Sometimes, everything feels a little too much, even at work. You feel like you have too many things to do but with so little time. You can’t fathom how to handle all of them and deliver the best results. Pressure and emotions can affect your performance, thoughts, and decisions. So, here are seven tips on how to manage your emotions when you’re feeling too much at work!
7 Tips to Manage Emotions When You’re Feeling Too Much at Work
Ground yourself
When you’re feeling too much at work, your emotions can take control of you. You may feel like you’re not like yourself. And grounding can help you. You can do the 5-4-3-2-1 method: identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. With this method, you can bring yourself back to the present and alleviate the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Step back and take a break
Once you’ve brought yourself back to the present, it’s good to step back for a moment and take a break. Feeling too much can also cause mental exhaustion. Resting, even for just five minutes, can help refresh your mind. Without the drive of your emotions, you get a clearer view of your current situation. You can also come up with better solutions to the challenges that you’re facing.
Challenge your thoughts
You always have to remember that you control your emotions, not your emotions controlling you. When you’re feeling too much, negative thoughts and some assumptions are louder than before. But, you can challenge these thoughts.
One way to do this is to list down all your negative thoughts and assumptions. Be as specific as possible. After all, the first step in any problem-solving situation is to identify the problem. Across the items that you listed, write your arguments. Why is this item false? What can you do to combat it? What evidence can support your reasons?
Prioritize your tasks
Did you know that multitasking is one of the main reasons for feeling overwhelmed? Multitasking, while it helps when you have several things on your plate, is not always a winning game. Because when you multitask, you self-interrupt. Instead of focusing on one thing at a time, you have to cater to multiple matters at once. And sometimes, this can make your emotions go into overdrive.
So, to lessen the pressure, what you could do is to prioritize your tasks. Among all the things that you need to do, pick the one thing that you absolutely have to finish within the day. If you think you can handle more than that, then you could try listing down five tasks for the day. Strive to complete those first before moving to your other responsibilities.
Narrowing down your choices can help you focus and be more productive. Just make sure that you do them one at a time and avoid multitasking in the meantime.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. You don’t have to face everything alone. Are there some tasks that you could delegate to someone else? And help doesn’t always mean that someone will take some of your duties for you. It could also mean just having someone to listen. Having someone listening to you can help you better organize your thoughts since you need to convey them to another person. You also feel that you’re not alone, whatever challenge you’re currently facing.
Examine your triggers
Being overwhelmed at work is paralyzing. So, to prevent this situation from happening again, self-reflection is needed. That is, you need to examine what your triggers are. Knowing what triggers you can help prevent yourself from reacting to the situation. Instead, you can manage your response better and also be more self-aware.
Once you’ve identified your triggers, condition yourself on what your response should be when you encounter them. As much as you want to, not all of your triggers are avoidable. It’s also unpredictable when you’ll experience them. So, preparing yourself for when such situations happen is essential.
Take care of yourself
Lastly, to avoid feeling too much at work again, you must take care of yourself. Remember that not only does your work affect your health, your health also affects your work. If you’re not in good shape, your performance will be affected. You’re also more at risk of negative emotions. Which, in turn, also creates more problems for your physical health.
So, keep yourself healthy. Read more about how you can keep yourself healthy at work with these seven tips we previously shared.
Emotions are powerful. So powerful that they can influence your thoughts, behaviors, and decisions. And when they’re overwhelming, it can affect your performance. Knowing how to manage them is the key to continuing to be productive, even when you’re feeling too much at work.
