Feeling Overwhelmed In Life (And With Your Marketing)? Here’s Why Clarity And Strategy Is the Cure

I want to share something with you that’ll help you transform yourself and make massive changes in your life going forward.

It will make every decision you make feel so much easier and aligned with your heart…

Something that’ll help clear away frustration and apathy when you are feeling overwhelmed in life.

And, because crafting a self-reliant AF alternative lifestyle is our goal, how you can apply it to your marketing.

Continue reading, OR click here for the podcast version if you’re addicted to learning while walking, or driving.🪄🎧💫

Want to hear me say all this with hand gestures and dramatic pauses? Watch the YouTube version here.🪄 📺💫

We ALL know the feeling of overwhelm…

It’s one of the two biggest frustrations that restless and ambitious creatives I’ve worked with over the years tell me that they have had when they want to make a big life change.

Like starting an online business.

Or becoming self-employed.

They say, ”Where do I even start?,” and, ”I don’t have time,” both often tinged with so much overwhelm, they’re crying tears of blood.

Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but there are TEARS. Lots of tears.😅

I know the feeling well.

Moments of crippling overwhelm will happen a lot in life, especially when you’re running your own business.

Maybe even more often when you’re a creative or neurodivergent person.

You’re staring down your to-do list like it’s this living creature, like a hydra.

You cross one thing off, and somehow three more tasks appear.

Your creative brain is buzzing with WAY TOO MANY ideas like a beehive.

You’re rage-scrolling and getting into stupid arguments with people who are guaranteed to not have read a single book in the last year (or longer).

Or, you’re stress-cleaning the individual bottles of spice in your pantry because everything feels like too much.

Yep…been there…(especially the stress-cleaning part, my personal flavor of procrastination!)

You’re feeling overwhelmed in life.

But here’s what most people get wrong: Overwhelm is almost never about how much is on your plate.

It’s about how little clarity you have about what truly matters to YOU at a particular point in time.

I’ll explain why that is here, how you can gain clarity. I’ll also share one requirement to being able to act on clarity, and three practical ways of clearing overwhelm on a day-to-day basis.

You’ll be able to use these strategies in both your life and in your creative business.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed in life, it’s like a flashing neon sign from your subconscious saying:
“Hey sweetie darling, we need a plan.”

Not just another planner. Not just a cute to-do list.
A strategy.

If you’re overwhelmed by time?
Time-blocking strategy.

Overwhelmed by your weight or health?
Daily healthy habit strategy.

Money chaos?
Budgeting strategy or money manifesting rituals.

But here’s the critical thing to take into consideration:
No strategy works if it’s not energetically aligned with what you believe at a subconscious level about yourself and what is possible for you.

You could get a custom-made, thousand-dollar strategy from one of the world’s top coaches, and it would not work if you fail to do the inner work of energetic alignment FIRST.

And what I mean by ”energetic alignment” is what you TRULY want in your heart of hearts, with what it is that you are trying to do in your life.

Because it’s one thing to know in your head what you’re doing, but it’s another thing to know it in your heart.

Not JUST in your heart, either – you also have to train your subconscious mind to know and believe it as well.

We’re talking about the part of our mind I like to call the “brat brain” because it never does what we want it to. It does whatever TF it wants to do, and sabotages our progress.

But with an energetically aligned strategy and a lot of daily repetition following that strategy, we can change that part of ourselves, too.

And THAT’s where the magic for profound transformation starts.🪄💫

So, before you start hyperfocusing on colour-coding your calendar, take a pause.

Ask yourself:
How do I define myself now?
Who do I want to BE?
Would the truest version of myself be saying YES or NO to what I’m doing with my life right now?

Clarity comes from within.

Clarity is an identity project.

And once you know who you’re becoming, decisions get easier. You no longer hustle to “do it all,” which includes a lot of things that you don’t need to be doing at all. The things that aren’t helping you become who you want to be.

You start building a life that actually fits.

Overwhelm becomes less of an issue because that clarity helps you DITCH anything that isn’t an energetic match.

For example, you stop saying ”yes” to coffee catch-ups with people you aren’t really into. Or, before you spend two hours watching a movie, you’re checking the reviews to make sure it’s not a rotten tomato. You start creating boundaries and practicing things like, ”digital hygiene or digital sunsets.”

