Turning Overwhelm into Focus on What Produces

It is so easy to slip into a feeling of overwhelm. Monday morning rolls around, the weekend breeze is finished, and your brain starts going through all the many, many things that you think you need to get done in order to have a productive week. And if you let your mind spin too far down this rabbit hole, you realize very quickly that there's just too much to do and you're probably never going to get it all done. But what if there was an easy way to take on only the few things that actually matter and to effortlessly see the rest managed by Mind of the Universe? Well, grab the popcorn and your work journal, because that's what this episode is all about. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I am your host, Andrew Donovan. Now, this episode, the content that I want to go over with you, is really a pep talk that I have to give myself on a regular basis. What I described in the introduction about waking up on Monday morning and letting your brain just spiral through all the tons of things you have to get done in order to have a productive week, that's the process that I experience pretty regularly. And then I find myself feeling overwhelmed because I've got this work week ahead that was at one point a blank calendar, and now it's just stuffed to the brim. And I have to remind myself my job is not to be incredibly busy. My job, in my business at least, is, is to be focused on the things that really matter and to trust that everything is working out in the big picture. And truly, I believe that. But when I let my brain start to take over and when I start to think about all the many, many details that I think need to get tended to by my own intellect, by my own efforts, well, then that gets really overwhelming. Can you relate to that? So what I've learned is that overwhelm, that emotion of being overwhelmed, it means that you're trying to be too specific about many things, when you think about it, you've got a finite amount of time, you've got a somewhat finite amount of brain power. Although most of us agree that we don't use our brains nearly to their full potential. But when you apply your mental power, your intellect, to try to manage the many details of your business, it's just impractical to expect yourself to be able to have a handle on all of it. I mean, consider any kind of product launch or product creation or whatever you might be doing in your business right now, even just like your social media content production, there are so many details that go into all of it. I mean, tracking likes and creating graphics and figuring out what the trends are and figuring out what the latest expectations are. On Instagram, should you use hashtags or should you focus on reels, or should you focus on reels that have five hashtags or 25 hashtags, or should you not do hashtags and should you do a different posting strategy? I mean, there's just. There's so much detail. And if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, I want to invite you to step back in those moments that you become aware of your overwhelm and just take a couple deep breaths. If you've got a cleansing, refreshing essential oil, like maybe some Siberian fir or a pine scent, something that's a little bit earthy and refreshing and grounding, grab a little bit of that, take some deep breaths, and just remind yourself consciously that everything is always working out. This is the first place that I go. And I also like to remind myself that 20% of my efforts are really responsible for 80% of the results that I see. And so when I've got this endless to do list of all these little tasks, like research the latest trends for Instagram and get with my video editor to make sure that we tweak these little details about our video intros and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I mean, I could make an eternal to do list of business tasks, as I'm sure you could. And when I catch myself doing that, I have to remind myself, hold on. Of all of this stuff that is consuming time, resources, manpower, and my emotional mental bandwidth. A small percentage of that is actually responsible for the majority of the results. And in a future episode, I actually want to teach you a framework that I use to laser in on that 20% of most productive things. But I'm gonna give you something else today that's less about identifying your perfect 20% and more about finding the feeling space of productivity and then turning the rest over to the universe. Because that 80% of you could say less productive stuff. It's not that you don't want it to get done. It's not that it's not important in some way, because it probably has some kind of significance or meaning. That's why you put it on a to do list. But knowing that you're a being, possibly with other priorities and other things to do, not just business all the time, you know, that it's just not Possible to have that much attention and bandwidth to be able to tend to all of those details. And that's what I'm talking about when I say that if you feel overwhelmed, you're being too specific about too many things because one human being can't manage everything. That's just impractical. And you know that that's asking a little bit more of yourself than you actually need to. And as a self proclaimed perfectionist, I can totally relate to that feeling. So once I've invited myself to step back, take some cleansing breaths and remind myself that I don't have to do everything, in fact, I really want to focus on that top 20% that produces the majority of my results, then I like to ask these three questions. And if you've got a work journal or a little pad of paper, write these down. We'll also put them in the show notes for you here on the podcast platforms. So the three questions. And I'm gonna tell you what the questions are and then go a little bit more into detail with each of them. Number one, what's lighting me up in my business