Overwhelm is probably the number one thing that I hear from my clients and from people that I interact with about why they are struggling to build their business. It’s this term that we’ve gotten really comfortable using as a scapegoat.
“I’m overwhelmed.”
“I couldn’t do that, because I was overwhelmed.”
“Oh, I didn’t start the Facebook group because I was overwhelmed.”
“I didn’t get on live video today because I was overwhelmed.”
What exactly IS overwhelm?
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Most of my peeps are health and wellness entrepreneurs or fitness professionals, and they are probably very used to hearing their clients say, “I didn’t go to the gym today,” or “I didn’t work out,” or “I didn’t food prep because I was lazy. I’m a lazy person.” They take on that default of lazy anytime they don’t actually go ahead and accomplish something that they set out to accomplish. And I’m finding that this same thing is happening with people who are trying to build a business. The default setting is to just say, “I didn’t do this because I was feeling overwhelmed,” and I want to talk right now about what exactly is overwhelm, and how overwhelm is different from stress.
Are we actually overwhelmed or are we stressed?
Now, overwhelmed essentially is when your brain is overstimulated. You are taking in too much information and we’re not able to process it.
In this day and age, we take in so much information; it is the equivalent of reading seven newspapers a day! And thus, the intake of information has increased. More is being demanded of us to process, but our brains have not evolved enough to be able to sort through all of that. And especially for us in entrepreneurship: if we’re sitting on social media all day long, we’re seeing Facebook ads for this strategy and that strategy and hundreds of different things.
It is very, very, VERY easy to slip into that state of “I don’t know where to begin. So, I’m just not going to do anything.”
How many of you have experienced that? It’s actually pretty common!
We’ve all been there and it’s a totally natural thing to happen when we’re overstimulated. Basically, our brains are shutting down. They’re short-circuiting. We are not able to multitask. A lot of people say, “I’m the best at multitasking, I could do it all.” But what’s really happening is your brain is just switching between two different things. So, if you are sitting doing paperwork and also watching a movie. you’re not actually simultaneously doing both. You are just quickly switching between both activities and every time you switch between activities, it’s slowing you down.
Now, I know a lot of people – especially in my family – who think they are ninja multitaskers and I try to explain to them that they’re actually doing a huge disadvantage by trying to do two activities at the same time.
It doesn’t work. It’s not how our brains function.
Now, when we’re driving, we’re using our eyesight and ears to focus, but also having conversation or also listening to the radio, we’re using different parts of our brain because we are using different senses. So, in some circumstances, there are things that we can do at the same time. But I’m talking about an instance like trying to write a letter and give a speech at the same time. It’s not going to happen. They just conflict.
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So, what’s happening? Our brains are shutting down, because we are just overstimulated.
Now, this is different from stress.
Overwhelm is just too much information. Stress is more of the emotional response, often to being overwhelmed. But it has more to do with the ego. It’s that idea of having so much happening in your brain that it hurts. And then we take that overwhelm and we apply meaning to it.
Negative meanings, like “If I don’t figure this out, I’m not successful.” “If I don’t complete this by the date that I wrote down on my goal sheet, I’m a failure.” All of a sudden, we’ve taken this natural state where our brain can’t process stuff and we’re applying all of this external meaning to it. I remember being a kid in elementary school, trying to figure out how the frick to do long division in math class. I swear to God it felt like my brain was on fire. I could not for the life of me figure out how to do math. That was one of my big struggles.
And, you know that feeling where you are so frustrated that you have a lump in your throat? You feel the tears starting to come? As an entrepreneur, I’ve been in that place many times. I wanted to take my computer and throw it out the window and just be done for good.
We’ve all been there.
But, when we are in that place, we have a choice to make.
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If we’re overstimulated, we can either apply the stress meaning of, “I’m not good enough. I’m not going to be able to do this. I’m a huge failure.” Or can we take that (when we feel that in our body) and really really tap in and reframe it. Can we reframe this? When I feel overstimulated or when I am pushed up against something that is new, instead of defaulting to the old habit of applying meaning that’s not even real, letting my ego get in the way, saying I’m not good enough… can we take that and say,
“I’m experiencing growth right now. I am learning something new. So my brain feels like it’s on fire, but maybe this is a good thing.”
