What Can I Do About Overwhelm? — Emotion Series #10

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. Hey everybody, welcome back. Today we have another special guest for you, Mina Lee. Mina is a coach and a facilitator in our community, and she's joining Joe today to explore the topic of overwhelm. I hope you enjoy it.

Hi, Joe.

Hi, Mina.

I'm really excited to talk to you about overwhelm today.

It feels like—

yes, it feels like a topic that's so rampant in society, and I just see so many clients create it for different reasons, and I'm a bit bewildered around it. You know, some people create it because they literally are like, if I'm overwhelmed, then if I make a mistake, then I won't be so bad. Or if I'm overwhelmed, I don't have to deal with all the shit in my private life, or if I'm overwhelmed, that means I'm working hard and trying my best, you know? Or even for myself, like, if I'm overwhelmed, I don't have to feel the meaninglessness of everything.

Yeah.

So I'm super curious today to talk to you about, like, what is it? What makes us create it? Like, how do we move through it individually and as a group in the collective? So let's dive in.

I want to, I want to, but I, but nobody knows who you are. Oh, well, I mean, I guess some people do, but some people know who you are. But I want people to know who you are because I love, I love you. So I want everyone to know who you are. So who are you? What's going on here? Or can I introduce you? Can I introduce you?

Yeah, you have to introduce me.

Mina was the first person to sign up for the first course that I ever did. And so Mina has been working with me longer than any other person. Consistently, which has been really fun, and has moved into her own coaching practice and is doing amazing work in the world. And that's amazing. But also just a really close family friend. My daughters absolutely adore you. There was a happening with one of our daughters just the other day, was like, "I have a couple extra days. Can I go up and see Mina?" And I was thinking to myself, Hmm, she must have something she wants to talk about with me now. And then she tells me about a new boyfriend and da da da. I was like, oh, I know what she wants to talk about. So it was awesome.

Yes. And they're the teachers I bring into all my client sessions.

I'm like, a 9-year-old told me, which, you know, she was 9, she said this, and she was 15, she said this. And I just feel so proud as like to call them like goddaughters, you know?

And I'm also super grateful just the role you play in their life. So on a personal note, thank you, because it— like, you're a confidant and trusted, and they look up to you. And it's really— it's so, it's so beautiful that, like, another thing about Mina is that we got to travel through China together, and, you know, you introduced me around, and we got to have all these cool adventures where we got to learn and do all sorts of crazy things together. And, um, and so I'll say it, but I got to mentor you in a lot of ways, and then to see you mentoring my girls is just It's just been awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

It's been a huge journey of weaving spirituality and business, or loving and doing with you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which is great. This is podcast, which is overwhelm. Awesome. Okay.

Well, and the weaving of like doing and being and love and business. Yeah.

And all of it.

Um, so the first question, what is overwhelm? At its essence, intellectually, emotionally?

I mean, it's, it's definitely an easy way to talk about it is a form of fear, it's anxiety. Um, but what I would say, it's the moment where you think you have to get out of flow to take care of yourself. It's the moment where you think that Or at least it starts there. Maybe it isn't that exactly, but it starts there. There's this moment where you're kind of in flow and then something happens and you think you have to manage it. You think you have to manage reality.

What does it mean to be in flow? Like in trust, in safety?

Yeah. You're focused and going towards your goal. Let's say you're focused, you're relaxed, you're going towards your goal, you're in flow. And so you're not, you're not wandering. You're not, you know, you have a purpose and you're going and you're, and you're going towards it and you're— but you're not stressed about it. You're not— you're relaxed and you're moving and you're going with the river, so to speak. And then, and then all of a sudden you want something or something happens or somebody says something to you that's scary, and all of a sudden you have to manage reality. You have to push, you have to roll upriver. And that's the beginning of the overwhelm, and that's the beginning of the fear in the system. That's like, that's the first moment.

So you have to manage this thing that you can't, so you're already lost. There was this one time when you said overwhelm is when you don't feel any one emotion fully.

Yeah, so that's the other, that's the other piece of it too, which is overwhelm is not allowing your— we think we're overwhelmed because of X, Y, and Z. I have a call, and then I also have to get to this place, and then, but I have a big job thing, and, and oh my— but what's actually happening on an emotional level is that there's all these big emotions and you're not feeling them, and so you're not allowing them to pass all the way through you, and so your system is, is, is overwhelmed with the amount of emotions that you have. And so typically what I see is when people move through those emotional states the overwhelm immediately goes away. And fear is kind of the beginning— is not the beginning, but a part of those emotional states that aren't being felt all the way through.

