How to stop feeling overwhelmed right now

Transcript:

Hello everyone and welcome to the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about overwhelm, and I know there's some people out there that are feeling this right now. Now, when times get tough, when circumstances change, when we have a lot on the plate, we can feel this, just overwhelming sense of overwhelm. We just have so many things going on and we feel like we have to do it all at once and it gets so stressful and then it's just like we can't get anything done because we're just so stressed out now. I have felt this so many times in my life and I'll just be honest, in the past few years I have felt overwhelmed more probably than. I ever have in my entire life, and that is because my travel schedule has gotten insane in the past couple of years now coming out of the pandemic. Uh, where I was at home, I was a little bit introverted already, so it was kind of easy for me to be at home a lot and work from home and work with clients. Uh, that was very simple for me. So coming out of the pandemic and having so many engagements and places I had to go, meetings I had to take in person speaking engagements. Meetings that were really high pressure. Meetings. I'm talking with corporate CEOs and heads of companies and Fortune 500 companies. I mean, it's been insane and I'm so grateful because my life is totally changed by facing those fears and dealing with this overwhelm. But I will be honest. There were times when I wanted to cancel the trip. There were times when I didn't want to go to the meeting. There were times when I was so stressed out about the hotels and, you know, setting up just everything, like the flights and just all the meetings and the dinner meetings. I just, I felt so overwhelmed. So I'm going to be giving you some tips throughout this podcast where you can start to apply these things anytime you are feeling overwhelmed in your own life and you can start to apply them in a really practical, easy to follow manner. So when I was feeling the deepest sense. Of overwhelmed when I just had so many things in my head. One of the greatest things I ever started doing was writing out everything that was inside my head. I would write it down in my daily playbook. That's my go to journal. It's one that I created. It's a one stop shop, right? I got your gratitude in here. It's a 90 day course to check in with yourself to know how you're feeling in the morning, at night. And I studied some of the greatest minds and people that had achieved the most in life to write this book. And you know, there's really great quotes of the day and there's daily actions and all kinds of things, but I'm not trying to sell you on the book. You can do this with any journal, but whenever you're feeling overwhelmed, just know that that just means there's a lot of thoughts in your head. There's just a lot of talking going on in your head, and all you gotta do is pour that all onto a page. Just pour it all out. Don't question it, don't think about it. Just anything that comes into your head, just dump it all on the page. And they call this brain dumping too, so just put it all on the page. And after you are done, when your brain is quiet, if you can get to that level where your brain is just totally quiet, like, wow, that feels so good because you put it all on the page. And when you're looking at the page, then prioritize. What do I actually have to do today? What do I have to do in a week? What do I have to do in a month or two months or three months or sometimes it's a year away, but that is going on in our brain. It's like we have this voice or several voices that are just like going at us and nagging at us about these tasks that we might not even be able to achieve right now. It's like having gridlock traffic in your brain. You have so many cars in your brain that you can't even function and you become paralyzed to even move. You just. Kind of sit with all those crazy thoughts going on and all the honking horns from the traffic. And the way we get rid of that is to take all those cars, all that traffic, put it on the page and then put the cars in place that we could actually move towards their destination and when we're able to do that. We start to move with so much more flow and ease. And what's cool about the daily Playbook is it encourages you to do just three things, three major goals for the day. And by Major, I mean we get to decide what that is. So it could be laundry. I mean the laundry has been on my list more than once. It's not meaning like major, like you have to achieve some monumental feat every single day. It just means something that's major to you, something that's going to take a few hours or take up a big chunk of your energy or your time. So you put those things down and those are the main things you want to focus on that day. So when you look at that list of all the things that are going on in your brain. You can then start to organize them in a now, later way into the future kind of list. So you could just say now, next, later you just put them into those piles. So what are you going to do right now? Those are the things that are the pressing issues that you really need to be worrying about. And the other ones you don't really have to worry about. So you get to clear those off your plate. And this helps us so much because then we aren't so overwhelmed with all these different tasks just bombarding us. Now, there are going to be times when you're more busy than usual and you do have a lot of tasks to get accomplished in that day. But remember this, we as humans are not great at multitasking, and we can only do what we can do. So we have to give ourselves some grace in our pursuits. And to know that we are not great at multitasking, like I said, you know, there have been tons of studies on this. There have been scientists putting electrodes on people's brains and testing them in all different types of ways. And we've come to the conclusion that most people cannot multitask very well. Something loses out whenever you try to multitask, so think of it this way. You know you have 100% energy to focus on something. If you are focusing on this video and you are watching me, and you're not checking something else on your computer or watching TV while you're doing it, you're giving me more of your focus. So you might be giving me 100% focus right now. Now if your dogs running around and you're paying attention to that, maybe you're giving me 75% focus and if you're doing multiple things at once, you maybe aren't just like hearing just a little bits of this and that's OK. Yeah, I mean, it's all for your benefit. That's why I do this, so. What I'm saying is 100% energy going into one task means that you're going to actually do that task really well. So if you take away all the distractions, so say you you need to write an article. Maybe it's for school, maybe it's for SEO for your website. Or you have to write an e-mail to a client or to somebody else. If you give that 100% of your focus, meaning you don't have your phone on your desk while you're doing it, you're not watching television, you're not listening to distracting music. You are just with your computer. You're writing that e-mail, and you're not thinking about