Feeling the burden all your responsibilities looming around you? That is absolutely normal and a regular occurrence for everyone. The simple solution?  Follow our 5 step process to help you with your self-care.

1. Think local

Technology and the internet have made us so aware of everything happening across the world, we spend our time freaking out about problems outside our control. We need to engage locally and focus on issues in our own communities that we can actually affect to see some sort of progress. Reading yet another article on Brexit won’t.

2. You time

Concentrate on improving yourself before improving the world. Consider the things that you could be doing better because ultimately, our ability to affect the world is proportional to how much we’ve worked on ourselves. If you’re waking up and spending your morning posting on Twitter and arguing about violence in the Middle East, it’s going to feel hopeless.

3. Growth report

You have to realise that self-worth is just an illusion, and the approval and validation that most of us seek from the world will happen as a by-product of the growth within ourselves. We know what we could be doing better, so do those things better; as you do so, you’ll be presented with greater opportunities to affect others.

4. Pick your battles

Choose your struggle. Get rid of this idea your problems are going to go away; you’ll always have them. Instead of trying to avoid them, choose the ones you want to have in your life, ideally the good ones. Recognise you have that ability to decide which one you have entertained based on what you choose to focus on, and what you choose to focus on, and what you are happiest to act upon.

5. The outcome

People are surprised by how philosophical my new book is. It has helped people zoom out on what’s happening in our culture and to understand it from a much broader view. This intolerance for opposing views is a global thing and that’s worrying. Whichever side you think is evil, it’s not their fault – it’s far deeper 

Mark Manson started blogging in 2008 about big ideas, and now delivers life advice that doesn’t suck. Here is his take on today’s most important topics

Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson (£18.99, Harper) is out now