Yeah, yeah.

And when we're in overwhelm, are we— is our nervous system already always in that fight, flight, freeze? Triggered, helpless?

Yeah, right. Yeah, our nervous system is activated and it's, it— and it's in that fight, fight, or freeze. That's right.

What do you think makes us create overwhelm?

Yeah, so there—

so I heard you talk about that, and so there's like— I, I want to hesitate on that phrase, like, we create overwhelm. I think there's some place in the journey where realizing that you're creating the overwhelm is healing because it's empowering, and you get to see that you have a choice, and you get to choose to move beyond that choice. But there's another place in the journey where if you think, "I am responsible for my own overwhelm," it just makes you more overwhelmed. It's just one more thing that you then have to deal with that's on your plate that you're scared of that you have to manage. And so, it depends on where somebody is in the journey is where the usefulness of that feeling of, "Oh, I'm creating the overwhelm." I'm responsible for it, right? And I don't think you can see it. You can't until you— you're not responsible to— for it until you can see that you're responsible for it, if that makes any sense. Once you can see it, then you have choice, but before then you don't. So, so there's kind of an odd thing to that.

And how do we get to see it? And how, how do we get to see, oh, I'm creating this to avoid this or this, right? Because I've mapped this versus, oh yeah, I just had multiple people in my life die. I'm feeling overwhelmed. This is systemic. So how do we see through, like, when there's great self-compassion, and maybe when there— we want to inquire more into how it's not serving us?

So I don't— it doesn't matter to me if you're in the— in a war zone, or if you're in a— multiple people in your life just died. The overwhelm always has an external component to it, and it always has the internal component of not being able to process those feelings, um, at a time that's— in a time that the system needs it to do so it's not overwhelmed. So I'll give you, for instance, so, uh, we, as you know, both of our daughters went into hospital when they were really young with pretty serious issues. And in both cases, I was not processing the emotional experience. I was handling doctors, I was making sure food was, you know, and, and Tara was in that particular case really able to handle, like, emotionally process those things. And I think it was like day 7 or 10 of the first one where I was just like, okay, I'm completely overwhelmed, I have to go and be emotional and do that thing, where Tara could continue to kind of process the emotions and it more in real time, not entirely in real time, but more in real time. So she had a more steady state that was going through that. So there's always this external piece to it, and, and so there's always a chance to look inside and say, okay, how— what needs to be processed? What is it that I'm, I'm, I'm dealing with. So in the case of those deaths, like, yeah, there's some overwhelm, there's some big emotions, there's grief. Grieve. Have that experience. It's going to heal you. It's going to help move your identity. It doesn't matter how big it is outside or, or whether it's a war. You know, Walt Whitman as an example, E.E. Cummings, both had awakenings in war, I would, I would argue by reading their poetry and Um, and so it's like, it doesn't really matter if you're feeling overwhelmed. There's an opportunity to allow yourself to feel something and process it. And because anything that you can't process in real time, um, typically means that there's some more resistance to it that can still be let go. So it doesn't really matter.

So let's say someone reckon— they're at that first moment of recognizing, oh, I'm feeling overwhelmed. How would you then recommend or go through, walk them through that process of then inquiry and unraveling?

Yeah, so it depends on the context. It's a great question. So one context is, I don't have space in this moment, and I do mean moment, like this week doesn't, doesn't register, but in this moment. So then the best thing to do is learn like really great breath exercises. There's ways of breathing that can immediately, you know, breath, or there's different ways to talk about it, but like slowing down your breath, making it equal. I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's yoga or whether it's the Navy SEALs, like teaching people about breath and how it calms the nervous system. The, the quote I heard recently, which I loved, which is like, we can't control our nervous system, but we can control our breath, and our breath controls our nervous system. And so if you can't deal with it in the moment, you can breathe. The issue with that is that a lot of people will use that breath to then oppress, repress the emotions. Like, "Okay, I'm just going to keep on breathing and then I'm never going to feel that." And that can be a world of hurt. So in some cases, you're in a business meeting, you're in a hospital, you got to just— the breath can immediately regulate the system out of overwhelm. Then otherwise, um, then the— but once you have the space and you're feeling these emotions, it's, it's the best thing to do is like look at what's the thing that you don't want to have happen and then feel that. So usually when there's overwhelm, there's a false end, just like in fear there's a false end, and you're scared of the emotional result of that false end. So, oh my God, if I don't get this job done, my boss is going to be mad at me. Okay, so that's the, that's the moment.

