From Overwhelm to In Control in 2 Minutes

Would you like to know how to go from overwhelm to in control in just 2 minutes?

Did you know that we are all constantly running films in our mind? We project them in our mind in the same way a cinema projects them onto a screen. Once we realise this, we can remarkably easily learn how to change the size of the screen, fade out the colours of the film and even change it for one that is more useful. I am going to show you a simple and highly effective way of doing so.

Step 1As soon as you realize that you are stressed, worked up or overwhelmed the first step is to feel your feet on the ground (and bottom on the chair if you are sitting down) and make your breath very long and slow. See if your in-breath can last 15 seconds and then your out-breath another 15 seconds.

Step 2
Become aware of where you experience the pressure of your overwhelm, for instance, some people feel it like a huge weight looming over them and others see it right in their face like a huge mountain. Invariably it is accompanied by a doom-filled or dramatic sound track. This is the film that you are running, the one we are going to change.
Let me give you an example, the other day one of my coaching clients asked me to help her calm down as she had reached what she experienced as a 90% overwhelm about an exam she had that afternoon. She was in a terrible state of nerves and panic about it. When she described how she experienced the overwhelm she said it was huge, right up close and completely surrounding her.

Step 3
Begin to turn the sound, colour and intensity down on your overwhelm. Sometimes it is a case ofchanging its colour. For instance if it is like a huge black cloud looming over you, you may want to change the colour to white and then begin to fade it out. Change the size of image, as you can make the screen gradually smaller and smaller and begin to move it away from you until it is located just in the right place. You could imagine the cloud shrinking in size and floating off into the distance, depending on the circumstances you may even enjoy it getting so small and so far away that it simply disappears.
I have known people who have played with it like an old television, making the image smaller than a postage stamp then into a dot that vanishes as they switch the TV off.
You may like to play with adding a new light hearted or even comic sound-track.
This is how my client changed her exam “film”, she told me that the right size for the exam was a sheet of A4 paper that should be located on her desk and nowhere else. So she swiftly, in her mind, reduced it to this size and placed in on her desk (all the while keeping her breath slow and long). As she did, I saw her usual smile once again cross her face as if the sun had just come out again from behind a cloud and perhaps the most important; she passed the exam!

It is as simple and quick as that and with practice you will find how quickly you can do it, in the end it can be as fast as a few seconds. You will also notice more rapidly when you are feeling stressed and act on it long before you reach overwhelm. Trust in yourself, your imagination and your ability to play with your inner experiences. Being able to manage your emotions and inner state is a critical aspect of life mastery.

Once you return to a calmer state, it frees you from the useless drama of the overwhelm. You can instead take action on what you can change and accept or let go of going round in circles about anything else.