It’s like your thoughts and life go from being a pile of tangles and knots to a taut rope.

A rope you can now follow in exactly the direction you want your life to go. Like a hiker following a trail.

By the way, I have a free download that’ll help you gain clarity on your dreams and identity that you can use every morning. I’ll tell you how to get it at the end of this post.

But First, You Need to Give Yourself Permission

Here’s where most people get stuck: even when they do get a glimmer of clarity, they squash it with shame, doubt, or some inner brat whispering…

I’ve heard SO many people say things like, “But not everybody can be successful at what they try to do.”

They start listing all the reasons why people fail, from lack of privilege, money, skills, good parenting, to lack of sheer luck.

And while everything on their list may be a legit reason why many people do fail, the truth is, very few people even try to realize their BIG DREAM.

The thinking goes, ”Those people failed for those reasons; therefore, I might fail for those same reasons.”

So they just never start.

They do not give themselves permission.

It’s a fear-based belief that keeps people playing small.

If you believe that because so many people have failed for all those reasons that it means that you will also fail, you’re giving up before you even try.

Fail because you tried first and failed, not because of some other people’s experiences of failure, limitations, or their lack of privilege.

Go after your own experience.

Test the limits of what you’ve been given.

Because it may be a lot more than you realize. Which is to say, we often are not aware just how privileged we really are.

Success isn’t RESERVED for the lucky.

It’s reserved for the brave enough to begin and the bold enough to keep going.

So next time your inner brat brain starts hissing about how “you can’t have that,” just remind yourself that it’s fear talking.

Self-reinvention doesn’t need approval.

The cure for overwhelm is giving yourself permission to want what you want, followed by strategy and action that aligns with your vision.

So many people are lost, confused, stuck, and feeling overwhelmed in life because they are too afraid to say, ”HELL YES” to their own damn desires.

It’s the first REQUIRED step. You have to take that leap of faith.

That bet on yourself.

You have to start LEADING yourself in life.

I’m all about inspiring you to take action in pursuit of your biggest, most delusional-level dreams, but I’ll be honest here…

Rose-colored glasses are a requirement.

And that’s gonna feel cringe. Especially when you’re getting started and there is zero evidence of any success coming your way.

But if you want less overwhelm and more clarity and purpose in your life, then you have to be willing to get out of your own way.

Acknowledge your deepest shame, your ”ugly duckling” fears. Your impostor syndrome. And learn what you need to heal that part of yourself and to outgrow the fear.

This is how you connect with yourself at the level that makes transformation possible.✨

Now Let’s Talk About Feeling Overwhelmed in Life… Specifically in Marketing

Let’s bring it all back to life-changing tactics and strategies that you can use RIGHT AWAY on a day-to-day basis.

Consciously, when we feel overwhelmed, we think that it’s because we just have too much to do, right?

That we’re just too busy.

But overwhelm is never because there is too much to do. ❌

“OH HELL THERE ISN’T!”
I can hear you screaming. I feel you. I once screamed it, too. But trust me—stick with me here…

Overwhelm in marketing is kinda a noobie badge of honor.
Yay, you made it! 🎉

Welcome to ze club! Hair falling out yet? Good, good! You’re in the right place, darling! 🤣

But now it’s time to clear the damn fog before your spirit gets CRUSHED.

Before you start fantasizing about deleting your entire online existence and living off-grid with GOATS (which is also not a bad life choice, but also not for everybody!) 😉

Here’s the pattern I see on repeat with noob business owners:

You start your businesses, stars in your eyes, focusing on what I call the Awareness Foundation. It’s the first of the 5 essential foundations of marketing. Kicking off brand awareness is the fun, relatively easy stuff: setting up a website, coming up with a name, creating a logo, etc.

The Awareness Foundation is all about brand presence. The brand gets birthed, and it starts to take up space in the world. The goal of this stage of business is to make our dream customer or client aware that the brand exists.

Then you move into the Interest Foundation phase—creating content, building offers, getting the funnels flowing.

You start to feel like a real online biz owner. Yay!

But then…

The grind begins.

The spinning plates of keeping all those different platforms up to date with fresh new content. The never-ending content hamster wheel.

