Feeling Overwhelmed? Try This…

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor. Share it with someone that you know and love. Send it to them in a text message right now. I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Let's talk about overwhelm. Have you ever felt overwhelmed before? Of course you have. It's not just in your head. Overwhelm floods your entire body with stress hormones that can literally shave years off of your life. And if you don't control it, and we live in a world of constant notifications, endless to do lists, zero downtime. But your brain and your body were not designed for this world that we've created. And the truth is, overwhelm almost never comes from what you're doing. It comes from what you're thinking about what you're doing. And so today I'm going to show you seven powerful ways to stop overwhelm in its tracks so you can finally feel like you're in control of your life again. Let's be real. It's really, really easy to get overwhelmed nowadays. Life moves faster than it ever has before. We have constant notifications, we have work demands, we have social pressures, and we rarely get to unplug with all of the technology and the phones and the computers and your ring notifications going off and your TV and people and children and work, it's a, it's just everything everywhere all at once, right? Overwhelm is really, really terrible for your body as well. Overwhelm activates your body stress response, which is your body reacting to your world and what you're thinking about your world as if there's actual danger in front of you. And it floods your body with cortisol and floods your body with adrenaline, which is really fine in the short term. If you need adrenaline, you need cortisol and your body rushes you with it. It's good because then you can run away from a tiger. But if you're getting cortisol and cortisol and cortisol multiple times a day throughout the day, it can lead to a lot of long term health issues. Chronic stress leads to ton of issues from inflammation to weak immune systems to disease. There was a study was done in 1991 by the Whitehall is what it's called and they found that people with higher stress levels had a greater risk of developing heart disease and mental health problems from those who did not have higher stress levels. So it's not just mental to think, oh my God, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just overwhelmed in my head. No, no, it's in your head. But it's also very physical. And this research highlights that it's not just in your head. It's physical and it's damaging to your body. It affects everything, your blood pressure, your digestive system, everything. And when it's left kind of unchecked, like most of us do, you get a lot of wear and tear in your body and it becomes real and dangerous. And so it's very easy to be doing something in this world that we live in every single second of the day. But our brains and bodies, like I said, we're not meant for this world that we've created. Like we're better suited. Our brains, our bodies are better suited for living in the forest or out on the plains hunting and gathering, not constant stimulation. Go, go, go, go, go. And so, you know, in our hunter gather days, yeah, we had moments of intense cortisol and adrenaline followed by intense rest. Right. So it was like maybe you're running away from an animal, you need adrenaline, you need cortisol and then you burn it off. Or maybe you have an animal that you see that you've been hunting for a day and you see it and you're you got to run it down. Adrenaline, cortisol. But it's not all day long now. It's just like the pace never stops with social media, 24, 7 work, culture, notifications, all of this stuff. And so our natural rhythms within our body have been hijacked. And so when you're looking at being overwhelmed with all the stuff that's going on, what does it actually mean to be overwhelmed? Basically what it is is this is it is your body trying to send you a message. It is your body saying, hey, slow down dude, I ain't got much more left. That's basically what your body's saying. When you feel overwhelmed, it's like your body's warning light turning on. Like it's like it's saying to you, you're asking too much of me. And the answer in those moments of overwhelm is not to push harder, it's to listen to these signals. The brain and the body are swamped by the demands that you are placing on them. Demands that you're placing on them that can be cognitive, they can be emotional, they can be physical. And so, you know, there's cognitive load which is thinking too much, there's emotional load, which, which is too much worrying. There's physical demands which is too much doing. And all of those contribute to overwhelm. Think about wearing a backpack and each thing that you're constantly ruminating on or having to do and the physical demands are just like adding a weight to the backpack that you're carrying. Eventually you're going to get to a point where that weight is unsustainable. And now here's the thing. It could be that your body is overworked, physical movements, whatever it might be. But let's be real for most of us, most people work on computers, they don't do a whole lot. They go into an office. Most of the time the overwhelm is not from physical. It's usually the mind is overworked. You know, chess players can burn 6,000 calories in a day by barely moving. And they them sitting down and staying in their their seats, their body's barely moved. But it's their brains that are just constantly playing things. And because your mind is part of your body, it's making your body overworked as well. You know, the brain uses 20% of your body's energy on average throughout the day. Even though it only weighs about 2% of your body's weight, it is the most energy consuming organ in your body. So if you're overthinking and overthinking and overthinking and waking up, and you're checking your phone, you're checking your text and your emails, your Instagram and TikTok and Twitter before you get out of bed. And then you wake up and you chug a coffee. Your mind has not even had any chance to ease into the day. Like, imagine if you woke up and you just sprinted immediately. Your body would not respond. Well, this is what your mind's doing when it's constantly on. You know, I was on a group call a couple weeks ago that I was running for Mindset University, and a lady said, it's making me overwhelmed is the exact phrase. It's making me overwhelmed. And so when I'm listening to somebody talk, I'm listening on two levels. What they're saying and then what's behind what they're