right now? So this is. Well, I'll go through the questions first, then go into detail. Number two, what am I giving the universe to tend to just for now? And number three, what would I like to entertain at some point? Question mark. And then in parentheses I put it's what would I like to entertain at some point? But that doesn't get my focus right now because it's not my primary target or targets. Okay, so number one, what's lighting me up in my business right now? Number two, what am I giving to the universe to tend to? And number three, what would I like to entertain at some point in the future? And let's go just a little bit into detail with each of these questions. The first one, what's lighting me up in my business right now? The reason why I like that specific wording is because at different points of your life, different things are going to light you up. You might be really lit up by making funny videos for YouTube right now that direct traffic to your brand in business and create awareness. But in six months you might be lit up by something totally different. I truly believe that when something lights you up, it's lighting you up for a reason. And sometimes I really find myself feeling rubbed the wrong way when I hear other coaches and mentors say, here's a list of all the things that actually matter. You need to focus on these things all the time because the majority of inspired ideas, the unexpected things that are just birthed out of the oblivion. Those are the little positive impulses that were not anticipated, those little serendipitous moments where you just have. I mean, one day you're inspired to go to every cupcake shop in your local area, and through that you discover your new journey for making a digital course about specific kinds of cupcake artistry. Whatever. You get what I mean, it's following those little impulses, that feeling of being lit up that really lets you. You follow your path of least resistance, your path of greatest inspiration toward everything that you really desire, the things that really matter to you. And I think that it is such a gift to be able to give yourself permission to let that be your primary guiding force. And so when I answer that question for myself and I say, what's lighting me up in my business right now, not this year, just right now, sometimes I find myself feeling a little bit flippant. I think, okay, and Andrew, you can't just switch back and forth all the time, moment to moment, about what's lighting you up. But when I'm really honest with myself and I stop thinking what should I be doing? I stop thinking, what is everyone else doing? And comparing myself to them, and I just ask, what's genuinely lighting me up right now? That clarity allows me to get. Just dial in on usually, like, one or two things that I know would really make a difference in my life and business at this moment. And even if it seems a little bit whimsical or it seems maybe like it's something that isn't what I quote unquote, should be focusing on, if I know that it genuinely lights me up, I've allowed myself the permission to really trust that. And I invite you to give yourself that same permission. Trust those impulses. Question number two is what am I giving the universe to tend to just for right now? Now, usually when you've got that big, long list of the many, many things that you think you're supposed to be doing this week or this month or this year, or even today, and you feel overwhelmed, well, a lot of that stuff is stuff that you genuinely would like to see tended to, most of it is stuff that you can't tend to all by yourself. That's why you feel overwhelmed and, and the idea that you're the person who has to do it all, it is so flawed because, well, I mean, look at your existence. There are trillions of details that have come together so synergistically you couldn't possibly, as a single human entity, have orchestrated all of it. Correct? I mean, just look at your physical body right now. The clothes on your body, the blood running through your, through your bloodstreams, the energy production that's happening inside every cell of your body. I mean, you're one person and you couldn't have constructed all of that. There is a wiser mind of the universe tending to your well being and to the well being of your business, believe it or not. And I have to remind myself of this pretty frequently because it's easy for me to slip into this attitude of well, Andrew's got to do it all because he's the well, I'm not going to go too. I don't want to get too detailed with you, but I relate to that idea, that feeling that you've got to do it all. And when I remind myself that there is a much wiser, broader perspective, a wiser mind of the universe that's really orchestrating all of existence and that has my well being at heart and the well being of my business because my business is part of that universe, then I feel like I can start surrendering things. And I really like that word. How do you feel about it? Surrender. Could you let a few of those things go off of your to do list? Specifically the ones that don't light you up, the ones that might be most time consuming and least productive, or the ones that might be productive but that you just have a lot of resistance or heaviness about. You don't feel flow. So when I ask this question, what am I giving to the universe to tend to, at least for right now, I move a lot of stuff from my busy to do list over to this question and I'll write down all the things that I, I think someone should be tending to. And it might be general stuff, like it might be like send tons of people through my funnel, like tap into lots of traffic, find lots of people to buy my course or generate this amount of revenue. And it might be really specific things like find someone to handle this meeting or find these, come up with the specific topics for my upcoming keynote or my upcoming presentation. It might be broad stuff or