A 5 Step Process To Stop Overwhelm | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today we're going to be talking about how to stop being so overwhelmed. I'm going to give you a five step process, very, very simple process to help you stop being so overwhelmed, right? So when you look at the world, there's a lot that's happening in the world, right? We can look and be like, if we look at all of the things and we can watch the news and see all the things and we watch this news station, that new station, man, it can seem like there's a lot of stuff going on. It can seem really scary, right? We can get caught up in it. But then also, besides what's happening in the world, there's also your life, right? There's things happening in your life. You've got kids and you've got a job and you've got bills to pay and you've got all of these things that you need to do. And if you were to look at all of them and bills that are coming up and deadlines and the kids have to do this, you still gotta do the laundry. Like, it can seem really overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Overwhelm is a perspective. And so, you know, I think the world's always going to be crazy. I think you're always going to be busy. So instead of trying to fix the world, instead of trying to fix other people, why don't we fix us, right? That's really what it comes down to. The first thing I want to say about overwhelm is this. There's a lot of times when I will. I work with business owners, right? What I work with in business owners is the mindset of the business owner. Because I know that the thing that's holding a business back from growing is nothing. Well, there's other things, but majority of the time, like 95% of the time that I see, it's the mind of the business owner. If that is restrictive, it will restrict the growth. And one of the things that I hear from a lot of business owners is like, oh my gosh, this is going on right now and I'm so overwhelmed or it's overwhelming me. And the very first thing I always tell them, and this is not part of the five step process, but I want you to just understand this. First is when someone says, well, you know, my employees are over. This has gone on with my employees and this has happened, this has happened. And it's really overwhelming me. I say, no, no, no, we gotta change your verbiage first. First off, the things going on with your employees are not overwhelming you. You are overwhelming yourself based off of your perspective of your employees. Can we agree to that? And that's the thing I always want to get people to first is instead of blaming something externally outside of them, oh, I have the kids that I have to do this for, and I have a job and I have deadlines, and I have this, this going on and this going. And you start to blame everything externally. If you blame change anything that's external, what you can change is you in what you do. And so the first thing I always take people back to is nothing is overwhelming you, you are overwhelming yourself. That's the first thing we really need to get clear on, right? So if you want to blame external, this ain't the podcast for you. This is how to change your perspective and get yourself out of overwhelm so that you can take the right action to make yourself feel less overwhelmed. So that's the first thing I want to talk about it and just really understand is that you are overwhelming yourself. So we need to get you out of it. So how do you get yourself out of it? Let's dive into it. The first thing is to breathe. You've been listening to this podcast long enough. Whenever anything happens, whenever I get overwhelmed, which happens a couple times a week, the very first thing that I do is I take a step back mentally from the situation. Cause usually 99.9% of the time, when I am overwhelmed with things going on in my business and stuff I have to do, it's because I'm looking at everything at once and thinking that everything has to be done immediately. When in reality, in this very moment, in this present moment, there's nothing that has to be done. So what I do is I take a step back, I take 60 breaths, I go in through the nose, I go out through the mouth. I do it, you know, in the nose, out the mouth. When I breathe out, I breathe out like I'm breathing out through a straw. So it is a long exhale. Because a long exhale actually slows your heart rate down and releases more carbon dioxide, which allows your body to relax a little bit more. Because when your emotions are high, your logic is low. And so when you're really, really caught up in overwhelm and you're overwhelming yourself, you're not thinking really clear. And so what you want to do is just do your breathing and think of something that you're grateful for, think of something that's positive in your life, even if it's just like, man, it hasn't been sunny in a few days and today the sun came out. I'm really grateful for that, right? And you start thinking about of something that you're grateful for so that you can start to pivot your mindset that you are overwhelming yourself with and get out of the stress so that you could come from a positive place. Because when you come from a positive place of gratitude, it makes it easier to come up with ways to get yourself out of overwhelm, right? When emotion is high, logic is low, which is even more stressful because you feel like you should be doing something, but you can't figure out what you