In this 5‑minute episode of “5 Minutes of Momentum,” Christine Corcoran frames overwhelm not as a setback but as a sign of growth. She explains that overwhelm arises when the brain is asked to process more than its natural 5‑7 chunk limit, especially during learning, expanding capacity, or resisting change. She describes how learning creates new neural pathways and brain matter, making the experience feel heavy. Corcoran then offers a practical framework: breathe, identify whether the overwhelm stems from learning, growing, or resistance, and then break the load into manageable chunks, prioritize, delegate, externalize thoughts, and re‑frame the meaning you assign to the feeling. She emphasizes that shifting mindset—from catastrophizing to seeing overwhelm as a growth signal—reduces its intensity and fuels action. The episode ends with a call to recognize the source of overwhelm, choose a proactive stance, and move forward with responsibility and control.
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Welcome to 5 Minutes of Momentum. These episodes are a short 5-minute burst of inspiration, motivation, and massive action. If you need that little kick up the butt to get things moving and to inspire you to take massive action, then every single Thursday I'll be sending you through a 5-minute episode to download, digest, and implement to finish your week off strong. Are you ready to get started? Let's go. Okay, let's talk about overwhelm. Overwhelm is a constant experience in our business. And if you are experiencing overwhelm at the moment, or this is just a great episode to listen to when you are experiencing overwhelm, because I want to break it down for you so then you know how to handle it. Because overwhelm is the growth you've been asking for. And yet what often happens is that we experience overwhelm and then we pause, we hold back, we shrink instead of moving towards them. And so I want to help you really just break it down, right? So when you're experiencing overwhelm, I want you to listen to this episode and it'll support you, support you to figure out what's happening for you so then you can work through it. All right, so when you experience overwhelm, you're either learning, growing, or resisting. Let's break it down. Which one is it for you right now? If it's the first one, it's literally because you're learning something new. We experience overwhelm, our mind experience overwhelm when we are learning to process more than 5 to 7 chunks of information at a time. So your brain only has the ability to process 5 to 7 chunks of information at a time. So imagine, right, like you've got the mental load if you have kids or if you have something going on in your personal life, you have the mental load of that, plus you have probably another 5 chunks of things that you need to think about within your business, right? Your to-do list is probably a massive one. And so when we are experiencing overwhelm, so when we are learning something new, we are literally rewiring our brain. So we are creating new neural pathways, which means you are creating new synapses, you are creating new brain matter, because you cannot unlearn what you learn, right? Your brain will hold on to it. Your actual brain is developing brain matter. So that's why it feels so overwhelming when we're learning something new, because we're taking on all this information. Your conscious mind is literally going through and creating new brain matter. So it can feel overwhelming sometimes because it's all new. So if you are the beginner of something, if you're stepping in and doing something you've never done before, if you are learning something. Like, I mean, how overwhelmed do we feel with AI right now? Like, I feel like there's something new to learn with AI every single freaking minute of the day. And so we need to be conscious of like, okay, if I'm learning something new, if I'm putting myself in the beginner seat again, then it's normal for me to experience some overwhelm. And so what we need to do is we need to breathe through it, recognize that you are asking your brain to process a lot, right? So even then breaking it down into then 5 different categories, because remembering your brain can only process 5 to 7 chunks of information at a time. So then I usually like to break it down to be like, okay, what What am I trying to handle in my mind? And that then supports me to be able to like, okay, what's the priority? What can I delegate? What can I get out of my head? What can I focus on that's gonna support me to be able to remove and shift the overwhelm? And usually when I do that, you can usually pinpoint it to like one main thing that's causing the overwhelm. So what's causing the most overwhelm for you? And addressing that thing will help to reduce a lot of the rest of the overwhelm. And then otherwise, it's just reminding yourself that like, it feels overwhelming because I am expanding and I'm creating new neural pathways in my brain. I'm creating brain matter. And then I need to be conscious, like, that's normal, it's okay. And the meaning that you place on it will change the way that you feel it. So if you make it mean that you're so overwhelmed and you're like dramatizing in your main mind and catastrophize it in your mind, then it's going to feel worse. But if you're like, it's okay, you're learning, you're growing, you're a beginner, you're just working through this, you will get it, right? It's like the first time you learned to drive a car, everything was so overwhelming, right? It's— but now you can drive and not even think about it. So it's just you are learning and you're creating your neural pathways. The second one is if you're growing. So if you are expanding, you're expanding your capacity for more, you're experiencing new things, you're stepping outside of your comfort zone, you're also growing, as in you're also learning, right? And so it's going to feel overwhelming because it's all new. Again, reminding yourself, like, this is me expanding, this is me growing, and I need to recognize that it's uncomfortable for me because I am learning to expand, either take on more responsibility, handle new uncomfortable things that I've never done before. And this is gonna require a new level of thinking from you. So it's about how you approach the challenges, how you approach the obstacles, how you approach the growth. If you approach it from a growth mindset of like, this is me growing, I'm expanding, how would I like to approach this? How would I like to grow through this? Versus this is so hard, what am I doing? I don't know anything. I should know everything. I, I'm trying to do all these things. It's not working. Like what, again, the meaning I place on it will change the way you feel about it. And the last one is usually resistance. If you're feeling overwhelmed and you are resisting something, it can often make you feel worse, right? You need to be going with the flow and against— rather than against the current, go with it, right? So when you're resisting a new way of doing things, or you're expanding and you're coming up against a lot of resistance, you want to check in with yourself and be like, okay, what am I resisting here? Am I resisting the change? Am I resisting a new behavior that needs to be built and a new habit that I'm creating? Do I need to work with, with what I'm working on, right, rather than against it. And this will require a whole new version of you, a whole new style of leadership, maybe a whole new level of action. And again, the meaning you place on it will make all the difference. So if you adjust the way that you're thinking about it and go, okay, I am wanting to step into this, this is something that I'm choosing, right? Because often the resistance comes from feeling like it's out of our control. Whereas if you're like, what am I choosing here? Am I choosing to work towards this? And I'm resisting it because it feels hard and it feels like it's change, right? If you choose again— so you— what I mean by that is like decide what you are choosing and go towards it. This will call you forward in a whole new way. It'll help you feel like you're more in control, and it'll help you feel like, okay, I'm choosing this, so what do I want to do about it? Helps you take responsibility for it, but also allowing yourself to move through the resistance because it's part of growth. So if you're experiencing overwhelm, remind yourself that it's part of growth. It's part— it's a normal part of you growing and expanding. And ask yourself, am I learning here? Am Am I growing or am I resisting it?
