Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed from juggling the many things in your life? Whether it's your demanding workload or your busy family commitments — or a combination of both — you are not alone. Many people today feel constantly overwhelmed and don't know what to do about it. Many people I speak to feel so overwhelmed that it creates a constant niggling underlying anxiety, which makes them feel out of control. Our fast-paced world has created more stress, more overwhelm and more feelings of anxiety than ever before and we need some tools and techniques to manage this. In this chapter we will explore this in a bit of detail and give you some applicable tools to help you find balance in our frantic world.

11 000 feet above South Australia

There I was, 11 000 feet in the air and strapped to my skydiving instructor for my first ever tandem skydive. It was something I had wanted to do for some time for the adrenaline rush and to embrace my fear (I sometimes have a fear of heights and I thought this could be a good way to face it). I must admit, I wasn't feeling great because I had had a big night out the evening before celebrating life and drinking far too many Jack Daniels. Not a great idea the night before a parachute jump!

As we ascended in the modest little Cessna plane, I felt a mix of fear, uncertainty, excitement and nausea, but I was ready for it. The door of the aircraft opened just like a car door and the blast of wind immediately woke up all of my senses. I was guided by the instructor to carefully step out of the plane and onto the wheel shaft to set myself up to jump. With nothing but a wheel shaft and thousands of feet underneath me, I was motioned to cross my arms over my chest and get ready to jump on the count of three. I must add that the guy who jumped before me hit his head on the wheel and was knocked out for part of his freefall, so that didn't help with my confidence.

1, 2 …

On ‘3’ I blacked out for a few seconds, overwhelmed and overstimulated by the sensory overload of everything going on around me. It was all too much for my body and mind to take in! I was thankful it was a tandem jump because I was totally out. I passed out for a few seconds and woke up in the middle of the freefall. The surge of adrenaline kickstarted me back into the present moment and it was exhilarating feeling the G-forces push my face into a permanent smile. I was loving it! Regaining my composure, I laughed and joyfully shouted with my instructor as we both free fell through the sky at the rapid pace of 200 feet per second — that's 190 kilometres per hour. ‘Yoo-hoo, what an amazing feeling!’

Then, suddenly, he pulled the chute and everything slowed down as we were jolted into a feeling of pure bliss. The stimuli around me turned to peace and calm. It was like somebody had changed the TV channel as time stood still for a moment and my senses absorbed the peace and quiet around me. I felt my heart rate slow down and observed the landscape beneath me slowly come closer as I dropped peacefully through the sky. In this moment, all I felt was pure, joyful bliss! Wow! There I was, floating like a bird, taking in the awe-inspiring scenery beneath me as we slowly circled our way back to earth.

Everything leading up to this moment was superfluous and was quickly eliminated from my mind. All of the fear, worry, anxiety and overwhelm I had felt the night before and as we ascended in the small plane had been unnecessary. It was all created in my mind when, in actual fact, after the adrenalin rush of freefalling through space and time, everything else was pure enjoyment. The moment we hit the ground, like a kid on an amusement park ride, all I wanted to do was go straight back up and do it all again.

What did this teach me? That everything that is meaningful and amazing in life is often on the other side of fear or discomfort. And all of that fear, anxiety, worry and procrastination is only robbing you of these experiences. Yes, it was scary. Yes, it was overwhelming. Yes, it was challenging. But on the other side was joy, excitement, fulfilment, accomplishment and so much more.

Think of a time in your life when you spent the whole night worrying about something you had to face the next day — like a presentation you had to make, public speaking, a big meeting or a difficult conversation. You spend the whole previous night tossing and turning, perhaps worrying about all the things that could go wrong. You might be thinking things like, ‘What if I stutter? What if I forget my words? What if I fail? What if I don't know the answers to their questions?’ When in actual fact, the next day you complete the task and everything runs successfully and smoothly. With a sense of relief, you feel proud and happy with your achievements. Why did you need all that overwhelming worry the night before?

Overwhelm in the modern world

‘Overwhelm’ is probably one of the most common words that I hear in my line of work, and it is often one of the predecessors to anxiety and burnout. When I hear someone admitting they are overwhelmed, it's usually an orange flag: a sign they are not coping with their workload or they are trying to juggle too many things in their life. If someone vocalises their overwhelm, it usually means they are already struggling and are reaching out for help, so if you hear someone say they are overwhelmed, it may be worth offering them a helping hand. Or if you are feeling overwhelmed yourself, reach out for support. It's also beneficial to take a step back and break down what is causing the overwhelm in the first place. Then you can take some action towards managing it.

