4 Ways to Stay Positive When You Feel Overwhelmed

“We can’t always give a hundred percent to everything all at once.”On today's 5-Minute Friday, Lewis lays out four techniques that can keep you in a positive mindset even when you feel like you're neck-deep in problems. Life has been particularly overwhelming for a lot of people these days, and that's why we need the tools to deal with stress now more than ever. Mental health resources: www.mentalhealth.govThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:12Lewis Howes?

  Four Ways to Stay Positive When You Feel Overwhelmed. I want to start today's podcast with a quote from Timber Hawkeye, who said, "You can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass." Man, isn't that a good reminder for us? Because there's often a lot on our plates with our career, our businesses, relationships, our fitness, our family, maybe a side hustle or two. There's a lot going on, especially with the stress of the world. There can be some overwhelm sometimes, and it pulls us in many different directions when we have these different areas of our life. And we can't always give 100% to everything all at once.

• 0:55Lewis Howes?

  And when we're overwhelmed in the present moment, it seems like it's hard to be optimistic about the future because you're constantly fixated like, "I can't get to all these things. It's going crazy. There's too much going on." But with a bit of effort, we can still take control of the situation and stay positive. So I want to share with you four things you can do to keep your head up while you're feeling overwhelmed. And the first thing you can do is take a moment to breathe and smile. Here's something that is probably something you hear all the time, but you don't implement all the time. When you breathe in a certain way,

• 1:37Lewis Howes?

  where you take a breath in for a two or a four count, and then you breathe slowly twice as long on the way out. If you repeat that four different times, it will slow your heart rate. It'll calm your mind. So you breathe in for two or four seconds. You go.

• 2:01Lewis Howes?

  So in for two or four seconds and then out for four or eight seconds. Just double the time out as you do in. Repeat that on a loop for four times. I'm telling you, it'll help tremendously. The fourth breath you do, do it with a smile and it'll bring you back to the present moment and feeling a little bit better in that moment. And I highly recommend checking out the Rob Bell interview that was recently happened about spirituality or Jay Shetty, where we talk about peace and purpose as well with some tools in there for breathing and focusing on the moment. Thing number two, give yourself permission to work hard. Many of us have learned that we beat ourselves up when we're overwhelmed.

• 2:44Lewis Howes?

  We constantly say, I'm overwhelmed and I'm stressed and then you beat yourself up even more. That's not helpful when you're overwhelmed, often because we're afraid of messing things up. But it's okay to work hard sometimes. It's okay to say, I've got a lot on my plate. Now's the time to hunker down, sacrifice, work hard, push past my discomfort. There's not going to be this perfect workload all day long where you have, oh, I've got these few things I've got to do and everything is comfortable. It's not designed that way. Be willing to go all in and work hard and sacrifice at different seasons of your life. Now, I'm not saying that needs to be that way every day, every month, every year, because that's overwhelming, but give yourself permission to work hard. Don't beat yourself up if you feel overwhelmed. Just follow these steps.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  Step number three is to see the opportunity in the overwhelm. Cause overwhelm can push us to do things faster, smarter and better if we focus on it. When I feel like, man, I got a lot on my plate, what do I do? I first tell myself, okay, take a deep breath. Okay, it's time to work hard. And the third thing is I gotta learn to delegate or eliminate things that aren't the most important thing in my life right now. So I see the opportunity in the overwhelm and I say, oh, here's all these different things. Time to delegate, time to eliminate and focus on the most important thing. And that leads us to step number four, which is to create priorities. Because sometimes we think, I gotta do all these different things and I gotta do them perfectly. It's not all going to be perfect.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  Let that go. We can't do a million things all at once. So literally do yourself the favor, relax your mind, smile. You've got opportunities in front of you. This is a good thing. And create a list, pick the top priorities and knock one thing out at a time. Give yourself permission to eliminate, to delegate, to prioritize, to breathe, to work hard in the moment and really be grateful that you have the opportunities in front of you. Again, you don't want to feel overwhelmed all the time, but a little discomfort here and there is what's going to make you grow and make you smarter. Cause you're going to say, ah, I don't want to feel this in the future. So what do I need to eliminate? What skill do I need to learn?

• 4:55Lewis Howes?

  Who can I delegate this to? These are just a few things you can do to stay positive in times of overwhelm. And if you need extra support, that's okay. There will be times in your life where you'll need to confide in someone you trust, seek a therapist or talk to a doctor. We've had podcasts with great therapists and psychologists that you can listen to at any time. And you can go to mentalhealth.gov to find great resources for all your immediate mental health needs. Check the show notes for links and resources and more. Remember, be kind to yourself. Give yourself permission to ask for help. And I want to close with this quote. "Life has many ways of testing a person's will,

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  either by having nothing happen at all or having everything happen at once."

• 5:43Lewis Howes?

  Let that sink in. Don't feel too overwhelmed. You've got this and we got your back here at the School of Greatness. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.