Hey, my friend, what is up? And welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big. I am pumped to have you here today, because today's episode is going to be all about how to overcome being overwhelmed, things that we can do to prevent it, especially with this time of year. I don't know about you, but anytime the holiday season comes, I'd say the same thing. Every single year I always say, like, all right, I'm going to get myself organized. I'm not going to be waiting till last minute. I'm not going to be running around with a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get everything done and getting overwhelmed and being stressed out, I'm gonna get it all done ahead of time so that I can just enjoy the holiday season. And so, I'm sure you can relate to that feeling of overwhelm and just the stress of it, and even if it's not due to the holidays, I mean being overwhelmed and stressed out is just something that we all go through, especially these days, it's really easy and really common to get overwhelmed. You know, we have kids. I mean, think of all the things that we have going on. We have kids. We have kids, sports after schools. We have relationships. We have relationships to maintain and improve and work on. We have homes to take care of. We have careers and businesses, and the list goes on and on and on, and then add on now, this time of year, where the holidays are right around the corner, and it's just really easy to let it all consume us and make us feel overwhelmed, right? And I just hate that feeling, because all it does is produce anxiety and stress and too much overwhelm can be really bad for you, because it just increases that level of stress that's put on your body.
So while there is no way to completely eliminate being overwhelmed, we can really and truly work on keeping it in control as much as we can. There was actually a study done back in 1991 that showed people with higher stress levels having a higher risk of heart problems and mental health issues than those who didn't. So physical and mental overwhelm happen when we don't control this feeling of being overwhelmed. And the stress isn't just all up in your head, it can also affect everything physically too, including like your blood pressure, your digestive system, your sleep, so many different areas. So if we don't do anything about this, that wear and tear on your body can be really bad and dangerous for you now, and I will say, in the world that we live in now, it's really easy to be caught up in doing something every single second of every single day, right? Like this, go, go, go. Mentality grind away. Doesn't matter what you do. You've got to do something if you sit down to relax, you feel guilty, right? But our brains and bodies are not equipped for that. Our brains haven't caught up to the way that the world is right now, this fast-paced Go, go, 24/7 mentality, it's just not there yet. We're not meant to have that constant stimulation twenty four by seven, and especially now with social media and things like that, it makes it even harder to really let your mind and body relax and not be so overwhelmed with, you know, wanting to do all the different things, right?
You know, it's like, you wake up in the morning and your alarm goes off, and then you grab your phone, and it immediately starts right, like, Oh, let me check my messages. Let me just scroll on Facebook, let me check my email. We don't want to do that. We want to try to move away from doing that. And it just puts all this extra toll on your body, and if you don't learn how to control it, eventually it's going to break you down. Eventually it's going to be like, whoa, like, let's put the brakes on here. You're doing way too much. And you know, because you'll start to feel that feeling, you know, that feeling where you're like, doing things all the time, and you're feeling energized and. All of a sudden, time goes by and you're like, Whoa. I feel like I hit a brick wall. I feel like I just got slammed with a Big Mac truck. My body just feels exhausted. My mind feels exhausted. I feel like I just need to take a nap, right? I just had this happen not too long ago to me. For the last like maybe two and a half weeks, it has just been an excessive amount of things that needed to be done, from trips that I had to take to planning birthday parties for my husband my father, getting gifts for both of them, planning a big birthday party for my husband, trying to get a new business up and running off the ground, you know, keeping up with the podcast, trying to revamp my mindset, course, and turn it into a membership. You get it all the things. And it was just a couple of days ago where it finally hit me. And this is so unlike me, I usually do go to bed at a pretty good time, but I was like, You know what? I need to go to bed super early tonight. And I went to bed and was asleep by 8:30 believe it or not, and I slept for a full 10 hours, and again, woke up today feeling, you know, I don't know. I think I might needed one more night of that good night's sleep, and that's totally okay to do that. So how can we overcome this overwhelm that we all have? Because we all have it. First off, overwhelm is really just your body's way of saying, slow down. Right? Like, slow down. There's not much left in the tank right now. So can you just freaking chill out for a second, Buddy, please just chill. That's really what overwhelm is.
