What To Do When You’re Feeling Frozen and Overwhelmed

Staring into nothingness. Freaking out about what will happen when everything gives out. Something is going to go wrong and it’s all your fault. You’re the reason we’re in this mess and now we’re f—ed.

While everyone will tell you that feeling overwhelmed is a part of life, those thoughts aren’t really the nicest and I don’t want to just let that stuff happen. There must be something we can do about it. I reference CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) alot to help understand the psychology behind all the negative self-talk that comes along with the inability to do anything and the feeling of overwhelm. But now that I feel like I’m heavily relying on determining things emotionally I kinda forgot about actually taking actions on things.

I feel like this wayyyy tooo often so this post is to serve to me as a reminder of what to do in conjunction with being aware and understanding my emotions.

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The Tim Ferris’ “Feeling Overwhelmed” Checklist:

• Am I eating enough?
• Too much caffeine?
• Understand what is making you feel this way. And then what can you do about it?

Reference Video: How to Cope with Feeling Unfocused or Overwhelmed | Tim Ferriss

Am I Eating Enough

Eat something, eat anything! There are too many diets out there that glorify skipping meals, and our society has been ingrained with if you’re workinghard enoughyou’ll forget to eat.This will obviously lead to some kind of break down within your body and mostoften it;ll start with overwhelmness. If you can’t think straight. Can’t figure out what to do next. Or things are becoming really difficult to do. Chances are you probably haven’t eatenaything yet.

So eat breakfast!

• Eggs, Toast and avocado are a really easy way to ensure you get the nutrients you neeed with minimal effort.

Personally for me, my excuse is that  I’m so engaged in whatever work I’m doing I’ll say it’s because I’m too lazy  to cook. So as a result I’ve made alternative that are fast enough to not require cooking and give me no choice but to eat them because its a low barrier to entry.

Those snacks are:

• Almonds or any nuts for that matter (Macadamium,peanuts, sunflower seeds) 
  • I think the higher the fat content the  better. But at the end of the day anything is better than nothing. If you literally haven’t eaten anything yet, anything will do. Eat something.
• Cereal. I like Vector cereal cause it may be placebo but I  feel ike the little granola clusters got energy in them. And it taste pretty good too
• Granola is another nut alternative if you’re not feeling that
• Oat meal if you only prefer warm foods

I feel like that’s a pretty good list of options. If you can think of more definitely comment those down below as I’m always looking for more alternatives incase I get sick of any of those lol.

Too Much Caffeine

I love caffeine and it has helped me so much through highschool and undergrad. But somewhere along the way as I got older, I forgot to eat breakfast more and became more and more reliant on caffeine. It got to a pointwhere like I needed 4-5 cups of coffee to function anywhere remotely to normal. So somehow I weened off of caffeine and now if i have more than one cup my hands start shaking. (Doesn’t stop me from want to drink coffee though lol)

However, as I’ve adapted more unhealthy habits and lifestyles, I noticed that caffeine sometimes had the opposite of the desired effect. And I think food plays a major role into it. But also if you’ve been living like that for awhile, your body also isn’t going to be able to adapt that quickly. So before you ingest more caffeine make sure you’ve ate enough. Drank enough  water, and maybe try some tea first. 

Because sometimestoo much caffeine can make you spurtsy and move without really thinking. So just be aware.

Check Your Headspace

My go to thing when I’m hella lostor just overwhelmed  is trying to pindown what the heck is even going on in my head. The best thing for that is a brain dump. I like to manually writing these down cause seeing your handwriting just makes it realer in my head. So I grab a pen  and my limitless planner and just 

brain vomit whatever is going on in my head.

More often than not his gives me some ground to work on and I’m pretty much good to go. What I have noticed though is that because I was such a fan of “The Four Hour Workweek” I had carried over the Pareto principal into everything I do. I had to do some digging and found the exact questions that Tim Ferris has engrained into my life.

So if the brain dump did nothing for you this is what Tim recommends

writing down:

• What 20% of you actions or commitments produce 80% of the result and your positive emotional state
• What 20% produces 80% of pain and negative emotional state
• What would it look like if it were easy

And just like that you should usually feel better and ready to take on the world. The number one thing though. Make sure you ate something.