should be doing, right? So the first thing, just get better at just taking yourself out of your body, out of your mind, all of that, and then just feeling into the breath, okay? That's the first thing. Second thing that I find that really helps people out is when you are overwhelmed. The reason why you're overwhelmed is because you're thinking about everything all at once. Everything everywhere, all at once. All of that stuff is what you're thinking about, and it's overwhelming. Let me say that again. You are overwhelming yourself because of the fact that you're actually trying to think of all of the problems and all of the solutions and when they need to be done and doing all of them right now. And so what you want to do, step number two, after you do your breathing, is to write everything on your mind on a piece of paper. Get it all out of your head, Everything, all of the BS that you got to do, everything that's stressing you out, every person that you're stressed out about, all of your thoughts, all of your feelings. Allow your mind to just release it all and put it on the page. One of the things I find that helps people so much is just literally by putting it on the page, there's already another level of relaxation. Cause it's like your brain has been holding onto it. It's been bouncing around your brain 40 different things and trying to figure out the solutions and what you gotta do and when you're gonna do them. And when your brain knows, okay, it's on paper, it's like another level of relaxation. Because it's when it's on paper, what's important about knowing something that's on paper is when it's on paper, it can be planned, right? It makes it really easy to figure out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done and how to do it when it's on paper. And so now that it's on paper, it's out of your head, it's on paper. It can live there forever. Now, let's go through each one of these things and ask yourself, you know, when I'm looking at this, what is it that's stressing me out? What is the actions that I need to take? And what I would do is find the most important one, like the thing that is. That has the most energy around it or feels like it has the soonest deadline, or the thing that's holding you back the most, or really, really making you feel it. And that's where we're going to go into number three, which is deciding which one is the one that you want to take action on next and. And figuring out what is the next action to take. Right? Because when you're thinking about all of the things that need to be done, you're not just thinking about the next step, you're thinking about the next 5,000 steps. And that's really. When you're thinking about that way, you can really overwhelm yourself because you can't take all the steps at once. You can always take step one to two to three to four to five, all of that. And so you've got to take the next step. And so you have to. Now that you're looking at this piece of paper, you identify what's the one that stresses you out the most, or which one, if you got it accomplished, would make you feel the best. And you identify the next best action to take. Usually when you're overwhelmed, you're thinking about 46 different action items to take, you know, and the five things you need to do in your business, and the seven things that you have to do with your kids and the 18 things that are wrong in your life. That's too much. A human can only do one thing at a time. You can only do one thing at a time. Multitasking is a lie. You can't do 40 different things at one time. So what it comes down to is what you know. So part of you is usually stressing out because you want all of the things to be done, but you can only do one thing at a time. And so if you want to start to feel better, progress helps you feel better. Progress equals happiness, as Tony Robbins always says. So if you feel, even though things aren't done, but you feel like you're making valuable steps in the right direction, usually those will help you feel a whole lot better. And so you just Identify what's the biggest priority and what's the next best action that I can take. Right? All right. Now, once you feel that your mind is calmed down, it's on paper, you know what action to take. Get your physical body moving. One of the things that's hard to do is that if you've been stagnant for the entire day, it's a lot harder if you've been sitting at a, you know, sitting on your couch or maybe you've been at the computer. You know, it's 2 o' clock and you've been at the computer all day long and your body hasn't been moving. There's no momentum on the side of physical action. And so what you've got to do is you've actually got to start the momentum. You've heard me say it a million times. Action leads to more action. Inaction leads to more inaction. So if you've been inactive physically, not moving your body much today, except for maybe just your fingers because you've been typing at the computer, and your eyes because you've been looking at the screen, get your physical body moving, whatever it is that you got to do, I don't give a damn what it is, but get your heart rate up, do jumping jacks, do pushups, go for a walk. A lot of times when we're overwhelmed, we're thinking about all the stuff that needs to be done, but we're not doing any of them. And usually if you're just sitting on the couch doing nothing, it's really hard to get yourself into forward motion. It's