Have you ever wished you had your own personal easy button (you know, to make your life easier)?

For busy high-achievers, life certainly has its moments. And sometimes, with all our big ideas, big projects, big goals, and big lives, life can seem . . . hard. 

Okay, not seem hard. Sometimes it’s a really difficult challenge. But here’s the thing. We don’t like to believe or admit this, but for many busy women, WE are the biggest obstacle to a life with more ease and less stress. It’s true. A lot of the time, with a few simple tweaks and adjustments, life could be easier. Heck, even the tough stuff could be less of a struggle.

Without making it too complicated, here are a few ways you might be able to make your life easier, less stressful, and more fun.

1.      Preserve your brain space. In a complicated life, your brain, your thoughts, and your mental energy represent valuable real estate. Don’t waste this on places that don’t matter. Consider what you can ritualize or turn into a routine or system that doesn’t require a lot of thought. For example, plan your menus weekly instead of feeling overwhelmed each evening with the “what’s for dinner?” question, then save your grocery lists and weekly menus until you have four or five weeks of them. You’ll never have to start planning from scratch again—unless you want to.

Make it easy: What routine tasks stress you out and how could you create a better system or routine for getting them done (preferably in batches)?

2.      Prioritize and schedule. Before you dive into your day, it’s worth taking ten minutes to plan for success. Identify both what your priorities are and when you are going to make the time for them.

Make it easy: What important to you that’s always falling off your radar? Ask yourself whether you’ve really designated a place for it in your life. If you haven’t, do so now.

3.      Gather your mojo. Even the hardest jobs get easier when we have reasons for doing them that inspire action and passion. If you need convincing, just think of the people who run into burning buildings to save someone trapped inside. A compelling “why” will allow you to move mountains. It will also help you move past fears of public speaking, procrastination, and even weight loss plateaus. If you are feeling stuck or uninspired or paralyzed, try asking yourself why you are attempting what you are attempting. Why is it important? What is the result you are seeking? What possibilities or options will completing it create? If that reason isn’t compelling enough, dig deeper.

Make it easy: Are there areas of your life where you are stuck or uninspired but feeling pressured to do “it” anyway? Dig for your “why.” Keep digging until you discover what it is and you can approach the job with the sense of meaning or importance it has for you.  If you can’t come up with a compelling enough reason to move forward, it’s worth asking why you are pushing yourself to do it.

4.      Ask for help. This is the place where I find the most instant ease. It seems so obvious, but it’s also a place we tend to overlook—all the time. Other people have answers and skills and talents that we don’t have. It’s more fun to do something difficult in the company of others. It’s also a whole lot easier not to get trapped in mindsets that sabotage us when we are moving forward with someone else.

Make it easy: Where are you flying solo when you might really benefit from delegating, bringing in a partner, a mentor, an expert, or a friend?

5.      Approach yourself and your life with kindness. Ditch the perfectionism. Reward your progress and recognize your efforts. Treat yourself as you would a good friend or your mother—and pay attention if that’s entirely different from how you normally judge and talk to yourself. Be open to tweaking and readjusting instead of trying to force things to happen. See your progress as an experiment. Be open to what works, and see what doesn’t as an opportunity to self-correct, not as a failure.

Make it easy: Are there places where your own harshness or your strict expectations are getting in the way of you feeling at ease to move forward? Where does it currently feel like you are “forcing” or struggling when maybe you could change your approach and find an easier path?

There are so many ways that we can over-complicate things or sabotage ourselves. The good news is, there are just as many ways that we can step out of our own way and lighten our own load. I’d love to hear from you. What have you found makes the tough stuff easier? Leave a comment and share your success and your favorite strategies.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Stress, overwhelm and overload are a perfect recipe for emotional eating and overeating.

This is one reason that so many high achieving women overeat. One of the trickiest things about feeling time-crunched and rushed is that it usually seems like you can’t afford to take any extra time or energy to step back, get a handle on the situation, or figure out how to do it differently.

“I’ll just get through this and start fresh on Monday,” is a typical approach, and in the meantime, the stress eating and other emotional overeating continues to be an ineffective bandaid or coping strategy that usually contributes its own additional stress to the situation (because you don’t feel good about what you are doing).