The—

okay, so feel through, grieve, allow yourself to have the full emotional process of having your boss mad at you. Don't, don't— I'm not suggesting don't finish your work and have your boss mad at you, though that might be fine. I'm suggesting live in that reality feel all that experience, allow it to move through you so that you know you can survive it and you're not scared of it anymore. And then that can do it. And that usually, that'll come with, like in the case of, oh, my boss will be mad at me, it's going to go beyond your boss mad at you. It's your mom or dad who were mad at you. It was the critical parent who wanted you to— the person who taught you that you had to be productive to be loved, etc., etc., etc.

You know how when we coach someone, like, a lot of our role is to hold that really stable nervous system so they can explore these topics safely? Yeah. So what if they're in that state of overwhelm, they're by themselves, how do they— they do that breathing. What's the next question, the next thing when they're already overwhelmed and they don't have somebody else to, or something else to stabilize? Like, even when we find out in sessions, hey, you're creating overwhelm, you're creating problems that feel really urgent so that you can feel needed. Like, they get to that after a process of discovery, but how could someone who just notices they're overwhelmed begin to solve that? Yeah, when, when there's nothing to ground them, when there's—

yeah. So there's— I think there's so— there's so many things that you said in that. The first one is that, you know, that job of us to hold that really nervous, nervous— that very stable nervous system. Yes, sometimes that is our job. And I would— so there's something I don't want any coaches listening to this to think that that's like a requirement and/or something that should be done all the time. And then the second part is, so if you're looking for the intellectual discovery, the emotions will bring it rather than trying to have the intellectual discovery and then that's going to allow for the emotions. So If you feel the thing that you don't want to have happen and live through that in a very slow way that you can have all those emotional experiences, it'll become really clear to you what's creating the overwhelm, right? It's like, oh, I create the overwhelm so I don't have to feel the, um, the absence of my parents' love for who I was because it was only for what I did, you know? And so you'll get to that naturally if you allow the emotional experience. Um, what I notice is that intellectually people can come to that experience of, you know, they might get it explained to them or they might find out some way like, oh, I am, I am overwhelmed right now because I want to feel alive, or I am overwhelmed right now because, um, because I didn't— I want my dad's love and I never got it, etc. Like, they can have those things, but that can only— can sometimes just cause weight. It's like, oh shit, this is just about my dad's love, and now I'm still chasing it. And oh shit, I'm like, I can't get rid of it. And, you know, why it's been 10 years, I'm still chasing my dad's love by trying to please my boss. You know, like, they— so that is a bit of a slippery slope. Whereas if they actually have the emotional experience and invite it and welcome it the same way that you would do if you were um, the same way you would do it as if you were, uh, like the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying or the Samurai, like visualizing your own death, like slowly through all those moments, and visualizing your dad getting angry at you or your boss getting angry at you, slowly getting fired. All that will really allow you to have that emotional experience, and then it becomes really clear on the other side. The intellectual reasons for it.

Yeah, so I'm overwhelmed, I'm scared. What am I scared of feeling? Let's feel that together.

Yeah, what am I scared of feeling? What's the result? For some people, the what am I scared of feeling is hard, so it's what am I scared of happening and what would I have to feel if that happened is easier. Because it's pretty— it's really easy for someone to identify, oh, I'm scared I'm going to get fired, I'm scared that I'm going to be left. I'm scared that somebody will get mad at me. Those are easier to identify than the emotions. Yeah. So that's the, that's the main thing. And also to know that I think the other thing that happens in that is that people think that the overwhelm is productive. Most people in our society go, oh, when I'm overwhelmed, I'm productive, so it's good. Like, I've seen I've seen bosses say, "Oh, I'm going to put some fear into people because they'll work harder, they'll act better, they'll make better decisions." There is no psychological evidence of that at all. Now, obviously, a little bit of urgency can be helpful, but not any kind of prolonged fear. It reduces our capacity to think. It reduces how quickly things get done. It reduces our accuracy. It reduces our capacity to learn. So anxiety is really detrimental to productivity. The weird thing is it's a bit of a mental illusion that we often think we're getting more done when we're overwhelmed. And it's a little bit like I've seen I saw footage of a tiger, or it was a lion, who hadn't eaten in a long time, and like, and they couldn't sleep, and they were like up constantly looking for food, and, and you could see their nervous system was all tweaked. And, and I like, they're probably thinking they're being more productive, but they are clearly not as good of a hunter as the one that's relaxed and, you know, licking themselves and hanging out in the sun. And so it's the same thing. Our minds often trick us into thinking we're more productive when we're overwhelmed.

