Mastercard’s marketing campaign made me feel seen. It proved that saying no to the FOMO pressure to keep up with the Joneses and instead focus on my life experience.

This last year, I grew an appreciation for a priceless commodity we all take for granted daily, our headspace.

Our brains are struggling with the FOMO of social media, multi-tasking everything, and the social anxiety we have with the state of the world around us. Like a computer hard drive, our head has only so much memory storage and running it 24/7 is burning us out.

Respecting our limited capacity, reviewing and purging even with what’s on our minds is good practice.

Are you overwhelmed with anxious thoughts?
Write it down, or connect with a trusted person to work through it.

Does reading your to-do list paralyze you because you have no idea where to start?
Start by delegating and crossing off tasks that don’t need to be done now.

Have an idea that’s been weighing you down?
Block off enough time to work through it.

This is where the brain dump comes in. As Mel Robbins shared in her podcast, Feeling Overwhelmed? there is a lie that we all tell ourselves, “Everything is important.” This is the fast track to being stressed all the time.

The answer is being strategic with what you focus on and when. Start with paper and a pen or pencil if that’s your jam. Then vomit everything you have on your mind. Now you can be more strategic about creating a system to complete everything. Trying to do this all in your head is a practice in futility because you aren’t benefiting from the value of action; writing it down is a first step. Writing it down makes it real. Writing it down makes you look at it objectively, and when you can visually see tasks next to each other, the ones that matter shine through.

So the next time you are feeling overwhelmed, take ten minutes and sit down and download it. myLife planners provide space for this, or you can just as easily grab a random blank piece of paper. Help your brain help you by purging the thoughts blocking the flow of information in your noggin.

Written by: Crystal Reynolds
CRYSTALINK.CA

Content provided by Women Belong member Crystal Reynolds