Mastering the Mindset
Mastering the Mindset
Overcoming the Overwhelm: Find Your Way Back to Control
Feeling like you're drowning in responsibilities, notifications, deadlines, and demands? You're not alone. The feeling of overwhelm is very real. Unfortunately it's becoming more common in how constantly-connected our lives have become. Let's talk about how to deal with it as well as how to prevent it. We can't let it get in the way of our goals and daily lives. Let's dive in.
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I'm in mistakes goals. I bury my clocks because it take time. I gotta go. I already know if I want to grow, you reap what you sow. That be the case. Planting my seeds and water my base. Yeah, I made mistakes. Yeah, I know you grow in your garden, but watch for the snakes, the people that act like you. Crazy but trying this, they fall away. They don't think it's possible. I think it's possible. That is just hate. Yeah, they hate themselves because they on the shelf. Why you create a life that you love, a life that you love, yeah, loving the fact you improving yourself, decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it. The road got bump in your foot on the pedal. You go up a level. You turn up whenever it's time for you to go put in that work. I know my worth. I know it ain't gonna be easy. Yeah, I know it hurt. One thing is for sure yeah, until they put me in this earth before I ride in that hearse, I'm chasing my goals. I'm chasing my goals, yeah.
Speaker 2:Love and affect you, improving yourself. Decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it, to go got bumpers.
Speaker 1:I'm chasing my goals. All right, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all so much for being here. If you are watching me on youtube, go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel. If you listen to me on a podcast platform, go ahead and leave me a review. Both these things help me out a whole lot. Also, become a monthly supporter of the show. You can choose the amount. It can either be three, five, eight or ten dollars. You can cancel at any time, but why would you ever do that?
Speaker 1:Let's go ahead and jump in 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's so easy to get overwhelmed it truly is With everything the world has to offer us. In today's society, it's easy. Our lives just move faster than it ever has in the history of man. There was no other time on this earth that life moved faster than it does right now. Now, of course, our ancestors had more stressful and painful, right A harder life than we have. Our ancestors went through way more than we ever will, at least that's what we hope. But as far as the way, but as far as the way life is now, with the constant movement, the constant stimulation, the way technology is growing at a rate is never grown at the constant movement, the constant stimulation, the way technology is growing at a rate, it's never grown at. The constant notifications, the constant work, emails, the projects, the deadlines, the work demands, social pressures, children having to be a provider, a role model, and I won't even get started on social media and all the stress that can bring. And on top of all that, you got goals. We got all this stuff going on and we got the audacity to have goals. And if we're being honest, how often do we get to just unplug it all, to turn it off, to just say you know what? I'm turning myself off from the world? No social media, no emails, no phone calls, just unplugging. That don't happen. Often the stimulation and the distractions and the stresses 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 and it's a common thing for folks.
Speaker 1:Whatever the combination of all those things are, it's common to get overwhelmed, and being overwhelmed too much is actually bad for our 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 in your body, adrenaline. And these things are good in the short term, right For survival, like if you're being chased by a bear or if somebody tries to snatch your child from you. That super speed you get, that super human strength, you get that's needed. But if you're constantly overwhelmed and your brain is pumping cortisol and adrenaline, that's gonna be damaging to your body. It can lead to long-term health issues a weakened immune system, inflammation, all kinds of stuff. There was a study done in 1991, the White House study. It showed that folks that had higher stress levels for long periods of time had a greater risk of developing heart disease and mental health problems Heart disease and mental health problems.
Speaker 1: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, on your body, and research shows that stress in general affects you, from your blood pressure to your digestive system, to your sleep, all of it. We don't want to be digestive system to your sleep, all of it. We don't want to be leaving this kind of stuff unchecked right. 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 preoccupied 24-7.
Speaker 1: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 of them. We all got stuff going on, 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 no, I don't think so, my boy, you got to sit down somewhere. It's that warning signal, like that check engine light on your car. Right, and we all done, been there, done that when that light come on and we'll just keep driving. But that's not what we're supposed to do. You're supposed to pay attention to it and check on it. So, down the road, it ain't this bigger problem. That's a lot harder to fix and deal with.