saying. And when someone says, it's making me overwhelmed, it's often not the situation that they're that's overwhelming to them. It's their internal response to the situation. And so this perspective shift before we go through the seven different things is really powerful. This perspective shift is powerful. It's not usually the situation that's making you overwhelmed. It is your internal response to the situation. And if you can shift this perspective, we can change our response. And if we can change our response, then we can easily start to change the situation. And so I'm less concerned about what you do, and I'm more concerned about the story that you're telling yourself in your head. The stories that you tell yourself shape your reality. I can't handle this. And saying something like that is a way different story than I'm learning to manage this. You know, the words that we use describe what's going on in our life, and our stress will raise or lower based off of how we decide that we want to experience this life. And so don't say, I'm overwhelmed, say it's making me feel overwhelmed. Now, that might. That might not seem like a huge difference to you as a huge difference to your brain in the way that you're processing it. I'm not. It's not I'm overwhelmed is that this is making me feel overwhelmed. Work is making me feel overwhelmed, my relationship, my schedule, any of those types of things. Now, the thing that I want you to understand is that when we look at those things, your relationship is actually not making you overwhelmed. Your schedule is not making you overwhelmed. Your work is not actually making you overwhelmed. You are making yourself feel overwhelmed. You can't play the victim card here. I'm not going to let you While your circumstances, I get it, they can be challenging in your life, you have to take responsibility for what's going on. And if you take responsibility, that's actually going to be what changed your life. If overwhelm is always just happening to us, then we're stuck and there's nothing we can do about it. But if we're creating the overwhelm, then we can figure out how to uncreate the overwhelm. Teachers are deep into new units this time of year. IXL lets kids practice the exact skills they're learning in class, helping lessons stick and boosting confidence. Heading toward the spring IXL is an award winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing skills, or reviewing science concepts. 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It also changes the way that you look at every single thing in your life. It puts you in the driver's seat of everything. And you know, like I said, overwhelm rarely comes from what you're doing. It almost always comes from how you're thinking about what you're doing. You know, overwhelm is when you have 40 things on your to do list. Why are you overwhelmed with those 40 things on your to do list? Because you're thinking about doing all of them at one time and you're thinking about thinking about doing them. Or you think about planning them and you're thinking about trying to get them all done. That's what's making you overwhelmed. But you can only do one thing at a time. And so let's talk about the seven steps to actually get you out of Overwhelm. The first one if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you could probably guess it. It's to breathe. Give your mind and give your body a break for a little bit. Like just chill the fuck out already. Like, just breathe it. You don't have to be back to back to back every single second. It can be three minutes of deep, intentional breathing. If you don't have three minutes in your life to close your eyes and to breathe, you need Three hours to close your eyes and breathe. Because if you don't, it will eventually catch up to you. If you don't slow down, it will catch up. I promise you. You were not meant to be. Go, go, go, go, go. And so when you do a deep breath, your deep breathing activates what's called the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms the fight or flight response, which most people don't realize they're running through their entire day with their body on fight or flight. The entire day. So even if it's just a few minutes of just slow, deep breathing, it can shift your entire state inside of your body to a state of relaxation. So that's the first thing. Please get better at breathing. Second thing, Focus on one thing at a time. That's it. Imagine, like, think about this for a second. Imagine that I cook you a dinner. Big old steak and salad and baked potato. Would you look at that and look at the plate and be like, oh, my God, I'm so overwhelmed. No, you wouldn't get overwhelmed by looking at a plate of food. Why? Because you look at that food and go, oh, yeah, I don't have to eat all of it at one time. I take one bite at a time. And so when you're looking at your to do list and you're like, oh, my God, I'm so overwhelmed, it's because you're thinking about all of it at once, one bite at a time. Look at the entire to do list, prioritize it, and then figure out how to fit in your schedule. Focus on breaking down tasks, not doing everything at once. If you have a big thing like, hey, I need to create a presentation, right? That presentation might seem like a. A giant mountain you got to cover, right? Well, then let me just take the few different parts of. Okay, first off, I got to do market research. Okay, so market research the first part of it. Then I've got to actually type out what I want in a Google Doc to say. Then I've got to create the slides. And you take these large tasks, and you break them down into smaller tasks so that you don't have to focus on the entire thing, like trying to fit the entire steak in your mouth. And then what you do is you look at the entire thing and you say, okay, I'm gonna work on one thing at a time until this is done. Slow down. And then it brings us to our next thing, which is actually to start to use a to do list more. And so you might say, oh, my God. But, Rob, you Don't understand. To do lists stress me out. No, it's not your to do list stressing you out. It's you thinking about your to do list that's stressing you out. And so what I always recommend with the prioritization that I was talking about in the last tip is this. You write your to do list out, and then what you do is you circle your most important thing, you circle your second most important thing, you circle your third most important thing, and then you take out an index card, a little three by five index card, and you write number one down, number two down, number three down, and