So when you feel overwhelmed, it's basically your body signaling you to slow down. It's basically similar to the check engine light going on in your car, right? It's a warning like it's alerting you, like, I need help. Slow down. Do less. Take a step back. Rest a little bit. Listen to your body and the answer to this light flashing in your body, alerting you that all right, I'm getting overwhelmed. I'm super stressed. Isn't to just push through and push harder, right? The answer is to stop. It is to just stop. Because if you continue to push through this, you will end up working yourself into the ground. And what's going to happen is, because of all the stress on your body, it's not going to be able to take the toll, and you'll end up getting sick, and then it'll set you back even further. So this overload can be, you know, mentally, it could be physically, it could be emotionally, it could be all of the things. And you really need to start to pay attention to this. And when you're feeling it. Just recently, I started to switch up my workouts. I had been doing at home workouts for like, 15 years, and I had just decided that, you know what, I think I'm gonna switch this up. The weights here kind of they're not heavy enough for me, especially for the lower body workouts. So I said, You know what, I'm gonna start going to the gym with my husband. Even though I hate the gym, I hate the gym, I just I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like everybody's looking at me. I feel like everybody else knows what they're doing, and I don't, and it's just really intimidating. But if I go with my husband, I feel better. I will not go along, not yet.
So I started going to the gym with him, and if you've ever done at home workouts, I mean, it can be really challenging, especially if you up the weights and everything like that, but your body does get used to it. And if you haven't been to the gym, which I had not been to a gym in like, 20 freaking years, like, seriously, 20 years. And so you're working out now, you're using the machines and all that kind of stuff. And you know, I'm lifting heavy, because I'm the type of person where, you know, when I go to workout, I want to give it my all, like, if I don't feel like I want to throw up at least once during that workout, in my mind, I didn't push hard enough, right? So I really push myself and get the most out of it during that 45 minutes to an hour while I'm there. And I noticed that after doing this for almost like two weeks, that Whoa, my body is not just sore. My body needs a break. And I don't know if it was because I just been coming off the 75 hard program where you're doing two 45 minute workouts a day for 75 days, or if it was just because it was new workouts pushing really hard at the gym. But either way, this was not just, Oh, my muscles are sore. That's great. It's working. It was like, whoa. Slow down here. I think you might need to take a couple days off and let your body recuperate. And so I had to be aware of that, even though, honestly, like working out is my therapy, I had to really listen to my body over the last few days and say, All right, my body needs a break. There's no sense in pushing through. Because if your body is that tired, if you are physically that beat up and worn down and tired, you're not going to be able to give it 100% anyways, when you go to the gym and you're also not going to give your body the chance to repair and recover, right?
So it's okay, take a couple days off, take a little step back, work on some stretching, things like that, to help you recover. Totally fine to do that. So most of the time, when you get overwhelmed, it can be something mentally, physically, emotionally, all of. Them. But what I found is that most of the time, it's your mind that's on overload that's causing this overwhelm feeling that you feel your brain is about 20% of your body's energy that it consumes every single day. It's the most energy consuming organ in your body, right? How cool is that? And I work with people all the time, and something that I hear people say when they're talking about their business and growing their business, and they really want to get to that next level. They want to break through that next level and get to the six, seven figure range, whatever their goal is, when they start to talk to me about the action steps that they need to take in their business to grow their income, they'll say things like, this is making me so overwhelmed, or it's making me overwhelmed. And the thing that I want you to remember right is that if you word it that way, basically it's making you a victim of it. It's kind of like saying, you know, I can't do anything about it, versus shifting it to I'm making myself overwhelmed. And so I always try to help people shift their words, because a shift in your words is what's going to shift your perspective. So if I'm always saying this is making me overwhelmed, then it's making me a victim, and I can't change it, because when you're a victim, you can't do anything about it. It's out of your control. But if I say I'm making myself overwhelmed, then I can do something about it. I can change the situation. The power and control comes back to me. It's really more about the story that you're telling yourself versus the actual situation, because it's the stories that we tell ourselves that shape our reality.