When you are stressed and overwhelmed, you don’t have a lot of time, so here are some quick tips that I use to feel better, stay focused, and avoid overeating and emotional eating. These are not tips for the long haul—no one can operate with too much to do forever, but using these tips can help you get through a stressful time with minimal overeating and stress eating damage.

How not to overeat when you have too much to do:

1. Plan what you are going to eat. It’s basic, but we tend to overlook it don’t we? Working through lunch and being starving at three o’clock when you are under deadline doesn’t cut it (and leads to overeating). Make sure you have meals to eat that are balanced and have protein to help even out your energy.
2. Don’t keep everything in your brain. Make sure you have a document somewhere that lists everything you have to do and remember. Dump it there. You’ll be amazed how much energy and stress this saves you.
3. Break your to-do list into small items and cross them off as you work through them. You want to create a breadcrumb trail so you can see movement, so you can see where you are going, and so you can see that you are being effective.
4.  Set mini goals. Sometimes we have to live fifteen minutes at a time. Know what your focus is for this fifteen minutes of your life. Set a timer and give it your all. If you feel tempted to stress eat, try delaying for fifteen minutes. Set the timer and choose a task to focus on–or take a break.
5. If you can’t figure out where to focus or if you can’t maintain a focus either pick any one thing on your priority list or take a fifteen minute break. By the way, a break doesn’t mean skimming your email or mindless eating. A break means walking away and clearing your mind. I go for a run or go make a cup of tea. You might go outside and breathe, take a short walk, go fold a load of laundry or even do some dishes. Don’t spend your break worrying—remember, it’s a reboot.
6. Speaking of walking away, don’t eliminate physical activity when you are stressed. It not only lowers stress and reduces overeating, it gets you out of your head and helps you refocus.
7. Have a stopping point each day. Do not let work and emails saturate all the areas of your life. Do not charge your phone in your bedroom if you can help it.
8. Don’t sacrifice sleep if there is any way around it. Getting consistent good sleep curbs overeating and emotional eating and will give you energy, focus, and creativity to be more productive with less time.
9. Sprinkle in lovely rewards, treats, and indulgences that are not food. Put on music, wear a color that you love, light a candle, use the great lotion that you’ve been saving. Put flowers on your desk and call a friend at the end of the day. Something as simple as savoring your coffee in a comfortable chair instead of drinking it while you are hunched over your computer screen can shift your mood, replenish you, and keep you going.
10. Say it out loud and make a commitment. Acknowledge, at least to yourself, “I’m stressed and overwhelmed, but it’s not going to always be this way. I’m going to do my best as I get through this, and that includes taking the best care I can of me.”
11. Rinse and repeat these tips until this episode passes, but remember, they aren’t a recommendation for how to live your life long term. Life’s too short to live on a hamster wheel of surviving and not thriving, so if you don’t see an end to this episode, get the help you need to move forward differently in the big picture.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

When you are struggling with too much—whether it’s too much weight, too much to do, or just too much stress, setting goals and deciding to change can feel impossible.

“I know where I want to end up, but when I look at how far I have to go, it feels overwhelming,” a client in one of my emotional eating coaching programs shared. “How am I going to make all the changes I need to make? When I look at the weight I need to lose (135 pounds), I feel hopeless.”

When you are overwhelmed, overloaded, or overeating, the hole you see yourself in can feel pretty deep. If your stress level is high to begin with and your calendar is crowded, thinking about your weight loss or life balancing project can exhaust you before you even really get going.

What do you do when change seems insurmountable?

Dream big and step deliberately. This is a theme that has been coming up quite a bit with my private coaching clients and I want to share it with you.

If you are a high achiever who expects a lot of herself, this can be a delicate balance, but it’s the key to really getting where you want to go, not selling yourself short, and not creating a lot of stress and overwhelm that sabotages your success.

Here’s what you need to do.

Set your GPS. Define your destination. This is the big, bold, juicy place where you want to end up. Don’t short change yourself. Dream big. Your vision is about thriving not just surviving. Set your sights on what you really, truly want. It’s okay if your goals feel too big to even wrap your head around.  This is your vision. It’s the destination that’s off on the horizon. You don’t have to get there tomorrow, but you do want to be navigating in this direction. In the meantime, your focus is going to be on your feet.

A marathon is just a series of steps.

