3 Steps You Can Take (Today!) to Beat Overwhelm as an Escrow or Title Professional

Few people outside the title/escrow business understand the hustle it takes to run a successful desk.

Maybe this sounds familiar to you:

You walk into your office Monday morning, Starbucks in hand, optimism in full effect, ready to conquer your workday.

Then you start scrolling (and scrolling) through emails.

And notice the red light blinking on your phone.

And the stack of files on the corner of your desk from Friday.

Overwhelm starts to set in, your shoulders start inching up around your ears, and your chest begins to tighten. It’s enough to make even the most dedicated of us want to run for our TikTok fyp.

You’re not alone!

When we spin out in overwhelm it’s because of our thoughts, and the feelings that those thoughts generate. Our brain is telling us that the tasks ahead are too much:

We’ll never get them all done (failure).
We don’t have an answer for that lender or agent (inadequacy).
We have to admit a mistake – even if we’re not the one that made it (vulnerability).

These unproductive thoughts lead to unproductive actions, which leads to more overwhelm.

But you can break that cycle.

Here are 3 steps you can take to start conquering overwhelm today.

Step 1: Get a Plain Journal or Notebook

Go into your closet and grab one of the seven journals that you started but never finished (or is that just me?).

Give yourself an hour for this exercise, and do it the same day/time each week. I find that Sunday mornings, coffee in hand, dogs next to me on the couch, is the best time for me. I’m in a relaxed state and thinking with the logical part of my brain (prefrontal cortex). You definitely don’t want to do this when you’re under pressure or already stressed.

Now write down all of the to-do items that wake you up at 3 o’clock every morning…the question you’ve been meaning to ask underwriting, the 1,000th email you need to send to the seller’s agent, your daughter’s soccer game that you volunteered to bring snacks for.

All of it.

You’ll want to start freaking out at the number of tasks on your list – but don’t! You don’t have to do any of it yet, or even at all if that’s what you decide. The point is to just get everything out of your brain and onto paper.

Step 2: STS (Schedule That Shit)

Go back into your closet, next to the stack of unused journals, and get out one of your unused monthly calendars.

It doesn’t need to be fancy or complicated, simple is actually best.

Open up your calendar for the upcoming week and schedule each task on your list.

Each task gets a time frame:

Email client – 7:30am – 7:45am

Walk at lunch – 12:30pm – 1:00pm

Stop after work to get soccer snacks 5:30pm – 6:00pm

Again, don’t panic! It’s your calendar, you’re in control. You get to decide what goes where, or even if it goes at all.

Schedule with kindness! Don’t sabotage yourself by planning an entire day, or days, of back-to-back tasks. You don’t need to be super-human to get it all done, just realistic.

For example, if you’re not a morning person, don’t schedule a gym session for 5 am. If you know your brain is typically dead by 6 pm schedule your high-functioning mental tasks before 3 pm, or, better yet, before work.

Pro tip: Schedule self-time FIRST. It can be as simple as taking yourself to lunch or dinner, even binge-watching Yellowstone (yes, you can still binge tv shows! Just schedule it). We know how quickly self-time goes by the wayside if we don’t make it intentional.

Also, think about delegating tasks when possible: order groceries online, use auto-pay for your bills, or even hire a house cleaner to come in once a month, if that’s feasible for your budget.

Step 3 – DO. THE. DAMN. THING.

Spoiler Alert: You will want to avoid this step.

Your brain will try to tell you it’s too hard or uncomfortable.

It will tell you to pick up your phone, head for the fridge, or go get more coffee.

Expect those thoughts. Be ready for them.

When they arrive just tell your brain to settle down, and then put on your big girl pants and get it done.

Five minutes of feeling uncomfortable beats two weeks of having that same task hanging over your head while you beat yourself up for not having done it.

Budget the time you think each item will take, then use ONLY that time, and move on. If you’ve underestimated how much time you needed then re-schedule another time to finish it.

Obviously, there will be circumstances outside of your control, but it’s your schedule, and you get to decide how to respond.

This isn’t about writing yet another to-do list, and it’s not about wearing our busyness as a badge of honor or feeling sorry for ourselves.

It’s about making decisions on purpose, then executing those decisions. We know what to do, we know how to do it, and we’re worth the effort.

Now, get to scheduling! I’d love it if you’d drop your comments below and let me know how this works for you, or if you have any questions!

Primal Vs Prefrontal – a Tale of Two Brains

Photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash

Did you know that, as humans, we function primarily from two different parts of our brain?

They’re the polar opposite of each other, and their functions are the difference between sitting down and working on a college thesis, or binge-watching Tin Star (highly recommend!) the whole weekend.

Let me introduce you to them:

The Primal Brain

Its job is to

1) Seek pleasure

2) Avoid pain

3) Be efficient (which, in this case, is NOT a good thing!)

Back in the primal days being full, being warm, avoiding uncomfortable situations, and thinking ‘inside the box’ literally meant staying alive. (We weren’t always at the top of the food chain).

