It’s been a few weeks since I last posted. When I relaunched earlier this month, I was bound and determined to not skip a week. However, my anxiety started hitting the roof and kind of paralyzing me. After about two weeks of that fear, I realized that I just needed to pick myself back up and start again.

There are a couple of other ventures I’m working on, too. They’ve gotten off the ground and the next step is to get more traction. One day it hit me: people are going to see these websites. People are going to read my words. They’re going to expect content on a regular basis, and I’ve never been able to stay consistent for more than a month or two.

All of those thoughts sparked the anxiety. It took a few days, but I realized I was feeling imposter syndrome. How could anything I have to say make a difference? What if people think my writing is trash? What if nothing ever comes from any of this?

Well, I can’t control other people. If my writing is trash, then the only thing I can do is take the constructive criticism and become better. That realization brought on an old insight that I needed to remember: I have the power to work on myself.

To help quiet the anxiety, I began looking around at my physical space. I’ve always had a hard time being organized. It doesn’t come very naturally to me. Clutter feeds my feelings of anxiety and overwhelm. It’s almost a subconscious thing – the items littering the table or living room or my bedroom have this impact on me that causes my brain to freeze. When my surroundings are cluttered, so is my mind.

It’s this weird, vicious cycle that I decided to stop. Over last week after getting home from work, I would clean my junk off the table and out of the living room as best I could. On Sunday I decided to clean my room.

Yep. That was literally the state of my room. Every few months it gets that bad again because I get lazy about my routines or my depression kicks in. Honestly, it’s no wonder I felt overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious. Just walking around my room was a chore in and of itself!

Originally I wanted to take the whole day to clean my room, but there were some other important things that needed to be addressed. I spent one hour cleaning everything. Honestly, the last fifteen minutes I was exhausted. It got to the point that I started shoving things into an empty cardboard box. There were so many papers I needed to go through, but I was struggling with decision fatigue by that point.

This is what my room looked like after that one hour:

Doesn’t that look so much better? I could feel the stress lessen and I wasn’t as anxious. I mainly wanted to make my bed, clean the floor, and get my desk cleared. Check on all three. Everything that went into the cardboard box can be gone through at a later time. After putting in all that work, my room feels like a sanctuary again. Most importantly, I can sitt at my desk to write instead of at the dining room table.

Taking the time to clean my room made a huge difference. It was the reset I needed to feel confident again in my goals. I’m still a little nervous about putting myself out there in the world (who isn’t?), but now things feel doable.

You don’t need to set aside a whole hour for your reset. Thirty, fifteen, or even five will work perfectly if that’s what you need. You don’t even have to clean. There are a lot of things you can do:

• meditate
• journal
• read
• exercise/take a walk
• write a story
• paint/draw
• pray
• review your goals

Everyone has something that makes them feel refreshed. For me personally, cleaning does the trick. Once my space is clear, I can think clearly and focus. So far my room has stayed clean. Let’s see how long I can keeep it up!

How to you reset when you feel anxious and overwhelmed?