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Defeat Overwhelm and Procrastination – My ABC Method

If you are struggling to cope, feel overwhelmed, frozen by fear, indecision or procrastination: take a little time out and follow along with my easy ABC Method for Ultimate Wellbeing!

Assess your state

  1. Stop for a one second, close your eyes, take a deep breath in and ask yourself how are you really feeling right now?  Name the feeling and note the level of intensity that you are feeling?  – 1 not much at all & 10 is completely and utterly feeling it.
  2. Next, acknowledge whatever that feeling is and simply accept it (don’t judge yourself, critique the feeling or wish it would go away)
  3. If it’s un-resourceful/negative, decide now, how you would like to feel instead? – (usually, it would be the opposite feeling – write it down)
  4. Now take a moment to think about the uplifting/positive feeling that you’ve just written down I’d like you to remember a time when you last felt that feeling. What were you doing, where were you and as you close your eyes for a moment – imagine every little detail of that enjoyable scene.  How were you feeling, how were you breathing, what colour’s and sensations can you see in your mind eye and feel in your body as you imagine that specific time in your life even more vividly now?
  5. Now take another deep, slow breath in and out and slowly, gently open your eyes. Re-rate how you feeling now between one and ten.


Brain dump

  1. With a pen and paper sit and write EVERY SINGLE THING that’s running around in your in your head down. Section it into specific categories – home/work/business/home tasks etc. Every project you can think of, family, social and financial obligations AS WELL AS all of the “shoulds” that you keep telling yourself need to get done!
  2. Once you’ve completely exhausted your mental to do list, review your notes, scan your mind and memory for absolutely anything else that you can add to your list.
  3. Now that you’ve completely run out of things to add – look over your list and decide if you can delete, delegate or do.
  4. If some things can be deleted, cross them out and just let them go as they are now no longer important to you, delegate as much as you can to others (write the name next to the task) and then with the tasks that are left, assign a realistic time frame.
  5. Create a box with the four time zones and add post it notes with the task name into the correct square – critical/urgent, important, not important and as i like to say for the last box – it can wait till later!

defeating procrastination and overwhelm

Choose with calmness & clarity

  1. Choose ONE THING from your time frame grid and focus only on that task
  2. Calmly and clearly break the task into the smallest bite size steps that you can think of
  3. Put a kitchen timer on for 15-20 mins and begin that singular task
  4. Start completing each small step within that task, just bit by bit.
  5. When the timer goes off, cross out the task or tasks that you have just completed and congratulate yourself for moving forward (feeling more empowered, clear and confident).

One final note:

Keep asking yourself with every decision – does this truly help me accomplish my goal?

It can be hard to eliminate time wasting activities (like checking and clearing emails) and it can be even more difficult to decide on realistic time frames (when it feels as if you should have already completed everything on your list!)

If you aren’t truly sure what you are working toward, you can go around and around and just mark time.  Life can start to feel like ground hog day!

In my experience, there are two questions that can help clarify the entire process behind my ABC Method.

Those two questions are…

  1. What am I truly working toward?
  2. What are the core values that drive my life of Ultimate Wellbeing?

If you need assistance with answering either of those questions or anything else, please reach out to me, I’m happy to help you clarify your answers and help you discover your very own set of personal core values.