and over again. You are only using one of your senses for the affirmation, and studies have proven that the more sense you involve in the process, the greater your chances of success!

Say you want to develop patience in dealing with a work colleague who is frustrating you with their behaviour. In the past, you have reacted defensively and heatedly when this colleague has spoken to you in a sarcastic manner. You want to be able to deal calmly with this person, and tell him that you don’t like being spoken to in that manner.

So you affirm over and over and over to yourself “I am calm, patient and firm. I am calm, patient and firm.” Then a week later the work colleague comes over and makes a sarcastic comment to you and you bite back angrily. What went wrong?

There are five main factors that, if you include them in your affirmations, are guaranteed to dramatically increase your success! Those five factors are:

Personal, the affirmation must relate to you

Positive, stating exactly what it is you want (not what you don’t want!)

Present tense, stated as now “I have” or “I am” or “I feel”

Emotional, how does it feel to already have the end result of the affirmation? and

Visual, a clear and detailed picture in your mind of the desired outcome.

If we take the above scenario again, a better and much more successful affirmation would be “It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that I (personal) respond (present tense) firmly and calmly (positive) when ‘person’ speaks inappropriately to me.”

Then you need to visualise the affirmation; the situation and your desired response to it. This is the most important part of making affirmations work for you! Almost all world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualisers. They experience it before they actually do it. This simple tool will help you like nothing else!

When you have written out your affirmation, spend a few minutes a couple of times a day to visualise it. Relax your body and mind, and see the situation unfold in your mind. Think of a previous incident or an imagined one where this person spoke sarcastically and inappropriately to you, however this time see, feel and hear yourself reacting calmly and firmly, stating what you want to say.

This works. Unlike verbal affirmations that are simply repeated over and over and over, including all five factors, especially the visualisation, will empower your affirmations and yourself!

What do you want to be, do or have? How will you word your affirmation today? What does it look and feel like for you? How will you feel when it works perfectly and you have it?

Habit 2 “Begin With the End in Mind” is my focus for August. This chapter walks the reader through creating and using a personal mission statement. I’ve done this before, several years ago, however I have never reviewed that statement and honestly can’t even remember what I wrote on it. So this month, I’ll be doing a lot of soul-searching and introspection and crafting a new personal mission statement. I’ll be sharing the process on the blog later this month if you’d like to check it out!

Funnily enough, it was while reading through this chapter that I began thinking about how I had never revisited my first mission statement for Excellence Coaching, and through that process came the change in focus to Living an Excellent Life!

While reading through chapter 2 of the 7 Habits (Begin With the End in Mind) I began thinking about how I had never revisited my first mission statement for Excellence Coaching (written about five years ago), and through looking at that and thinking about what we stand for, what is important to us and what we desire and want for our clients and subscribers, we’re now in the process of developing a new mission statement for Excellence Coaching.

Our new mission statement will be focussed on “Living an Excellent Life” and what that means. We’ve changed and clarified our focus because living an excellent life is what we’re all about, working with and helping people lead the most excellent life possible, the most excellent life that you can dream of!

What I’d love to know from you is, what does “Living An Excellent Life” mean to you? What would your excellent life be like? What would you be, do and have? Leave a comment and tell me what YOUR excellent life looks like!

Have you ever tried to learn something new, and gone through that really irritating phase when everything you did seemed wrong, you had two left feet instead of hands, nothing made sense and all you wanted to do was throw in the towel and quit? I know I certainly have, and I’m willing to bet that you’ve experienced it too! But the really good thing is that this feeling is normal. Yes, normal! Everyone feels it at some point, and it’s actually just one of the stages of learning something new.

Whenever we attempt to learn something new, we move through four different stages:

Unconscious Incompetence

Conscious Incompetence

Conscious Competence

Unconscious Competence

The first stage is Unconscious Incompetence, where you don’t know that you don’t know! Ah, blissful ignorance! Unfortunately, this stage very quickly gives way to…

Conscious Incompetence, where we know that we don’t know, we know we’re doing it wrong, however we don’t yet have the skills, knowledge or dexterity required for the task. This tends to be the stage where we want to quit, we get annoyed and irritated and our self talk is often negative.

Conscious Competence is where we know what and how, still, we have to think through each action as we go. Left foot moves here, right foot here, swing around, watch the door, keep balanced, etc. We know that we know how, we’re just not yet at stage four.

Unconscious Competence is where we can do something automatically, almost without thinking! Hooray! This is the stage where to an onlooker everything looks easy! If you think back to learning to drive, do you remember having to consciously think about putting the clutch in, change the gears, let the clutch out etc? How’s your driving now? My guess is that you don’t think about it much at all, you’ve moved into Unconscious Competence, where your actions and reactions are automatic!

So next time you’re learning something new, or helping someone else learn something, keep an eye out for which stage of learning they’re at. If you or they are frustrated, remind yourself (and them!) of the stages of learning and that it is just a stage, with practice you’ll move past it!

I posted about my personal challenge re the 7 Habits on my personal blog, and made the comment that “I’ve been finding it challenging, because I can no longer whinge about something…” and a very wise friend left the comment:

“I don’t think whining and complaining is easier… it only *feels* like its easier because that is the habit that you have been most exposed to. One day, you will probably look back and realise that being proactive is actually easier because you have built up your strength from within and people are attracted to that and will want to help you.”

Isn’t that just so totally true? We start to build strong good habits within us, however it is not an instantaneous easy process. Staying in our comfort zone, continuing to do what we have always done and NOT changing is easy, and I know a lot of people who choose to do that. However, for those people who choose to change, it can be a long and painful process. Killing off the old bad habits and replacing them with productive good habits takes time and energy.

What habits do you have that are worth the time, effort and energy to change? What one habit, if you changed it, would bring about the greatest, most beneficial change in your life?

One of the things that nearly all of my clients, and myself, have in common is that we seem to not have enough time to get everything done. The reasons vary for everyone, we all have different demands on our time, however the end result is the same, stress, frustration and feeling of never being able to get everything done.

During a recent session with my own Coach, I mentioned that I was thinking of taking on another task that would take up around ten to fifteeen hours a week, and I didn’t know how I would fit it in as I was already so busy and feeling ineffective in what I had to do now! During our session, she asked me what I wanted to get done, how much time I had available and what was a realistic time frame for adding something new to my life. While looking at what I am doing now, contract work up to 32 hours, running a business from home, Tafe college up to 12 hours, and just being a wife and mother, I realised that it’s not so much that I’m ineffective, it’s simply that my expectations of how much I could get done in the time available were unrealistic!

This was a really good exercise for me, and funnily enough one that I use with my own clients but had not thought to apply to myself! My Coach had me list what I wanted to get done, and see how it fitted into the time I actually had available to do it all. When I looked at the list of time available, and compared it to tasks I had to get done, I have enough time to do the minimum required, but no extra. Not without giving up an awful lot of sleep anyway, which would end up being counter productive!

The end result of this was that I decided to take on the new task (if required, it’s not a certainty yet) as the long-term benefit would outweigh the extra stress and effort over the next six months. And for now? I’m taking it easy on myself, focussing on high priority tasks and giving myself permission to pass on the lower priority tasks.

So if you’re feeling the same way, that there’s not enough hours in the day, you never seem to get everything done, your days are packed full but you still feel like you’re running on a treadmill, try taking a step back and looking at what you have to do, how long it takes and how long you realistically have available to do it all in. Are you, like me, trying to cram 36 hours into every day and feeling frustrated when it doesn’t work out?