For the people who are listening, what are some somatic markers to tell when they are just in the healthy level of tension and normal level of stress versus when they're in a state of overwhelm that isn't necessarily helping? Like, what are some somatic markers to tell?

Yeah. Um, Well, I want to say that somatically, and I think some— for some people intellectually is better markers, and some people somatically is better markers. So any of the fear markers, like, um, for intellectually, like, um, um, black and white thinking, binary thinking, false ends, um, uh, those are all thinking you have to make a decision, having some sense of urgency over a decision that's false urgency. Those are all, those are all markers intellectually. Somatically, there's often a feeling of pushing. I have to, I have to, gotta get right, like there's like this pushing that happens. I think that's a really big somatic marker. The other one is that you intellectually and somatically, like, you're more likely to forget stuff. Right? Like, when you're leaving the house, you're less likely— and you're calm and you're relaxed, you're less likely to leave the keys. If you're overwhelmed, you're more likely to have to come back into the house several times. The Marines have this great saying: slow is steady, slow is steady, steady is fast. And, and it's like, so that feeling of rush is often very much in overwhelm. But it's interesting because you'll see people do this when they start to get interested in this. They're like, "Oh my God, I'm rushing, therefore I must be overwhelmed." And they're like, "No, no, but I've got a good reason to rush because if I don't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And that's a gold mine for self-recognition. All those da, da, da, da, da, das are all the reason. And then to also say, okay, what made it that I didn't set up my world so that I didn't have to rush? Right? So I'll give you an example. Oh my God. Yeah, but I have to rush because if I don't rush, then I'm going to be late for this job interview. Right? So the first question is, is that true? Like, is it better to call the job interview place and say, hey, I hit traffic, I'm going to be 5 minutes late? Or is it better to come in all fucking overwhelmed? So that, first of all, so that's— and we don't question that. And so if you can look at that and say, what made me think that it was better to rush and be there frazzled? What's that feeling? What's going on there? There's going to be a lot of juice there. And then there's also what made it that I've set up a situation where I wasn't, you know, I didn't give myself an extra 15 minutes to this big job interview. What made me create that level of anxiety. And so those are all like fertile ground.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I notice in myself like sometimes a sense of panic, quickening of tempo, and then also the eyeballs literally like are going left, right so much faster. Like they can't like hold a steady gaze. I'm like, wow, they're really overwhelmed.

It's exactly what was happening with the lion. It was like, they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Whereas like most cats when they're hunting, they're like super slow and they're. And this thing was like, like it was buzzing. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's move into organizational too, cuz one thing I'm fascinated by is when an individual change, how that change ripples into larger systems.

Yeah.

So how does, let's say a CEO or leader, they're doing the work, they're like, I'm trying to regulate my nervous system. I'm trying to not create so much overwhelm in my life, but they're interfacing with an organization. Where overwhelm has been empirical and is rampant in the culture itself. And let's say they're in a larger culture, social culture or capitalist culture, which also— how does one who's just that one interact with that resistance to, let's say, even shifting? Because yeah, everybody also has their own thing with overwhelm. How does that one person start to shift an entire organization?

So I think the The first thing is they have to be clear on it in themselves. I think if somebody's become a CEO of a successful company, when they're clear on it themselves, the company will be clear on it. And I'll just give you an example of this, which is, there's so many examples of this, but apparently like Bill Gates used to take one week to go be by himself in a cabin every quarter as a way of getting back to whatever you could call it, his center. I'm sure he had a different word for it, but to get out of the overwhelm, to get to the greater vision, to think about things. Greenspan spent the first 30 minutes of every day in contemplation. If you talk to Jeff Bezos right before he quit being the CEO, he talked about I gotta— I wander until 10 o'clock. He works out whatever he wanders until 10 o'clock. He only makes decisions from 10 to 5 because his whole job is to make good decisions. That's all his job is. And he doesn't do anything after 5. Like, so I just want to say that there are multiple people who have been very successful who have figured out that this is true, that their overwhelm doesn't serve and doesn't serve their company and doesn't serve them. And And then some of those even see it inside of the company that it doesn't serve the entire company. And I think some of them don't. Some of them are like, yeah, I'm the decision maker, so I can't be overwhelmed. But the line worker putting the widgets on the bigger widgets, they should be overwhelmed because that's going to improve. And some people have realized, no, actually, that actually doesn't improve. You make more errors, you have more recalls, there's whole bunch of other issues that if you can actually, like, there is a pace of getting things done that is optimal for every, for every, um, for every project.

