If you are feeling overwhelmed yourself, you are not alone. Thinking of writing a bestseller, selling millions of copies, getting a movie deal and living a luxurious lifestyle feels good while you’re in dreamland. However, once you get back to reality and its time to get things done… overwhelm creeps in.

When this happens, authors usually get stuck. The more you don’t get things done, the more overwhelmed you feel. This leads to a plummeting of self-confidence and more unpleasant remarks from the not quite supportive people around you.

Getting out and staying out of overwhelm will make your life more productive and stress- free.  You’ll be feeling more accomplished and your self-worth will rise. What’s most important is that you will be able to get your message out and change lives.

If you are feeling overwhelmed about making a bestselling book or about anything else in your life,here are 3 practical tips that you can use immediately…

1.     Empty your head consistently. The feeling of overwhelm intensifies the more you have on your mind. The more things you have on your mind, the lesser you’ll be able to accomplish.

To solve this, get yourself a brain dump notebook. This can be a physical notebook like a small memo book or a 3-ring binder type. Or it can be a digital one like your smart phone, ipad, or a word document. What I use personally is Evernote (evernote.com) because I get to access and synchronize it anywhere I am from my iphone, web browser and desktop.

Make sure you empty your brain all the time, no matter how insignificant you think it is. Regardless if it’s a thought to change the batteries of your remote control, a possible twist to the book you are writing, a marketing idea or a country you want to visit some day.

What’s important is you put all your thoughts in one place out of our head and not on different scraps of paper or sticky notes that end cluttering your workspace. Go back to this list periodically so you can pick those you can take action on, put on a project folder or calendar. This is vital because you want to train your brain that the info is in one location it can Trust to go back to, everything is there and it won’t get lost. Then, your brain can let go of the thoughts, freeing you of overwhelm and allowing you to focus on your tasks at hand.

2.     Be Outcome and Next Step Focused. With every item on your Brain Dump list, ask yourself, “What is the outcome that I want?” Define the successful outcome that you want.Then, define the first step to get that item moving.

For example you have the item ‘book signing’. Ask yourself what this means to you and what end result you want to happen. Perhaps the outcome you want is to have 500 people show up and buy your book at your local bookstore. Now, ask yourself what needs to happen first to move this forward. You may say, find out more about setting up this kind of event in your local bookstore. So what’s the first step to getting this information? Is it a google search, calling the bookstore or going to the store itself? If you say make a call, do you have a phone number? No? The first physical step to get this moving then perhaps is to search yellow pages for your local bookstore number phone number. That’s easily doable than ‘book signing event.’  Now you have a clear next simple action step to get your project moving.

3.     Give yourself more love. When you beat up yourself for not getting more done than you want; when you say yes to everyone else’s needs and leave yourself exhausted with more things on your plate than you can handle; when you pressure yourself that everything has to be perfect; or when you put yourself down for not knowing enough…You get yourself in deeper overwhelm.

So take care of yourself. Get the rest that your body needs, learn to say no, acknowledge yourself for the things that you did get done. Remember that perfection does not exist. Thatimperfect action is much better than no action. And that what you know is enough. Tell yourself that you love YOU unconditionally no matter how things turn out.