Inspiration Overwhelm

Hello everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Happy Christmas Eve Eve. It's Thursday. We have one more day till Christmas if you celebrate and developments in the McManus household. My sister got exposed to Covid. So usually so Christmas Eve for my family is honestly the most fun you'll ever have. I, I know it's a big bet, but it's super fun. Normally when there's not a virus, my parents host this amazing Christmas Eve party. It's a wet elephant and they basically just invite everyone. If, if people in our town or in the outlying areas don't have a place to go on Christmas Eve, it's a catch all for anyone who wants to go and be around friends and loved ones and have some fun. And. And my parents make like seven different soups from for all different types and my dad makes very potent eggnog and it's normally so much fun. Last year obviously that didn't happen. It was just my parents, my sister and I and this year it's just my parents night because my sister just found out from work that she was exposed to Covid. So we're super, super lucky that we haven't been impacted as badly as many, many other families have. But it still sucks. Let's just own that sucks. Like I love my sister and I wanted to see her on Christmas and it's just a super bummer. And for those of you who are going through some variation of this, either more extreme and you have family members who are sick or you know, family members who aren't getting vaccinated. So it's really messing with your plans. My heart goes out to you. This is just a really weird couple years that we're going through and I was trying to think of what I want to talk about today because I just had this overwhelm of ideas and it was so hard to pick one, but it just felt like, like none of them were particularly right. You know that, you know that feeling. Like they just have so much inspiration and you almost, almost quit. You almost quit from doing the thing because you're like nothing, none. Nothing really fits the, the feeling of today. And so I'm just not going to post anything or go live. And I didn't want to do that because I made a commitment to myself that I would show up live every day for the rest of this year. And I know this happens to me a lot, so I imagine this happens to you. There are those two kinds of overwhelm, right? There's the oh Crap. I have so much stuff to do. I don't know how to prioritize this list of tasks, okay. And none of them are particularly exciting. You just have to, like, get through it. So there's that kind of overwhelm. The other kind of overwhelm is that inspiration overload. Honestly, it's just you have so many ideas trying to come through you come through your brain, and it is a struggle to try to figure out which one you want to dance with first. Anytime I get in this, I imagine or I think of the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. And if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, especially if you have some downtime over the next few days. So Elizabeth Gilbert is obviously an author. She wrote Eat Pray Love and a few other novels, and she wrote this book about the creative process, Big Magic. And she has this concept that, you know when. When you get an idea for something, like, ideas have consciousness. Like they have their own agenda. Okay? So you may get an idea for something, but if you don't get into contract with it and start working on it right away, it could say, you know what? This person's not serious about this idea. About me, the idea. So I'm going to go to someone else and, you know, the idea may hang out with you for a little bit. I think she referred to Maya Angelou at one point where Maya would be out in the field and. And get an idea for a poem and she'd run home, and by the time she got home, she'd either forgotten it or only remembered a piece of it. And I know we all have this, like. We have these amazing ideas for falling asleep. We're like, oh, I have to remember that in the morning. In the morning, we just. It's gone. We can't remember it. We all have that experience of having a brilliant idea for a project or a post or something you're going to cook in the kitchen, and by the time you kind of put off engaging with it and by the time you get to it, it's kind of like, lost its flavor. It's kind of like, you know how you put, like, really good leftovers in the fridge, and after a couple days, like, they don't really taste like anything anymore. So you don't really want to eat them. You don't really want to engage on it. My advice when I work with my clients and when I work with myself and, and all my colleagues, is when you have these ideas, like, we only have the bandwidth that we have, right? So it's not like, you can enact, you can act on like seven different ideas all at once when you only have 30 minutes to do. Do something. Okay. It's just not reasonable. But my recommendation when, when this happens to me and when it happens to other people, what I like to do is write all the ideas down, capture the general gist of everything and hold it someplace and pick one of them. One of them that you're going to play with, one of them that you are going to make real in some way, shape or form. You're either going to make an outline for that book, you're going to write the post, you're going to capture the main point that you want to do in a live whatever it is, and you go and do that one thing. Now, that list of other ideas, you're going to go back to it at some point when you have time, and some of them will have lost their juice. And that is absolutely okay. And here's what I want to normalize is we don't have too many ideas. We have way too. We do. I mean, sorry. We don't have a, A scarcity of ideas. It's. So we get these ideas and we're like, oh, my God, I'm never going to get an idea again. I better capture this. We get almost scarce with it, right? I don't know. I mean, I know I do this. Like, I, I write down 10 ideas a day, and every single day I'm shocked at how many new ideas I come up with. We, you know, one of my coaches, she says, we don't need to capture all of our ideas. We actually need some of our ideas to go and die. And here's the thing. You know, it may be an amazing idea and you may just not be the person to work it out. Okay? So when you have an idea, know that it's not just coming to you. This is kind of a. An energetic thing. It's not just going to you, it's going to a few other people in the universe as well. It's just, it's, you know, entering your orbit so you're aware of it to see, okay, is this the right person to make me real? And it's okay to let it go and let someone else do it. In the book, Big Magic, which I highly recommend, I won't ruin too much, but she talks about how she became friends with another author and they were pen pals and they'd never