Being stressed is not fun. Never achieving your goals is discouraging. When working from home, it’s so easy to get bogged down in tasks, to feel overwhelmed with things piling up on you, and to find yourself “working” way more hours than you ever would at a 9-to-5 job.

Juggling between work, family and your personal needs, you easily get sucked into the never-ending list of to-dos and end up feeling overwhelmed and stressed. I’ve found myself in this place recently. Again, I should say I know this because I’ve been there before. There are days you just look up and feel that your dream job of selling travel simply isn’t fun anymore.

Our Work Should Be Fun
And isn’t our work meant to be fun? At least in my book it is. The whole reason I started my own travel business was to create and have a lifestyle that I enjoy. So when I’m not enjoying it, and things aren’t going right or the way I want them to, the first step is to figure out why. For some crazy reason, my first thought is usually, “I really need to get organized.” Have you ever said that to yourself?

In my view, getting organized is not the solution. At least it isn’t for me. It’s usually a simple case of “justified” procrastination. It’s much easier to clean off my desk and organize drawers and filing cabinets than it is to just buckle down and tackle the tasks that need to be done. But first it’s important to identify the reasons that may have led you to the point of being so overwhelmed.

Avoid unrealistic expectations: The number-one source for stress and overwhelming anxiety is when you set strict expectations on a particular outcome. When things do not turn out the way we imagined, we feel a sense of failure between what we wanted and what is in front of us. I always try to remind myself, “This is not brain surgery…I’m allowed mistakes.”

Don’t take on too much: It is natural for us to want to win the approval of other people, and we don’t want to let others down. As a result, many of us, including me, aren’t good at saying “no.” Saying “no” is something that takes real practice, but when the end result feels right, it’s very satisfying.

I remember when I made the decision to send a letter to all of my clients letting them know that I had refocused my business to cruises, tours and vacations, and no longer handled “air-only” bookings. Saying “no” to airline tickets didn’t hurt my business as much as I had feared. Indeed, it gave me the time to focus on the clients and the exact business that I wanted.

Take some pressure off yourself: I can hear you saying, “That’s easier said than done!” A voice within our heads is constantly chattering and often reminding us what we’ve done wrong, or what could’ve been better, or why we need to get everything done yesterday. As a result, we place unnecessary and unreasonable pressure on ourselves.

Don’t be a perfectionist, overachiever or control freak: The same mental voice in our head also tells us that things have to be perfect. Being a perfectionist is a label, a story that takes a lot of energy to keep up and leaves us overwhelmed with needing to do everything perfectly.

An overachiever is another label we give ourselves. This one is a socially accepted and impressive. It makes us feel special, even admired. There is nothing wrong with having a lot of accomplishments under your belt. But having too much on our plate can also leave us feeling overwhelmed.

One of the resistances to releasing control is our lack of trust in other people, and trusting that they can do the job as well as us. So we end up doing (or wanting to do) everything ourselves. The realization that we don’t have the capacity to do it all can be daunting.

When my travel business grew to a point where I could no longer keep up, I became the bottleneck. I created not only an insurmountable mountain of work for myself, but also unnecessary stress. Once I “allowed” others to help, I experienced a sense of relief. It allowed me to concentrate on other areas of the business where I could serve a much more productive role.

I have found that people are amazing. Ask for help and be open to receiving what others are willing to provide. You never know what will happen. Just think, what’s the worst thing that can happen? After all, it’s not brain surgery!