Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #273| Here's Why Your Overwhelm Keeps Coming Back No Matter How Many Times You Try To Say No
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: Here's why your overwhelm keeps coming back no matter how many times you try to say no.
- 0:04Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:21Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
- 0:26Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:33Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Do you sometimes look at your calendar or maybe even your entire life and think, how did I get this packed?
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: When did this overwhelm creep in and take over my life?
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: I'm such a capable woman who can handle so many things, so why do I feel like this?
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes it feels like it just happened, but in truth, it happens one yes at a time.
- 0:56Michelle Gauthier: The yeses piling up on the earlier yeses until you're so overwhelmed you can't think straight.
- 1:02Michelle Gauthier: Here are some of the little yeses that I've seen just in the past week from my client.
- 1:07Michelle Gauthier: One of my clients was in such a rush to get through her email inbox, you know, that looming inbox with hundreds of emails that she just clicked accept on all of the meetings.
- 1:16Michelle Gauthier: One of my other clients signed her kids up for a camp that she knew that they would love, but didn't realize or pause to think about how to manage the fact that the drop-off was at 9 a.m.
- 1:25Michelle Gauthier: and pickup was at 3 p.m.
- 1:26Michelle Gauthier: and that she works from at least 8 to 5 every day.
- 1:30Michelle Gauthier: I see this all the time.
- 1:31Michelle Gauthier: And it's not like these aren't very smart women.
- 1:33Michelle Gauthier: These are very smart women, but overwhelmed women are just defaulting to yes without even pausing to think about what their answer actually is.
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: And if you're thinking, I don't think I do that, keep listening because it can be sneaky.
- 1:45Michelle Gauthier: In fact, it happened to me this morning.
- 1:47Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll discover why you're defaulting to yes without even thinking about it, what those unintentional yeses are actually costing you in your calendar and your relationships and your own sense of self and the one shift that changes everything without turning you into that person who has to say no all the time.
- 2:07Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so let's dig into this.
- 2:09Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you already know that you're doing this.
- 2:11Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you know that you say yes too often or say yes without even pausing.
- 2:16Michelle Gauthier: And maybe you've even tried to fix it.
- 2:18Michelle Gauthier: Some of my clients have done things like try to set up an auto responder.
- 2:22Michelle Gauthier: One of my clients was trying to not work after five or have some focused work during the day.
- 2:26Michelle Gauthier: So she set up an autoresponder on her email that says, I'm unavailable after 5 p.m.
- 2:31Michelle Gauthier: I'll get back to you tomorrow morning.
- 2:32Michelle Gauthier: But then when she would see the notification pop up that she had a new email, she'd still open it and respond.
- 2:38Michelle Gauthier: So she had that boundary set up, but she wasn't following it.
- 2:41Michelle Gauthier: Or maybe you have a sticky note on your desk that says like protect your time or say no or some kind of reminder like that.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: Or maybe you've told your work bestie, call me out if I take on too much again, but she's not around when you actually say yes and take on more.
- 2:55Michelle Gauthier: None of these solutions are really working.
- 2:57Michelle Gauthier: And it's not because you're undisciplined, you clearly are not, but it's because that yes happens in a split second.
- 3:03Michelle Gauthier: And it's a habit that is happening either fully unconsciously or partially.
- 3:07Michelle Gauthier: Let's talk about what happens when you have this pattern of saying this automatic yes.
- 3:12Michelle Gauthier: Let's see what it's actually costing you because it's not just the time, it's also the way that it makes you feel.
- 3:17Michelle Gauthier: One of my clients used to get a daily phone call from a coworker before work, and her automatic yes was to pick up that call.
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: And every time her coworker would call, she would sit there feeling that familiar tightness in her chest, listening to someone else's complaints and feel this resentment building, thinking, why am I the one who always has to hold this?
- 3:37Michelle Gauthier: Why can't I just say I don't have time?
- 3:39Michelle Gauthier: But she didn't say that.
- 3:40Michelle Gauthier: She kept picking up the phone and feeling resentful toward this woman, but then feeling a little bit of guilt for even wanting to say no and a little bit of shame for herself that she couldn't protect like 30 minutes of her own morning and questioning why do I have to be the one who everyone calls to complain?
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: The person who doesn't get to have a peaceful morning because she has to make everyone else feel better.
- 4:01Michelle Gauthier: So by the time she would hang up from these calls, she wasn't just behind because she had 30 minutes that she had used in a way that she hadn't planned to use it.
- 4:10Michelle Gauthier: She felt scattered before her day even started, rushed, irritated at her own kids for needing here, and then feeling guilty for being irritated.