I began running marathons a few years ago. In the process, I’ve met a lot of people with incredible stories—women who went from not being able to walk two miles to running 26.2. Women who lost 100 plus pounds and changed their lives—inspiring stuff. But here’s the deal. They didn’t do it (and I didn’t run my first marathon) by simply going out and running 26.2 miles right away. We set our vision and then we put our trust in a series of actions and smaller goals—which we took one small step at a time. We ran a marathon by taking a first step. And then another. And then, as it got easier, a bunch more.

When I trained for that first marathon, I never looked farther ahead than the week I was in. It would have been too scary. I had no idea how I was going to run a marathon, but I could take on the challenge of that week’s training plan. When I got to the starting line in Portland, I didn’t think about mile 25 or mile 26 (I never do). I thought about the first mile.

Getting where you want to go doesn’t need to be overwhelming, and it shouldn’t add stress or overload to your already busy life. Set your GPS and then focus on where you are going to put your foot down next. Take steps—steps that are the size that work for you. As long as you keep your feet moving, and your GPS calibrated, you’ll be fine.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Mind clutter—a mind overflowing with thoughts, worries, projects, to-do lists, feeling and ideas—leads to a lot of problems. Mind clutter contributes to overload, stress, procrastination, lack of focus, burnout, clutter outside your mind, and emotional eating and overeating.

Overeating, or reaching for food when you aren’t really hungry, is a common response to feeling overloaded, ineffective, or short of time. And that’s how too much mind clutter can leave you feeling.

It’s easy to become caught in a vicious cycle (I call it the hamster wheel), when your mind is on overload. It can be tempting to resort to stress eating, or to overeat because you feel too overwhelmed to really take care of yourself. Overeating adds to any feelings of being out of control (and now having one more thing to deal with). You have so much in your head that you feel like you don’t have time or the mental space to do more than react, and you soon overeat again. Maybe this time you aren’t craving comfort, but you want an energy boost, or a reward, or a distraction.

The point is, the cycle of mind clutter contributing to emotional eating contributing to mind clutter continues, and you stay stuck. Plus, it feels awful.

My suggestion? When you focus on tools to stop overeating, don’t ignore the mind clutter. Taking control of the overwhelm can create a profound shift in both your emotional eating and your life.

Here are some tips to get started.

• Don’t rely on your memory. It doesn’t matter how well it works. The point is, it takes a lot of energy and creates stress when you store too many details, events, and things to do in your brain and expect yourself to be able to track them. Like a computer screen constantly being “refreshed,” you are continually going through the act of sorting through what you need to remember, prioritizing, and making decisions. That’s a lot of work. Write everything down. Designate one place (one notebook, app on your phone, or file on your computer) and do a brain dump of everything you are thinking about or worrying about daily. Now you don’t  have to remember it anymore.

See the mental space you just created?

• Create a punch list. This is not a comprehensive list of everything  that you want to accomplish in the next six months. This is the list of 1—3 priority action items you are giving your attention today or this hour or for the next fifteen minutes. Choose a time frame that works for you and honor that important task or experience with your full attention.

•  Give your brain downtime. Too much clutter creates anxiety and tension. It does not encourage restfulness and relaxation. But a periodic “reboot” is exactly what you need to get off the hamster wheel. Give yourself at least 7 ½ hours of sleep and aim to spend at least ten minutes a day simply “being” and tuning in to the world around you.

 Giving your mind practice at being calm instead of spinning at top speed is a good thing.

Addressing mind clutter creates a shift from being caught on the hamster wheel to being proactive and in charge. That’s where overload begins to dissolve, and peace with food and all the good stuff that comes with it, really begins.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

If you are you a busy woman, a business owner, or mom with too much on your plate, here are three easy ways to start moving from stress and overload to ease, abundance, and success.

