I woke up today with a feeling of panic.\u00a0 My list of priorities to get done had once again grown completely out of control, and what made it worse was the fact that the vast majority of items had deadlines attached to them that if missed would have negative consequences.\u00a0 For example, year-end tax items needing to get done\u2026.is there any bigger joy killer than the phrase \u201cyear-end taxes\u201d? I would argue that there is not!\u00a0 And sadly, year-end taxes were only one of the projects with a set deadline that I simply couldn\u2019t miss.\u00a0 All of which added up to my state of panic this morning. In fact I am quite certain that I would tested positive for multiple DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria for Panic Attacks\u2026complete with accelerated heart rate, trembling, light-headedness, and a fear of dying\u2026okay, that might be a slight exaggeration \ud83d\ude42 , but seriously, I was feeling stressed!<\/p>\n
The problem with going into a panic is that it literally shuts you down from being productive.\u00a0 It causes you to become so focused on the fact you are feeling panic that you can\u2019t focus on resolving the issues that caused you to panic in the first place.<\/p>\n
Panic stems from your thoughts.\u00a0 And the best way I have found to overcome panic is self-talk \u2013 I literally have to become a parent to myself, saying \u201csettle down, it is all going to be okay\u2026let\u2019s walk through exactly what needs to get done and start on the most critical thing first\u201d.\u00a0 I know it probably sounds juvenile to have to talk to myself in order to calm down, but laugh all you want to \u2013 it works!\u00a0 It helps me to stop and step away from the panic and go into \u201cmatter of fact mode\u201d which is the voice of reason reminding me that I can get through this if I just take it one step at a time\u2026reminding me that it is all going to be okay if I just stop panicking and start focusing.<\/p>\n
And so this morning that is what I did.\u00a0 I sat down in a silent room and forced myself to get completely focused.\u00a0 No distractions.\u00a0 And then I went to work\u2026.and work I did.\u00a0 I worked in the most hyper-focused manner that I have worked in a very long time.\u00a0 I started busting out one hard task after another\u2026I didn\u2019t stop to eat\u2026heck I didn\u2019t stop to run to the ladies room (which is why I have to hurry and type this blog before I explode).\u00a0 I refused to let myself think about everything I had to get done and instead I forced myself to focus on one task at a time, completing one and then immediately beginning the next.\u00a0 I worked the entire day until a few minutes ago when I realized it is now past midnight!\u00a0 WOW!\u00a0 I had no idea it had gotten so late.<\/p>\n
Sitting here now I am shocked at how much I got done.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking really super hard projects that were intense!\u00a0 And I got a ton of them finished.\u00a0 If I could reach around and pat myself on the back I just might do it!\u00a0 Instead I am going to jump out of this chair and scream \u201cI AM AMAZING!\u201d Because that is how I feel right now \u2013 I was amazingly productive today and that is something to be proud of.<\/p>\n
Here is hoping you all have amazingly productive days tomorrow and a fabulous weekend of fun!<\/p>\n
~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up today with a feeling of panic.\u00a0 My list of priorities to get done had once again grown completely out of control, and what made it worse was the fact that the vast majority of items had deadlines attached to them that if missed would have negative consequences.\u00a0 For example, year-end tax items […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1021,174,1195,3376,2465,3378,122,3377,1072,571,2089,1975,3375,3379,3385,1272,3384,3383,3380,3381,275,941,1187,312,313,516,54,948,3382,250,2744],"class_list":["post-4276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amazing","tag-anxiety","tag-consequence","tag-cosequences","tag-deadline","tag-diagnostic","tag-distractions","tag-dsm","tag-fabulous","tag-focus","tag-focused","tag-hard","tag-panic","tag-panic-attack","tag-pat-on-the-back","tag-productive","tag-projects","tag-proud","tag-self-talk","tag-settle-down","tag-stress","tag-stressed","tag-tasks","tag-tax","tag-tax-return","tag-thoughts","tag-time-management","tag-to-do","tag-walk-through-it","tag-work","tag-work-hard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4277,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions\/4277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}