Dealing with Personal Style Overwhelm? It’s Ok to Take a Break

Your style journey is not a simple process, and personal style overwhelm with learning all the things can set in quickly.

I want to talk about something that goes against the grain a little bit, but it’s something that’s come up for me in several different conversations over the past couple of weeks. I want to talk about this because it is one of those things that happens to everybody. That is when you start to feel completely overwhelmed. 

You’re on this journey of trying to figure out your personal style which is a big task. So you get overwhelmed and stop doing all the things. You disappear and stop trying because it’s overwhelming and you feel like you’re getting nowhere. 

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The reality is that it happens to a lot of people in different ways. You may have heard me talk before about the first time I came across capsule wardrobes back in 2015. I was pregnant with my second child, and it was easy for me because I didn’t have a lot of clothes to manage. 

My attempts after that were really difficult and hard. And there were a couple of years when I just gave up. I did nothing. I didn’t focus on style or fashion in any form or in any kind of way. I went down the LuLaRoe rabbit hole and ended up wearing leggings and tunics for a while, which was pretty terrible. 

Then I kind of fell in love with a nursing brand called Latch Mama. And I wore jeans and their nursing tops for a while. In this period, I began to feel a pull again to get back on the journey. This of course led to me starting this business and developing all these amazing tools that now make so much sense. 

I want you to know that this is normal. I have even heard the same thing from prior alumni and graduates of the intensive course. There’s a reason it’s called The Intensive. It’s 12 weeks full of content. Over 60 lessons spread out over 12 weeks. That’s 5 lessons on average lessons a week with lots of homework and tactical assignments. 

When I asked how many hours students were spending on this each week it was common for people to be spending 2-4 hours on this journey. Several of them after finishing the course said they needed to take a break. It was so intense and they needed to stop focusing on it so heavily for a while. 

At this point in my journey, there’s no taking breaks anymore. I eat, sleep, live, and breathe this stuff now because it’s my business. I see it inside our free community. People will post their outfit photos and be really into the process, start gaining some traction, and then they just disappear.

I totally understand what happens because sometimes you come into this process thinking you feel frumpy in your clothes. You want to look better and need some style tips. You think that it’s going to be surface level and fix your problems. 

But, I’m not a surface-level kind of person, and that’s not what I offer people. I offer a full transformation process that requires you to learn a lot and dig deep within yourself. That can be super overwhelming because it’s a process of transformation, not a quick fix or a one-and-done solution. 

It’s truly an internal change so that you can have a long-lasting outward change. I can’t sell you a bandaid. It’s not who I am as a person. It’s not who I am as a business owner, and it’s not what I believe in. It’s not what God called me to do here. 

What I believe in and what I’ve created is so much bigger than just a quick transformation. So a break can be necessary and it can be beneficial because it allows you to take that time to rest and reset. Interestingly enough, when you think about it, rest is such a biblical perspective because God created for six days and then he rested on the seventh. 

Rest is a part of who we are as women on our faith journey and we need to take those moments of rest to take that step back. Last week I talked about reflection, which can be part of your rest process. But what I want to encourage you to do today is not to let your rest, your break, or feeling stuckness be permanent. 

I don’t want you to just quit. I want you to say, “I’m taking a break. I need to take a break and when I’m ready, I’m going to get back in here.” You have to also consider that this journey is a marathon. It is not a sprint. I once believed when it came to capsule wardrobes, that I would create this one capsule wardrobe this one time, and then I would be done. 

It’s funny. I’m sort of on this long ongoing really difficult decluttering journey because I have six kids, almost seven, and we have collected so much stuff over the years. It’s driving me nuts, and I’m so overwhelmed with it. 

In my head, I used to think that I was just going to declutter everything once and it was going to be fine. But the reality is things keep coming in. So I have to keep doing this over and over again. Style is the same way because we’re changing as time goes by and things are shifting for us. It’s not something we can just fix this one time and expect to move forward. 

Why You Feel Overwhelmed

The first thing I want to talk about here is why we feel so overwhelmed. What is it about a transformation that makes us feel so incredibly overwhelmed when it comes to this process? The number one thing is information overload.