So I'm gonna play the devil's advocate for a second. Let's say I'm like, yeah, those stable companies, that's easy, they already have so much money. And let's say like, we're starting, you know, we're trying to survive, we have to get beyond this first customer, everything is urgent, literally, or Like, what would you say to that?

I would say, "I don't want to buy from that attitude and I sure as hell don't want to invest money in that attitude." That's what I would say. Yeah. And your people are burning out probably or they will shortly. I think it'd be a harder thing to say to somebody who's— the harder one is something where it's like— and with something like a startup, it's easier to say that because you are making decisions and you have to get things done and they're thoughtful things. And so you're really trying to maximize your decision-making. It becomes a harder thing to say for a company that's I have 20 people who are out mowing lawns. And if they move just a little bit quicker, then I'm going to make an extra $500 a day. So move quicker. I think that's actually the harder place to see how slowness can be more profitable. Then you're looking at— and then it can depend on the kind of business. I mean, I think the Reinventing Organizations book had a great thing about this with nurses where this nursing establishment that in, I think it was Netherlands, all the nurses had been— they have community nurses, they're supposed to take care of X amount of blocks of city. And they were getting, okay, you have 20 minutes to drive and you have 10 minutes to give them the shot. Blah, blah, blah. And it was all becoming nickel and dime and became tighter and tighter and it was all driving efficiency. And some guy came in and said, "Eh, BS. That's not how we're going to do it. We're going to stop and we're going to have coffee with these folks and we're going to find out what they need to be independent. And that's going to be our priority. It's not going to be how quickly we serve them. It's going to be how do we get it so that we don't have to serve them?" And he took over the market and he took over the market partially because nurses want to work for him and didn't want to work for anybody else. So bada-bing. But the second bar they took over the market is they became, I think it was like 20 or 30% more efficient. And so if you're constantly worried about that half a cent margin, you're going to miss the major opportunity. And so then that's another thing. So there's a lot of reasons, but it's more about don't trust me if you're a CEO. Measure, find out what's the right pace for this particular— what's the right pace, what's the right incentives, do the experiments, find out. If I'm writing a novel, most great novelists work about 3 hours a day. They can't write 10 hours a day every day and be successful. They either burn out or their writing becomes crap or whatever it is. Programming, probably you can do for more than 3 hours a day. And sales, there's a certain level of sales that you can do and still be productive. And the job is to find out what that level is and what's the mindset that is instead of assuming overwhelm is it. And that's the crazy thing is it's all based on assumption. So if you're listening to this and you believe in your overwhelm, It's an assumption. You have not tested it. I guarantee you haven't tested it.

I guess that goes to back to the first and third, which is like, how does— so CEO realizes it, they've decided, they've gotten clear on it. They're like, I wanna do this in my organization.

Yeah.

And let's say they have hundreds to thousands of people who are used to years of working in overwhelm.

Yeah.

How do you concretely begin to— and you can't, you can't change what's going on in their private lives, stuff that contributes to their own overwhelm.

Absolutely.

Their own pattern around overwhelm, you know, creating overwhelm at work too.

Yeah.

But feel blank. How do you begin to shift that momentum in that system?

