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Conquer Stress and Feeling Overwhelmed With Just One Thing
Just One Thing
by Patti Tokar
Sometimes life can seem not just hectic, but totally overwhelming. 
Each day is a sort of race, or worse, a fast-paced treadmill that pulls you forward without letting you press the pause button. You get up as early as you are able (which isn’t as early as you would like because you are so tired when you wake up), hurry through the morning preparations, get yourself to work, stay busy-busy-busy all day yet seem to accomplish nothing, hurry home, get dinner going, take care of the family’s urgent-need-of-the-day, do the minimum clean-up and straightening (because that’s all there is time for), and then, when a little block of time actually opens up, you sink down in front of the TV because you are too strung-out and exhausted to do anything else. Worse, you have half a dozen phone calls you should have made, a couple of unfulfilled promises you made to friends, and a to-do list in your notebook that just keeps getting longer. To top it all off, life seems like jut a long string of chores, you are feeling overwhelmed, and you can’t remember the last time you just had fun.
Whew. Sound familiar? It’s quite likely; according to a 2011 Neilson Company survey, 53% of women in the USA report feeling stressed most of the time.
So how do we change this? The answer is simple. Change yourself.
Yes, it would be nice to win $1,000,000, to have the perfect high-salary part-time dream job appear, to have the kids and spouse suddenly do their share of the chores, or to have the perfect full-time personal assistant appear who wants to work for you for free. But if we play out each of these scenarios, we will find that without changing ourselves, we would soon find ourselves right back in the overworked, overstressed, overwhelmed style of living.
Living a low-stress life is a skill, not a genetic trait nor a fairy godmother blessing. It can be learned.
Start with awareness. Take a note book through your day and jot 
down all the things that went wrong and all the stressful, time-hungry little events as they occur. This is important because patterns are occurring that you are probably not even aware of.
Now, look through your notes and pick just one thing. Use your own criteria. Pick it because it is the easiest, because it is the biggest problem, because it is the most emotionally frustrating, because you know exactly how to fix it, or for any other reason. Just pick one thing. We’ll get to the others soon.
Say, for example, you see that one big problem in the morning is getting dressed. It takes forever to put together your outfit because your closet is overstuffed, the laundry is stacked up, you have orphan pieces that don’t match, several of your pants need to be hemmed, and your favorite jackets need to have buttons sewn on. You decide to start with this one problem.
Now pick one thing that you will do to solve it. Perhaps you will sew the buttons on your jackets. Perhaps you will set a workable schedule for doing the laundry, even if it is only your work clothes that are on that schedule. Perhaps you will select your entire outfit the evening before. Pick whatever you can reasonably do, but just pick one. Do not decide that by the end of the week, your closet will be totally cleaned and organized, all the clothes repaired and altered, you will buy six new pieces that match everything in your closet, the laundry basket will stay empty, and you will get up 15 minutes early every day just to ease your morning schedule. Trying to conquer too much will lead to conquering nothing.
Use the changing or accomplishing of your One Thing as a learning experience. Did it get done because you wrote it on your planner? Or was it better to put a sticky note on the mirror? Did you have to announce it to your family and be a little selfish about taking the time to do it? Did you have to restart several times? Was it better to hire someone to do it? There are no wrong answers here – just information to help you learn how you uniquely deal with change.
One you have conquered your One Thing you will be amazed at how this seems to shift everything. Just getting control of one small issue awakens you to being aware of just how much control you really do have. Often, changing just one small thing leads to other issues spontaneously changing on their own. For example, in the illustration above if you chose to pick out your entire outfit the night before, you may find that your kids decide on their own to lay out their clothes for the next day, which further eases up your morning pressure. Or if you choose to keep the work clothes laundered on schedule, you may find that a good number of the pieces don’t need to be laundered after each wear – they just need to be freshened in the dryer or perhaps just hung up as soon as you take them off.
You can now pick the next One Thing. One small thing at a time begins to build momentum until you find that there is now regularly a much smaller time space between recognizing that something is causing stress and you taking steps to change it.
Simplifying happens by recognizing a stress event, figuring out an action to alleviate it, and then taking action, one small step at a time.
The action part is the vital step. You can recognize an issue, complain about it to anyone who will listen and wish for a miracle. Ok, but the problem will not get solved until you begin to take action to fix the problem.
Soon, you will find that you have changed, and this in turn changed your life. You have less stress, and no longer feel overwhelmed. That is because you did One Thing. One Thing at a time.
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Simple Life Recommended Books: (In association with Amazon.com)
The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity - Your Master Key to Prosperity by Catherine Ponder
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - Although there are many reprinted versions of Think and Grow Rich, this is my strong recommendation. The book is paperback with an unusually durable binding and pliable cover and pages. It feels magnificent to hold and to fold back the pages for reading and highlighting.
I have heavily highlighted copies of both of these books and consider them books to reference and re-read on a continual basis.