7 Ways To Stop Overwhelm

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today we're gonna be talking about seven ways to stop being so overwhelmed. It's really, really easy to get overwhelmed nowadays. If you think of all of the things that we have to do, all of the technology that we have. We have phones, we have computers, we have tv. We have other people that live in our lives. Some of you guys have children. We have work, we have family. We have so many things that are just trying to get our attention. And some of them deserve our attention. Some of them, frankly, don't deserve our attention at all. And overwhelm is really, really terrible for your mind, but it's also really terrible for your body. There was actually a study that was done in 1991. It was a Whitehall study. And they found that people who had higher levels of overwhelm and stress levels had a greater risk of developing heart disease and mental health problems compared to those people who were not as overwhelmed. And so when we look at this, it's not just a mental thing. It's also a physical thing as well. And so when you look at overwhelm, if this is the case, and it's not good for our minds, it's not good for our bodies, it's something that we should work on and try to get, you know, at least not try to get rid of. Cause we'll probably never get fully rid of overwhelm throughout our entire life, but at least start to step away from being so overwhelmed. Because it's very easy to be doing something every single second of every single day. But if you look at our brains and our bodies, our brains and our bodies were not meant for this world that we're in. And when I say world, I don't mean Earth. I mean the world, the structure, the technology, everything that we've built. And technology seems to double every single year as far as how much stuff is happening and the amount of. The amount of things that you can go into with video games, with VR. I remember I did VR a couple years ago. I did it, and I had a headset, it was about three years ago. And I played one game, and I got really into it. I'm not really that big in video games, but I got really big into it. And it was this game where you shoot robots. And these were. You know, the levels get harder and harder and harder. And I noticed that after I played the game for, like, an hour, my nervous system was on guard and, like, really overwhelmed for a few hours. After I played the game, after I was done, I was sitting on my couch and I could feel like my heart beating. And we're not really suited for this world that we've built our in. Our brains and bodies are not really suited for all this technology, everything that we have. We're better suited for the planes and hunting and gathering and not in constant stimulation all of the time. And in between the hunting and gathering, we would sit around and talk, or we would just stare off into the distance at a beautiful sunset. And so when you look at overwhelm, what does it actually mean to be overwhelmed? It's basically the body saying, hey, slow down. Like this shit's getting to be too much. You gotta chill for a little bit, dude, I ain't got any more left. Just stop for a bit. But what the problem is, and I've realized this about it myself about probably six or seven years ago, is that I had been trained. I trained myself to go, go, go, go, go, go, go all the time. And so when I had a free moment, just the pause made me even more stressed out. Cause I felt like I should be doing, I felt like I should be further, I felt like there was something I was supposed to be doing at all points in time. And it's basically the overwhelm is your brain and your body are swamped by all of the demands that you are placing on them. Not anybody else, not society, not your mother or father or anything. It is you are placing your brain and body in this overwhelm. And the demands can be, you know, it can be many different things. It'd be cognitive, it could be emotional, it could be physical as well. And here's the thing that I really want you to understand. It could be that your body is overworked. Maybe it's physical movements. Maybe you work outside, maybe you get a workout in every single day. It could be that the body is overworked. But if we're being real, most of the time, overwhelm doesn't come from your body being overworked. It's from you not being able to turn your mind off. You not being able to take a step out of your mind and chill for a minute. And because your mind is part of your body, your brain is part of your body. It's also making your body overworked. Because the brain, even though it's only 2% of your entire weight, it uses about 20% of your body's energy. Your brain is the most energy consuming organ that's inside of your body. So if you're thinking and overthinking and overthinking and overthinking. There is no break at all. If you're waking up and you're checking your phone and you're checking your emails and you're checking your texts and you're checking Instagram and you're checking TikTok and you're checking Twitter before you even get out of bed. When does your brain actually have a second just to chill? And then you get out of bed and what do you do? You go straight to the coffee and you chug a coffee, and then you go get your kids ready, and then you take them to school, and then you immediately go to work, and you're rushing into work, oh, my God, I forgot to eat breakfast today. And you're just eating snacks. And the rest of the day is just go, go, go, go, go. And you come back from work, you get stuck in traffic, you go pick up your kids from. From school, you bring them home, you get them, get them all ready with their school work, you get them ready for bed. And then once they're ready for bed and they're in bed, then instead of taking a moment just to chill, your version of quote, unquote, chill is