Feeling Overwhelmed?

One of the key reasons motivation can dry up is the sheer amount of work you may have to do. Juggling work and home, children and your relationship as well as trying to find time for yourself can leave you feeling either in a whirl or exhausted.

This can lead to poor sleep, further tiredness and an increasing loss of motivation. "Where should I start?" is often the question you will find yourself asking in this situation.

The first thing you need to do is accept that you will need to take a long hard look at your life. Are you using your time wisely and efficiently? Are you doing things that you could delegate to others? Are you doing things that you should drop? Have you started projects that you will never finish?

Goals and Priorities

It is important that you decide what your goals and priorities are first. Consider the analogy of clearing out a cupboard. The first thing you decide on before filling it is what is the cupboard for? What is its purpose? This cupboard is like your life. What are you trying to achieve? What do you want to fill your life with? These are your goals and priorities.

Once you have decided this you then need to examine everything that was in the cupboard, which relate to the things you spend your time doing, and choose between 3 options:

• Keep
• Give away
• Bin it
  

What you keep in your life are the important things to you and what you value most. Things given away are delegated tasks to others and the binned ones are those things that you really don't want to do any more and have no need to continue.

Procrastination

If you clear out the unnecessary and unwanted tasks from your life you should feel a lot lighter. Clarifying what you want out of life and what is most important to you will help you to see what you need to focus on.

But what about the things you have to do that you don't want to? What about the things you keep putting off?

Procrastination is a classic sign of poor motivation and can waste a lot of time. Think about something you constantly procrastinate about - phone calls, making appointments, filing paperwork.

All of these things drain you of energy and motivation as you 'handle' them each time you think about them, see them or physically handle them. This all adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed or too busy. Instead think about organising similar tasks together and tackling them quickly or as soon as possible. You know that you are going to have to do these things anyway so why have them hanging over you? Not only will you feel better but you will have more energy to focus on your real goals and priorities in life.

Jacky Tustain is a Life Coach based in the UK, specialising in helping people turn their life around through raising confidence, motivation and self esteem. For Life Coaching information check out her BeCanDo website or for motivation training her Get Motivated ecourse.