I’ve been really overwhelmed recently with the holidays approaching and all that I’m trying to do for my family, myself and my business. So much so that I was starting to neglect my children and some of the responsibilities of my household, things I thought I was trying to work on. It got to the point that I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath – literally. I mean I didn’t feel like I was getting enough air into my lungs while breathing. Being from a family with some anxiety issues, I new immediately what it was even though I’ve never felt them before that I can remember.

After talking with a close friend, I looked at my schedule and realized that I was setting my daily expectations way too high. I was trying to accomplish 3-5 things on a daily basis – huge things. When I got to the end of my day after my nanny leaves to go home, I told myself that I could finish up during the night hours. Of course with dinner, homework, and just the basic needs of such a large family and being a single parent, it was impossible to get everything done. I would then get upset and frustrated with myself for not accomplishing what I set out to do. That in turn would cause me anxiety. Sound familiar?

Here’s what I decided to do. I decided that each day I would set out to accomplish one major thing. That’s it. Not little parts of many things like I often would do but one particular thing that I had to get done. I would concentrate on it and get it accomplished in a good, healthy way. With that plan I’d be able to maintain focus on one specific thing. If I finish early, I could start something else but I wouldn’t put that on my schedule. I’d only put the one thing I set out to do.

So far, so good. I realized once again that the majority of stress we experience in our lives is not caused by outside forces but it’s caused by ourselves. Once I saw the problem and decided to make changes around it, the problem went away. Now the challenge is to keep it going this way. I believe I can do it. I believe you can too.