what you have to do later. You're just 100% in. That e-mail is going to be a lot better. That SEO is going to be a lot better. That article is going to be a lot better than if you're distracted. I remember in school there would be a lot of times when I would be reading a book and I would have something else that I was thinking about in my head, something I needed to do and I knew like it was a chore and my dad was going to be home in a little bit. And I just had that in the back of my head. And I'm trying to do my homework. And I'm just thinking I better go do that chore before my dad gets home. Because as I was reading that book, I couldn't retain anything that I was reading because my mind was just talking to me about that chore I needed to go do. So what did I do? I would close the book and then I'd go do the chore. I'd come back to the book and then I'd be fine. And then something else would come in and I'd have to do the thing all over again. So it just shows that when our brains are chaotic, when there's a lot going on in chatter, it's hard for us to focus. So we really want to quiet that noise as much as possible. And the same goes when we're with someone, you know, when we are in front of someone. One of the greatest gifts we can give them is our full presence. Just being completely present and in the moment with a friend. I did this last night. Friend of mine was going through a really challenging time and was talking to me about some changes he wanted to make in his life and he started crying with me. And me just being there, I didn't have to know everything to say. In fact, me not talking actually helped more just listening to what he had to say and letting him figure it out and holding the space for him. As a coach, that's one of the greatest things we can do. And as a friend, that's one of the greatest things we could do. Or a family member. It's just to be there with that person. And I was giving him 100% of my energy and my focus because of that. It just flowed. And by the end, he was telling me like how thankful he was and what how good of a friend I was. And it really meant a lot. It touched me so deeply that he felt so heard and supported and felt like he had a path forward. And I don't wanna get into any details about it because I always respect my friend's privacy and everything but. It was powerful. And the reason I'm mentioning that is because when you give that focus and that energy and you're not overwhelmed when you're around people you know, have you ever been in the presence of somebody who's overwhelmed? They just look like a squirrel, just like they're just all over the place and you just want to be like. Freeze. Well, that's one of the best things that we can do when we're overwhelmed is to breathe, to meditate, to slow things down, to be present with the moment. And that chaotic energy is really draining for people. You know, if you're around somebody that's always just all over the place. It doesn't really promote a lot of connection because that person is always in the future worrying about what's coming next. A person's not in the moment. And that's what overwhelm does. It takes us from this present moment where all the magic is. You know, when you have a great experience with someone, it's usually in that moment where you just look into their eyes during something really cool. It might be a lot of things going on around you, but you're the I have the storm. There could be chaos all around you or fun all around you, but when you're in that centered. Space. Maybe it's a kiss. You know, we all remember those amazing kisses in our lives where there could have been a lot of noise, fireworks going off, but when we kiss we have that moment of just connection, pure presence. And it's like all the chaos and all the things going on around us, it just all fades out. That's what it could be like when we really tackle overwhelm is we quiet all the noise and all the chaos and we can really be. Where we're meant to be, which is right here, right now. And I just want you to think about sometimes in your own life. When you have maybe fell overwhelmed. And something broke you out of it. Maybe it was a moment of fun or laughter. Recently I was in DC with my parents and we were just running around from monument to Monument and seeing so much in a very short period of time. But two of my favorite memories from this trip were there was a moment where I just looked into my mom's eyes and I just loved on her. I just told her I loved her and how happy I was to be there. And how cool this was that we were getting to experience this together and it was just like a simple. Just moment of presence and gratitude and I could feel she felt it and I felt it. That was an amazing moment. And the other moment was with my dad. Where we were just running all around the Air and Space Museum. There was so much to see and me and my dad are total nerds for anything space. We just love it. We think it's so cool and we were just looking at everything and taking pictures and just soaking it all in. And there was so much to read and to see and to do. But then I just grabbed my dad. And we looked at Neil Armstrong's suit when he first walked on the moon. We just looked at it, and we were just in that moment with that. And we posed for a photo. And it's one of my favorite memories from the whole trip. And it's just so interesting because. I saw so many things. I did so many things, but those moments of just pure connection. That's what I take with me. And when I think over my life, the moments where I've been the happiest, the moments where I've had the most fun, were those moments where I just connected with a friend or family member and we just shared a laugh. You know, sometimes laughter can just be like those amazing moments. And if I was overwhelmed in those moments, those moments wouldn't have happened. And I just wonder how many moments we rob ourselves of because we have this weight of overwhelm. We're worried about, you know, paying the bills or we're worried about what's coming in the future. If you're like most of us, right? We've always gotten through it. You know, if you're watching this video right now, you've gotten through a lot of challenges in your past. And odds are you're going to get through a lot more in the future. So instead of feeling the stress and this overwhelm which does no good for our bodies, it just releases stress hormones into our bodies instead of doing that, if we just get really present and focus on what is in front of us, we can save ourselves so much heartache. So much stress and we can have so much more fun with our lives. So try these little tools out. I'm telling you they will help writing down everything that's going on in your head and prioritizing it. I'm telling you it's one of the best ways to release overwhelm. Meditation is a wonderful tool. Breathing breathwork? You can study Wim, Hoff or other experts in Breathwork. It's really just great to get present and in the moment, because when you're present, you're truly here. When we're worried about the past, we're not here. When we're worried about the future, we're not here. But when we're in the present moment, we are right where we're meant to be. We are right here. Thanks for listening.