So the first thing I want you to do when you start to feel overwhelmed is, I want you to pay attention to the words that you're using. Change your words so you can put yourself back into a place of power and control. Also overwhelm almost always comes from what you're thinking about, about what you're doing, not from what you're actually doing. So say, for example, you got 40 things on your to do list. Why are you overwhelmed? It's not because you have 40 things on your to do list, but you're overwhelmed because you're thinking about a plan on how to cross all 40 things off your list, and how you're going to be able to actually get all 40 things done ASAP. But you can't do all 40 at one time. You can only do one thing at a time. So I wanted to give you six steps that you can work through when you feel this overwhelm, take over and it will help calm you down. Listen, this happens to all of us, right? This happens to all of us. We all get overwhelmed. We all kind of let our mind and our thoughts consume us, and we can go down that path, and it's very easy to, like all of a sudden, go down into a downward spiral. We just did this. My husband and I, not too long ago, when we were going for a walk along the beach, right? We were walking along the beach, and, you know, the waves are crashing, and this is supposed to be a time of peace and relaxation and breathing and just we don't have anything on like in our ears. We're not listening to any podcasts. We're not listening to any music. We're truly just trying to be present for the moment. Be present in the moment and be grateful. And you know, we caught ourselves being like, Well, when I get home, I got to do this, that this, that this, and the other thing, and then oh my gosh, before the end of the week, I need to make sure I do this. I need to make sure I do that. And also, by the end of the year, XYZ needs to be done. And we're rattling off all these things that need to be done, which all that does is produce overwhelm and give you stress and make you feel anxious, right? So we kind of had to reel it back in and be like, All right, well, we're not going to think about that right now, because right now we're trying to be grateful that we're here in this moment and be present in this moment. And guess what? The To Do List is always going to be there. Your list will never end. You'll eventually, some way or another, get through all of it. But right now we're here in this moment, and when we get back home, then we can take out our to do list and we can do the next best action that's on it, and we'll go from there. But right now, we're going to enjoy it this time. So we've all been there. The most important thing is to just learn how to control it. And this is just another tool for you to pull out of your tool kit for when you feel yourself getting really overwhelmed. All right?
So here are six steps that you can work through when you feel this overwhelmed takeover, and it's going to help really calm you down. The first one is to just breathe. Right? How many times have you been Go, go, going, and you're overwhelmed and you're stressed and you can feel your heart racing, and then have you ever, like, stopped and been like, Oh my God, I don't think I breathe. I don't think I've, like, taken a breath, right? Just breathe. The thing is, when you get overwhelmed and you're super stressed and you're anxious, your heart rate increases, right? And that's just making you feel more anxious and more stressed, like you can feel it. So if you just stop, just a couple of minutes and close your eyes and just breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. You don't need a lot of time to do this. It will slow your heart rate down, which will calm you down, and you won't feel as overwhelmed because you're focusing on your breath, your heart is slowing down, and it just helps you be more present in the moment. So number one is breathe.
Number two is, do one thing at a time, especially when you're looking at a to do list. So this goes back to what I was saying to you about, you know, walking along the beach, just rattling off all these things in my head. What good is that doing me? I'm not working on my to do list right now. Right now, I'm focusing on getting in two miles on the beach with sun, you know, my vitamin D shining on me and being present in the moment, right? One thing at a time. If you have your list in front of you, and there's 10 different things on there, 15 different things on there, we're just going to focus on doing one at a time. It'll all get done. But looking at it being like, Oh my God, my list is so long, what am I gonna do? Freak out. It's not gonna help you. One thing at a time, trust me, it all gets done eventually it does.
A third step is this, prioritize the things that you need to do, really simplify it. So if you do have a list of like, 10 different things that you need to do, maybe you need to call the doctor, maybe you need to call the vet. Maybe you need to make a dentist appointment for your kids. Maybe you need to schedule that call. Maybe you need to get on you know, maybe you need to record another podcast like everybody has their list of stuff that they need to do. But what I found is really helpful is to look at that list the night before you go to bed and circle or underline or highlight whatever floats your boat, the three most important ones that need to get done the next day. All right, and do that every single day, and it will really help you stay on track again, too. Something else that kind of goes a line in line with this is to before you go to bed at night. Not only do you have those three things circled on your to do list that need to get done, whether it's for your business, your career, kids, whatever a mix of both is to look at your calendar for the following day as well and see what you got going on, what meetings do you have coming up, what things are already scheduled into your calendar. So that way you go to bed knowing about these things, and you wake up and you're not surprised, like I was this morning when I forgot to check the calendar before I went to bed the other night. So remember how I told you about how I went to bed super-duper early at 8:30 the other night? Well, I was so tired I completely forgot to check the calendar for Monday, and we wake up in the morning. We're running all around, you know? We get the kids out the door, drop the two older kids off at their school. I bring my youngest to his other school. My husband and I pull into the parking lot, and we're like, oh my God! Why are there so many people here? This is crazy. The whole parking lot is so full. We get out, we walk Keegan in, we give him hugs and kisses, say goodbye, we're walking out, and we're like, this is weird. Like, what's going on today? I don't know what. I don't know what this is. I hope it's not something that like I'm supposed to know about. But I don't know. We get in the car, my husband is literally reversing, and I say to him, let me just check the calendar real quick and make sure there's nothing going on here that we were supposed to be at. Sure enough, sure enough. There it was the Make A Difference Award ceremony for the school, and Keegan was going to be one of the students receiving a Make a Difference Award. So we hopped back out of the car looking like total scrubs, like literally not dressed for this at all, because in our minds, we were going to go for the walk on the beach after this. And we get out and we go in and we watch the ceremony. And the whole day was kind of off because I was unorganized with it again. Check your calendar before you go to bed at night and have those three important things on your to do list. Circle. They're highlighted that you know you need to do the next day. All right.