turning on Netflix and watching Netflix for three hours and then going to bed, and you do it over and over and over again. No wonder why we're so overwhelmed. It makes sense. So it means that it's something we can remove ourself from if we really want to. And it's something that I want to talk to you about today. And I got this whole idea because I was on a group coaching call for one of my coaching programs. It's called Mindset Mentor University. You know, if you're interested in learning about it, just go to robdial.com and you can. There's information under the programs up there, but I had a client that was on the live. And in the live, we have Q and A sessions, and the client was talking about something. The client said, oh, she said, it's making me overwhelmed. It's making me overwhelmed. And when I listen to somebody who I'm coaching, I listen on two levels. I listen to what they're saying, and I listen to what's under what they're saying. Like, what's behind it. When you say it's making me overwhelmed, really, it's making you overwhelmed or you're making yourself overwhelmed? Cause what happens is it's a tiny little difference. Like, I'm less concerned about what you do, and I'm More concerned about the story that you're telling yourself in your head. And so if you're saying it's making me overwhelmed, work is making me overwhelmed. My relationship is making me overwhelmed, my children's schedule is making me overwhelmed. My schedule is making me overwhelmed. No, it's not. It is not making you overwhelmed. Because when you say it is making me overwhelmed, you are taking all of the blame and you are putting it on something external, something outside of you, and that puts you as a victim to your circumstance. When in reality, you are the one that's in control of what you do throughout the day. You're the one that's in control of your schedule, what you don't do throughout the day. And so when you say something like it's making me overwhelmed, you're automatically making yourself the victim. And when you're the victim, you have no power over your life. And that makes you feel more overwhelmed. And so it's not making you overwhelmed, you are making you overwhelmed. You can't play the victim. You know, when you listen to the words, it's making me overwhelmed is putting external blame on something else. I am making myself overwhelmed is taking internal blame. And when you take internal blame, that puts you into the driver's seat. Because if you're the one making yourself overwhelmed, you are also the only one that can make yourself not overwhelmed anymore. That push you into a place of power. And when you have. When you blame external, you can't change it, but when you blame you, you can change it. But it also. And it's a small change, isn't? It's like it's making me overwhelmed versus I'm overwhelmed. It's a tiny little change. But, you know, it really changes the way that you view your world and what you can and can't do. It changes the way that you view your life. It puts you into the driver's seat also. Overwhelm almost never comes from what you're doing. That's the funny thing about it. Almost never comes from what you're or what you have to do. It almost always comes from what you are thinking about what you're doing. That's what it comes from. You're thinking about all the stuff that you have to do in the future. You're thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking. Oh, my gosh, how much thinking do you think that you do throughout the day? So much thinking throughout the day. And then you think about thinking, you think about planning, and you plan about planning. It just doesn't stop. You don't stop. And overwhelm is the feeling of, like, when you have 40 things on your to do list and you're like, oh, my God, I'm so overwhelmed. Why are you overwhelmed? It's because you're trying to think about and plan out all 40 of those things and take action on all 40 of them at one time. But, you know, you can only do one thing at a time. And so now that we've identified that what overwhelm is, why it occurs in your body and how you are the one creating it, let's talk about the seven different ways that you can actually get yourself free from this overwhelm. Okay? Number one, first one. And I've been given this tip a lot. Like, if you're not doing this at this point, you listen to podcasts all the time. You gotta get it together, okay? And that tip is you gotta breathe. Just chill for a second. Like, chill the fuck out for a little while, right? Get your. Give your mind and your body a little bit of a break. Just chill. So many people are just so tense and, like, so stressed and so wound up all the time. They feel like they have to go, go, go, go, go. And they always have to be looking at something. And they can't sit in their car for two minutes while their husband pumps the gas without staring at their fucking phone the entire time, right? Like, it could be three minutes of breathing. And if you're like, oh, my God, I don't have two minutes, or, I don't have three minutes. If you don't have three minutes to breathe consciously, you need three hours because you need to chill out, right? You just need to give yourself a break. And so this breathing is just a chance for you to take a break. Like, you couldn't work out all day long with no break. Whenever you work out, you work out hard, and then you break, and you work out hard and you break, it's the exact same thing. Give your mind a break for a little while, because eventually, I'm just telling you. And there's study after study after study. Eventually, all of this will catch up to you if you don't slow down. You were not meant. Our bodies were not meant to be. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go nonstop. If you look at all of the fastest animals, the fastest predators in this world. A cheetah, for instance. A cheetah can go 60 miles an hour, but it can only go 60 miles an hour for, like, a minute and a half. And then it's got a chill. So if you look at a cheetah, which is the fastest, I believe it's the fastest land animal. It's usually chilling most of the day and then it can go for 90 seconds. But you, your mind is going like a cheetah all day long and there's no break. So just give yourself a chance to breathe. Go onto YouTube and look up 5 minute breathwork techniques and just do 5 minutes of breathing and just be more conscious and get into your body and give your brain and your body a little bit of a break. Everyone who does a breath work exercise with me, whenever I do one of my lives, like I said for Mindset, Mentor University or any other programs that I have all the time, people are always like, oh my God, I feel amazing. And it was only three minutes. Whenever they first do breath work because they don't realize how much breathing can actually turn your into change your internal state. So that's the first thing I'll give you. First tip, just be more conscious. Do some breath work throughout the day. That's the first thing. The second thing is one thing at a time. Get really good at prioritizing and doing one thing at a time. I want you to imagine you come over my house and I cook you dinner, right? I cook you a big old steak, big old baked potato salad, and you look at the whole thing and you're like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I can't. How am I going to eat this whole thing? Would you ever do that? No. Because when you eat, you don't try to fit the entire steak and baked potato and salad in your mouth at one point in time. How do you eat? You eat one bite at a time. It's the exact same thing for everything in your life is you need to figure out all of the stuff that you need to do that's overwhelming you like crazy. And you need to get better at your prioritization. You need to prioritize the things and then take action on them because you're not stressed about what you have to do and taking that action. You're stressed because you're thinking about all of the things that you have to do and imagining all of them at once. You can only do one thing at a time. You can only take one bite at a time. Just take the next bite. So get better at your prioritization. What's the most important get better at your time management. One of the things that causes the most overwhelm, it's like 95% of people that I talk to on my different calls and everything that I run. Like, 95% of people are complete shit at time management. Like, just terrible at time management. Go onto YouTube, type in how to get better at time management, and actually start to get better at it. You can go back and you can listen to episodes where I've done it as well. But, you know, like, I did a. I did an episode that was. That was kind of on this as well. And this kind of flows directly into number three. And number three is to basically, as you prioritize, get better at your decisions. Like making your decisions, Work on getting better at your decisions. And I did an episode on this a couple months ago on mastering your decisions. And there's this thing called the Eisenhower matrix where Dwight D. Eisenhower made this. And it's. It's basically taking your to do list and categorizing them by one of four different things. There's four different categories they can go into. There's urgent and important, which are the things that you want to do, like immediately. There's important but not urgent, which are the things you want to do after your urgent and important stuff. There's urgent but not important, and there's neither urgent nor important. So those are the four categories. Category number one is urgent and important. Category number two is important but not urgent. So it might be something that's due, like, next week. Category three is urgent but not important. And category four is not urgent and not important. And you start getting better at making your decisions. And when you do that, you realize, okay, this thing that's stressing me out is not due until next week. I don't need to worry about it. So why don't I do the things that I need to do today so I don't stress myself out as much? So that's. Number three, is to get better at making your decisions. Okay? Number four is stop doing so many things at once. Like, you're doing too many things. And let me explain what I mean, because it's not the same as the other two. Stop saying yes to everything and everyone. There's so many people out there that are like, yes men and yes women. You're putting too much on your plate. You're afraid to tell your friends no. You're afraid to tell your boss no. You're afraid to tell your spouse no. You're afraid to tell your mom no. And then you have a million things on your plate that you have to do. And so stop doing so many things. Do less things, but do them better. Don't try to be a jack of all trades, find the thing that you love, and master something. And so, like, for me, when I talk with my business partner about this, what I always say is, you know, there's many ways to grow a business. There's a million ways to make a million dollars. And when you look at the business that I have, there's many different things. We could have 40 different courses and products and categories and all of that stuff. But really what that comes down to is it's doing a whole lot of things, but not doing a whole lot of things really well, I'd rather. Instead of doing 40 things, I'd rather do two or three things, but be incredible at those two or three things. And so number four is to stop doing too many things, do less, but do them better, and actually find something that you love to do and try to master that thing as well. So that's number four. Number five. Another reason why you're so overwhelmed is because you're not doing enough of what you love. You're mentally resisting things that you don't want to do. So you're like, oh, my gosh, I've gotta do these things. I've gotta do these things. I've gotta do this thing. But then you ask yourself, like, okay, you have the weekend off, but on the weekend instead, you spend time scrolling on your phone and watching Netflix, when in reality, there's things that you love to do that you haven't done in a while. And so make a list of things that you love to do and those things that make you happy, and look at that in the morning and plan those things out. How can you bring more of those things into your day and you're not doing enough of what you love? So people think overwhelm is doing too much sometimes, but a lot of times it's not doing enough of what you love to do. And so how can you actually start to make a list and figure out what is it you love to. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you used to play tennis in high school and even play tennis in six years because you've been so damn busy. How can you play more tennis? Right? What would it look like for you to play more tennis so when you get off of work, you can go and play for an hour or two with a friend or play some pickleball, do more of what you love, because that's a mental break from all of these things that maybe you don't really love that you do throughout the day. So number five is do more Things that you love. Number six, this is really important is to train for stress tolerance. So try to get good at training for your stress tolerance. What do I mean by that? A lot of people like comfort. And the problem with comfort is that you're not trained for stress. You're not trained to stress and then de stress. And so one of the things that I like to do is when I work out, I work out really hard in a set. And this is a tip that a friend of mine gave me years ago that's really good at training your nervous system. He said, do a really hard set and then give yourself the 60 seconds off or 90 seconds off. But instead of picking up your phone again and scrolling on Instagram or talking to somebody else, I have a gym that's in my garage. I'll do a really hard set and then I'll close my eyes and I'll set a timer for 60 seconds and I'll just concentrate on just. And just really slow breathing. So what I do is I get my brain and body to a very heightened state during the workout, during a set, and then I calm myself and my nervous system back down. And then the next set I get myself to a heightened state and I calm myself back down. In a heightened state, I calm myself back down. So it's stress de stress, stress de stress, like stress de stress. And you rest and you close your eyes and what you're doing is you're training yourself, your nervous system, your body, that when you're in a very heightened state, you know how to self soothe and get yourself down to a calm state. And so that's what you can, you can actually train yourself on stress tolerance. Another this is the reason why you see ice baths and like, it's like everybody's talking about ice baths nowadays is because your body freaks out during an ice bath. And your body's like, we're going to die. Get out of the water. And your body's saying that and tries to get your mind to think the same thing. And what you do is you calm your mind down. And as you calm your mind down, you calm your body down. And so that's a stress distress. And so you're actually training your nervous system to calm down. It's another really good thing with like saunas. Like I have an ice bath that I use that's in my garage. I also have a sauna. And so when I'm in the sauna and my heart rate really starts to get up, what I focus on is I can feel my heart Rate literally through my chest, just beating. And I focus on slowing it down. Stress. De stress. And so I'm training myself for stress tolerance, which I don't think really many people are trained with in the first place or know to do this in the first place. So that's. That's number six. And number seven is to a little bonus for you is a stress journal. Whenever you're stressed and you feel like you got too much going on, you're too overwhelmed, put it all on paper. There's a couple benefits of it. Number one, you start to become more aware of what stresses you out so that you can avoid it or you can plan to de stress yourself. And number two is you get it all out of your brain. And so a lot of times when we get stressed out, we just sit there and we think about it and we ruminate and there's so much shit going through our heads, we don't even know what to think because we think. And the more things come up and it gets worse and worse and worse and worse. When you make a stress journal, it's really good. The reason why is because you can sit there and you can say, okay, what is stressing me out right now? This thing is stressing me out. And you get it all out of your brain, which is a benefit. And the next thing is you start to notice patterns of what's making you stressed, and you can start avoiding those things so you don't get as stressed. So those are the seven tips for you to help you out with being less stressed and less overwhelmed. Number one, get good at breathing. Number two, do one thing at a time. Number three, master your decisions. Number four, start stop doing too many things and start doing less things but doing better. Number five, do more of what you love. Number six, train your brain and your body for stress tolerance. And then number seven, create a stress journal. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me Obdial Junior R O B D I A L J R. Once again, throughout this podcast, I mentioned Mindset Mentoring University. If you want to learn about it, you can go to robdial. Com, go to coaching programs tab. There's information on up there. But with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.