There's so many ways, but the, I mean, I'm depending on the company, I would have a lot of answers, but the, I give you the generic baseline that I would start with. The first thing I would do is I would try to measure how overwhelmed actually people are. And this will be everything from attrition rate of good people, attrition rate of bad people, to asking them, you know, open-ended question about it. Or a good survey can tell you, like, are you looking forward to coming to work on Monday? Probably is a pretty good indication of overwhelm. So I would first just find out, I would define the problem and find out really what the problem is. And then I would try to find out what it is that's overwhelming them. I think most of the time people are overwhelmed in companies if it's not just kind of their innate pattern is because they feel like they have the responsibility, but they don't have the authority to actually make it work. And so it starts with overwhelm and ends with despondency. And so I would really be looking really carefully at where the decision-making is happening and how people field. The other place I would go is I would look for how the productivity— I would start trying, like, if there's someplace where I know this productivity is X, I would say, let's change the speed, right? So there was a company I was reading about, I can't remember the name, but they were a stand-up paddleboard company. But the CEO very brilliantly said, we're an online marketing company that happens to market paddleboards. And, um, but he took his company to 30 hours a week. Like, you could— you couldn't really work over 30 hours a week. It was looked down upon. And his productivity and his sales went up consistently more than his competition. And so he was out there advocating for the 30-hour work week. And I— and, and, but for me, the bigger thing is like, oh, he was driving flow in his company. And that's— so I would think about it less as how do I drive, how do I reduce overwhelm, and I would think of it more as how do I drive flow? How do I have people calm, relaxed, focused, on game, right? And, and, and that amount of tension rather than the kind of tension that takes them out of their game, that makes them run back for the keys. That makes them second-guess themselves, that makes them, "Oh my God, I got to talk to my boss because if my boss is unhappy, then..." instead of just making the call that going up 6 levels of asking people for approval. So those are the things. And then there's going to be attrition. There's going to be some people in your company that they are overwhelmed by their nature and aren't willing to do the work to become less overwhelmed. And So you're gonna have to find those folks and get rid of them and, and help them find a, hopefully help them find a place where, you know, it's a better fit. So th— those are some of the things that I would do. And mostly I would talk to people and ask them how, what's the overwhelm? How do we reduce it? Because reduction of overwhelm needs is like, it's a team sport. So it's not going to come down through a policy. It's going to come with a discussion of like, I would open a channel on Slack that says reduction of overwhelm as an example and say, oh, I'm seeing that overwhelm is doing this and this and this. Hey everybody, give me ideas on how we can reduce overwhelm in the company. Overwhelm is defined as spinning, being nonproductive in our spin, being non-relaxed. You know, overwhelm is not defined as slacking off or wandering, you know. So I would be really clear about the definition. I'd really be really clear on what it isn't. And then I would ask everybody for ways that we could do it and examples of how people have beaten overwhelm. And that would be part of the cultural experience.

Sometimes I see teams that are so overwhelmed that they're— the helplessness is really loud and they're in a freeze around the overwhelm itself. And it's like when we go into the conversation, like the prefrontal cortex literally like can't can't come up, they're just like, oh, don't know what to do. And there's like a sense of collective freeze in it of itself, you know?

Yeah.

So when they're in that place where they can't, they're not even here to ideate, what would you suggest?

Give them a break. Get them, get them out of the office. Yeah. If they can't, if they can't, if they can't, what you're basically saying, they're so overwhelmed they can't think. So now maybe you don't need them to think if they're cutting lawns or picking apples, but you need them to think for most modern jobs. And so you— why even have them there unless they, you know, unless they can think? I'm like, right now, for instance, I— there's a great example. I go into companies and oftentimes the— I'll go in with, you know, the CEO has invited me in and their EA will be the one communicating, "I've found this space and we're going to do it here," and blah, blah, blah. And some of the EAs do that in 3 emails, less than 5 sentences each. And some EAs do it with 20 emails and each one of them are like small novels. And I can tell you who's overwhelmed. Just by that, right? Because they're trying to make sure everything's right and catching every little piece and da da da. It's like, oh, you're overwhelmed. And the other ones are like, oh, what's the— like, they see the least that's required to do an excellent job.

Is there ever overwhelm without fear?

It's a great question. No, no, you're at the very least, you're scared of feeling the feelings that are coming up. The last part of that though is just because that's there, it doesn't mean if you feel your fear, the overwhelm goes away though. Meaning that there sometimes needs to be a lot of other things that are moved and sometimes moving the other things takes the fear away. So I just don't want people to think like, "Oh, I'm overwhelmed, therefore I'll feel fear." The question is, "I'm overwhelmed, how do I feel safe?" That's the more accurate. Question is, it's like, it's— overwhelm is a sign that you don't feel safe inside of yourself or outside of yourself. And, and, and, and there is— knowing yourself is the only safety. There's no amount of money that can make you feel safe. There's no lover that can make you feel safe. There's no, there's no car or, or vaccination that can make you feel safe. The only thing that can make you feel safe is knowing yourself, feeling safe inside of yourself, knowing that you have a home to go to at any time. That's what can make you feel safe because then all the bad things that can happen are not relevant. They're like, yes, they're there and they could happen. And yeah.

Yeah. When I go through the emotional movement, there's—

all I realize is it gives me clarity about what needs to be done.

But oftentimes there's like some boundary or something I need to stop doing, or just, um, yeah, some way in which I'm not taking responsibility for, for it. And then typically when the action comes, I'm like, oh.

So this is—

this is the third part that I want to talk about, is transforming the overwhelm. It's like the gift on the other side of the overwhelm. Um, Like, for example, if we see Ukraine, and then I want to talk really personal, but like, for example, Ukraine, like the entire country, you could say, is overwhelmed. And I see everything that I read, long-form articles, the journalism is like so many people are coming out and activated and doing something. And there's a huge sense of community and tying together.