Step number four, and this is going to be hard for you if you tend to be a people pleaser. And listen, I'm not throwing stones. I am a recovered people pleaser, and it is still hard for me. Sometimes I do still struggle with this. But number four is to stop saying yes to every damn thing and to every damn person, and start doing less. Right? Start doing more of what actually matters most to you, and this will minimize your stress. I know if you struggle with the people pleasing tendencies, right? You immediately want to just say yes, I'll do it. Yes, I'll go there, yes, I'll run that call for you, yes, I'll do this. You immediately want to say yes, like you don't even want to think about it. You just want to say yes immediately. And I've been there and done that, and what I've learned is that I've over committed to things that, number one, I didn't even really want to do or go to, and just the things that I would commit to really didn't even align with me and my journey and what was most important to me. And so really, instead of just jumping out there as soon as possible, saying yes to. Everyone and everything. It's okay to just not give an answer. Anyway. It's okay to tell someone, hey, you know what? Let me think about that. I'll get back to you. Or, Hey, I'm not sure if I'm free that night. Let me check my calendar and get back to you within the next day or so. Right then, just take a step back and think about, Do I really want to go to this? Do I really want to see these people? Do I really want to do this, this thing, whatever it is like, is it something that I really want to do, or am I just saying yes because I'm just saying yes because I'm a people pleaser, right? And I can guarantee that there's a lot of things that you're committing to that really just you don't want to commit to, and it's okay to say no, so I'm giving you permission to say no more and do less, and it will really help minimize your stress.
Number five is to do more of what you love, right? What do you do that you love? Are you busy all day long, doing things for everybody else? You know, I was talking to a friend not too long ago, and she was telling me about how she finally went and got a pedicure done, and she was at the point where she said, You know what, I never do anything for myself, ever. I'm constantly doing things for the business, constantly doing things for the kids, constantly doing things for the house and everything else. And I never, ever, ever do anything for me or anything that I want to do, and she was just kind of like at that breaking point. And so that's nothing to be like, ashamed of, or anything at all. But that, again, is your body signaling you, Hey, wake up here. Come on, take a step back. Don't be putting everybody else first all the time and putting yourself on the back burner. Make sure you're doing something in your day that you love. Do you wish that you could just go sit on the beach? Maybe you don't have all day long to sit on the beach. That's fine, but maybe just bring a chair and sit there for like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, bring your book. What are the things that bring you joy? Because it's really easy to put yourself last. It is really easy to put all the hobbies and the things that you love or the things that you wanted to start on the back burner because you're just busy doing everything else for everyone else all the time.
So do more of what you love, and the last one, number six, is to journal about what you're stressed out about. Now, listen, I'm not saying like, hey, let's go get a journal. Is going to turn this into my big stress ball journal over here, I'm going to feel real good reading this. Kathi, no, I just mean the importance of getting what's in your mind out of your mind and onto paper. See, the problem is, if you keep everything that's floating around in your brain, you'll never be able to ever get rid of it. You'll never be able to de stress from it. You'll never be able to analyze it. You'll never be able to overcome the things that are keeping you stuck where you are, or overwhelmed or stressing you out, you'll never be able to get over that, because it's just still floating in your head, whereas, if you just can get it out onto paper, what just happened? What caused me to feel these feelings of overwhelm? Why am I feeling so stressed out right now? Then what it does is it makes you more aware, and it gets it out of your brain, and it gets you to look at it on paper and read it out loud to yourself, like, all right, is this really worth worrying about? Like, do I really need to continue worrying about this? Right? Sometimes it's really hard to see that perspective when you're just keeping the little voice inside your head. So just get it down on paper.
So just to recap one more time. The six steps to help you work through when you're feeling overwhelmed and it'll help you calm you down is step number one, breathe. Number two, focus on one thing at a time. Three, prioritize the things that you need to do, simplify it. Number four, stop saying yes to everything and everyone. Number five, do more of what you love. And number six, journal about what you're stressed out about. Listen, overwhelm isn't permanent. It doesn't need to be permanent. It's just your mind and your body asking for a rest. So make sure to listen to it. That's all.
So that's all I got for you today. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. Thanks so much for being here. You know, I love you and I will see you the next time. Bye.
