Episode 146: What to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed, Stuck, and Disorganized

It's one thing to decide to prioritize your health...and it's another to design life to work with the game plan, especially when we already have so many plates in the air. 

Here's my two-part system of how to stay out of overwhelm when life is life-ing and it all feels like a lot to carry all at once.
 
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Check out my (free) workshop, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond right here: www.MindStrongFitness.com

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong: 146: What to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed, Stuck, and DIsorganized

0:00  
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. My name is Rachel, and I'm the founder and CEO of mind strong, where I like to say, we give you the keys to the kingdom. One of my favorite expressions, if you know how to ride a bike, try to fall off a bike. Right when we teach nutrition as a skill, and your brain is wired for that skill, it is very hard to ever gain the weight back because you've mastered it like skill, just like riding a bike. So a few weeks back, we did a lunch and learn inside. Ignite our 12 week program. We do weekly group calls. Sometimes I lead them. Sometimes we bring in incredible guest experts. I happen to be leading that one, and it was all about how to do the things we don't really feel like doing right. If habits are the holy grail, how do we stay consistent enough to build habits and at the end of every lunch and learn we do an open Q and A for our Ignite community. So they can ask me, they can ask our guest expert anything that came up for them, one of the questions that was posed in the Q and A, and the second this person asked this, like 10 other people chimed in, and they were like, Yes, can you do a podcast on that? So here we are. The question was, Rachel, what do I do when I'm feeling overwhelmed, stuck and disorganized, right? We are all very busy, humans with lots of things that we're juggling, whether it's careers, family, finances, life in general. So how do we do it all and not get into what I like to call paralysis by analysis. So that's we're going to dive into today. What to do when you're feeling overwhelmed, stuck and disorganized. Check it out.

1:39  
Welcome to the becoming mind strong podcast, the official podcast of mind strong fitness. My name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of mind strong and we are here for two things. We're here for hope in a stage of life where it feels like we are doing everything right and nothing is working. I am here to tell you you are not broken. This is fixable, and I promise there is hope. And number two, we are here for truth in an industry that is designed to keep us confused with shake systems and point systems and frozen meals. I promise you it doesn't have to be that difficult. Someone can teach you the skill of riding a bike, someone can teach you the skill of knitting, and I can teach you to master the skill of nutrition. So are you ready? Let's rock and roll.

2:37  
If you happen to be an Ignite member listening to this podcast, you already know my answer, but here's a refresher, because we went, we went deep into this Q, A, because, as I said, when the person posted, about 10 other people chimed in, and it makes sense, this is a topic that I'm sure resonates with so many, especially women, right? We have grown up in a society that rewards us for being Superwoman, for carrying it all and not complaining for saying I will put the oxygen mask on me when I am an inch of my death, because I'm fine to take care of everyone else and society says, Wow, what an incredible mom you are. You're so selfless, when, in reality, we are hanging on by a thread. So of course, we're feeling stuck, disorganized and overwhelmed. I'm going to answer this in two parts. One is a lot bigger picture, the 30,000 foot bird's eye view, and then the second is a bit more tactical. Hands in the dirt, some action steps to take away if you've hung out here before, you know, I love to say, nowhere in my bio does it say motivational speaker, right? I am never here for rainbows and glitter and unicorns. I am here for tactical tools we can put to use. I am a big believer in neuroscience that the US that exists today, the parts we love, the parts we want to change, they are all a result of our brain wirings, the good, the bad, the things we don't love. It is how our brain is wired. So if we were to dig deep and say, Hey, I'm really good at x, well behind x is a lot of conscious or not a lot of time and consistency to literally wire our brain for habits around x. If we look at why that we're not so good at and we'd love to change about ourselves, when we dig deep, what we will find, undoubtedly, is that behind why is not a lot of intentional effort, where we're getting our hands in the dirt, we're looking at data, we're looking at feedback, and we're consciously making progress. Because when we do those things, or we do them long enough, maybe you are doing those things, but it's still new. When we do those things with enough time and consistency, we don't have a choice. Our brain is going to wire for habit, consciously or not, right? My favorite example, I'm kind of going down a rabbit hole, but it's important, is brushing your teeth. If I say I was brushing your teeth this morning, I've no idea, Rachel, I don't remember it right. Because we woke up, we brushed our teeth because our brain is wired for that skill. It's on.

