How To Live In The Present During Overwhelming Times

What you're afraid of actually isn't even the thing that you're really afraid of. You're probably just fearful of some things that are very controllable. You think you're afraid of the travel, but you're not. You're afraid of it might throw you off your routine, or you think you're afraid of the work schedule, but you're not. You think you're really afraid it's going to take you away from somebody. So these are things that you can mitigate, these are things that you can control, and that helps to take the fear out of it.

And we're back with another episode of Heck Said, she Said.

So Lori and I have been talking about living in the future and how much anxiety you can build up for yourself when, God, none of it freaking comes true. And it came from a place of we just got back from New York, and then the next day when we got back from New York, we spoke at an event and that was on the tail of what was like a five week string. And I'm actually still in it of traveling to one or two locations every week. So we're talking like 10 trips in five weeks. Speaking at one or two events or running my own in that five weeks every week. Like if somebody lined up a timeline and you saw it, you'd be that mind blown emoji. And the problem is, when I was looking at the future, when I was looking at my calendar of all the travel coming up, I had so much anxiety around freaking out. I thought it was going to be the worst five, six weeks of my life. Here we are four weeks into the five, six weeks, and I love it and I feel so great. I've never had so much, like so much energy and I want more of it. And so we kind of wanted to talk about this today that when you look into the future, you're just inviting in anxiety over something that probably isn't going to happen or isn't going to unfold or isn't going to feel the way that you think it's going to feel. And instead you could just be living in the present, realizing how good you have it in the moment.

It is a real thing that I have had to learn. And it's not that I don't live in the future. I definitely take a little future trip at least once a day, if not every single day. But when I do it, they're just a lot more brief now because right when I go on that trip and I start to freak out, I'm like This isn't helping anything. Like, it's not happening right now. In fact, you've got, you know, some space here and here or whatever that looks like. It is a real craft that you hone in on to be able to start to compartmentalize every single moment and every single day. And there's that beautiful quote by Lao Tzu that talks about if you live in the past, you're depressed, if you live in the future, you're anxious, and if you're living in the now, you're present.

Yep.

And it's so true. There were times in my life where I was living in the past and I was very depressed. And I would say now I'm much more future focused, so I have a lot more anxiety. And I think that people who listen to this podcast, I think that you probably lean more into the anxious because you have a lot of things that you wanna get done. You never feel like you're doing enough or you have a lot on your plate and you're overwhelmed. So while I do believe that there is some things that you might need to do to take off of your plate, to stop feeling so anxious sometimes in life, like where we are right now, y Chris and I probably could have said no to some of these things. In fact, we have been reassessing. Could we have said no to this? What does this look like in the future? Do we want to say no to certain things or hold space for certain things to come through? But ultimately, we looked at this very busy schedule that we have right now and we decided yes. We wanted to say yes to all of these incredible opportunities. So now that we've said yes, that's actually part of how I deal with it, is okay, you might be anxious, but you wanted all of this. I actually have said this probably 10 times in the past week. Hey, remember when we wished people would ask us to be on stage? Remember when we would have literally like died if we got to speak in front of hundreds of people twice in one week? Oh, my God. Remember, like, when we would have freaked out if people paid for us to come and speak? And also we got like incredible trips to New York. Like what?

Yeah, like New York, Miami, Louisiana. All that bouncing back and forth, back and forth, like that was what we used to pray for and say that would be the greatest thing ever. And so the whole point is, when I looked at this six week stint, man, I had a lot of anxiety around. I thought I didn't know how I was going to make it through it. And now that I'M four weeks into it, it feels amazing. It is the opposite of what I was afraid of. And so I just wanted to take the moment to remind people to not build that anxiety. Don't count yourself out because it may not look and feel the way you think it's going to look and feel. Just be in the present, tackle what's in front of you and put on the set of lenses that sees the bright side of everything. I mean, now going through this six week stint, being four weeks in, I would do this all the time. Like I love. I'm so high energy. I'm having so much fun with this. I think I said yes to all of the exact right things for the first time in a long time. And so just because there was a lot of things in a certain period of time doesn't mean that there was a single one of them that shouldn't have been a yes for me. They were all hell yeses. And it's reflecting in the way that I feel and that is really good.

