I tend to get overwhelmed easily. My brain will focus on a conversation and I will replay the conversation in my head over and over. Pretty soon my worries have evolved like a Pokemon evolution into a whole new problem that is always bigger and scarier than the original problem.

When I find myself in that place, I try to center my thoughts on three areas:

• What is my responsibility.
• What isn’t my responsibility.
• How to move forward.

Then, I make a list of what is my responsibility. I can take a shower. I can get dressed. I can spend time in God’s Word and prayer. This initial movement alone gets my brain out of the “ideating” stage where I loop stress and anxiety and helps me start taking steps forward.

What Is My Responsibility

When I start to think about the specific conversation or event that is causing me stress I try to write down the details of those events. Who is involved? What happened? What was said? Again, these steps help me identify the nuts and bolts instead of getting swept up in emotion. I call it, “Taking Inventory.”

As long as the stress stays in my head the stress is always a blob of emotion swirling around, but simply writing down the nuts and bolts of the stress help me find this stage to be more manageable. I start to catch my breath. I start to see a path forward. I start to feel a little bit of hope in an area that felt hopeless.

What Isn’t My Responsibility

At this stage it helps me to clarify what I can’t change. I can’t change how someone responds. I can’t change how they are responding to the event / conversation. But I can show up prepared. I can listen well. I can reconsider based on what I learn from this interaction.

This little exercise takes only a few minutes. I typically write it into my phone in a text or Notes App. But I can feel my physical body start to relax as I go through this process. Most of my anxiety and stress comes from different scenarios in my head that might or might not happen. Most of the time, my anxiety isn’t coming from the stress of the event, but stress from something that is only happening in my head.

How to Move Forward

Now, I can focus on doing the best work I can bring to the table. If I don’t go through this process I can get stuck. But going through this process gives me a roadmap. I might get overwhelmed again, but now I have a reference point for me to come back to and re-evaluate.

The interesting thing about anxiety is that it usually wants to pull me away from the present moment. My mind starts racing toward outcomes, assumptions, worst case scenarios, and conversations that haven’t even happened yet.

But this process helps bring me back to reality: what is actually happening? What is my responsibility? What steps can I take forward? Sometimes the situation still feels hard. Sometimes the conversation still doesn’t go the way I hoped. Sometimes I still feel overwhelmed later in the day.

But now, instead of spiraling in every direction, I can focus on the next faithful step in front of me.