- 4:17Michelle Gauthier: She felt like she was already failing at the day and it was only 8 a.m.
- 4:21Michelle Gauthier: And imagine that that was just one yes on one phone call.
- 4:25Michelle Gauthier: And now stack that feeling, that low simmer of resentment and guilt and not enough on top of every other automatic yes as her day went on, because that probably wasn't the only one.
- 4:35Michelle Gauthier: And let's just look at what this one yes picking up that call was actually costing my client in real terms.
- 4:41Michelle Gauthier: There's the 30 minutes to 60 minutes itself that's just gone, spent listening to complaints before her workday even began.
- 4:47Michelle Gauthier: But it doesn't stop there.
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: She missed her chance to set her own morning up in a way that she wanted to.
- 4:53Michelle Gauthier: She didn't get to actually connect with her kids.
- 4:55Michelle Gauthier: She was like rushing them along while half listening on the phone.
- 4:58Michelle Gauthier: She ran out the door without grabbing her own lunch that she had made for herself.
- 5:02Michelle Gauthier: And this hectic morning led her into a whole bad day.
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: She walked into her 9 a.m.
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: meeting unprepared and struggled to lead it.
- 5:09Michelle Gauthier: And the open block she'd protected for a high priority project, she ended up just responding to emails because she didn't feel like she had enough focus to work on the big project.
- 5:18Michelle Gauthier: That's just one yes.
- 5:19Michelle Gauthier: Now multiply that by every other automatic yes stacking up in her day.
- 5:23Michelle Gauthier: I see this pattern constantly.
- 5:25Michelle Gauthier: My client Tanya said yes to whatever task the company owner asked of her without question, throwing away everything she'd already prioritized for the day.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: She could get one ask and her whole day was thrown off because she said yes to it without questioning anything or saying, These are my priorities.
- 5:40Michelle Gauthier: Naomi stopped working the instant her kids interrupted her home office every time.
- 5:45Michelle Gauthier: Lori said yes to a girl strip she didn't even want to go on, losing days of work and family time to do something she didn't even enjoy.
- 5:52Michelle Gauthier: And like I mentioned, this just happened to me this morning.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: Well, should we call it morning?
- 5:56Michelle Gauthier: My teenage daughter sleeps till like noon.
- 5:58Michelle Gauthier: So when she woke up, she came into my office to say good morning, and my door was cracked.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: So she knows that means I'm not talking to a client so she could come in.
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: So she came in, gave me a hug, I said good morning, and all of a sudden, even though I'm in the midst of doing some deep work, she's asking me some questions.
- 6:12Michelle Gauthier: She's telling me how she wants to clean her room, how she wants to go through her closet, what she's thinking about doing for and I was like, I just said an automatic yes, even though I'm in the middle of doing deep work and now I'm getting super distracted, and this isn't anything that we need to talk about right this instant.
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: So I said, thanks for coming in.
- 6:29Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for letting me know you're awake.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for the hug.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: I'm right in the middle of doing something that takes a lot of focus.
- 6:33Michelle Gauthier: I'll talk to you when I'm finished with this.
- 6:35Michelle Gauthier: So even I, who have written this podcast, fall prey to the automatic yes from time to time.
- 6:41Michelle Gauthier: So if you don't catch this and you keep saying yes on autopilot, it has a long-term price too.
- 6:46Michelle Gauthier: You know that feeling when you're at the dinner table with your family, but your mind is running through tomorrow's overloaded schedule or some email that you have to send tonight.
- 6:54Michelle Gauthier: So you're missing your daughter's cute story about the new friend she made at camp today, or when it's finally time for you to go to bed and your whole family's gone to sleep, you're too wired to wind down.
- 7:04Michelle Gauthier: So you try to just get a few things done instead, and you end up with four or five hours of sleep instead of eight, which feeds this pattern of chronic exhaustion.
- 7:12Michelle Gauthier: And then when you skip the workout or the doctor's appointment because you're too busy or too tired.
- 7:18Michelle Gauthier: You're the friend who's always busy and your friendships start to suffer.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: At work, you become the bottleneck.
- 7:24Michelle Gauthier: Your colleagues in your own team end up waiting on you because you're booked so solid, which slows everyone down.
- 7:30Michelle Gauthier: And all the while you show up with a smile on your face while your lower back is killing you and you're low-key nauseous just thinking about how you ever get yourself out of this.