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Now, this is something that took me a very long time to figure out and learn to embrace. I was hard wired to basically run away from anything that caused any stress. And my lovely mother (bless her heart) wanted to take care of my brother and I. She wanted to do it all for us. But here’s the thing that often happens: if you have someone in your life (possibly a parent) who, from a young age doesn’t want you to experience stress, they are actually taking away the opportunity for you to experience growth.
It takes growth and confidence to be able to say, “I could figure this out myself. I can do this.”
And what used to happen any time I would have a test coming up, memorization was not something that was one of my strengths. And that became one of my hardcore beliefs. “I suck at testing. I’m not a good student.”
And so my mom wanting to fix everything. Sometimes she would help me write my papers last minute. She would stay up with me till the late hours of the night, from elementary through high school. She’d ask me questions, go over my work, help me study, and test me. But she would always bail me out.
So you’re not surprised that when I got to college and had to take tests, I had meltdowns on the daily; like when I was a kid and it was cute for her to be able to save me. When I got older it was like, “Well now what the heck do I do? I’ve been hard wired with these beliefs and this messaging from childhood that I personally can not handle stressful situations.” You don’t know what to do, you don’t feel like an adult, and you feel incapable of handling it.
Well, you can imagine how hilariously ridiculous that is for somebody who wanted to be an actor and performer and then went into entrepreneurship. Those are two careers ironically enough where there is literally no net. There is no one who is going to bail you out.
And maybe that was even subconscious me chasing a challenge to be in a position where no one could bail me out. I could experience that growth, because as human beings that’s what we really want. We want to experience that personal growth. And I wasn’t given those opportunities and encouragement; it was just always done for me.
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So I want you to really ask yourself…..
What are your default settings to stress? How do your parents handle stress, when they have emotions that they don’t want to deal with?
Where did they carry it physically? Does it end up in their throat? Does it end up in their stomach? Do they retract and pull back? Do they get angry and lash out? What are their habits and behaviors?
Because, as children, we watch this.
We study it, and we start to pick things like that up for ourselves. We start to mimic and model what we are seeing. How do your family members react to stress?
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A client said, “I sat down an hour and a half ago to write a blog post and have so many things I could write about, but my brain is overwhelmed.”
This is such a normal thing to experience and I would actually really say…
Is it overwhelm that you have all of these ideas, or is it stress and fear coming in?
That what you write isn’t going to be good enough, or that everyone else has already taken all the good ideas and nothing that you say is going to be original.
Now, it could just be that you have too many ideas. So I would write out a list of all of the ideas that you have and pick one. You can always write the other ones later this week or later this month. But just start with one. A great way to narrow this down is to recall what is happening for you in your life right now. If there’s a specific story that you can pull from, something that’s really relevant on the tip of your tongue that’s happened today- that’s a great place to start.
Another client says: we’re not completely internalizing the moment. Absolutely. Really being able to step back when you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed, we can identify what’s really happening for us inside; if we can really step back and say, “Am I being fearful? Am I allowing those little negative gremlins to creep in? What is actually happening?”
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You know, I’m not a parent yet. But, as a parent, you want to do everything for your kids. And as a coach and mentor, you want to do everything for your clients. But, if you do everything for them, you rob them of the opportunity to experience those pieces of growth, those pieces of potential failures, all of that.
We want to protect our clients.
We want them to have the most success.
We want to protect our kids. We want them to be the best that they can be and we want to help them avoid all of those failures.
But really: when we step back and look at it, those are essential pieces for building character, building growth, and building confidence. Don’t take that away from people. Before you jump in to answer questions for people, let them figure it out on their own. You will not be a bad parent. You will not be a bad coach. You will not be a bad mentor.
Don’t take that away from them.
Back to reframing stress, overwhelm, and fear.
One really important piece to be able to do this is getting present in the moment. Getting present in the moment, really internalizing how we are feeling, asking ourselves, “what/ how do I feel right now?”