I regularly see this in the mental health clinics where I work. I often ask the inpatients as they engage in my programs how they are feeling and what led them to the clinic. Many respond by saying it was all too much, and they were feeling overwhelmed so they needed some support.

Our work lives have become increasingly challenging — tight deadlines, lack of resources, conflicting priorities, financial stressors, demanding workloads and the unrelenting pace of work life. We live in a world where we are always accessible and other people's demands for an immediate response are always hijacking our attention. Couple this with a busy home life juggling family needs, social events and all of the necessities of life and it can be completely overwhelming. Our typical response to these demands is to work even harder and put in longer hours, without breaks, to keep our head above water, often at the compromise of our own health.

Overwhelm can be defined as:

• being buried or drowned beneath a huge mass of something
• feeling defeated by something
• having too much to manage, too much to deal with
• experiencing loss of control
• feeling emotionally overloaded.

That's exactly what you might hear from people around you on a daily basis:

• I'm drowning in work.
• I can't see a way out.
• I just can't keep up with it all.
• It's all too much!
• It's manic at the moment!
• I never get to the end of my to-do list.
• I'm emotionally exhausted. I just can't do it all!

How creating a stress-reduction course stressed me out

I experienced this stress and overwhelm myself when I was working on a particular project that caused me some anxiety, which I had not experienced before. Ironically, it was while I was creating an online course titled ‘Mindfulness for Stress Reduction.’ Who would have thought that creating a course for stress reduction would actually cause me so much stress and overwhelm? Quite comical really!

I wanted to make the best possible course and I spent countless hours in the library after work researching and writing 12 modules. Each night I surrounded myself with medical journals, the latest research papers, mindfulness books and anything I could gather on the topic. I spent days, weeks and months doing this and I felt like I was getting nowhere. It was overwhelming me. I was buried under my papers and I was trying to do too much at once without any focus. It was truly stressing me out!

I eventually changed my approach and decided to be more mindful of what I was working on each evening by only working on one specific task with full focus. For example, if I was working on module 2b, then the only notes I would take with me were those on module 2b— nothing else. Before starting the work, I would do a Three-minute meditation practice to set my intention on what I was working on and to have a crystal-clear objective of what I wanted to achieve that night. This focused approach proved to be a good formula and I eventually finished the content for the course, which turned out to be Three months more of hard work and hundreds of pages of material.

I then went into creation mode with videographers, graphic designers and developers, and this proved to be an even more stressful experience. It cost me a lot of time, money and energy, but I will spare you the details here. Suffice to say I learned a great deal from this experience, and I could definitely feel the overwhelm turn to stress and then further manifest into feelings of anxiety. I must say, it took me a while to recover from this and I'm happy to say the course was successfully completed despite all of the challenges. You could imagine my apprehension about committing to writing this book with the word ‘burnout’ in the title. I jokingly tell people my next book will be titled How I Nearly Burnt Out Writing a Book on Burnout!

Our brains have a limited capacity. Cognitive overload is a state where we are given too many tasks or information at once and our brain cannot process all the information proficiently, which only leads to overwhelm and stress. We cannot perform our tasks with maximum efficiency and accuracy when we are operating in this distressed state. We keep taking on work — adding to our never-ending to-do list — and this leads to trying to multitask, which causes even more stress or anxiety. It's a perpetual problem and something we need to take control of. I'll share some tips on how to manage it later in this chapter.

The myth of multitasking

One of the biggest causes of stress is multitasking (or trying to). Research on multitasking over the past few decades states that:¹⁶

• multitaskers actually take longer to complete tasks and produce more errors
• multitaskers have difficulty retaining information
• multitaskers lose a significant amount of time switching back and forth between tasks, with productivity reduced by up to 40 per cent
• multitasking showed a drop of IQ of 10 points (which was similar to the effects of going without a full night's sleep, or going to work drunk)
• multitaskers have a deceived perception of being more efficient than they really are
• multitasking causes poorer academic results in students.

I run a corporate workshop on multitasking and at the beginning of the session I open with this innocent question: ‘Who are the good multitaskers in the room?’ Usually, the response is about 75 per cent raising their hands. After one hour of workshopping activities and having some fun along the way, I ask the exact same question at the end of the session and not one single hand is raised! Multitasking is a myth and not an efficient way to work!