5:00  
Autopilot. But none of us came out of the womb. Pun intended chomping at the bit to brush our teeth. Right? We had external accountability, a guardian poking you being like you brush your teeth, you brush your teeth until you did it for so long that your brain is just wired for the habit, and now it's autopilot. So that was a very long winded way of saying that the stuff we love about ourselves, the stuff we don't love about ourselves, it is all habit. It is all brain wirings. What that does not mean is that we can control every single thing in life. What it does mean is we have a lot more control than we think. There is no such thing as I'm just a disorganized person. I'm just a person who gets overwhelmed easily. Those are habits. There is some genetic predisposition. I'm not discounting the fact that if, if those things run in your family, it was modeled to you, it was passed on to you. And that does not mean that we are stuck. Being stuck is how I'm going to say that, right? We have our brains are plastic, meaning they can change. We can rewire them. It's not easy. It's not an overnight thing. It's simple. There's a difference between simple and easy, right? Simple means it's not complicated. Easy means it's a quick fix. This is not a quick fix, and it's not a difficult fix, like most things in life, it takes conscious effort, right? It takes shining the light of awareness, conscious effort and time and consistency. So all that to say, I want to start with the 30,000 foot zoomed out bird's eye view of what to do if you feel stuck, overwhelmed, or what was the third one, disorganized. Okay, here's the more. Oh, I said all that to say that I don't like the word mindset. That was the whole point of that long ramble. I don't like the word mindset. Every time we talk about this stuff, we were talking about neuroscience. We were talking about literal brain wirings. So there was a five minute explanation of the fact that I hate the word mindset, because it's all neuroscience and our brains are plastic and can change. Here's my favorite. Oh, I hate the word mindset, but mindset tool whenever I'm feeling stuck, overwhelmed or disorganized. Okay, I like to do what I call the rocking chair test. The Rocking Chair test, again, is a very simple little thought process I have

7:12  
I close my eyes. You don't have to close your eyes if you're driving or in public. Do not I mean in public, I guess you could, but don't do it if you're driving.

7:20  
I like to envision myself. I am 99 years old, maybe 110 we'll see. I got good genetics. My grandpa passed last year. He was, my goodness. How old was he? 100

7:32  
100? I don't know over 100 well, over 100 I need to ask my dad that, because that's important to know good genetics there. I like to close my eyes. Let's just call it 100 and I'm, I'm 100 years old, sitting in my rocking chair on my patio, and I am reflecting back on my life. I know, I know time is fleeting. I don't have much of it left. And I'm reflecting back will this moment right now, that I'm feeling triggered about, that I'm feeling overwhelmed about, that I'm feeling stuck about, will this matter? Will I even remember it? Now? What that's not going to do is flick a magic switch where this moment doesn't matter. That's not the point of it. We're not trying to suppress feelings and say this isn't important. What we are trying to do is calm down our nervous system, right? Because when we're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, disorganized, especially overwhelmed. We cannot solve a problem in that state because our brain is in survival mode. It's freaking out. It's spiraling out. There's, there's nothing that can be done that's productive in that moment, until we can slow down our breathing. We can slow down our nervous system. We can, we can remind our brain that we are safe. The Rocking Chair test, to me, is the quick and dirty way to do that. Take a deep breath. I'm feeling super triggered right now, like none of this is about suppression. I'm 99

8:53  
on my rocking chair, maybe drinking some lemonade. I don't usually drink lemonade, but maybe I'm maybe at 99 100 I start drinking lemonade. Who knows? Let's get wild. Will this moment matter? Will I even remember it? I'm going to interrupt this episode real quickly to ask a 32nd favor. If you are loving the podcast, if you can tap that Five Star Review button above, maybe even leave a few nice words. It is the biggest help to getting the podcast out there. As the time I'm recording this, we don't advertise the podcast, so we rely on our old friend the algorithm to help get it in the hands of other women. Leaving a review is the absolute number one way to help us do that. Thank you in advance. Thank you. Thank you. Now, let's get back to the episode and listen. There will be moments where the answer is yes, when, when you have big life dividing decisions to make, right? This is a fork in the road. Am I leaving a 30 year marriage, or am I staying here? Am I closing up shop on my business, or am I launching the business that feels more aligned for me like you will remember those moments. Those are moments when you tell this story of your life, it's like man, and then when I was 55

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I just.

