When you find yourself feeling overwhelmed in your business, it can feel impossible to move forward.
Often this stems from overthinking.
For example, let’s say you’re about to send out a pitch email to a company. Before you hit send, you think, “This person won’t get back to me.” Or, “This subject line sucks.”
Suddenly, it’s a struggle just to hit the send button, because you’re thinking about everything that could go wrong.
Instead of focusing on what can go wrong and creating unnecessary problems, what if you were to focus on solutions, systems, and action instead?
When you do this, it flips a positive switch in your mind…
Allowing you to send the email… and another one… and another one.
If you learn to focus more on the enjoyment you get from crafting the perfect email and the potential that comes with sending out multiple emails, instead of dwelling on one company possibly reacting negatively to your email, sending out emails every day becomes easy.
This positive switch keeps you going and encourages you to continue reaching out to companies that you can offer your services to. Falling in love with the process of getting clients and growing your business will bring you gradual results… and keep you from fixating on any single result.
You’ll see a boost in clients when you set your intention on how you can help… and you measure success by the actions you take rather than the results you get from any single action.
The secret is to find consistent actions you can take over time… and then, not to quit.
Implement this blueprint for overcoming analysis paralysis, so you can take continuous action toward your goals.
Avoid Overthinking
People tend to overthink things because of perfectionism, uncertainty, or fear of rejection (or some combination of those). This is normal. But, if it’s keeping you from taking action, you need to find your way around it and get to the root cause.
Here’s a step-by-step way to do that:
Step 1: What’s your poison?
Choose what you think is the likely root of your overthinking: perfectionism, uncertainty, or fear of rejection. Get a piece of paper and write one of these down as a headline. This will give you a starting point to work with.
Step 2: Do a brain dump.
Underneath that headline do a brain dump. Get every worry, fear, and traumatic experience creating limiting beliefs down on that paper. This doesn’t have to be in a list format. You simply want a visual of everything in your head, so you can begin to free your mind.
Step 3: Set your priorities.
Next, set priorities — these are things you’ll work on first, because you think they’ll have the biggest impact. Based on what you put down during your brain dump, make a list of three to five thought patterns or experiences that make you feel anxious as a writer. For example, maybe networking in person makes you feel overwhelmed, because you’re introverted and prefer to talk online.
Another example might be, if a company asks you to work on a project that’s out of your scope of practice, it brings up a fear of not being competent. Whatever your biggest worries are, write them down.
Step 4: Create a counter behavior or mindset.
Once you identify the situations and thought patterns that cause you to overthink, you can decide how to counter those. For example, if you feel overwhelmed doing in-person networking, you might focus on LinkedIn networking instead. Or, you might find you enjoy networking opportunities that encourage one-on-one conversations more than group small talk.
If a client asks you to take on an unfamiliar project, and your immediate reaction is to panic, you might remind yourself in those situations that you have solid writing skills and the ability to apply them to new project types.
Countering overwhelming thoughts is a gradual process. It may take some time before the thoughts stop cropping up, so be patient with yourself.
The more you do it, the more you’ll feel ready to take the actions you need to build your business.
More Strategies to Beat Overthinking
Doing the four-step process above whenever you’re feeling stuck can help you move from analysis paralysis to action.
In addition to that process, there are specific strategies you can use to free yourself from each of the big three culprits: perfectionism, uncertainty, and fear of rejection.
If you struggle with perfectionism, remind yourself that every writer improves their skills on a continuous basis, no matter what level they’re at. It’s a never-ending process.
Get rid of your perfectionism mindset by doing the following:
- Identify what triggers it and how you can respond. For example, if it’s that you don’t feel good enough, maybe ask a friend to remind you of your talent and hard work. If it’s that you’re disorganized, maybe take a half hour to tidy up your desk.
- Recognize everyone makes mistakes and that learning from them will help you feel accomplished. This is how everyone grows, and you want to grow!
- Tell yourself what your strengths are and be open to improving your weaknesses.
Uncertainty often stems from a limited state of knowledge. Whenever you feel uncertain about sending an email message to a prospect, writing an effective blog, or understanding the components of a sales page that converts, it may mean you need to do more research to help you move forward.
To move forward when you feel uncertain, you can:
- Focus on what you can control and what’s in your power to do.
- Open yourself up to new ways of doing things and new possibilities.
- Identify what, specifically, you’re uncertain about and seek out an answer.
Fear of rejection occurs when you put all your chia seeds in one basket. (I’m vegan, so I prefer chia seeds to eggs.) When you put your hope in one business to hire you, it can bring up feelings of inadequacy.
When you need help overcoming fear of rejection, you can:
- Release your expectations, so you’re not disappointed. Don’t expect people to want to work with you. Simply reach out and don’t focus on the outcome.
- Remind yourself of your worth and the skills you have to offer.
- See rejection as redirection and an opportunity to grow.
You’re not inadequate. Maybe that client who said no wasn’t the one you needed to work with. Remember, there will always be companies that say, “No”… but there will also be some that say, “Yes.” People are waiting to say yes to you, but you have to reach out to them. Don’t get stuck over the no’s you’ve received — instead focus on getting your next yes.
Tools for Letting Go of Overthinking
Letting go of overthinking isn’t something that happens overnight, but there are some tools you can implement to help you.
Meditation is an excellent way to calm your thoughts and center yourself. You can listen to high-frequency music or binaural beats in a quiet space or while you’re out walking with your headphones on.
Add this to your daily routine before you start working or whenever you feel overwhelmed.
Play to your strengths. Are you good at SEO? Are you good at email marketing? Are you good at networking? Ask yourself what you’re good at and do more of that to keep you feeling upbeat.
Use deadlines. Break through analysis paralysis by setting a deadline for each task you need to finish. Share your deadlines with your clients or with another writer friend. Knowing a project has a due date is often enough to push overthinking onto the back burner, freeing you to take action.
The Power of Consistency
Whether you enjoy networking, social media, reaching out to businesses, or studying… create a schedule you can stick to, and then stick to it! This is a key component in achieving success.
Experiment with time goals and task goals. An example of a time goal is spending a half hour a day sending emails to prospects. Sending five emails a day, on the other hand, is a task goal.
Both are good… and both can help you build momentum toward reaching your goals. So, find what works best for you.
Being repetitive with business-building tasks can give you consistent results.
Don’t rush your success. For example, being consistent for one week on LinkedIn won’t do the trick. But one year on LinkedIn can deliver amazing results.
Enjoy the process, strive to work with businesses that make you feel happy and fulfilled… and, most importantly, keep working toward what you want to accomplish.
