Mastering the Mindset
Mastering the Mindset
Overcoming The Overwhelm
Feeling overwhelmed is a feeling that no one is exempt from. It can feel like everything is against you which could lead to you feeling like everything is just too much to handle. It affects our mental and emotional well being. It can make us feel stuck, unable to move forward, and sometimes even hopeless. I give you 4 steps to handle and prevent this. Don't miss this one. Truly a great episode!
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What's up everybody and thank you for listening to Mastering the Mindset. My name is Darius Dodge and I'm an actor, hip-hop artist and fitness and life coach, and I'm here to personally help you train and improve your mindset so that you can, one, become the best version of yourself mentally and, two, gain focus and motivation to be able to take action and achieve the success in life that you want and deserve. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to my channel and at the end of this episode, if you liked it, please share it with a friend or a loved one or someone who would benefit from hearing this message. I'm so glad you're here and I'm ready to go on this journey with you, and that journey begins now. That journey begins now. All right, and welcome back to another episode. Thank you all for showing up today.
Speaker 1:If you are on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel, and if you're listening on a podcast platform, please leave me a review. Also, become a supporter. You get to choose the amount. Become a monthly supporter. It can either be three, five, eight or ten dollars. I think that's what the amount is. The link is in my description. So go ahead, click that, click that and become a supporter. It really helps me to be able to keep this thing going and I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Let's go ahead and dive in. Today is not going to be a short one. I'm excited to give this episode. I think is really relevant right now and I think it's a good one. I'm excited for you to listen to it.
Speaker 1:But today let's talk about being overwhelmed and the reasons we get overwhelmed and how to overcome it. And if you really are being honest, it is so easy to get overwhelmed it truly is With everything the world got to offer to us. In today's society, it is easy. Our lives just move faster than it ever has in the history of man. There was no time on this earth that life moved faster than what it does right now. Of course, our ancestors had a more stressful and painful and harder life. Our ancestors went through way more than we ever will. Hopefully that's what we hope. Our ancestors went through way more than we ever will. Hopefully that's what we hope.
Speaker 1:But as far as the way life is now, with the constant movement, the constant stimuli, the way technology is growing at a rate it's never grown at the constant notifications, the constant work emails, the projects, the deadlines, work demands, social pressures, children having to be a provider, a role, role model, social media and all the stress that that can bring. And on top of all that, you got goals. We got all this stuff going on and, if we're being honest, how often do we get to just unplug it all to just say, you know what? I'm turning myself off from the world? No social media, no emails, calls, just unplugging. That don't happen often. The stimulation and distractions and stresses it can be endless. We got phones, tvs, people around us, children, the news bills and again, your goals and all the demands that that takes All of this right.
Speaker 1:And it's a common thing for people, whatever the combination of all those things are, it's common to get overwhelmed, and being overwhelmed too much it's actually bad for your body. Science shows that when you're overwhelmed it activates your body's stress response and when this happens, your body reacts as if it's in danger and your brain starts to pump cortisol. Cortisol that's a tongue twister for me. Cortisol in your body, adrenaline, and these things are good in the short term for survival, like if you're being chased by a bear or somebody tries to snatch your child from you. That super speed you get that superhuman strength, you get that's needed. But if you're constantly overwhelmed and your brain is pumping cortisol and adrenaline, that's going to be damaging to your body. It can lead to long term health issues, a weakened immune system, inflammation, all kinds of stuff. And there was a study done in 1991. The Whitehall study. It showed that people that had higher stress levels for a long period of time had greater risk of developing heart disease and mental health problems Heart disease and mental health. So I think it's safe to say that it's important to figure out how to stop being so overwhelmed. It literally takes a toll mentally and physically on you, and research, research shows stress in general affects you from your blood pressure to your digestive system, to your sleep, all of it.
Speaker 1:We don't want to be leaving this kind of stuff unchecked. And again, it can be easy to leave it unchecked because of how the world just constantly moves these days, especially because of our phones. If we wanted to, we could be occupied 24 7, right. So let's talk about overwhelm and how we can overcome it. So what does it actually mean to be overwhelmed? If I ask that to 50 different people, I might get a different answer from all 50 of them. We all got stuff going on right, but if we just break it down in the simplest form, it's your body telling you that you need to slow down. Your body say, oh well, I don't think so. My boy, you got to go sit down somewhere. It's that warning signal like that check engine light on your car, and we done all been there. When that light come on, we keep on driving. But that ain't what we supposed to do. You're supposed to pay attention to it and check on it. So down the road it ain't a bigger problem and a lot harder to fix and deal with.