The Prefrontal Cortex

This is known as the ‘higher-thinking’ brain. It’s the workhorse, the intentional, problem-solving brain, and it’s available to us 24/7. We can tap into it any time we want.

Most of us just don’t know how.

The primal brain is considered ‘efficient’ because it runs on default, which takes no energy or conscious thought to operate. Because of this, it tends to generate the same (often negative) thoughts so often, for so long, that they become our unconscious beliefs:

“I can’t do that”, “I don’t know how”, “I’m not good enough”, “Things like that are only available to other people, not me”.

But imagine for a moment…what would be possible for us if we decided to challenge those default thoughts? If we chose an INTENTIONAL thought instead? How would those intentional thoughts feel in your body?

We don’t have to choose an opposite thought right away because most of us have found that forcing positive thoughts doesn’t work. But we could decide to choose a thought we can believe, one that would serve us:

“What if I could do that?”, “What if I could learn how”, “What if I AM good enough, right now, just as I am”.

Pick an intentional thought from your higher brain, make sure it feels believable, and make sure it’s a thought that will serve you. Then journal that intentional thought, every day. Make it part of your routine. “I AM worthy, just as I am”. “I AM capable of learning this new thing”. “I can do hard things”.

YOU CAN RE-TRAIN YOUR BRAIN to think thoughts that work FOR you. Tap into that prefrontal. Make it intentional.

It will change your life.

I wish you all a very happy, intentional week!

And Happy Valentines Day my beautiful friends ❤️

Committing to Commit

So here’s the thing about committing…you can’t try to commit to something. You have to decide up front that you’re all-in, that it’s a non-negotiable. It’s getting up at 4am to get to the gym by 5am, now matter how sore or tired you are, or how comfortable your bed is. It’s staying home on a Friday night to write that thing that’s due by Saturday even though your friends are texting the shit out of you to go out with them to a club. Or the movies. Or dinner. It’s respecting yourself enough to honor the commitment you made, to YOU, in order to better yourself, or to better your situation. It’s not giving up on YOU, even though giving up on yourself is so much more comfortable, and, oh, so much more familiar.

Maybe you already knew all of this? I will admit it has taken me a very long time to figure out this piece. I’ve always been really good at deciding to try something new, and then beating myself up when I would (predictably) quit. Every time. No matter what it was…writing that paper, going to the gym, trying to find a different job. I would find a temporary, external motivation like a blog, a movie, or an Instagram post, and when the external motivation faded, so did I. I mean, after all what did it really matter? It was only myself that I was letting down, it’s not like anyone else was getting hurt?

Then one day, after beating myself up for quitting yet another thing, I found my answer. I noticed that, if a friend or family member asked me to go somewhere with them or help them with something, and I told them I would do it, then I would do it. I would show up for them, no excuses. Obviously they mattered to me so I wasn’t going to let them down? And that’s when I understood why I couldn’t commitment to myself, it was because

I DIDN’T MATTER TO ME.

I didn’t possess enough self-respect to follow through with the things I told myself I would do. I wasn’t important enough to show up for me.

You always hear people on social media and podcasts talk about how “we need to love ourselves”, and I was never sure what that meant exactly? I mean, it’s not like I hated myself, so, wasn’t that kind of the same thing? But then I remembered an epiphany I had once (a long, long time ago) when I realized that two people couldn’t truly love each other unless they also had respect for each other. So then, wouldn’t the same hold true for the relationship we have with ourselves?? I mean think about it…if I didn’t have enough self-respect to honor what I told myself I would do, then I didn’t really have self-love either, which was why I could repeatedly quit on myself. It’s because, at the end of the day, I didn’t honestly believe that I was worth showing up for.

That may sound sad, but it allowed me to wake up to the fact that I needed to start respecting myself. To understand that I WAS worth showing up for, and worth loving too, for that matter. I mean, would you ever say out loud to your best friend, or a loved one, the things that you say quietly to yourself? Would you ever treat them like they weren’t worth showing up for? YOU are a living, breathing human being, YOU are worthy of respect, and YOU are worthy of love. Doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or who you’ve been, or what your circumstances were in the past. You are a perfect creature made by God, or the Universe, or whatever you choose to believe. You are a part of this world and you are worth showing up for, so BELIEVE THAT, for your sake, for the sake of your friends, and for the sake of your loved ones.

So commit to something. Today. It doesn’t need to be something huge and scary, just start small. Commit to getting up a little earlier to spend some time in thought by yourself, or journaling. Start a morning routine that sets a positive, even tone for the day. Or commit to spending a half an hour – or one hour – a week doing something creative…color, paint, make something, dance, or go for a walk. Whatever it is, block out the time, and make it a commitment, a non-negotiable.

Because YOU are worth showing up for.

Please feel free to comment below, I’d love to hear your feedback.

And thank you for reading my little blog 🙂

-Vicki