1. Set the tone. Your busy brain finds and collects the information that it’s looking for. If you want to spend your day focused on stress and overload, begin by worrying about what you haven’t done. Want more ease and calm? Set an attitude focused on accomplishment and positivity.  List three things you are grateful for before you even get out of bed and review three things that you WILL accomplish today. Put on music that inspires and create and live in positive energy.
2. Don’t ignore the food and don’t deprive yourself. Ease and calm require consistent fuel. Eat something for breakfast that has protein in it. This will tide you over much better than a bagel or a bowl of cereal or the nothing that you usually feed yourself. Give yourself a short deadline (two minutes is plenty) and decide NOW what you will have for lunch and dinner if you don’t already have a plan. Unmade decisions create stress. Hunger and low blood sugar lead to bad decisions and (often) overeating.
3. Slow down. Rushing, even when you are busy, rarely makes anyone more productive. Focus does. Hold on to your vision of ease and calm and your three priority tasks. Do one thing at a time. In a world of mutitasking and Twitter, giving your whole self over to a task can be grounding and even meditative. Really. Ask yourself throughout the day where you want to place your energy in this moment. Close down the other windows on your computer, let your phone go to voice mail, and let the other tasks wait until it is their turn. Enjoy the job you dive into, the feeling of undivided attention, the conversation you have while being fully present, and the lunch you get to savor.

This is the only life you are going to live today. Be in it.

How do you release stress and create calm and ease in your busy life? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Happy New Year!

I’m back in the office today after taking two weeks off to spend time with family, enjoy the holidays, unwind, and relax. My mind is full of new ideas and I am so excited about the possibilities that 2012 holds for all of us.

I have a message to deliver. You are capable of more than you think. And it gets even better. Odds are, you are capable of accomplishing amazing goals with less stress, and more ease than you currently see possible. If you are overwhelmed, overloaded, or overeating it’s very likely that you can untangle some stuff, have less stress, do less, and create better results. Not by working harder, but by taking simple, do-able steps that make sense for your life.

I’d love to help you keep a focus on this kind of focus in 2012. This year, I’ll be in more frequent touch, with bite-sized tips and information to help you break free of the three Os (overload, overwhelm, and overeating) and create more ease, joy, and success.

January is a month when there is a lot of momentum and emphasis on moving AHEAD, starting new things, and setting intentions, goals, and resolutions for the year ahead. I hope that as you do this, you also spend some time reflecting on the twelve months that have just passed. Here is what I know. We underestimate what can happen in twelve months when we look ahead, and when we look back, we often forget much of what we have done.

For some of you, it’s much easier to see what you didn’t accomplish in 2011 than what you did.

Please don’t stop there.

As you dive into this New Year, I want to encourage you to do some reflecting.

Make a list about 2011. Include everything you can think of that you accomplished, everything significant, life or lifestyle changing that happened, and anything that you survived or overcame. Take note of where you spent your time and energy. Write it all down. You might be surprised.

Don’t stop yet.

Go back through your calendar from 2011 and remind yourself where you were and what you were doing eight, nine, and twelve months ago. Get a clear picture of where you were last January. You might be surprised. When I reviewed my year, I find all sorts of growth and changes that had become so routine that I had stopped noticing them. New habits, new ways of eating, heck—I moved my office in 2011 and radically changed my work schedule. It works so well, I almost forgot to add it to my list of accomplishments!

Last January, I had a vague goal of “someday” running the New York City marathon. In February, I had the unexpected opportunity to work with world-class coaches who encouraged me to set a clear plan for doing so. In May, I ran a half marathon I’d never thought of running with the goal of finishing with a time that qualified me to run in New York City (this was a time goal I had never thought possible for myself). Running that time was amazing. And in November, I accomplished another huge goal. I hit the streets of New York City and ran in a race I’d dreamed of running for years. I never dreamed all that would happen back in January, 2011. But it did.

Don’t forget the positive changes that you’ve maintained over the past year. Sometimes it takes great effort to keep things the same. Have you kept weight off, maintained a fantastic relationship, stuck with your yoga practice or your commitment to me-time? These accomplishments count and they count big.

I’m betting some things have changed or you did some things you forgot about in 2011. If you are like me, you may have accomplished major goals that weren’t even on your radar twelve months ago.

My point is this—don’t sell yourself short. Knowing what you are capable of and knowing what you have done and have endured or survived can be a major source of power and confidence as you step into your bold new year.

I will never encourage you to live in the past, but I want you to take from it what can propel you in the directions that you want to go.

What did you almost take for granted about 2011? What unexpected fantastic new living may await you in 2012?

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Maybe you haven’t lost the weight you committed to lose this year. The days are shorter and you aren’t exercising the way you planned. Or perhaps holiday overeating is well underway and you’ve decided it’s hopeless—for now anyway. Are you one of the many women who is now ending her sentences with the phrase “in January” or “after New Year’s”?