Speaker 1:And this overwhelm can be mentally, emotionally and physically. You could be thinking too much mentally overwhelmed, you can be worrying too much emotional overwhelm and you could be doing too much physical overwhelm. All of these things contribute to being overwhelmed mentally, emotionally and physically, and each one of them carries its own weight right, and the more you keep adding or letting it pile up, eventually that weight is going to be too much. And more than likely the majority of you listening to this podcast, it ain't so much the physical I'm sure we done all been physically overwhelmed before, but right now, for the most of us that ain't the case. It's the mental and emotional side of it. All the stuff going on in your brain and it takes a toll. It makes you tired and you can even start to lose weight. Did you know that your brain can make you burn calories? There was a study that showed that chess players the real intense ones that chess players, the real intense ones they can burn up to 6,000 calories a day playing chess Using their brains. 6,000, that's three times as much as the average human. Their body ain't moving. It's the mental overload.
Speaker 1:Do y'all know anybody that went through hard times and you see them for the first time in a long time and you see that they lost weight. Maybe you've been down that road. Stress, stress can do that to you, and stress and overwhelm can also make you tired. Your brain only makes up about 2% of your body but uses about 20% of your energy. 20% of your energy is used by your brain. It's the most energy consuming organ in your body. It's why you can be tired even though you ain't did nothing physical. It just drains you Again. We done all, been there, all done that We've been at work or we got deadlines or bills or so much work to get done and we can be sitting at a desk or in the office all day and come home and be exhausted. And we ain't left at a desk or in the office all day and come home and be exhausted and we ain't lifting out a single weight it's your brain.
Speaker 1:Now, the last time this happened to me was with the last play I was in in September and October, and the story was a good story, but the way the script was written not so much, and I won't go into too much detail about that, but I will say that the way it was written made it hard to memorize and find my character. And I was the lead, which mean I had, which meant I had so many lines. And if anybody knows me and I said it on here before I don't have a problem with learning my lines. I don't have a problem with learning my lines. As a matter of fact, I'm making my goal to be the first person in the play to be memorized, no matter how many lines I have. And I had the same goal for this play, even though I had so many lines. That was my goal.
Speaker 1:And let me tell you I was working and I put. I put me in my work, and not just at rehearsal but at home too. I'm going over my lines trying to make this character come to life and sound natural and find the emotion and the emotional arc of this character. And it was just hard. I literally have never struggled as much as I did in my whole career and I got to a point of rehearsal in the rehearsal process whole career and I got to a point in rehearsal in the rehearsal process and we had, like a week before, our first audience and I'm noticing I'm like I'm just, I'm just exhausted and I'm still struggling to get my damn lines down, like when I say exhausted, I'm talking about I come home and I don't have the energy to do nothing. I was stressing because I never want to be on stage with an audience and not get my best. You never want to put your name on something and not be proud of it, especially as an actor, because at the end of the day, when somebody comes to see you on stage, they're going to see you and they're going to say, yeah, his acting was not that good and I was not proud of where I was and it was stressing me all the way out. I couldn't work on anything else. I was missing podcast episodes and everything. I was just so overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:But there's a shift that we have to make in our thinking and it's a shift I had to make as well. We can say, every time we get overwhelmed, that this is making me overwhelmed, or that thing is making me overwhelmed, making me overwhelmed, or that thing is making me overwhelmed, this is overwhelming me. Or the small shift we should make is to say I'm allowing this to make me overwhelmed, I'm letting this overwhelm me. Because if we say this is making me overwhelmed, it's making you the victim, it's making your mind come to the conclusion that you just can't do nothing about it. And this shift, it is small. Come to the conclusion that you just can't do nothing about it. And this shift, it is small.
Speaker 1:A shift in words, a shift in perspective. If we say I'm making myself overwhelmed, that's something you can change, you can do something about that. You can recognize that the power is in your control. The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality. There's a big difference in saying I can't handle this versus I'm learning to manage this. Words are important. I can say that this script and this play is making me overwhelmed, or I can flip it, and the thing is we still can and have to acknowledge that the problem is there, right? We ain't just going to pretend that just because you say it's different, that it'll make it any easier. But if I say I'm allowing this script and this play to make me overwhelmed, I'm taking the responsibility and reminding myself that I'm the one that can make a change.