And worst of all?

The disappointing tumbleweeds on your posts or the ghost-town response to your opt-ins.

So you go back and read and study something new and try a NEW tactic…

Just to have the same experiences again.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Eventually, the excitement dies, and consistency drops off. Cue the marketing meltdown and overwhelm.

You start to believe that getting this BIG DREAM of yours to take off is going to take a colossal amount of time and effort. Way more than you could have ever imagined. It’s a crushing realization. It takes many people out of the game early on.

But darling—it’s not your fault, and it isn’t true.

And you probably have not done anything wrong.

You probably have just tried to do too much.

Because creative people are always trying to do too much – it’s our default mode. We think we can just figure it all out, creatively. But all we do is bury ourselves under the weight of our own perpetually re-spawning, Gremlin-like ideas.

So let’s diagnose the 3 areas where you’re taking on too much and what you could consider doing to reduce the overwhelm.

3 Ways to Reduce Feelings of Overwhelm in Life (and in marketing!)

You can apply these to any area of your life, not just marketing.

I’ll share some useful examples of each method to illustrate what I mean.

1. You’re Not Delegating Enough

For anything that you have to do again and again, look for ways to delegate it to other people.

Create workflows for every task you have in life. And I mean, every task. I have workflows for how I clean my bathroom. Workflows for how I run errands, pay my bills, contact friends, yup! I now know that a lot of these were coping strategies for ADHD to cure my excessive flakiness and forgetfulness when I was younger, but they WORK. They work so well for me.

In your business, you want to start documenting every workflow you dislike repeating. Record screen-share videos. Use Google Docs and Sheets to turn chaos into checklists that you can outsource.

Then start finding task minions. 🔍👀

As soon as you can afford it, hire a VA (virtual assistant) or a PA (personal assistant) (even just a few hours a month!) to take things you dislike doing off of your plate.

At home, this could be hiring help from Airtasker or a community Facebook group. You can find people to do your yardwork, house cleaning, returning unused packages or gifts, fixing things, running errands, or even selling the clunky food processor your ex bought for you that you never use.

Start delegating more tasks to your kids, husband, co-workers, other parents, or members of your craft club, for example. Maybe you’ll meet with resistance the first few times you make the request, but maybe you can match their energy elsewhere as a consequence.

”Not going to take out the garbage? Fine, I’m not going to take you to your friend’s house.”

And if you feel like you do more housework than your partner, although you both work full-time? Go 50-50 in on a house cleaner. Or, if you’re a clean freak but your partner isn’t, offer to get one, but you pay a bit more. Now you both can enjoy weekends off together without the buildup of resentment brewing because one of you doesn’t care about fingerprints on the fridge, but YOU do.

Delegating tedious, repetitive tasks as soon as you can should be the first thing you do to reduce overwhelm when you are running a business. You could be spending those 4 hours that house chores are sucking up each week, making 10 times what it’ll cost to pay someone to do it.

For the best advice on how to do it, read the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. It’s the best book I’ve ever come across on exactly how and when to outsource business tasks.

2. You’re Not AUTOMATING Enough.

While there are many downsides to living in a super techy era, there are more upsides to it if you’re making the most of what tech makes possible.

This is especially true with an online business.

Don’t love writing weekly emails? Cool—create a 12-email welcome automated sequence.

Hate daily social media posts? Create a 365 canon of evergreen, bulk-scheduled content you can just cycle through like a boss. I have a blog post on how to do that, by the way.

Ads, funnels, chatbots, autoresponders—so much of your lead gen can be set on autopilot.

Then, when it comes to daily life, a lot of life admin can be automated.

You can automate your bill payments, calendar reminders, birthday gift buying, your weekly basic grocery shopping, and even your nightly meals if you want!

It takes time to set up, but future you will thank you.

Still not realistic for you right now?

No worries. But if that’s the case, here’s your magic word…

ELIMINATION!

3. You’re Not Eliminating Enough.

Now, this is the most important one for creative people like us. The peeps with WAY too many ideas and interests:

Less IS more.

Less stuff and fewer commitments.

But hold up, less doesn’t have to mean boring. Stay with me here…

First, list out everything that you think you need to do.

