Overwhelmed by opportunities

Ask Tonic’s Coach January/February 2020

Overwhelmed by opportunities

By Rod Macdonald, Certified Coach Practitioner and Tonic’s Resident Coach

Q: “I feel bad about writing this, but everything in my life is pretty great. My challenge is that I seem to have so many opportunities in front of me that I am overwhelmed and get stuck trying to figure out what to do. How do I keep moving?”
-Parminder

A: Parminder, firstly, you don’t need to feel bad about your life being “pretty great”; that is terrific news. In fact, the challenge you are describing is similar to what many people encounter when they feel like they have too many choices to make or too many challenges to overcome. That sense of overwhelm is your brain and heart doing their best to satisfy all your wants and needs but potentially not having enough resources to get through it all. Here are a few tips to both free up some energy and make the best choices possible:

1. Decide when you want to work through the decision-making process and allocate enough time and energy to get through it.

2. Use index cards or scraps of paper to write down all the opportunities that are currently overwhelming you.

3. Decide which 1-2 areas of your life are most important, right now. They may include physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, career, relationships, or other.

4. Once decided, organize your opportunities into those two areas as identified in the last step, and put aside any opportunities that don’t fall into the most critical areas of your life.

5. Now that you have narrowed down the opportunities put them in order of which, when accomplished, will make the rest easier to accomplish or not relevant anymore.

6. Then, with the opportunities prioritized, ask yourself what are the first few steps to achieve them, and start.

Having opportunities is great, so you may reflect on this when you wake up and before you go to bed, appreciating everything you have in front of you. Do the work, and you will likely find clarity and relief from that sense of overwhelm.

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Combining over 30 years in the field of self-development, Rod is the CEO of the Certified Coaches Federation, one of the largest coach education companies in the world, and a speaker, coach and author. For more information on the Certified Coaches Federation, visit www.certifiedcoachesfederation.com and for more information on Rod, visit www.indestructiblehuman.com.

Want to ask Tonic’s Coach a question? Send a brief email to rod@indestructiblehuman.com describing your challenge in 50 words or less, and one question will be selected per issue.

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