You know, I think a lot of times there's also a deeper underlying root issue under the oh, I feel overwhelmed. And if I'm being totally honest, for me, when I get a very packed schedule and I'm traveling all the time, there's like this asterisk of oh my gosh, you're going so backwards with your health, you're not getting your workouts and you don't feel good. Are you ever going to be able to make it back where you feel really good again if you keep going down this journey of not having the time and space to really take care of yourself? And when I was in New York, I was like, oh my God, I'm so aware that these are choices that I'm making of having drinks every night, maybe eating too much at night, or things that are really rich that were keeping me awake. And so then I'm not sleeping good. So then the next day I already feel behind the eight ball and I don't feel feel great. 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It's really interesting because what I just heard you say, and I'm sure you, you realized you said or not your anxiety didn't come from the schedule.

No.

And your anxiety didn't come from the number of places that we're gonna be. No, it did not. And your anxiety did not come from the number of things that we're gonna be doing. It came from your fear that you couldn't control your health.

Yes.

That you came from the fear that you'd make unhealthy choices.

And then my sleep, and then it would just spiral and I'd start to feel awful. Yeah.

So it's a great lesson to us and everybody listening. What you're afraid of actually isn't even the thing that you're really afraid of. You're probably just fearful of some things that are very controllable. You think you're afraid of the travel, but you're not. You're afraid of it might throw you off your routine or you think you're afraid of the work schedule, but you're not. You think you're really afraid it's gonna take you away from somebody. So these are things that you can mitigate. These are things that you can control and that helps to take the fear out of it.

It definitely does. And I just wanna talk to the people who are like, well, easier said than done because this has been a journey for me. Sometimes it's in the beginning, it did not feel, quote, unquote, easy. It felt like I was not in control. It felt like I couldn' to exactly what I wanted. But in the long run, what I learned is you don't have to be 100% dialed in all the time at all. In fact, I think it is good to get a bit out of your routine, but just make sure that you have a little bit of movement scheduled every single day. Make sure that you're drinking your water on the road, try to bring any supplements that you're used to taking, and stay as close as you can to that morning routine. And that is really, really huge. Along with, you know, something that's really changed for us is when we're on the road, we try to keep our whole day up until dinner as healthy as possible. And it's not that we go, you know, balls to the wall when dinner comes. It's just that you're probably going to be eating with people. You might have a glass of wine or two, whatever that looks like, and you're going to be just fine. But just try the best that you can to keep your day up until that 5, 6 o' clock point as healthy as possible.

So if there's any message for you to take out of it, it's this. Whatever you're worried about in the future, it's not going to feel as bad as you think. It's going to probably feel better than you think. The things that you're actually worried about are not the true things you're worried about. The true things, once you uncover that you're worried about, are probably controllables. And while it's not always easy to make the better choice, it is within your power to make the better choice. And that's a muscle that you build. You're in control. It doesn't have to feel bad. Lean into having the exact productive life you want and put in the boundaries to have it feel the way you want it to feel.

I just want to add one last thing because I can get really overwhelmed with the workload that can pile up while we're gone. And something that I did on this trip was I just took an hour to three hours every single day. And I went to an amazing coffee shop and made it part of my experience. And I would do work there. And I committed to this because when I got home, I didn't want to feel so overwhelmed and behind. And also that's where a lot of my overwhelm on the trip can come from, is thinking that people need me or there's things that I need to respond to. So just simply by scheduling one to three hours a day on these trips when you're really overwhelmed or you have a very loaded schedule. I felt so relieved. I felt amazing. So, you guys, I hope that these, any one of these tricks or all of these tricks really helps you with overwhelm. And we're so grateful for you tuning in.

Thanks for listening. Love. Appreciate you.