How to move from overwhelmed to actionable

Photo by Hayley Murray on Unsplash

I woke up today knowing…

1) It was time to write a post.

2) I didn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to write about. 

And as any writer will tell you, starting at that blank page being short of ideas can be an overwhelming feeling. Luckily, I’ve been here before and knew what I needed to do. 

So I took a walk.

Now you’re probably asking what taking a walk has to do with overcoming overwhelm in your life. Allow me to explain…

Overwhelm starts to melt away when you realize you don’t need to go straight from A to Z or problem to solution. 

You just need to go from A to B by figuring out your next actionable step.

For example, trying to go from a blank page to a fully formed article – A to Z – wasn’t going to get me anywhere any time soon. But taking a walk – A to B – allowed me to clear my head. And clearing my head allowed me to see what bubbled up in the old idea maker. And that’s what led to the idea for this article that you’re now reading or listening to.

This same sense of overwhelm is commonplace in our financial lives as well. We get so wrapped up in feeling like we have to figure it out all at once that it often stops us in our tracks. It helps to remind ourselves that we don’t have to figure it all out, we just have to start where we’re at and figure out the next step. 

Reducing our sense of overwhelm starts and ends with returning our focus to the actionable. 

When we do, the way forward starts to reveal itself with a clarity we might not have expected.