I know that I am very guilty of being a give-you-everything kind of person when it comes to information. And sometimes that’s probably not needed. I’m just a very analytical and research-based person. I like to get as much information as possible, and then try to present it to you in a way that is as simple as I can make it. 

As a complex person, perhaps, sometimes I’m not simplifying it enough. You have too much information which can be so overwhelming. It can also be paralyzing. You look at this journey and, if you’re in the free Facebook group, you see people posting. 

You may see so many things that don’t make sense to you because people are in different places on their journey. It can feel like you don’t know what you’re doing or what to do next. There’s so much here to think about – colors, style, capsule wardrobes, minimalism, style words, style goals, and all these different things.

Fear of Failure

The second reason that people often get overwhelmed when they’re making these kinds of changes is because deep down they fear failing. If you stop, you’re not failing. You’re choosing to stop. It’s not a failure if you choose to stop. 

The thought of failing and maybe not figuring it out makes people nervous, anxious, and feel overwhelmed. This is that head stuff that you have to overcome. I would like to encourage you that there is no failure when it comes to your personal style. 

Every day you’re getting up and you’re getting dressed. Most of the time anyway, unless you’re staying in pajamas. There’s no failure because you have to have clothes on your body to be socially acceptable. You don’t have a choice. So failure really isn’t an option here. All you can do is just gain momentum forward. 

Often people will come into this process with really high expectations. They think they are going to go from being uneducated and not knowing anything about their personal style to Kate Middleton in a month. And I’m here to tell you, that is not going to happen for so many reasons.

You may not ever be a Kate Middleton because everybody has their own style and trying to fit yourself into that box can be hard. You have to manage your expectations. As I said earlier, it is a marathon, not a sprint. 

It’s something that you have to go through, journey through, and dig deep within yourself. Take the time to process, experience, and learn as you go. Whatever learning speed that you have, that’s the speed that you’re at.

Lack of Structure

The other thing people feel overwhelmed by is that there is a lack of structure. However, I want you guys to know that this should not be something if you’re in my group and you’re paying attention to all the stuff we put in there. You should not feel lost.

There are several different ways to go about having a map here. The first thing here is if you’re in the free Facebook group, go to guides. At the top, the first thing is a content catalog. It’s a Google spreadsheet that has every podcast episode and blog post that I have ever done. It is all here. 

The links are here for you. There’s a search function with directions to help you find anything you’re looking for. This is just one way that you can get help. You also have the Wardrobe Roadmap which walks you through the steps of your style journey. 

The mindset piece that weaves through all of it. Dealing with color, personal style, wardrobe, and some of the stuff that comes after you’ve kind of nailed your wardrobe in this ongoing management of your wardrobe. It’s all here. 

There are pieces of training, documents, different videos, relevant podcast episodes, or blog posts. All of this is condensed really well for you. If you don’t want to have to comb through a big spreadsheet, this has the information pulled out that’s in a cohesive order. It’s laid out for you carefully and specifically so that you can figure out where you are and where you’re headed next. 

Social Pressure

Another reason that people feel overwhelmed when they’re making these big transformations is because of social pressure. We worry about what others think about us. Sometimes when we’re on this journey, the feedback that we get is not always positive because people come at us with their own expectations, thoughts, aesthetics, and ideas.

That is not always a positive experience. People can get frustrated by that and feel overwhelmed and decide to quit because they’re not getting positive feedback. They’re just getting random feedback. Our Facebook group is full of positive feedback. 

We have rules in place that keep negative feedback at bay because we know that this can be overwhelming. Sometimes people want feedback. If you want feedback in this group, you have to ask for it in your post because we have a rule that says if the person doesn’t ask for feedback, no feedback is allowed. 

Sometimes people just want to post and feel loved on. They need a virtual hug to feel good about themselves, and they don’t need to be torn down by feedback. Whether it’s critical or not. Know that when you post in the group you are protected by our rules that keep that to a limit. 