Speaker 1:And this overwhelm can be in more than one form. Right, it can be mentally, emotionally and physically. You could be thinking too much that's mentally overwhelmed. You can be worrying too much that's emotional overwhelm and you could be doing too much. Physical overwhelm. All of these things contribute to being overwhelmed mentally, emotionally, emotionally and physically, and each one of them carries its own weight. 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 listen to me, right now is not so much the physical part I'm sure we've all been physically overwhelmed, 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.
Speaker 1:It makes you tired and can even make you lose weight. It can make you lose weight. Did you know that your brain can make you burn calories? Your brain can make you burn calories. There was a study that showed that chess players like 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 you know anybody that went through some hard times and you see him for the first time in a while and you say and you see how they lost weight, or maybe you've been down that road Right. Stress stress can do that to you, and stress and overwhelm can also make you tired. Your brain only makes up two percent 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, we done been at work or we got deadlines or bills or so much work to get done and we could be sitting at a desk or an office all day and come home and be exhausted and we ain't lift not a single weight. It's your brain. The last time this happened to me, it was the second to last play.
Speaker 1:I was in back in September and October and the story was a good story, but the way the script was written not so much. I won't go into much detail about it, that's all I'm going to say, but I will say the way it was written made it hard to memorize and to find my character and I was the lead. And the way it was written I had so many lines and if anybody knows me and I've said it on here before, I don't have a problem learning my lines. As a matter of fact, I make it 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 with this play. Even though I had so many lines, I had that same goal.
Speaker 1:And let me tell you, I was working and I'm putting in my work, not just at rehearsal at home, going over my lines, trying to make this character come to life and sound natural and find the emotion and the arc of this character. And it was just hard. I literally have never struggled as much as I did in my whole career. And it got to a point in the rehearsal process and we had like a week before our first audience and I'm noticing that I'm just exhausted and I'm still struggling to get my damn lines down. And when I say exhausted, I'm talking about I would come home and I wouldn't have the energy to do anything. And I was stressing because I never want to be on stage with an audience and not give my best right. You never want to put your name on something and not be proud of it. And I was not proud of where I was and it was stressing me all the way out. I couldn't work on anything. I was missing putting out podcast episodes right, I was just so overwhelmed. But there was a shift. There's a shift that we need to make in our thinking, and it's a shift that I had to make as well.
Speaker 1:Every time we get overwhelmed, what we say is this is making me overwhelmed, or that thing is making me overwhelmed. This is overwhelming me, or the shift we could make and should make, the small shift we need to 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 is a small one, but it's an important one, because a shift in words is a shift in perspective. If we say I'm making myself overwhelmed, I'm allowing myself to get 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. That's the truth of it all. The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality.
Speaker 1: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 right. We have to acknowledge that, yes. Yes, this is hard. But if I say I'm allowing this script and 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:Right, 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 years professionally. This has never happened before. I know my track record, these circumstances I have right now. I can't change them, 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? That's okay. I ain't where I want to be and it's because of the situation I'm in, and it's very, extremely challenging. So let me control what I can control and go from there, and that's what I did. So the first thing we need to do. The first thing we need to do is to start listening to our words.
Speaker 1:When we start to feel that overwhelmed, be able to put yourself back in a place of power, because, at the end of the day, we can't change the external, but we can change the internal. Get in that driver's seat and say you know what I can make a change? And also the majority of the time. Well, a lot of the times when we feel overwhelmed, it don't come from the things that we're doing. It comes from the things that we're not doing, the things we're thinking about. A lot of times, it ain't the 50 things on our to-do list that got us overwhelmed. We get overwhelmed because we're thinking about them 50 things on our to-do list and we stress over it, wondering how in the hell we're going to ever get it done, because we know we can't get it all done at one time and we want to so bad. We want to so bad. We want to be able to get all 50 of those things done at one time, but we just can't and it overwhelms us. So what can we do? Well, I'm going to give you some steps to take, four steps to take to to lead to less overwhelm and hopefully get you through this.