• “I’m going back to the gym . . . in January.”
• “I’m going to get back to (fill in your favorite weight loss plan here) . . . in January.”
• “After New Year’s, I’m going to get serious about my eating/stress/_______.”
• “I know I’m an emotional eater and I’m going to get some help with that . . . in January.”

Yes, it’s the holiday season, and for many of you it’s busy or challenging in its own way. And in spite of what you may be thinking, it’s exactly NOT the time to give up on yourself or to put yourself on hold. In fact, you have three weeks of your year remaining. This is time when you can have an impact, nurture some new habits, and prevent yourself from having to dig yourself out of a hole come January 1st. And guess what? It’s possible to do all this without adding to stress and overwhelm.

How to jumpstart your success before the New Year

You doubt me don’t you? The truth is, the holiday season may not be the time to overhaul your life or your habits, but it’s a fine time to start building the kind of incremental change that can work wonders—because this is exactly the kind of change that tends to last. Instead of throwing your priorities to the wind or declaring that there is “no time for me,” this is a time when you can start to build your sense of effectiveness in small but powerful ways.

Your December Jumpstart has two steps

Pick the area of your life that you’d like to focus on. Eating? Managing stress? Physical activity? Self-care? Now think small and think do-able. What’s one small consistent step that you can and will commit to over the next three weeks? This should be something that you want to start or some fragile habit that you want to commit to nourishing and maintaining. If you feel doubtful about your ability to take this step, you aren’t thinking small enough.

Warning: Thinking small is a real challenge for many of you because you are high-achievers. You are likely to devalue small steps and automatically double them. Don’t do this. It won’t work for a jump start.

• Examples of a small step:
• Taking your vitamins every day.
• Drinking eight glasses of water a day.
• Taking a ten minute walk at lunch.
• Spending five minutes every morning writing in your journal.
• Asking for help with something once a day.

Choose the small step that you will commit to and simply start moving forward.

Another warning: You may be tempted to choose many small steps. Again, one small step may not seem like “enough.” The truth is, huge change is built on the backs of small consistent steps, AND taking on too many things at once can lead to a breakdown in all of them. If you are tempted, you can choose two or three small steps, but no more.

Step Two: Commit to me-time.

If you aren’t already doing this, this may be one of the most valuable steps you ever take. And if you start doing this now, you are going to be well on your way to a powerhouse of a new habit by January 1.

Here are the rules of the Jumpstart: commit to taking ten minutes a day connecting with yourself. That’s it. Ten minutes listening to you. It might be ten minutes of quiet meditation, ten minutes of journaling, yoga, or stretching. Maybe you’ll do it on a ten minute walk or while drinking your morning coffee.

Don’t over complicate this, and don’t underestimate its power. These ten minutes will help you stay clear on your priorities, your feelings and your needs. They can help you identify what is going well in your life, what’s stressing you out, and how you want to respond. These ten minutes have helped many women before you with everything from emotional eating, relationship stress, procrastination, overload, overcommitment, and a general lack of mojo.

Yes, you can throw in the towel, call it a year, and check back in with yourself on January 1st. But what might you accomplish if you start really learning the art of do-able self-care today?

Take good care,

Photo Credit

Melissa McCreery

Stress eating is one of the most common types of emotional eating and stress is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain—especially for busy women. Knowing that you want to eat healthier or stick with reasonable portions is one thing. Figuring out how NOT to overeat when you’re overloaded, overwhelmed, and just-plain-stressed-out is another. “White knuckling it” only goes so far (that’s when you hold on tight and try to rely on pure willpower). When you are trying not to stress eat, you’re eventually going to need something to do instead of turning to food.

Melissa McCreery

What holds you back?

• A busy life?
• Too much stress?
• Inner doubt?
• Frustration with yourself?
• Feeling like you aren’t enough, don’t have enough focus, or need to lose ten pounds first?

• Less stress
• A healthier lifestyle
• A lower number on the scale
• More professional satisfaction and success
• Happier relationships

Melissa McCreery

You know that vibrant health, a winning attitude, and the weight you dream of would be easier to achieve if you took better care of yourself. You’ve lived the reality of getting too busy and watching your good intentions, your workout plans, and your resolve to lower your stress slip off your radar.

Melissa McCreery