5 Steps To Beat Overwhelm

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

In A Rush?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes—including people who are “always so capable” (because guess who everyone comes to with their things), as well as people who normally live life comfortably in the slow lane but suddenly a large unexpected disruption to that peace came from nowhere.

  • Today’s main feature lays out a five-step plan for safely navigating through overwhelm to successfully “do the things”, assuming that doing so is both possible and desirable.

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

• Today’s featured recipe is for a sunflower corn burger, packed with protein, fiber, and healthy fats.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

An Important Way That Love Gets Eroded

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Psychology Sunday

Dealing With Overwhelm

Whether we live a hectic life in general, or we usually casually take each day as it comes but sometimes several days gang up on us at once, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes.

Today we’re going to look at how to deal with it healthily.

Step 1: Start anywhere

It’s easy to get stuck in “analysis paralysis” and not know how to tackle an unexpected large problem. An (unhealthy) alternative is to try to tackle everything at once, and end up doing nothing very well.

Even the most expert juggler will not successfully juggle 10 random things thrown unexpectedly at them.

So instead, just pick any part of the the mountain of to-dos, and start.

If you do want a little more finesse though, check out:

Procrastination, And How To Pay Off The To-Do List Debt

Step 2: Accept what you’re capable of

This one works both ways. It means being aware of your limitations yes, but also, of your actual abilities:

• Is the task ahead of you really beyond what you are capable of?

• Could you do it right now without hesitation if a loved one’s life depended on it?

• Could you do it, but there’s a price to pay (e.g. you can do it but it’ll wipe you out in some other life area)?

Work out what’s possible and acceptable to you, and make a decision. And remember, it could be that someone else could do it, but everyone has taken the “if you want something doing, give it to someone busy” approach. It’s flattering that people have such confidence in our competence, but it is also necessary to say “no” sometimes, or at least enlisting help.

Step 3: Listen to your body

…like a leader listening to an advisory council. Your perception of tiredness, pain, weakness, and all your emotions are simply messengers. Listen to the message! And then say “thank you for the information”, and proceed accordingly.

Sometimes that will be in the way the messengers seem to be hoping for!

Sometimes, however, maybe we (blessed with a weighty brain and not entirely a slave to our limbic system) know better, and know when it’s right to push through instead.

Similarly, that voice in your head? You get to decide where it goes and doesn’t. On which note…

Step 4: Be responsive, not reactive

We wrote previously on the difference between these:

A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It

Measured responses will always be better than knee-jerk reactions, unless it is literally a case of a split-second making a difference. 99% of our problems in life are not so; usually the problem will still be there unchanged after a moment’s mindful consideration, so invest in that moment.

You’ve probably heard the saying “give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe”. In this case, that can be your mind. Here’s a good starting point:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

And if your mental state is already worse than that, mind racing with threats (real or perceived) and doom-laden scenarios, here’s how to get out of that negative spiral first, so that you can apply the rest of this:

The Off-Button For Your Brain

Do remember to turn it on again afterwards, though 😉

Step 5: Transcend discomfort

This is partly a callback to step 3, but it’s now coming from a place of a clear ready mind, so the territory should be looking quite different now. Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible that your clear view shows discomfort ahead.

You’re going to make a conscious decision whether or not to proceed through the discomfort (and if you’re not, then now’s the time to start calmly and measuredly looking at alternative plans; delegating, ditching, etc).

If you are going to proceed through discomfort, then it can help to frame the discomfort as simply a neutral part of the path to getting where you want. Maybe you’re going to be going way out of your comfort zone in order to deal with something, and if that’s the case, make your peace with it now, in advance.

“Certainly it hurts” / “Well, what’s the trick then?” / “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”

(lines from a famous scene from the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia)

It’s ok to say to yourself (if it’s what you decide is the right thing to do) “Yep, this experience is going to suck terribly, but I’m going to do it anyway”.

See also (this being about Radical Acceptance):

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

Take care!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between lychees and kumquats—we picked the kumquats (click here to read about why), as did 65% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Recipes Worth Sharing

Sunflower Corn Burger

Burgers are rarely a health food, but in this case, everything in the patty is healthy, and it’s packed with protein, fiber, and healthy fats.

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body – by Michael Matthews

First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.

In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.

The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.

As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.

The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).

The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.

A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.

The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.

Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.

Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team