10:00  
Excited to get out of that unhealthy relationship that is part of your story, that is going to be part of your rocking chair, and the person who cut you off in traffic on your way home when you already had a terrible day because you spilled coffee on your shirt, and then your boss yelled at you, and then you forgot your stuff for your presentation. That's super triggering. Nobody's nobody's negating the fact that that that did not feel great, and at 100 years old, I don't think that moment's really going to matter. It just sounds like a frustrating couple of hours. So big picture. Zoom out. It's less about the rocking chair test. It's more about your nervous system when we're feeling stuck, when we're feeling disorganized, when we're feeling overwhelmed, the name of the game is we need to slow down. We need to slow down our breathing. We need to slow down our brain. The beauty of that is they work hand in hand, when we can get our brain to slow down through some kind of visualization. That could be the rocking chair test. It could be picturing your happy place on the beach, wherever it is and or when we consciously slow down our breathing. This is why things like box breathing right in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, they work. It is not woo, woo rainbows and glitter and unicorn things, they work because they are slowing down our nervous system and putting us in a place where we can start to make decisions. So before I do the next part, we're going to talk about the more logistical, tactical part, I always start with that for that reason. It's simply to get my body, my brain, to slow down so I can be productive. If I jump straight to tactical, it might work. Maybe for you, it would work for me, it doesn't because I'm too frantic, I'm too riled up. So as we get into the tactical part, you'll hear like there's some writing involved. I encourage you to use a paper and pen not not type in your computer if I'm trying to do that and I'm triggered, like I can't read my handwriting, like I'm just I'm too wired. So we got to slow it down. First Second part again, is more is more logistical. When we're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, disorganized, what we tend to do is get into what I call paralysis by analysis. Right? We think, think, think, and we don't act. One of my favorite situations to bring this back to is the field in which we work, the health and fitness field. I see so many women, and it makes sense, right? We go on social media, we start Googling things. Next thing we know, it's like, well, this person's claiming that carbs are necessary to lose weight, but this person swears that one carb and I'm going to gain 20 pounds. What do I do? Right? We get into paralysis by analysis, because there's so much conflicting information out there, especially about nutrition, about workouts as well. Health and Fitness is the perfect example of where we see paralysis by analysis. There's so much going on in our head that we simply don't start so for a lot of women, I see this in a broader life perspective, right? We've got our careers that we're dealing with. Maybe we're getting ready for retirement. We're looking at our family finances. We're trying to juggle kids leaving the house and kids having kids having kids, and now we're stepping into the role of grandparents or great grandparents. And on top of that, life is doing its thing as it likes to do, right? One of my favorite visualizations is, if you've ever played the game Trivial Pursuit, right, you get that little pie and you fill in the pie pieces. I believe one of the roots of human suffering is somehow we came up with this idea that life is supposed to be all five of those pie pieces in place, and if it's not, something is wrong, right? How many of us are like, well, finances are good, right now, but family's mess. Well, family's good, but now I'm worried about money. Like, we have this belief, where did it come from, that we're only successful at life if the pie is totally full all the time, if you reflect on your life, there was maybe like a week where that was true, right? For most of us, it is very rare that all the trivial, pursued puzzle pieces, all the pie pieces, are in place all the time, and the more we can embrace that, the happier we're going to be. Side note, so most of us, and it makes sense, right? Go back to what I said in the beginning, about especially as women were rewarded for juggling all the balls, for carrying all the plates and putting ourselves last. So at some point, we feel stuck, we feel overwhelmed, we feel like we have this, this growing to do list, but we're completely in the world of paralysis by analysis, because how the heck am I supposed to do that while I'm taking care of everyone else? Right? One of our coaches, Lila, in that Q and A session, she had a visual I love visualizations because I'm a visual learner. She said what she always tells her kids and her ignite members are I have two hands, so if each hand is carrying something and someone asked me to grab a third thing. Well, logically, I have to put down one thing to pick up the next thing. And she was saying how she always carries that with her, because, no, there is no expectation that you balance something on your head and on your shoulders and your back and pop out your butt and carry something there. No, we got two hands if you're going to pick something else.