Yeah.

And so it's like, what differentiates when, you know, we feel overwhelmed and we're it turns into this empowered sense of community. Or, you know, that's one example for them, you know, with, with even your daughter, like, her story around—

oh, let's just put it right against Russia. Yeah, I'm sure that those Russian soldiers feel very overwhelmed, right? And it's not building anything. There's no— it's just disintegrating stuff.

Yeah, right. So how, like, what, yeah, what determines when we as humans move through one versus the other? And in the Ukraine situation, you know, there's a common enemy, so I can see how that all has always united people. But in business and family, when there's that lack of common enemy, it's almost like we make each other the enemy.

Yeah, it's the meaning that you make of it. That's why I was so, at the very beginning, I was so precise about It's like, I'm not— you know me and the fact that I'm not like very conscientious about like the way that I look or, you know, the way the website looks. I'm not like, okay, that's the wrong font. I'm not. But I'm really precise about this kind of thing because it— and conscientious about this type of thing because it makes such a huge difference. If somebody makes the meaning of it, um, I'm bad or they're bad in the overwhelm, then it's going to be destructive. And if somebody makes the meaning of it, "Oh, I have an opportunity. Here's a great way for me to change. This is something for me to learn. There's a way for me to understand myself better. I look forward to my overwhelm." Then if you make that meaning of it, it's far more likely to be productive. And so it's really about the meaning that you make of it. And so that's why for some people it's really important that the meaning is, "I am empowered and this is something that I created." But if they're blaming themselves, then it doesn't— then "this is something I created" becomes just more overwhelming. And so that's specifically. So it's how you make the meaning of it. And the Ukraine-Russia thing, the meaning in Ukraine is that we want to survive, we can survive, and we are going to beat off this enemy. And in the Russian, the meaning is, this is a stupid war. Why are we here? We're just fodder. And, and yeah, we're getting treated like shit, so we're going to treat everything around us like shit.

Hmm.

Yeah. And so it just— it's what— it's the meaning that you make of the overwhelm, and that's where the choice is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's where I want to end us on a few stories.

Yeah.

Of, of where you've really seen breakthrough ways of where people have made meaning. It's really served. I love to hear one story where you've done it in business. I love to share Esme's story. I know she's open to the, the overwhelm with the math test and how that led to so much.

Yeah, share, share it.

Let me start with that one, and I want to hear one from you and me, Pete, too, so we can really end on a personal, like, personal transformation around the overwhelm. So, um, so One of Joe's daughters, Esme, she had told me, you know, doing the math finals was always challenging and difficult for her. And it would always take her a really long time. And she would come out with a grade that she didn't necessarily like. And I remember this past year when she was about to go into the math final, she lost the family dog like the night before. And you and Tara, her parents, were on a retreat with us. So there was no parent home, her with her little sister about to take a math final. The dog was lost. Her younger sister was freaking out, feeling maybe partially responsible for the dog being late. It was like complete and intense, overwhelming. Yeah, challenging. And she told me, you know, she went in and she was feeling so overwhelmed to a point where she was just like, oh, I have to just let go of everything that I can't control because it's too much. I'm trying to control everything, and all that's left is just trusting myself, showing up as I am, knowing that I'm enough. And that's it. And it gave her incredible focus. And she left the math exam an hour and a half early with the best grade she'd ever gotten. Like surrendering to that overwhelm actually gave her focus, trust in herself, not trying to control what she couldn't. And I was just, wow. I was like, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great story. Yeah. A business one. I think I could create a business one and one between you and me in the same situation. I— and it's going to be almost an opposite, um, one. But we were sitting— yeah, we were in China and we were visiting that group of people who had like figured out how to like build a 50-story building in like whatever it was, 3 days or something, because they had this special kind of Lego set on an industrial size. And we were sitting in their like side office and about a media conversation and, um, and there is a way in which you weren't being respected or honored and you weren't speaking up in a way— like, there was— it was like, oh, this is the conversation between, like, the people who know something. And, and, and I said that that was unacceptable. And you were— we were having coffee afterwards and you're like, why is that unacceptable? And I was like, oh, because I'm here for you. I'm not here for this business meeting. I'm here for your growth. And you got overwhelmed in that moment because you were scared to let that much love in.

That was huge. We were just looking out. Yeah, I remember that. And you were like, yeah, it's just not the most important thing. You're the most important thing.