Let's first differentiate some terms around multitasking to be clear on their meaning:

• Unitasking: doing one task at a time with 100 per cent of your attention focused on it (the best way to work)
• Simple multitasking: doing two simple tasks at the same time, such as driving the car and listening to music; or walking the dog and chewing gum; or simply walking and talking. Easy, right? We can handle that, can't we?
• Complex multitasking: trying to do two complex tasks simultaneously that require your cognition — for example, taking directions on a telephone conversation while somebody else is talking to you and giving you different complex instructions that you need to retain. We cannot do that! The human brain cannot do two cognitive tasks at the same time. This is where the problem lies because we sometimes think we can and we try to do multiple tasks simultaneously, which only leads to frustration, stress and overwhelm.
• Context switching: this feels like you are multitasking, but you are actually just switching your attention from one task to another. You can train yourself to get more efficient at this, but there is usually a price to pay when you are continually context switching throughout the day — and that price is inefficiency and feeling wiped out at the end of the day!
• Attentional blink: when you are context switching from one task to another and in between tasks the brain goes offline for up to 0.05 of a second, during which time it does not take in information¹⁷. For example, you open the fridge to get an ingredient and you stand there for a moment scratching your head, or you are going from a call to your inbox and you take a moment to get back on track again. These attentional blinks get longer the more stressed you are. We want to minimise the amount of context switching and attentional blinks we have in a day.

Some interesting research around the cost of context switching states that if you quickly check your email while working away on another task — for example, you get a pop-up notification on your screen — it takes an average of 64 seconds to get your attention back on track again to what you were previously doing¹⁸. This might not sound like very long, but if you get interrupted every five minutes in a 40-hour working week — which I think is conservative because we often get interrupted much more often than that — guess how much time you lose in a week due to context switching? A whopping 8.5 hours — that's a whole day!

Not only that, but we feel unproductive, unfocused, stressed and overwhelmed and we get to the end of the day and say, ‘What did I actually achieve today?’ Just like my example of working in the library on my online course, you will also feel totally exhausted at the end of the day from reactively switching your attention from task to task all day long and not getting anything completed. You might spend so much of your day ‘putting out fires’ and constantly meeting other people's demands that you don't have time to do any of your own work, which creates further stress and anxiety. This is not a productive way to work and if you continue to operate in this way you may eventually burn out from the constant wear and tear on your body and mind.

I was discussing this with a friend, John Rowland, who is Senior Vice President of CGI, UK North and Australia, which is one of the largest IT and business consulting companies in the world with over 84 000 employees globally. I asked John how he stays focused and energised even though he is working across multiple time zones and managing a multitude of tasks every day (due to the time difference he sometimes has to work up to 18 hour days). Refreshingly, he said that the first thing he keeps a check on is his self-care, making sure he is exercising regularly, eating well and sleeping well no matter what life throws at him in his busy weeks. He understands that if he has long, demanding days at work, he has to balance those out with periods of renewal wherever possible — for example, taking a half day off and going for a 10-kilometre walk, or just taking time out on his farm. He says, ‘You cannot be performing at your best if you are not at your best health wise.’

He went on to say that you must also be clear on what you are working on and when. He doesn't believe in never-ending to-do lists: they just add to your stress because you continually add to them. He does not multitask; instead, he creates distinct objectives that he'd like to achieve in a clear, prioritised order and then he stops for 10 minutes and closes his eyes. For five minutes he does a quiet meditation and for the other five minutes he visualises an upcoming task. Sometimes, he says, when he opens his eyes, he alters his objectives or eliminates something from his tasks. Stopping for those 10 minutes gives him the clarity and focus to work on his tasks with laser-sharp attention for the next few hours. I loved an analogy John used about the problem of getting caught up in the busy-ness of reactively working all day long without any clear focus. He said, ‘Sometimes you have to get off the dance floor and climb up onto the balcony to look down to gather some perspective.’ I couldn't agree more: sometimes you just have to take a step back and view things with a broader and wider lens to gain perspective.

Anxiety

Anxiety is very complex and comes in many forms: social anxiety, general anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, panic attacks and other forms. There are many contributing factors that can create anxiety, but for the sake of containing this discussion we will mainly focus on generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), which is one of the most common forms, especially in the workplace.