Speaker 1:And the first one if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I always bring this up. But the first one is your breath. Control your breath. Slow down for a minute, literally maybe 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, then you probably need three or four hours. Breathe, deep breaths four seconds in through the nose, eight seconds out through the mouth, four in, eight out. And the reason behind it, those deep breaths they activate what's called 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 is this leads to relaxation and recovery and in your nervous system and recovery in your nervous system. And when you get too overwhelmed, you get into your fight or flight mode in your body. And the fastest way to get out of that is just to breathe. It's simple, sounds cliche, but science tells us over and over again it works, it just does so. That's the first thing Breathe, slow down, breathe, even if it's just for a few minutes, shift your brain and your nervous system towards that state of relaxation, you'll be able to make better decisions. So breathe, just breathe.
Speaker 1:Number one Second thing you should do and this ain't rocket science either, and we all know it but focus on one thing at a time. If you go to a buffet and you see all 30 different food options and they all look good to you, you want to try as much as your stomach allows. You don't get overwhelmed because you want to try so much. No, what happens is you try one food at a time, one bite at a time, and that's exactly how it should be. When you start looking at your to-do list All those tasks that 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 one. All those things, all those steps to be done at once it's impossible to do that, and it's proven by science.
Speaker 1:Multitasking that's a myth. It's impossible. Multitasking is impossible. You might think you multitasking? That's a myth. It's impossible. Multitasking is 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're actually less productive and less efficient. The amount of energy it takes your brain right, the amount of energy your brain uses to focus, it requires to switch back and forth. It's actually harder to do that and it makes you less efficient. So trying to do multiple things at once, it's not even a good idea. It's counterproductive. It might feel efficient, you might think you're doing it, but it leads to more stress. So that's number two one thing at a time Again, not rocket science, which leads me to number three.
Speaker 1:Once you figure out the single tasks you need to complete one at a time, prioritize that list. You got 25 things to do today. Well, we know you can't do them all at once. You probably can't even do all of them in a day to begin with. So what you do is you write them all out and you circle the most important ones and you write a number one for the most important one, a two for the second one and go down the list that way and you put all your focus on number one. Nothing else matters right now except this first thing, the most important thing, and you focus on that all day, or however long it takes you, until it's done. And once you get done not a minute sooner then you move on to number two.
Speaker 1:Now be careful, because 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 get much done, and the reason for that is because you were just focusing on getting things done, things that probably wasn't all that important, like yes, making my grocery list needs to get done because I'm going to need to go grocery shopping soon, but I also have to submit an audition by tomorrow. I got to send in this song to a producer so we can put the finishing touches on it. I got to record this podcast. Get it uploaded. Right, making my grocery list is still important, but it's not a priority, right? So, number three prioritize and figure out the order of your tasks. Finally, number four stop doing so many damn things.
Speaker 1:Stop saying yes to everything and I know, I know. If that ain't the pot caught in the kettle black, I don't know what it is. 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 have gotten better at that. I've been working on it and I can truly say I'm getting better.
Speaker 1:The reason why I say yes so much is because of how it's like being an artist, right, the saying is you eat today, you starve tomorrow. Eat today, starve tomorrow. Meaning you can be booked and blessed in one season. You got gigs left and right. You have a great year and you book in shows and commercials and workshops, but then you hit a dry season and you look up and you don't know where the hell your next check is coming from. You ain't got nothing going on, no work lined up, and that's scary, it really is. So what ends up happening is you get in that dry season and then, when opportunities start to come back around, you say yes, yes, yep To any and everything, because you look at where you currently are, with nothing happening for you right now, but what you don't do is look ahead at how overwhelmed and drained you're going to be and when you get there in the future.
Speaker 1:After you say yes to everything, you be want to cut yourself out Like why, when the hell did I say yes to this. Why the hell did I say yes to this? But, like I said, I'm way better at it now. But stop saying yes to everything. Stop saying yes to everyone. Do less things. When you have less things to do, you're doing better. Also, stop doing so many things you don't love. You're going to have more resistance to it if you don't really love it, especially when it gets to crunch time. Try and only do things you truly love, but quit putting so much on your plate. So that's number four do less.