And you were about to say your next sentence and I just burst out crying and it was like, like loud.

And you looked at me so surprised.

You're like, What is happening?

What just happened?

What?

And I was like, yeah, I've just never been loved like that, that I was more important than the content, the PowerPoint, the slides, or the business that was happening.

Yeah. And that's a moment of that overwhelm occurred. You actually allowed the emotions to move through really quite rapidly. There was that fear of being loved that level, and then you moved right through it. And then we entered a flow state in the rest of our China travels together where everything just went beautifully and smoothly and wonderfully. And so I give that as an example of how to handle the overwhelm in such a way that can immediately change.

I mean, from that point on, every conversation we had with anybody turned into somebody crying, somebody having a realization, somebody going, "Holy crap, what just happened?" Like you got on the floor of that 5-star restaurant in Beijing because she kept apologizing and you were like, if you apologize to me one more time, I'm going to beg you, beg you. And you did. You got on the floor of that fancy duck restaurant and begged her. She almost cried just to get you off the floor. And she never said I'm sorry again.

Oh, I forgot about that one. Yeah. And it just like then that big smooth and all of those contacts that we met then paid off for you in future endeavors. And like, it's just, that's, that's how it works. If you can move through the overwhelm instead of tightening down, feel the feelings, and then all of a sudden that flow state comes in again. And that's, that's the example I would say.

Is there any last story you want to share, maybe from your own experience around overwhelm and how it's transforming?

My own experience? Recently there's been this thing happening inside of my system where I've been noticing how much the pushing creates the subtle overwhelm. So I see something that needs to be done in the business, and if I turn towards it and I do it, or I'm very clear, oh, this needs to get done, then it just kind of flows. Everything happens, and it seems like it happens slower, but it ends up happening a lot quicker. As soon as I push, oh my God, we have to get this done, and I manage it, I notice that I lose myself in the process. That's one thing. I notice that I start moving at a quicker pace. It's another thing. And I notice that my enjoyment goes down and I notice I'm like at the end of that day, I'm like, "Oh, I just need a break." Whereas if I immediately catch that moment of push and say, "Oh, what's actually needed here and how do I get back into myself and not go into the management of a situation?" Everything just seems slower. My impatience walks in and it's like, "Wait, wait, wait." So the other day, there's a decision that needs to be made in the business, like, what are we going to do next year? And because we have to buy or rent facilities, and every— all the facilities get rented early, you got to make these decisions really early to do any kind of event. And so I'm like, oh, we have to do this event. And, and I'm— so I'm— I noticed I was pushing. I was like, okay, like, I gotta get this thing done. And I thought, oh, how about if I ask the slowness what it wants to do? Like, because part of the reason I want it— the part of the— this is a little confusing— but part of the decision that I was making was trying to figure out how do I not be overwhelmed in my next year. So it's easy to do that for me if it's like, oh, I don't want to do that right now. But if you have whatever, $50,000 on a rental place for something, and then you have 20 people coming or 50 people coming, you can't say, "Oh, I don't want to do that. I feel overwhelmed." You need to show up and be there for people. And then you're making this decision a year in advance, so you'll have no idea how you're going to feel. And so it's like, "Rrr." So I was like, "Well, I'm asking from my intellect. What if I ask from my slowness? What if I just go to the part of me that is that knows that stability and calmness and ask that like, oh, what do I want to do? And so I did.

I can't wait for the answer.

And the answer was, more will be revealed. And what did I expect to ask slowness? Like, to ask slowness, like, well, what's the answer? It's like, well, this is the answer and go do that right now. It was no, slowness was like, it was like, yeah, you know, just relax.

It'll come to you.

You know, more will be revealed. You're fine.

What was the decision then?

That decision hasn't been made yet.

More, more, literally wait to make the decision. More will be revealed.

It, it was just, it wasn't wait to make a decision. What the answer that came was more will be revealed. And so I was just like, oh right, I am pushing to make this decision. And it's, and the wisdom is don't push to make it. It like stay focused. Be on point, but don't force to make the decision. And if I look back in my world, the more I have forced a situation to make a decision, usually the worse the decision. So I am operating. So that's an example of— Oh yeah, this is a silly example, but a good one. Just happened. You guys can't see, but she's laughing. Hopefully at me a little bit. Yeah, that was right.

At, with, as, all of you.

Mina, what a total, total, total pleasure. Oh, I'm so glad that we finally got to do this. I've wanted it for a while.

Me too.

Yeah.

Okay.

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