not hard. It feels like it would be hard to get yourself into forward motion. Like if I'm sitting on the couch and I'm like, oh man, I gotta get up and do xyz and I start thinking about it versus actually doing it. You've done this before, right? Then you think about, oh man, I gotta do this thing. And this thing is coming up and oh God, it's gonna be just so hard to do. And I've got so many other things to do today. And instead of actually getting my ass up, I'm sitting on the frickin couch, which is not helping me get towards anywhere, right? So the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Instead of thinking about what I need to do, I've just gotta take the first. So I've got to get my physical body up and do something. I don't care what it is, it's got to get the heart rate up. You can go onto YouTube right now. And you can go and put five minute home workout and you can do a quick five minute home workout, get that heart rate up. But you need some forward motion physically because action creates more action. So you've got to get. If you've been inactive, you've got to get into action because action creates more action. A lot of times, you know, there's actually been a lot of studies on this is a lot of people wake up and think like, well, I hope I'm motivated today because if I'm motivated then I'll take action. And they're like, well, I just don't feel as motivated today. So that's why I didn't get anything done. Right. Like, how many times have you heard somebody say that before? Well, I wasn't really motivated today, so that's why I didn't get anything done. That's a bunch of BS because psychologists have actually found that it's not you should be searching for motivation and then makes it easier to take action. It's that when you take action, you become more motivated. So instead of searching for motivation to take action, you need to take action to give yourself a chance to be more motivated. So what's the next thing that you need to do? Get your physical body moving and figure it out. Right? And that takes us to number five, which is just fricking do the first thing. Now that your body's had some movement, ride that momentum into the most important thing. It's really kind of interesting. I work with so many business owners and the solution to their problems is always so easy. It's take action. And then I talk to them and they don't take the fucking action. And I'm like, why didn't you take the action? Like, well, I had this to do and I was kind of overwhelmed. And there's all of these things and I'm like, do you see that you are your own worst. Like, thinking about it doesn't help. Trying to think about your problems is like trying to get yourself out of quicksand. By running faster, you're only going to go deeper, faster. And so what it comes down to is you've got to figure out what it is that you need to do and then you've just got to take action. Doesn't matter how you feel. You know, the most successful people that I found are not people that wait to be motivated or any of that stuff. What they do is they take action consistently. They are not more gifted. They're a lot of times definitely not smarter than other people, but what they do is they just take action every day and they take action. Here's a key point. Regardless of how they feel, usually when you start taking action, you start feeling better. And so, you know, you focus on one thing and one thing only. What is the action that you need to take right now? Become like a sniper rifle versus a shotgun. Like, if you see a shotgun, you shoot a shotgun and it has all these pellets that go everywhere. That's how a lot of people try to be productive. Everywhere, all at once, trying to get it all done. But the most successful people that I found are like a sniper rifle. Like, they are looking down the scope and they're going for one thing and one thing only today, and they're focusing on that one thing and accomplishing that one thing, the most important thing of their day. Just imagine if every day of your life, the only thing that you got done, like, besides obviously feeding the kids and that type of stuff. But as far as moving the needle forward in your life, the only thing that you got done was the most important thing, and that was it. Wouldn't you be like five or ten times more successful in a year if you just got the most important thing done? So that's what I mean by a sniper rifle. Like, you've gotta be looking down the barrel and say, that's the one thing that I've gotta go for today. Right. It's hard to get overwhelmed when you're thinking about one thing. The problem is you're thinking about too many things and thinking about all the things that need to be done and every single step that needs to be done. Nope. One thing. What is your most important task for today? And tell yourself, if that's the only thing that I get done and that moves the needle. Today was a successful day. So that's your five steps to stop being overwhelmed. Number one, get yourself into breathing. Number two, write down everything on your mind with pen and paper. Number three, ask yourself what's the next best action to take and identify it. Number four, get your physical body moving. And number five, take action on that first thing. So that's I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Rob, dial JR R O B D I A L J R. And I'm going to leave you like 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.