15:00  
Sub, put one down, pick up another. Now that is very, very much easier said than done, right again for all the reasons we've been talking about so I say all of that to say that was a very long winded way again of saying that it makes sense to me why so many of us live in this state of overwhelm, of feeling stuck, of feeling disorganized, we talked about the rocking chair test, my favorite tool to just slow us down so that we can prioritize. We can get our brains calmer. We can get our breathing calmer. Here's my exact exercise that I do in these moments, and I break it into a few parts. Part number one, always, I never, ever skip this part. If I skip one of the other parts, it is not this is a massive, massive brain dump. I do not like doing this on the computer. For me, personally, I like writing by hand. There's something because a lot of this is energetic, right? What's happening right now is our brains are in overdrive. There's so much information going up there, we need to energetically get some of that out. That's why, when you're feeling triggered, going for a job, doing a workout, it helps, because we have so much stored energy, we need to release it. That's why I like paper and pen for this, because we are going to channel some of that busy brain energy out onto the page. We are going to make a brain dump of anything and everything that's floating around in that brain. Well, the grandkids are starting soccer, and I'm supposed to take them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Jeannie is in the hospital, and I promised that I'd bring her breakfast twice next week. I promised Sally that I was going to have coffee with her three times. We don't have to add the part of I don't know where I'm going to fit that in, but that's spiraling in our head. Every logistical thing that is taking up space in your brain. Jot it down, everything. Do not filter. What's going to happen is your brain's gonna be like, Oh, this is too much. Oh, do I really have to do that one? I could probably not prioritize that one. No, there's no judgment. There's no filtering. This list is going to be insanely long, and when you think you're done, don't stop. I'm sure there's five to 10 more in there. Okay? Massive, massive brain dump of everything that's floating around and they're taking up energy. The simple act of doing that, that sounds like it would make the problem worse, right? Like, well, Rachel, now I've got this, this huge list, and now I can just see it energetically. We're getting it out. So that's okay. It's okay if it temporarily makes it worse. For me, it actually usually makes it better, because I can feel that the energy's been energy has been released. For some people, doesn't work that way. It's okay, either way. That's step one. To me, that's the most important step. Step two is we're going to make three lists. Now for me, because, again, on the topic of getting energy out, I like to rewrite so I will take a new page and I'll make three columns. Some people find that tedious. They would rather like color code or circle and star, because rewriting it is rewriting it. It's extra work. I like the writing part because, again, it's about energy release. So the way that I do it, which doesn't mean it's right, you could color code, you could circle and star, is I make three columns. Column one is what is absolutely not urgent. Like, what's the stuff that I hear is that word no, I should do but I don't really need to right now. The world's not going to end. No one's going to love me less. No one's going to die if I don't do this thing that goes in the least urgent column,

18:18  
middle column, kind of urgent. You could call it medium urgent. There's no right or wrong to these labels. It's stuff that, like, it's not a today thing, maybe it's not even a this week thing, but yeah, like this, this, this would benefit me to get it done. And then the first column, you guessed it, is what needs to get done, meaning someone's life is in danger, meaning we will potentially be thrown out of our house if I don't do this. What are the things that are capital M must? Okay, so we have three columns, least urgent. Like, yes, they're there. I see you. I'm not going to forget about you. I wrote you down so that you're not floating in my brain. You're here. And that could be a next month thing that could be a six months from now. Thing not urgent. Middle column, medium urgency, kind of urgent. Could be next week. Could be in two weeks. It's got to get done. But it's not a like whenever thing and then column one are the absolute must. What you will most likely find is not true for everyone, but for a lot of people, the urgent list. The must list is not as long as we think it is, some day, some weeks, if you do this, it'll be longer than others, right? There's weeks we got to get more done than we would like, and a lot of the time, it's just about seeing it on paper and being like, oh, okay, yeah, there's a lot to do, and there's a lot that that can wait. Here's the last step. This is my personal favorite step, um, and I don't want to say it's the least important, but to me, it's the most important. To some people, it's the least important. I'll tell you why. The third step that I do is I take a list, a look at this list, and I say, What can I delegate? And I'm going to avoid going too deep down a rabbit hole here, because I try to keep these these short and punchy. Um.