Speaker 1:So those are the steps and, like I always say, I'm on a journey with you. So trust and believe I'm doing these steps. I've done these steps. They work. They really do. It's not rocket science, but they are based in proven science studies and most of them are kind of plain old common sense. Like, yeah, that's of course. I should only focus on one thing at a time.
Speaker 1:I understand that, but it doesn't mean that we don't need a reminder every uh, a reminder from from a reminder every now and then, being overwhelmed. It ain't fun. It can hold us back not just from goals, but from enjoying life, and it's the summertime right now and here in Minnesota we know how quick. It's going to be over that sun, that summertime is going to be gone and sooner than we know it, it's going to be dark at like 4 30 pm. Right, we all hate it. It get all gray and that by itself can make it harder to find happiness, because in those gray, because during those gray times, the gray skies can have you feeling depressed or, at the very least, unhappy. So let's not be overwhelmed. Right, while we're enjoying these summer months, let's focus on not being overwhelmed, especially during this time of year.
Speaker 1:So again, one, get your breath together. Two, focus on one thing at a time. Three, prioritize that list. And four, stop doing so damn much. Simple, but true, simple, but it works. So that's what I got for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Please share this episode with a friend or a family member, somebody who you think will benefit from this message. Also, become a supporter of the show. You can choose the amount, the monthly amount. It can either be $3, $5, $8, or $10. You can cancel at any time. Why would you ever do that? But let's go ahead and get to this music. The song y'all will hear today is actually an unreleased song. Like I always say on here, y'all will always get what I'm doing first. This song is called Stubborn.
Speaker 2:Let's ride out.
Speaker 1:Call it what you call it yeah, okay. So what, I'm stubborn, call it what you call it yeah, okay. So what I'm stubborn, get on my wave.
Speaker 2:Uh, I shoot for the moon ended up turning into a star. Now I'm out of space. Yeah, so know you can't put me in my place. Yeah, hotter than mace, I spit it like I am not liking the taste. Weep it you sow, yeah, planting my seeds and water my vase. I stay out of my way. No, manly calm, I do not today. Leave me alone. That's all I'ma say. Sorry, not sorry, man, get up my face.
Speaker 1:Sorry, not sorry. The way that I'm feeling If you do me wrong, I'm catching the case. Sorry, not sorry.
Speaker 2:We out Don't wanna grind. Huh, that sound like death. Uh, my only regret was wasting my time. Uh, my second regret was being so stubborn. My two favorite words is fuck it and I ain't with all that fussing. No, I ain't with all that. Just watch how you talk to me. It's not up for discussion. Really, probably better off if you just don't say nothing. Call it what you call it, yeah, okay. So what? I'm stubborn.
Speaker 1:Call it what you call it. Yeah, okay, so wouldn't stop. Shut up when you talk to me. Shut up when you talk to me. I don't wanna hear your mouth or see your face. I don't need your help anyway. Let's believe I will be straight.
Speaker 2:I'll put it all on my plate, Get it done in plenty ways. Plenty days I'm outdoing them niggas, but I keep it cool.
Speaker 1:I don't even flex, you ain't a threat. I'm humble, so all I require from you is respect. Puts on my chest. That's how I play my cards. Get off my deck. She tell me you, too, closed off. I see you sound like my ex. That's not a diss. I'm learning some things about me that I need to check. But I need some sex. Let's talk about me later. I need some rest. I am the best.
Speaker 2:And avoiding expressing my feelings. My nigga, I'm good, I swear I don't need your advice. Yep, I'm all right. Yeah, just watch how you talk to me. It's not a full discussion. Really, probably better off if you just don't say nothing. Call it what you call it, yeah okay, so what'm stopping?
Speaker 1:Call it what you call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So what? I'm stopping? Get on my wave. Uh, I shoot for the moon, Ended up turning into a star. Now I'm out of space. Yeah, so no, you can't put me in my place. Yeah, We'll be right back you.