Speaker 1:And I had to come to the realization that. You know what? This has never happened to me in the 20 years I've been doing theater almost 15 professionally. This has never happened to me before. I know my track record. These circumstances I have can't change. I can't change my circumstances, so I can't allow this to burden me mentally and emotionally. All I can do is what I can do, and that's continue to be creative and execute this role to the best of my abilities. And unfortunately, I just ain't where I want to be with my lines, and you know what stupidities. And unfortunately I just ain't where I want to be with my lines, and you know what? That's okay, I ain't where I want to be and it's because of the situation I'm in is extremely challenging. So let me just control what I can control and go from there, and that's the first thing we have to do is start listening to your words.
Speaker 1:When you start to feel that overwhelm, be able to put yourself back in a place of power, because, at the end of the day, we can't change the external. We cannot change the external, but we can change the internal. We can get in that driver's seat and say I can make a change, and also the majority of the time. Well, a lot of the times our overwhelm it don't come from the things that we're doing. It come from the things that we're doing. It comes from the things that we're not doing, the things we thinking about. A lot of times we don't get overwhelmed because of them 50 things on our to-do list. We get overwhelmed because we thinking about them 50 things on our to-do list, and we stress over it, wondering how in the hell are we ever going to get it done? Because we know we can't get it all done at one time and we want to do that so bad. We want to be able to get all 50 of them done at one time, but we just cannot and it overwhelms us. So what do we do? Well, I'm going to give you some steps, four steps to take to lead us to less overwhelm and hopefully get you through it.
Speaker 1:And the first one and if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I always bring this one up but the first one is your breath. Control your breath. Slow down for a minute, literally, make it three or four minutes and just breathe. And if you feel like you don't have three or four minutes to just chill and just breathe, you probably need three or four hours. Breathe, deep breaths four seconds in into the nose, eight seconds out through the mouth, four in, eight out. And the reason behind this, behind those deep breaths, is they activate what's called the parasympathetic nervous system, activate what's called the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, is your fight or flight response and the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the body's rest and digest response. And this leads to relaxation and recovery in your nervous system. And when you get overwhelmed, you get into your fight or flight mode in your body and the fastest way to get out of it is to just breathe. So that's the first thing Breathe, slow down and breathe, even if it's just for a few minutes. Shift your brain and your nervous system towards the state of relaxation, you'll be able to make better decisions. So breathe. That's number one.
Speaker 1:The second thing you should do and this ain't rocket science and we all know this but focus on one thing at a time. When you go to a buffet and you see all 30 different options of food and it all look good and you want to try as much of it as your stomach would allow, you don't get overwhelmed because you want to try so much of it, because there are so many food options. No, you try it one food at a time, one bite at a time, and that's exactly how it should be. When you start looking at that to-do list, at those tasks you have to cross off, figure out what needs to be done, get your time management in order and take it one step at a time. Only one thing can be done at a time. Don't stress out over wanting to do all these steps at one time. It's impossible to do that and it's proven science.
Speaker 1:Multitasking that's a myth. It's impossible. You might think you're multitasking, but you ain't. All your brain can focus on is one thing at a time. So all you're doing is switching your focus back and forth, and science proves that. When you do that when you try to multitask, you are actually less productive and efficient. The amount of energy your brain uses and focus it requires to switch back and forth is actually harder and it makes you less efficient. So, trying to do multiple things at once, it ain't even a good idea. It's kind of productive, it might feel efficient, but it leads to more stress. So that's number two one thing at a time, which leads me to number three.
Speaker 1:Once you figure out the single task you need to complete at one time, prioritize that list. You got 25 things to do today. Well, we know you can't do them all at once, so what you do is you write them all out and you circle the most important ones and you write number one next to the most important one, you put a two next to the second most important one and you go down that list that way and you put all your focus on number one. Nothing else, nothing else right now, except for that first thing, that most important thing, and you focus on that all day, however long it takes you to get it done. And once you get that done not a minute sooner you move on to number two. And I don't know if you ever felt this before.
Speaker 1:But you can create this big old to-do list and you work at it all day and then at the end of the day, you feel like you ain't really getting much done and the reason is because you were just focusing on getting things done, things that probably wasn't even all that important, like, yes, making my grocery list needs to get done because I'm gonna need to go grocery shopping at some point, but I also need to submit for this audition by tomorrow. I also need to send this song to a producer so we can put the finishing touches on it. I also have to record this podcast and get it uploaded. Making my grocery list is just gonna have to wait until I get other things done right. So that's number three prioritize and figure out the order of your tasks. And finally, number four stop doing so many damn things.