20:00  
And delegation, to me, is one of the keys to life. And I want to be very clear about this that I don't say that to to

20:10  
take for granted anything right there are people who are in very real life situations where paying for help is not feasible for them right now. And my intention with this is not to override that, not to glance past that. That is a very real thing of life. I was in that situation for a long time. The point of me saying this is not to discount that. And

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as first of all, delegating does not have to mean financial it can mean bartering. It can mean asking for friends and family for help. It does not have to mean hiring help, and

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for I'll speak to myself. That's the easiest way to have this conversation. As mind strong has grown and as my financial situation has become secure, the number one thing that I will always spend my money on is help, because I am a very logical, data driven person, right? So if I look at the data of how much I would pay someone to clean our house, to do our laundry, whatever the case, whatever the chore is what I do, and this is a real thing is, I will look at how many hours it would take to do that task, and what those hours could equate to within my business. So to get a little deeper in the weeds, a huge part of my job as CEO of mine strong is content creation. I create these podcasts. I create these YouTube videos. I love it. That's one of my favorite parts of this. It's another huge part of my job is showing up for our community when we do our office hours and we do our lunch and learns when we're when we're adding to the Ignite curriculum that is my role as CEO, and again, some of my favorite things, those are my zone of geniuses. And because that's my zone of genius right now, nobody else in the company can do those things. That's why they're my role. So my hours, if I want to have a successful, growing business with happy members, which is our whole point is for me to spend as much time as possible showing up for our members and creating content. When I'm spending three hours cleaning my house and two hours doing laundry and an hour doing whatever chore, that's all time that does not make sense financially in the long in the immediate and in the long run, because if I spent those hours showing up for my business, how much more would it grow? And I've gotten as far as to break this down to what an hourly wage would look like, and it can get as low as like, well, that's the equivalent of $20 an hour. Is that where I want to spend my time? So I'm using myself as an example, because I'm in a place I'm very grateful to say that where I have the ability to make those decisions, even when I didn't back when I was just starting out as a teacher and was not making very much money, I still would look for places to delegate if I had a friend that loved I did that. This is a true story. Actually, I haven't thought about this in years. I used to meal prep. God, that sounds terrible now, because I hate meal prepping. But I had, I used to meal prep back in the day when I was a teacher, because I would be gone for 12 hours, and I had a friend who loved to clean. I always hated cleaning, like I'm a very organized person, but I hate like scrubbing, so I bartered with a friend. I said, Listen, if you come over and clean my house, I will do an entire week's worth of meal prep for you. And she was like, done, no brainer. And I was like, done, no brainer. And we bartered, and it was fantastic. So today's episode is the theme of, like, long winded explanations. I say all that to say delegation does not have to mean financial and that I think a lot of women, especially have a lot of shame and blame around like, this is my job. I should be doing this. I disagree. I think when you look at it from a very brass tax standpoint of what would the hourly rage wage be, it doesn't make sense for a lot of us all that to say step three is, I will look at those three lists, all of them, the urgent, the meh urgent and the not so urgent, and I will go through and circle. What can I delegate? Are there things that I can barter someone to do? Are there someone I can ask, Hey, suomo, do you mind tapping in on this? Are there things I can ask my best friends to take off their plate? Are there things that I can pay someone to do? And it would make sense financially. My goal is to go through that list and make it as small as possible through the the art, the skill of delegation, okay,

24:31  
at the end of this exercise, at the very least, the very least, you have gotten everything that's been swimming around ruminating in your brain, because there's a big difference between thinking about things and ruminating about things. Thinking about things is, hey, how do i Master nutrition as a skill? How do I eat the foods I love while staying in my budget? Ruminating is, I shouldn't have eat that. I should go to the gym. I should eat more salads. They are not the same. Thinking about, okay, here's my list. What.

25:00  
Needs to be done now. What can wait till later? What can I delegate that is night and day from I need to do this. I should do this. Why didn't I do this? I keep forgetting to do this. That is rumination, that is unproductive, that is anxiety in action. The point of this exercise is, at the very least, we've gotten it out of our brain. We have stopped the rumination, or at least slowed it down dramatically. And now we have an action plan, rocking chair test to slow down our nervous system. Massive brain dump. That is the one that you cannot skip if you want to do this exercise right. You can't make lists. You can't delegate without that. Don't try to delegate while it's in your brain, by the way, because it's still ruminating. Get it down. That's the most important step. Get it on paper. I'm a big fan of handwriting it from there. Put it into columns, or you can color code. I like columns because I like the act of writing to get the energy out. What's a must right now? What's a meh right now? What's a can wait till later? And final step, what can I delegate? What can I take off my plate so that my energy and focus are on the tasks that only I can do.

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For more information on mind strong fitness, or to apply for a free one to one strategy session with my incredible all female team, visit www, dot mind strong fitness.com. You.

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