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There was one summer where I got hired as an actor and I was terrified. I was, in my mind, completely unqualified to be doing this particular show with this particular group of actors and that stress kicked in. I had a total meltdown. I was like, “Oh my god, what did I just sign up for? I’m going to be the worst. Everyone’s going to think I suck. I’m going to pull down the whole performance.” And I was often running down the spiral. But I went anyway. And I experienced such incredible levels of growth. Unbelievable; more than I’ve ever had in a three month period. Because I was thrown into what I would not have done. I would not have pushed myself that hard. But I grew, because I had to up-level faster to keep up with everyone.
I developed.
I grew this amazing stamina and endurance.
All of a sudden, everything else compared to that looked really easy.
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Think about the military when new recruits come in. They go through boot camp (which is – so I hear – not the most pleasant experience), and they’re put through the worst case scenarios. They are pushed to their absolute limits, so that when they actually go to war or in the field, they’re prepared for it. They’re preparing and training them so that everything else is easy. And what’s also happening there is they’re building that stamina. They’re putting them in that pressure cooker.
They are under intense levels of stress and overwhelm. And they either have to adapt or die.
And it’s the same thing in business.
If you are unwilling to embrace the idea of overwhelm, reframe it from stress to growth, and take in the idea that this is kind of how it works, that’s it. I have so many clients who are afraid of experiencing stress or overwhelm.
I’m not saying that you need to build a business where you’re constantly stressed all the time.
I am not saying that at all!
I think that you should constantly be checking in internally and really asking yourself, “Does this feel good? Does this feel authentic?” And always using that spiritual side of you to guide you through each piece of your business, because there’s so much information out there.
The number one you got to learn is to trust your gut.
And if you’re like, “I can’t even feel my gut. Where’s my gut?”, it’s time for you to maybe go and start researching some meditations or some spiritual information so that you can start to tap into that again. It’s really important. If you listen to any successful entrepreneurs, all of them have some kind of practice where they’re able to ground themselves each and every day in the present moment; so that they can enter the world without any cloudiness.
I remember reading a book from a spiritual thought leader who basically said, “I don’t enter the world each morning — I don’t interact with anyone — until I have my body, my mind, and my energy in the right place. I do not enter the world or interact with anyone until I feel present and grounded.”
And I think that that’s such a powerful, impressive thing to do. I think everyone in the world will be a lot happier if we all did that.
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We want to understand that stress is, in many ways, our resistance to growth. We want to avoid it. We don’t want to feel overwhelmed. We’re running away from it. So how can we shift out of that? I think it’s really important to recognize that our brains can only process and quantify when we’re going to lose something.
Our brains are not totally able to look to the potential future and see and feel the fullness of what we could win by doing something scary.
Instead, all we see is what we could potentially lose.
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So it’s really important to remember that when we are taking those big leaps and bounds forward. So I want to leave you with this guys: If we get present right now, really just ask yourself, “What can I do right now to feel better?” That’s it. That’s why we’re here.
If you are working your business right now and you are just feeling exhausted and miserable and pissed off and stressed and in that really really heavy masculine “go-go-go…hustle-hustle-hustle…grit-grit-grit” if you’re just in that energy all the time: I really want to encourage you to step back and really figure out a way to rebalance your energy.
So that, when you come to sit down to work, you actually want to be there. It will take you 10 times longer to do any given activity if you were in that state of stress. If you step away from the computer, step away from that blog article, and step away from creating your academy to just go do something that makes you feel joy? That is so valuable.
It might feel like “OMG I’m running out of time, I have to do this, I have to have to have to…” The ‘shoulds’ will bury you. But, take a step back. I promise, you will come back refreshed with new ideas, with new energy, and you will be far, far more productive.
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So that is what I have for you today. If you found this valuable, please share with an entrepreneurial friend and pass it along to somebody who needs to hear this today. If you guys are not already inside the Facebook group Online Coaches Manifest and Monetize, join me! I share tons of juicy tips for health and wellness professionals on how to grow a brand, how to rock it on social media, kill it on live video, and start making money online. I look forward to connecting with you in there!