Speaker 1:Stop saying yes to everything, and if that ain't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what it is, because that's been my problem for years. I say yes to way too much. Stop saying yes to everything. Learn how to say no, and actually I'm lying. I'm lying. I have gotten better at that. I've been working on it and I can truly say I am getting better.
Speaker 1:The reason I say yes so much is because of how, how it is being an artist. There's a saying in the artistic community. The saying is you eat today, you starve tomorrow. Meaning you can be booked and blessed one season and you got gigs left and right and you have a great year and you booking shows and commercials and workshops, but then you hit a dry season and you look up and you don't know where your next check is coming from and you ain't got no work lined up and that's scary. So what ends up happening is you getting that dry season and when the opportunities start to come back around, you say yes to any and everything, because you look at where you are now currently with nothing, but you don't look ahead to how overwhelmed and drained you're gonna be and when you get there in the future.
Speaker 1:After you done said yes to everything, boy, you be willing to curse yourself out like why in the hell did I say yes to all these things? But, like I said, I'm way better than right now. But this does lead to overwhelm, and this ain't nobody fault but ours. Stop saying yes to everything. Stop saying yes to everyone. All you people pleasers out there. Knock it off. Do less things. When you have less things to do, you're doing better. Stop doing things you don't love as well, because what's going to happen is you're going to resist it. You're going to have resistance to it, especially when it gets crunch time. As much as you can, try and only do things you truly love, but quit putting so much on your plate. Stop putting so much on your damn plate. That's number four Do less. So those are the steps and, like I always say, I'm on this journey with you. So trust and believe I'm doing these steps, I've done these steps. They work, they really do, and they're based in proven science studies and most of them are kind of plain and simple old common sense Like, yeah, dash of.
Speaker 1:Of course, I should only focus on one thing at a time, duh. But what that don't mean is that we don't need a reminder from time to time being overwhelmed, it ain't fun and it can hold us back not just from goals but from enjoying life. And it's the holiday season, the sun is out less and less and here in minnesota it get darker, like 4 30 pm, and I hate that. It's all gray and that by itself can make it harder to find happiness because them gray skies can have you feeling depressed or, at the very least, less happy, and we don't need overwhelm to add to that, especially during this time of year. So again, one, get your breath together to focus on one thing at a time. Three, prioritize that list. And four, stop doing so damn much. So that's what I got for you today. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1:Let's go ahead and ride out in a song. We riding out today is lemons. Uh, you know, it's easy to figure out that you don't always win, but like they say, life is 9 to 10, 10% of what happens to you. The other 90%, the other 90%. Life gave me limits. I got the juice.
Speaker 1:I hit the booth and I tell the truth. I talk about me and what I've been through. Then I got hot Like I got the flu. I could be a choreographer Cause I'm making moves. Yeah, I got the moves. I do it so smooth. They know I keep it lit like I made a fuse. Now she wanna hang Like she made a noose. I pray to God, they all see me. When I made the noose Was on the SPN, feeling so cool. No, I ain't flexing, that's not what I do. I can't hear them lessons. Like I said, I chew Because life gave me lemons. Now I got to choose. Watch my shoes, these brand new. They want to walk on my steps, thank you.
Speaker 1:I got the juice. I ain't tripping, I stuck to the script and I stuck to the truth. I stuck to my word and held it all together. I guess I'm the glue. Whatever don't kill you, only make you strong. I guess I'm the proof, cause I'm still living. I want a feeling. Life gave me limits. I got the juice. Thought I was through. I was so blue. I want the feeling. Life gave me limits. Now I gotta choose.
Speaker 1:Thought I was through, I was so blue. I took a leap of faith with no parachute. God gave me wings. That's when I flew. I feel fresh about the rapper, feeling brand new. If you only knew what I've been through. Don't ever stop grinding, bro. Hope you never do, cause when you start climbing up you will love the view, cause life gave me lemons. Now I got to choose. Was in a bad mood, still a good dude. I needed doors to open for me. They wouldn't move. Got my foot in the door. Don't mean to intrude, cause life gave me lemons. Life gave me lemons. I hit the booth and I tell the truth. I talk about me and what I've been through. Then I get hot like I got the flu. Thank you, you, thank you.