- 7:39Michelle Gauthier: And the real work you're supposed to be doing at work, the writing or the strategy or the thing that you actually get paid for and evaluated on keeps getting pushed to the edges because there's no room left for it, which is exactly why your salary and your position stay stuck right where they are.
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: You're a smart, successful woman.
- 7:57Michelle Gauthier: You understand that this overwhelm isn't sustainable.
- 8:00Michelle Gauthier: Yet you keep saying yes sometimes without realizing it.
- 8:03Michelle Gauthier: Why is that?
- 8:04Michelle Gauthier: I'll tell you why.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: Because somewhere along the way, you started believing that everything that lands in your inbox is an emergency that needs to be solved.
- 8:12Michelle Gauthier: Or everything that anyone asks you feels like it's automatically your responsibility.
- 8:16Michelle Gauthier: If you don't answer it right now, you'll forget or it'll fall through the cracks.
- 8:20Michelle Gauthier: And underneath that, there's something even deeper, the idea that if you don't do it, it won't get done.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: And that belief, it's not irrational.
- 8:28Michelle Gauthier: You didn't make it up out of nowhere.
- 8:30Michelle Gauthier: It's based on past experience because you're capable and you follow through, and the whole system has run on you doing that, taking responsibility for everything for years.
- 8:39Michelle Gauthier: But let's be honest, almost nothing that lands in your inbox or in your text is actually an emergency.
- 8:45Michelle Gauthier: If someone asks you to do something face to face, you do not have to say yes and say it immediately.
- 8:51Michelle Gauthier: Three seconds of pause has never once caused that thing that you were afraid of to happen.
- 8:57Michelle Gauthier: So here's what actually changes this.
- 8:59Michelle Gauthier: Not a better system, not more willpower, but something that I call the powerful pause.
- 9:04Michelle Gauthier: Taking the pause doesn't mean that you have to say no to everything.
- 9:07Michelle Gauthier: This powerful pause is about training yourself to notice just that half second before you respond to an ask so that you can calmly make a clear decision about what you actually want to do.
- 9:18Michelle Gauthier: And you'll continue to get a ton of requests because you're a reliable, smart woman after all, but you'll learn to be the one who decides what gets your time and what does not.
- 9:27Michelle Gauthier: Some women try to do this on their own, this learning to pause and evaluate and say no.
- 9:32Michelle Gauthier: The issue is after years of programming and doing this, the automatic yes has become just that automatic.
- 9:38Michelle Gauthier: That's why in my program we have a specific mental presence practice, one you can do in like two minutes a day, that teaches you to slow things down so that you can rewire old patterns and create new ones with ease.
- 9:51Michelle Gauthier: This is the powerful pause.
- 9:53Michelle Gauthier: The client I mentioned at the start of this episode, the one unhappily saying yes to her coworkers complaining phone calls every morning, used this exact method.
- 10:01Michelle Gauthier: And when she practiced the pause and stopped answering the calls, the calls eventually just stopped.
- 10:07Michelle Gauthier: She got her morning back.
- 10:09Michelle Gauthier: She had time to get herself ready, time with her kids, time to listen to something uplifting on her commute instead of listening to a complaining phone call.
- 10:17Michelle Gauthier: And when she sat down at her desk in the morning, she felt actually ready for a productive day.
- 10:22Michelle Gauthier: Her entire day changed by learning this process, not just for one day, for all of her days.
- 10:28Michelle Gauthier: I taught this to her over a year ago, and she's still using it every day for all kinds of opportunities to say yes or no.
- 10:34Michelle Gauthier: It's not enough just to try the sticky note that says say no, because the problem runs deeper than that.
- 10:39Michelle Gauthier: And that's exactly why the powerful pause is such an integral part of my one-on-one coaching program.
- 10:45Michelle Gauthier: So if you've been saying yes on autopilot, agreeing to things before you even realize there was a decision being made, or you just don't have the nerve to say no, this is exactly what we'd work on together.
- 10:55Michelle Gauthier: The first step is doing a one-on-one consultation where we'll look at exactly where your automatic yes is ruining your calendar and your life, what it's costing you, and whether working together is the next right step to fix it for good.
- 11:07Michelle Gauthier: You don't have to have it figured out first.
- 11:09Michelle Gauthier: You just need to be ready to stop reacting and start deciding.
- 11:12Michelle Gauthier: I would love to talk to you.
- 11:14Michelle Gauthier: You can book your free call if you just go to Michelle Gothier.com slash book me, B-O-O-K-M-E.
- 11:21Michelle Gauthier: And we will also put that link in the show notes.
- 11:24Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 11:31Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at Michelle Gauthier.com.
- 11:37Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.