met and, but, oh, no, I'm sorry. They had met, but they were pen pals and they really Share, like, what projects they were working on. They just sent letters back and forth. And they finally met for lunch after about a year. And this other author asked her, you know, what are you working on? And she's like, oh, well, it's nothing, but what are you working on? And the other author described almost exactly the book that she had tried to bring to life, left on the shelf for too long, and then had to just, like, throw it out because it no longer had any juice. They were writing the exact same book. That idea had visited both of them. And this other author, I think was Ann Patchett, had run with it. And I don't know. Like, I'm obviously a little scattered here because I'm in this right now, because I have so many ideas of what I do want to share with you. And oftentimes, like, just sharing about the process you're going through and the struggle you're going through helps you prioritize. So whenever you're feeling this overwhelm, like, what is the bigger. The bigger story here? And how can you make that helpful for your audience and then just go and dance with something. Go and dance with one of the ideas. The rest can go and die. They're gonna. They're gonna be fine with other people. Yeah. And I. I'm surprised. Well, not surprised. I mean, I love my sister, you know, it's going to be a hard Christmas this year. It's going to be hard not having everyone. Jason, such a great thought. The ideas pop in, and if they stick there for you, and if not, that's cool, too. Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Yeah, no, it's. You know, we're incredibly creative beings. We're incredibly creative. We're incredibly adaptive. Okay, So, I mean, case in point, the last two years, look how dramatically everything shifted and changed. I mean, whole industries changed. I. I honestly, like, my company blew up in. In a good way. And I think it's actually thanks to the last two years and all the change that has been handed down to us. But we forget that. We forget how creative we are. We forget how resourceful we are. We forget how adaptive we are to change. I had another thought. Sorry. The ideas are just, like, bombarding me right now. Yeah, it's. It's really miraculous. You know, Jason, you did a live earlier, and you're talking about what you believe in, what you believe in. And, you know, you were talking about, you know, getting the fancy car and getting the nice house and having. I think you said also that, like, the nice watch. And it got me thinking about what those things really mean to us. Because I think a lot of people go after those things as status symbols. You know, if I'm wearing that watch in a meeting, people really respect me. And I started thinking, you know, I don't. I don't know if that's actually the power those things have, because honestly, when. When I see someone driving a car that I want or wearing something that I want, I imagine myself in there. I don't have any respect for them. I just want that thing. But I was thinking about this, and those things actually do hold power. Because when you. When you have worked that hard, it's. It's about a feeling. Yeah. Yes, that's exactly where I'm going, Jason. So when you've worked that hard and you've tapped into your creativity and you've made these ideas real and you've put it out in the world and you've had impact and you've. And you've got an income out of it, having these things are really just totems to remind yourself of how fucking powerful you really, really are. You know? So if you are wearing that nice watch every time you look at your wrist, it's not just a nice watch. It is, oh, my God. I created this. I harnessed all of those feelings, all of those ideas. I let the right ones come through me, and I made them real in the world, and it had impact and it generated income. And this is just proof. This is just proof that I am a powerful son of a bitch and I can do whatever I want. Yeah, exactly. It's how you feel when you put the watch on. Exactly. Yeah. I knew you'd agree to this. Anyway, kind of off topic. That was one of the topics I was, like, playing with, talking about today. But I'm sure it's gonna end up somewhere else in my content or in my book or whatever. But, yeah, there's just. There's so much. And. And I think this year, this holiday season, as we're wrapping up, as we're getting through Christmas, as we're going to the new year, we're all going to have a little more alone time than we typically do around the holidays, just by virtue of trying to stay safe and healthy and keeping our loved ones safe and healthy. And so here's my ask of you, anyone who's watching Jason, you specifically. Since you're here and tuned in, whatever ideas visit you, pick one of them that you play with over the next week. Week. Just pick one. Pick one that can be like a little passion project. Just See where it goes. Because you never know what idea. And we're busy so much of the time. It's. There's just always so much to do but pick one idea and just see where it goes. Because you never know which idea is going to be the one that shows you exactly how powerful you are. And I know, like, human beings are so powerful. We're just. We can create anything. We can solve any problem when we put our mind to it. If you haven't figured out your superpower yet, do this. Just play with the next idea, and then play with the next idea after that and just see where it goes. I know it's kind of an abstract call to action, but I. I don't know. I'm in this. In this idea overwhelm right now, and I have a feeling it's contagious, so I apologize if you get that way, too. Anyway, I can hear the house getting ready to go grab dinner, so I am probably going to tune out before one of my parents shouts up the stairs, katie, you ready for dinner? Because you know that's not professional. Anyway, I hope this is useful. If you're like me and you have this idea overwhelm, just know it's normal. Know that it means that you are never gonna be scarce on ideas. Oh, Jason, I. You will find out soon. You will find out soon. Everyone will. But just know that, like, the ideas are so plentiful, they will always come to you. Just play with one and read that book, Big Magic, if you have the time. Thanks, Jason. You too. Well, it's past dinner time for you, but anyway, thank you, everyone. I look forward to going live tomorrow and on Christmas Day. And if there's any topics that you want me to go live on, I would love to hear them. You know, going live for almost two weeks in a row. I used to do it all the time, but sometimes you get a little, like, look. You know, like, what do I say? What do they want to hear? Especially around the holidays. So, anyway, have a great night. Can't wait to talk to you soon. And Merry Christmas.