Ever had a week, or month or how about a summer that was so overwhelming, so chaotic that you simply didn't know where to start to get back on track?

You may not have any control over the thing (or things) that set off the chaos but you still have to deal with the ramifications. Often on top of the physical presence of the chaos there is also internal emotional turmoil that suddenly boils up from who knows where.

For example, this is going back to school time. For those of you who have young kids it often means the end to summer…sanity is around the corner. But for those of you whose kids are "coming of age" it may mean they are off to college and that could mean they're moving out of the house and sometimes out of state.

Regardless of how often you thought you'd be glad when the day came that they were leaving…now that it's here it can be a real emotional ringer. I've got several clients that feel like they are on an emotional rollercoaster for just this reason.

Added to that emotional turmoil is the feeling they have left so much undone during this time, they don't know where to start.

Or maybe you've been away for close to a week attending your company's annual event. You've been exposed to a lot of information. You're excited and rearing to go. But you're feeling overwhelmed. "Where do I begin" and feeling behind in your day to day life. So what do you do…often we do nothing.

Neither of the above examples are what train wrecked me this last week. But that is exactly how I feel overwhelmed and on an emotional rollercoaster. What caused the sky to fall for me? Technical difficulties.

My email account (Outlook) went down and I've been unable to access any of my files nor can I get or send emails. This is huge for me as I do a lot of my business using email. Believe me for the first couple of days, the sky was falling.

Loosing my folders would be awful and being virtually off line for a week has sent things into a real tizzy.

I felt so far behind that it seemed I'd never catch up and I was really at odds as to where to begin.

Where do you begin when this happens?

This is what I did and I hope the process helps you. I made a list of all the things I could think of that were lurking out there playing on my mind. All the things that were left undone while the distraction was taking my time…this newsletter was one of them. It was "due" on the 15th and here it is the 18th and still not out.

Once I got the list of projects in front of me that were undone (and making me crazy) it was easier (and much less frightening) to choose the first one to do.

In this case it was the newsletter. I decided that was my first project.

Did that fix everything?

No, I'm still behind and feeling angst (and Outlook is still not working right). So the next thing I did was stand back a bit and take a look at how I was dealing with the situation.

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