Anxiety is something that many of us feel from time to time. It's our body's way of preparing us for a challenging situation — a bit like the fight-or-flight response. It is totally normal to feel anxious or nervous for a short period of time until it passes naturally — for example, before a job interview or public speaking. It's perfectly normal if anxiety comes and goes; the problems arise when the anxious feelings persist for a prolonged period of time.

GAD is characterised by experiencing some of the following symptoms and behaviours for a prolonged period of time (usually about six months):

• a constant state of worry about a variety of everyday situations
• irritability and restlessness
• muscle tension or body aches
• difficulty concentrating and paying attention
• sleep disturbances
• easily fatigued
• withdrawal from friends and social events
• feeling of unease (physically and mentally).

Furthermore, some people may experience panic attacks, where a sudden rush of intense anxiety or fear overcomes them. They might feel sensations like a pounding heart, tight chest, difficulty breathing, dizziness, sweating, nausea, shaking and so on. They might say things like, ‘I can't breathe!’ or ‘I think I'm going to die!’ Panic attacks can happen at any time and are usually the end result of unresolved stress accumulating in the body.

Somebody who had a very public panic attack was Dan Harris. It wasn't just any panic attack though. It was in front of millions of viewers worldwide while he was delivering the news as an anchorman on Good Morning America in 2004. In his book 10% Happier¹⁹, Dan describes how his panic attack on national television changed his life because it led him on a journey to find meditation to tame his mind and reduce stress. He was an absolute sceptic about meditation initially and that's what I love about the book. He views meditation through a humorous, sceptical lens and shares how it changed his view and calmed his anxiety.

Managing overwhelm

If burnout is the outcome of unmanaged workplace stress, and overwhelm is the consequence of not managing your daily workload and mental energy, then we need to put some strategies in place to manage this initial overwhelm before it progresses.

We could use the analogy of a tangled-up ball of wool full of knotted-up stress, overwhelm and confusion that then progresses to anxiety.

It looks something like the illustration in figure 5.1.

We want to catch overwhelm in the messy confusion stage and unravel it to see what is causing all the stress. In this way we can take decisive action before the overwhelm turns into anxiety. It's like untangling a big, messy knot of overwhelming thoughts and as you untangle it, you deal with each little individual knot one by one to see what's behind these thought knots. Is it worrying about the future? Is it trying to do too many things at once (multitasking)? Is it lack of focus? Is it too many external distractions? Is it being over-reactive? Is it pressure? Once we can untangle the knots and discover what the root cause of the stress is, we can find solutions.

Here are some valuable tips to get you started:

• If it's too many distractions while working, manage the environmental distractions around you as much as possible. For example, create a clutter-free workspace, put your phone away or on silent, mute your pop-up email notifications, communicate with your team that you are busy finishing a project, be crystal clear on what single task you are working on and stay on track as much as possible. Set yourself a focus time and stick to it.
• If it's an overwhelming to-do list, take five minutes to review your list. Pick out the high-priority items, group other things into sub-groups — for example, phone calls, emails, quick-win tasks. Be realistic about what you can achieve in a day and allocate blocks of time to complete these tasks. Set clear intentions on what you are working on, catch yourself trying to multitask and pull yourself back to the task at hand. Also, acknowledge the completion of tasks and take renewal breaks often. Most people only look at what is still on their to-do list and don't savour the things they have achieved over the course of their day.
• If it's worrying about the future and all the things you still have ahead of you, try not to project yourself too far into a future that you have little control over. Bring yourself back to the task at hand and only work on that. If it's a big project that takes days or weeks, break the project down into small, manageable tasks. The moment you catch yourself worrying about all the things ahead of you, take a few breaths and reset your focus back on the task at hand. Enjoy the creative process of working mindfully through each task.
• If it's feeling tired and not being able to keep going, take a break, whether it's a tea/coffee break or a quick walk, a short meditation or just a chat with a colleague or friend. Give yourself permission to stop for a moment, change environment and renew your energy before you sit down again. Perhaps you can reprioritise what you are working on to make it more manageable. Feeling tired is usually a sign that you are not taking care of yourself. Check in with your diet, sleep and exercise routines.
• If it's competing priorities or looming deadlines, manage this as best you can by allocating time based on the highest priority. Minimise distractions, have a clear timeline for each deadline marked out in your diary for the upcoming week/s, seek support wherever possible and manage your mental and physical energy. Do the hardest cognitive task earlier in the day when you are mentally at your freshest.
• If it's just keeping up with everything at work and home, create clear boundaries as much as possible between work and home. Have a regular switch-off time when you no longer check emails and devices at home and reduce the temptation of working late at night just to keep up. Make sure you give yourself some downtime so you can function better the next day at work. Your home should be your place of rest and restoration. Reclaim that as best you can: do homey things like cooking, being with your family, reading a book and relaxing.