Taking a Break

It’s okay to take a Sabbath from style if you need to. I fully understand that sometimes it’s too much. In this context, I tend to work about six days a week because I’m finding pockets of time here and there. After homeschooling and in between cooking dinner, I’m working in the middle all the time. 

There have been seasons where I’ve worked seven days a week and I felt overwhelmed with the content, thinking about it all the time. I’ve recently re-implemented a Sabbath Saturday. If you notice, I don’t comment or do anything on Saturdays. 

I’m not available to even do anything from a social media perspective. It’s because I turn off my style brain and my work brain. I’m not thinking about this. I’m taking a break. And it’s okay to take those breaks, however, I want you to get back on track.

5 Steps to Get Back on Track

On that note, I have five different action steps to help you get back on track. For each of them, I have a couple of questions that you can ask yourself. To see if this is going to help you think about getting back on the horse and getting back into your style journey by figuring out what you need to do next.

Evaluate Your Progress

So the first thing you can do if you are stuck if you’re taking a rest and you’re ready to get back on track, is to evaluate your progress. You need to take a step back and look at what you’ve accomplished so far. Because I can guarantee you that if you’ve been working at this at all you have small wins.

You’ve learned amazing things, and you need to stop and think about how far you’ve come. Even if it’s only two steps. Two steps are better than no steps. The first question that I would like for you to ask yourself is what is one accomplishment in my style journey that I am proud of? 

Maybe the accomplishment is just not wearing pajamas every day. It doesn’t have to be huge, but I want you to note one accomplishment that you’re really proud of. Number two, have you noticed any changes in how you feel or how you present yourself since starting this journey? 

Do you feel more confident when you go out in public? Do you feel more authentic in the clothes that you’re wearing? Do you feel like you can be more present with the things that are important in your life? What are the positive changes that you’ve noticed since you started the journey? Because I guarantee you that they’re there. 

Where Are You Getting Stuck?

The second action step that you can take to get back on track is to identify where you are in the process. I’ve seen this come up a couple of times, people will come into the group and they’re new, or they come into the membership and they’re kind of new and they don’t know what to do next. 

This is why I specifically laid this out for you in the roadmap. Have you figured out your colors? Have you nailed down all of the stuff with color? This is the first place to start. If you’ve done this, if you’re super confident in your colors and have a great color palette, then you should be moving into exploring your style. 

Then you have to manage your wardrobe in between. The Wardrobe Roadmap will help you delve into these areas. If you have nailed your color but still don’t understand your personal style, this is where you should be focusing your attention. 

So ask yourself these questions. What was the last meaningful action that I took on this journey? What is the last thing I learned and put into practice? Am I stuck at a particular step? And if you are stuck, why are you stuck? 

Is it because you don’t understand the information? Is it because you need some help with the information? Is it because something is going on inside your head that is keeping you stuck? I see this happen so much when it comes to the style portion of the journey. 

When it comes to body types or essences or figuring out which clothes fit those two different areas. I see people get stuck here a lot because we have so much internal dialogue about who we are from our past and society and cultural expectations that it’s really easy to just get stuck and stop right here and not be able to move forward.

Revisit Your Original Goals

The third action step to take to get back on track is to revisit your original goals. Why did you start doing this? What was the impetus that put you on this path? Why did you suddenly decide to get interested in color analysis or want a capsule wardrobe? Why are you doing this? What do you hope to accomplish? 

What motivated you to embark on this journey initially? And then since you started this journey, have your goals changed? Do they need revising? Did you start this journey thinking that you were just going to learn about color analysis and then realize all these colors feel overwhelming?

Do you want to simplify? Maybe you started this journey thinking you wanted a minimalist wardrobe, but you’ve realized it’s not you and you need something a little bit different. Think about why you started and if you need to revise the direction of your path. 

Get Support

The fourth thing you can do when you’re on this journey, and for those of you that are in the free Facebook group I know you’re here doing this, is seeking support. If you’re in the Facebook group, you’ve got a supportive community. 

Even if you’re quiet and you’re lurking and you’re not posting just know that me and my admins take it very seriously. Creating a supportive, loving community of faithful women. We are all diligent in maintaining this atmosphere and this community in that way. 