you take your to do list and you throw it inside of the drawer and you just focus on number one, number two, and number three. I will be honest with you. I am really into high performance and productivity. I don't know if I've ever finished a to do list in my entire life. I don't. I don't think that I ever have. But what I have focused on is prioritizing the most important tasks and getting them done. So you write down number one, number two, number three, you put in your back pocket, and that's all that you focus on today. And you focus on number one. And you don't worry about anything else until number one is done. You need to go to number two. You don't worry about anything else till number two is done. If you don't get to number three, then maybe number three is your number one for tomorrow. That's what you you do to do list and put your top three things into an index card. That's number three. Number four, stop doing so many things. There's a lot of people that I know listen to this podcast that are people pleasers, and you say yes to too many things, right? Do less things, but do them better. Don't say yes to everybody. Don't try to learn as many things you possibly can. Do less things, but do them better. Don't be a jack of all trades. Find something that you love. Try to master it and, you know, realize that the way I like to think about is this. I would rather my skill set in my knowledge be, you know, an inch wide, but a mile deep. Like just niche down as much as I possibly can versus an inch deep in a mile wide. You see, like, that's the way that I really think about life is I want to master one thing, maybe two things in my entire lifetime. Most people are going, I want to learn, you know, a little bit of French and then you can speak like four Words in French and like, I want to learn a little bit of guitar. Like, whatever it is, stop doing so many things. Do less things, but do those things better. Which comes down to number four. Number five, try to do more things that you love. If you're overwhelmed, you might just be mentally resisting things that you don't want to do. That might be the truth. If you're burned out, you might not be doing too much, you might be doing too little of what you love. So make a list of the things that you actually love to do, things that make you happy, and then look at it in the morning and plan out how you can put as many of those things into your day to day. And when you incorporate activities that you enjoy, the cool thing about it is that your brain releases dopamine, and dopamine actually counteracts the stress hormones and buffers them. So, like, for instance, if you're really stressed out and you get dopamine, so you really stress out, and maybe you watch some comedy, Comedy will release dopamine. You're really stressed out. You watch some comedy, it actually buffers, it lowers your stress hormones. And so if you start doing things throughout your day when you're normally stressed throughout your day, but you start doing things that you love, it will actually make your stress lower. By just adding a couple of things in every single day, you won't be as overwhelmed. So that's number five. Number six, I want you to try stress training for tolerance. Like, actually try to stress yourself out. Not in your mind, but through different activities. So, like, working out, right? What you want to do is train your body for stress. De stress, stress, de stress, stress, de stress. You work out really hard for a set, and then you close your eyes, you set your timer for 60 seconds. Instead of going on your phone and looking for 60 seconds on Instagram, you work out really hard. You know, you put yourself into a position of stress, and then for 60 seconds, you close your eyes and you just breathe. And then your timer goes off and you go back into doing something stressful. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to train your body and your brain and especially your nervous system to stress. And then learn how to de stress. To stress and learn how to de stress. This is also really the reason why ice baths are really good, is because your body is freaking out. And it's saying, we're going to die. And you're saying, we're going to calm down. And you learn how to calm your body down in an extremely stressful environment. Saunas. Exactly the same. When you're in a sauna and your heart's racing, try to calm and regulate your heart race. So when you're practicing controlled stress, like hardcore exercise in cold exposure, all of these things build resistance. And you teach your body how to handle stress in small manageable doses so that real life stress doesn't feel so overwhelming. A lot of times, people that are extremely overwhelmed in their life don't have this practice of actual intentional, controlled stress. So that's number six. And then number seven will really help you out. Have a stress journal. Sounds weird. Sounds like it will make you more stressed. It will make you less stressed. Whenever you stress out, put it on a piece of paper. There's a couple benefits to this. Number one, you start becoming more aware of yourself. And number two, you get it out of your brain. Journaling externalizes your thoughts, which reduces your mental load. And then once it's written down, it can be more objectively assessed of like, hey, is this really something that's worth worrying about? Or am I just catastrophizing? And you can actually start. I always say once it's on paper, it can be planned. In the end, I just want you to remember that overwhelm is a message. It's not a permanent state. It's your body and your mind asking for just some adjustments. Change this around a little bit, please. Rest a little bit. We need a little bit more balance. So if you just listen to it and make small changes over time, these shifts will transform how you experience stress, how you experience life, and it'll put you in control instead of the mercy of just whatever happens to you, especially not being at the mercy of your to do list. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram. Stories. Tag me in at Robdal junior R O B D I A L J R. And if you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of the podcast, you can learn more@coachwithrob.com once you can coach with Rob.com and with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Hey, Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Huh. That sounds easier than I thought. You got this? Yeah, I do now. Where did I put my keys, you will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC Member

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