Managing anxiety

Getting back to that knotted mess of thoughts we were just talking about, the first thing I will say is to be more aware of your thoughts. Catch the stressful, overwhelming and confusing thoughts before they progress into physical feelings of anxiety. Research published in Nature Communications (2020) reveals we have about 6000 thoughts per day²¹, and many of those thoughts are repetitive — that is, the same ones you had yesterday and the day before. Also, about 80 per cent of our thoughts are negative ones — this is based on our negative bias, which makes us look for danger or threats.

So, first of all, it's important to be more mindful of your thoughts. What is going on up there in my mind? What thoughts are swirling around in my brain hour by hour? What thoughts take me away from the present moment? What thoughts invoke certain feelings in me? What thoughts stress me out? What thoughts make me anxious? Turn towards your thoughts and observe them.

The second thing is to realise that you are not your thoughts.

Thoughts are just thoughts — that's all they are. It's up to you whether you give energy to negative thoughts and which ones you choose to let go of. I know it's easier said than done and will take some practice, but once you become more mindful of your thoughts and you can observe what thoughts come and go in your mind, you are better able to manage them. With mindfulness you can become an ‘observer’ of your mind and your thoughts rather than be swept away by them. You are also better equipped to turn towards your thoughts and question them, whether they are useful or not. Mindfulness gives you that choice not to judge a thought as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but just to observe it.

I have a very straightforward formula that will catch almost 100 per cent of your overwhelming, negative, fearful or anxious thoughts. It is almost too simple yet it's hard to believe how effective it is. I share this with many of my clients, especially those suffering from anxiety, and I also often practise this formula myself. The formula works like this: if I am having a negative, fearful or anxious thought that is creating some tension or stress in my body, the first thing I do is turn towards that thought and ask it two very simple questions (see figure 5.2, overleaf).

Question 1: Is it true?

Is it real? Is it a fact? What hard factual evidence is there to support it? For example, if I'm having a ‘what if’ thought about my presentation the following day, such as ‘What if the group doesn't like my presentation and it falls flat?’, I ask myself:

Is it true? Is it real? Is it a fact? No!

However, sometimes you may be able to justify that anxious, negative and fearful thought and say, ‘yes, maybe it's true.’ So then you ask the second question.

Question 2: Is it helpful?

Is it even useful or helpful for me to think this thought? Is it helpful for me to feed this thought? In the presentation example above, what's the point of thinking they won't like the presentation? It's not useful or helpful and will not put me in the right mindset.

This simple, straightforward formula helps me immensely and has helped thousands of people I have worked with over the years. It really is a gamechanger and makes all the difference as to how you manage your thoughts and the feelings associated with them. Observing any thoughts that are not serving you well will disempower them, and they will not further manifest into something bigger. Remember, you are not your thoughts. They are simply thoughts and it is up to you to be more mindful of them and choose your response.

I was chatting with Nick Bracks about this. Nick is an actor (Neighbours), mental health advocate and author of Move Your Mind²². He is also no stranger to experiencing anxiety himself and is a self-confessed ‘overthinker.’ As a child, Nick had several bouts of depression and anxiety and he speaks openly about this because he wants to help others who suffer mental health issues. Nick was often in the media spotlight as the son of a former Victorian premier, Steve Bracks. He noticed he often put a lot of pressure on himself, was a people pleaser and had a very busy mind. Nick explained to me that once he was able to ‘turn towards’ his thoughts and better understand the triggers that were causing his anxiety, he was also better able to deal with it. He said that the things that helped him deal with anxious moments best were creating regular exercise routines, practising meditation, observing his thoughts, calling a friend and practising gratitude and positive affirmations. I shared some breathing practices with Nick to help him calm his overactive mind and manage his overwhelm and anxiety.

If you are feeling moments of overwhelm or anxiety, or if you just have an overactive mind, pause and turn towards it. Take a moment to observe your thoughts and ask yourself those simple questions: ‘Is it true?’ and ‘Is it helpful?’ And don't forget to use the breathing techniques I taught you in the previous chapters to help calm your busy mind.