Creating rules and boundaries to make sure that this is a safe place for Christian women to explore their style without being judged or being put down or being insulted for anything that they think or say or post.

We are here to support you, not to tear you down. There are a few questions you can ask here. How can I regularly check in with my support network to keep myself accountable? Maybe you’re at the place in your journey where it’s time to start posting some outfit pictures. 

Maybe that’s the accountability that you need if you’ve been quiet and watching. Also, the question is, if you are doing those things, if you’re looking at support and you’re getting some accountability in the group and you’re still overwhelmed and needing a break, is it, do you need more help? 

Do you need more support? Is it time for you to take that next step and get more help? The Radiant By Design Collective may be what you need right now. You get so much stuff inside of this membership. There are so many lessons from your self-image, mindset, gratitude, looking at your identity, and even looking at your purpose. 

You’ll get extra affirmations and a whole workbook on wardrobe harmony. Lessons are talking about self-care and taking care of yourself so that your body feels good. There’s more stuff too. Like a capsule wardrobe planner, which is huge. 

One of the things that you get in here is the opportunity to ask me questions. You can post comments and questions, and I sit there and talk about these questions for as long as needed. If you need help, this is a ridiculously inexpensive way to get some nearly one-on-one help.

Try Again

The final thing I want to say is that if you’re feeling stuck and overwhelmed on your style journey and you’re on the verge of quitting or you have quit, and you’re ready to just get back in there and try again, go to the source of all wisdom. Spend some time in prayer and reflection. 

If from a secular perspective, you could take a style journey and leave God out of it. But as Christian women, we’re not supposed to leave God out of anything that we do in our lives. He’s supposed to be the author of everything that we do and how we look is no different. 

Are you seeking his guidance? Are you asking for emotional strength? Are you asking for clarity? Are you asking him how he wants you to show up? Ask yourself what specific guidance or strength am I seeking from God at this moment. 

Is where you’re at in your overall life in alignment with where you need to be, how you’re showing up, and how you’re, how you’re presenting your image? Are you in that place? Also, are you, are you praying? Asking him what he wants for you? Are you asking him what changes he wants you to make in how you show up, how you look, and how you present yourself to the world? 

When I think of the show The Chosen, one of the things that I think about is the costuming. If you look at the way people were dressed back then it becomes clear that the way we approach style and fashion now is such a modern thing. It’s only been around for about a hundred years. 

Once upon a time, people had a handful of clothing items and they didn’t obsess and think about these things. There are some bible verses on how we should present ourselves as women especially, how we should appear and how we shouldn’t be vain. 

Verses about what to put on and what not to put on in different contexts. But we live in a modern society that does unfortunately create a little bit more confusion in our heads about these types of things.

Final Thoughts on Personal Style Overwhelm

I just want to encourage you that if you’re stuck and you’re ready to quit or you have quit, before you do anything else really on the list pray about it. Ask God how he wants you to communicate yourself to the world. When you feel inspired by Bible verses, journal down the answers that you get. 

Do some word studies on these verses that talk about how he wants us to show up. Know that it’s normal and it’s okay to get stuck and to feel overwhelmed and to want to quit or to quit. But don’t stay stuck. Don’t stay out of the game here. Get back in, jump back in, and move forward. 

The idea at the end is that your style, what you wear, and how you look, is no longer a decision or a thought. It should naturally be a part of who you are. As simple as walking into your closet and deciding to wear that rainbow scarf today. And have that be the hardest decision that you make. 

You don’t worry about how you look and you don’t worry about how you’re coming across because you feel so aligned with who you are on the inside and who God has created you to be and the person that he is making you into. None of these things are a struggle. It should just be a natural reflection of who you are.

Related Signature Style Articles:

• 3 Tips to Get Dressed Faster Every Day
• Real-Life Strategies for a Successful Low-Buy Year
• Tired of Feeling Frumpy? Try These 4 Steps to Create Your Perfect Wardrobe

These are some gentle action steps to evaluate your progress, identify where you currently are in your style journey, and get back on track faster so you can overcome personal style overwhelm.