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Anytime you find yourself overloaded with tasks and flooded with demands, it can be easy to become stressed and overwhelmed. This is not productive when you are swirling around in your mental soup and losing a lot of energy.

When we ask ourselves “What am I going to do?” We will step into reactivity and trigger the Fight-Flight-Freeze mode of stress response.

  • If you are in Fight mode, you will have tunnel vision on the problem and will resist by listening to the noisy loop of your inner dialogue.
  • If you are in Fight mode, you will be irritable and have a short fuse taking out your stress on those around you.
  • If you are in Freeze mode you may find yourself procrastinating, unfocused, and doing nothing to move forward.  This looks like reading email articles, scrolling on social media, or getting up from your desk to do other things like tidying up or getting a snack.

The secret to staying in Solution mode is to take a deep breath and ask yourself one of these questions:

  • How will I do this?
  • How do I want to approach this?
  • How can I set my priorities?
  • How can I ask for support with this project?
  • How can I meet this challenge?

Asking yourself “HOW” does not trigger reactivity as it does when you ask “what”, but rather asking “how” will shift your focus inward to become introspective. When you drop in to reflect on available options to meet your current reality, you can tap into your intuition and tune into your gut instinct to creatively problem-solve. Anchoring into relaxation and focus will support you to come up with your most creative solutions to meet any challenge.