general stuff. And really there's nothing that you can't put on that list. And the way that this is a really effective question is you have to remind yourself that it's not permanent. When you give something over to the universe. That doesn't mean that you're never gonna tend to it yourself. It doesn't mean that you're never going to give it mental attention. It just means that when you answered the first question and you said, what's lighting me up in my business right now? You're saying that's what I'm going to commit myself to. That's what I'm going to commit my focus, my emotional mental bandwidth to just for right now. And knowing that I can only focus on one or maybe a couple things at a time. Most people would say one thing at a time. Then I'm going to give the rest to the universe to tend to. That's okay. And then I might take over some of it in the, you know, a later time. All right, question number three was what would I like to entertain at some point? And this is where you write down things that don't get your focus right now just because it's not a primary target. So I've got things that might be really interesting to me. Like, for example, right now I'm getting more and more interested in leveraging Instagram as a form of traffic for my business. When I launched my very first coaching brand, I used Facebook as my only source of traffic. And so I got really good at it. I got really good at Facebook lives, figuring out how to make a Facebook Live get lots of traction, get thousands of views, get lots of engagement, and how to turn that engagement into people on my email list. And that's how I fueled my business right from the get go. And I was really efficient at it. And now I've become much less interested in Facebook and I'm getting more interested in Instagram. However, that's not the thing that lights me up the most right now. And so I didn't put Instagram as one of the. When I did this exercise for myself today, this morning, it's a Monday morning right now, and here in Salt Lake City, sunny, 61 degrees, Salt Lake City, I didn't put Instagram on my list of things that are lighting me up the most right now because it's interesting to me, but I feel like the future is a better time. Sometime in the future is when I'll start to shift my focus to Instagram and start to really master content strategies, posting strategies, ways to make Instagram be a real source of traffic for, for my business and to fuel my sales machines, my marketing machines, et cetera. So question number three. What are things that I'd like to look at in the future? I mean, that's kind of related to question number two. What am I giving the universe to tend to? The reason why I like question number three is because my brain doesn't like to let go of things because I have a little bit of fomo. So this is where I find myself wanting to be involved in many things because there's many. So there's so many good ideas, there's so many interesting things, fun things that I could invest myself in, and I just know that I can't focus on all of it. So if something doesn't light me up a lot right now, but I think it could really be an interesting part of my future, I'll put it on question number three. And so what I'm left with at the end of this very brief exercise, I mean, the whole thing can take three minutes, three to five minutes. And what I'm left with is question number one gives me just one or two things that I really can apply myself to, and that's what I make sure I've blocked timeout for on my calendar for the coming week. And then question number two gives me this sigh of relief because there's always going to be a lot of detail, a lot of nuance that I might not feel prepared to invest myself in, and I might not feel like I'm even capable of being the manager of all that detail. So if I can consciously surrender that to the wiser mind of the universe, well, that's a big emotional relief. That's a big burden off my shoulders. And then question number three. What are other things that I want to, you know, explore in the future, that I want to apply myself to at a future time, but just not right now because it's not my primary target necessarily? That's a fun question to answer because, you know, I get it, like, brainstorm other little dreams that I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna backburner those, and I'm gonna let them come to the forefront of when they just light up for me, and I'll know when that is. And then I take question number one, and I apply myself to those one or two things. And that's how I like to keep myself from overwhelm and keep myself mentally and emotionally focused on the things that really matter. And the thing that you have to keep coming back to over and over again throughout the week is you have to, as you find yourself going through the week, and you might find yourself feeling a little bit tempted to start adding more and more detail onto your list, taking more and more onto your plate, and to micromanage more of your life, you have to remind yourself, hey, it's okay to give a lot of that over to the universe. Truly trust that it's got your well being at heart. And the things that are lighting you up right now, there's a reason they're lighting you up. So you have permission to pursue those things wholeheartedly. All right, my friend, I hope that this conversation was really useful for you. And if you found a little nugget, share with me in a review on Apple Podcasts where you want to put your focus, how this has helped you feel a little bit freer, a little less burdened, and a little more inspired. And as always, we appreciate those five star reviews, the ratings. And if you have a moment, hit that share button and share this with friends or colleagues who would benefit from this, because that's how we spread this message and keep producing valuable content for you. Well, thank you for joining me on this episode and I will see you next time. Sat.