Then, ruthlessly eliminate anything that isn’t directly helping you get to where you want to go in life.

In marketing, for example, if you’re a busy wife and mother with a part-time job and you want to grow your side hustle into full-time self-employment, be UBER RUTHLESS! Rein in your commitments to as few as possible.

You do not need to be on all social media platforms.

Pick ONE platform, ONE ideal customer, and have ONE clear message selling ONE offer.

Everything else?
CHOP. CHOP. ELIMINATE. ⚔️

Stop overcomplicating your marketing because you’re trying to prove your worth by doing too much.

Instead, prove your worth by knowing what really matters—and doing just that.

Then, when it comes to your daily life, stop saying yes to even the things that you may think you cannot say ”no” to. For example, Brook Castillo of the Life Coach School (and $50 million dollar entrepreneur fn bada$$) decided when her kids were young that she would not be ever attending their friends’ birthday parties. She just stopped going. Her kid could go. Her husband could go. But she put her big dream FIRST. She was there for her kids in every other way, but she decided she didn’t need to be with them at every event (especially ones she didn’t really enjoy herself!).

So that’s what I mean.

Be RUTHLESS.

I recommend two books that taught me the art of elimination and turned my life around.

The first was Essentialism: The Disciplined Art of Pursuing Less by Greg McKeown. It taught me to understand that the moment we say, ”priorities” we are trying to do too much. A priority should never be a plural. There should only be ONE priority.

Funny thing about that word is that before the 1900’s it was only ever a singular noun. Our modern life, which tries to cram in too much, has made it a plural noun.

The second life-changing book for me was The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. It teaches a similar thing: that when we focus on LESS, we get MORE results.

You can use the research-backed lessons of these two books to help you make changes in ALL areas of your life, not just your business.

One caveat for my fellow neurospicy friends here, though…

Sometimes, for the sake of staying interested and motivated, your neurodivergent brain may require novelty. Don’t limit yourself so much that you get bored – work out the right level of variety that you need, then FOCUS on one thing at a time in a regular rotation.

Also, gamify TF out of everything.

For me, gamification is my secret weapon for staying motivated and disciplined. It’s why I teach gamification in my SWAN Transformation mentoring programs.

For some of us, novelty is essential, but even novelty can be strategized!

Ready to gain clarity and start making massive changes in your life?

Feeling overwhelmed in life doesn’t mean you’re broken or that you’re weak.

It means you need clarity.

Clarity about who you are. What you want. And where you’re actually going.

Once you gain that, then give yourself FULL FN PERMISSION to go after it. Go ALL IN.

Then, and only then, can you build the strategy to support it.

Here’s a recorded Charles Bukowski poem to listen to when you waver. It was a poem he wrote for himself and fellow writers to remember that if you’re going to try – go ALL THE WAY.

So if you’re ready to reclaim your sanity and make your marketing feel less like a chaotic meltdown and more of a self-expressed strategy…

Download my FREE SWAN Transformation Marketing Strategy Guidebook

It’s a 30-page printable ‘map’ to show you all the steps to start and grow an online side hustle or business – in chronological order!

365 steps, in checklist form. In order.

It’s designed to help you clear business and marketing overwhelm so that you’ll focus on ONLY the right things at the right stage of your business.

Because so often I see noob biz owners getting confused with what they should be doing and when, so this is to help you avoid that.

For example, if you are just starting out and you are on a shoestring budget, you want to start with SEO (search engine optimization) because it’s FREE and it will give all your content a longer shelf life. Done well and for a long enough period, it can rival paid ads. So it’s a good thing to learn how to do before you can spend money on ads. It’s also super fun once you get the hang of it because it feels like a big game – hunting golden goose keywords and all!

I get super hyper-focused on keyword research, maybe a little too often, lol.

In the guidebook, you’ll also find a link to download my FREE ‘Exotic Life Manifesto Worksheet.’ This is a list of questions and exercises to help you get clarity on what it is that you want in your life.

It’ll help you build a business that is aligned with your true identity and goals.

And the SWAN Guidebook design includes PIRATES!🪄🦢+ ☠️

This free guidebook will help you stop spinning in overwhelm and start walking in clarity.

Sign-up for the free guidebook below!👇