Latest / The Oreaganic Podcast / 57: Why Overwhelm is a Choice & How to Thrive in Busy Seasons

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57: Why Overwhelm is a Choice & How to Thrive in Busy Seasons · The Oreaganic Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello my friends, welcome back to the organic podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a short one, but I have a lesson on overwhelm that I think is going to resonate with a lot of people.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, let's get into it.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Organic Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Reagan, mechanical engineer, lifelong athlete, and recovered overachiever, here to empower you to pursue your highest potential and live freely as your happiest, most organic self.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every week we'll dive into topics ranging from personal growth, mindset hacks, psychology, and a blend of science and spirituality to give you all the tools you need to stop living on autopilot and start creating a life of freedom, meaning, and fulfillment as your most organic self.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're ready to become the best person of yourself, hello everybody, and welcome back to the pod.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode on overwhelm might might trigger some people.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Might make might make some people feel a little unsettled because I think of a past version of me and what I would think of the things that I'm about to say.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd probably be like, wow, she's such a fucking annoying bitch, or that's such bullshit.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that, that's not possible, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just have a bunch of shit to say about it because it would make me feel called out and insecure.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: But triggers are your greatest doorway to growth.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if I even just open up your mind just a little tiny teensy bit more to see how you actually have way more control over how overwhelmed you feel, then I have won.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've done my job.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So to give you guys some context into my into my life right now, I I this is like the busiest, like busiest, busiest stretch of three weeks of my life.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm only like three days into the three weeks of the pretty much ginormous bender that I'm having of just having like a really busy schedule and a lot going on.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And part of why I'm making this episode is because, like I said before, I think back to a past version of myself where I used to get so overwhelmed, but I would immediately go into a victim state where I'd be like, all of this is happening to me.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not fair to me that I have this many classes, this much work, this much this.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: This person doesn't have this much work.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: 99% of humanity is not dealing.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, let's not say that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: 99% of all of my classmates and peers are not dealing with nearly as much shit as I have on.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I am fucking entitled to being overwhelmed, and this is all happening to me, and of course it happened like this.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I get stuck in traffic when I'm already late after having the busiest week of my life.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I have this, of course I have that, blah blah blah blah blah.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was just victim mindset based around feeling super overwhelmed.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I let me just preface too, I'm not saying that overwhelm is not real, or that overwhelm does not deserve to be felt and acknowledged, or something that you can just like spiritually bypass and just pretend like it doesn't exist.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like you need to feel through emotions to let them cycle out, and we'll get into that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm talking about how it used to be with overwhelm.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I it was just everything was just like it was happening to me.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was happening to me.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing I could do about it.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was just the victim of my circumstances.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ew.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Literally ick, gross throwing up.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have grown a lot.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have progressed a lot in my internal world and and mindset and space.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in in the past few days, which I know is the start to a very long, very, very exciting, like fun things, but very, very, very long next few weeks, I know that I am in control of how I respond to my circumstances.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, it is true.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the things that have come up on my schedule are mostly out of my control.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're mostly out of my control.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is not really my fault that I am this busy.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And is it shouldn't you know what?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: If we want to say that, like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't have to have this much put on my plate or have this much going on, but blah blah blah blah.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can say all these things.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have I so easily have the option right now to say, oh my god, I have this and this and this, and it's gonna be miserable, and I'm like, I'm just so stressed out.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thing is, I can feel that way, and I can say that, and I have two options from there.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, the option is to wallow in self-pity and victimhood, and say, for the next three weeks, be in this like disgruntled, bitchy, like background state of constant stress all the time, just be like, oh my god, everything just like completely give in to the overwhelm.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or option two, after feeling overwhelmed, which everyone's entitled to do, is you say, Okay, alright, I feel this overwhelm, I hear it, I understand, like this is really a lot for me, and I am not going to let myself spiral in it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am not going to let myself drown in it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to remember that I have control over how I respond to anything that happens in my life, and nothing is ever happening to me.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is happening for me.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is that's a big mindset shift in general.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whether to lean away from victimhood and lean into accountability and ownership over your circumstances, no matter what happens in your life, is something that gives you such a sense of empowerment that you literally cannot get from being a constant victim your whole entire life.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be a victim, if you never want to look inwards, if you never want to take accountability, if you never want to feel like you actually have control over your life and circumstances, be my guest.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Stay a victim for the rest of your life.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, like do whatever you want to do.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But as someone who can speak to both from both perspectives here, past self and current self.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not I'm sure it's fucking hell not perfect.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I sure as hell still play the victim sometimes.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, 100%.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone, like I no one I think is ever gonna be truly immune to this.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like a muscle you build to have greater awareness around when you are hearing these victimhood thoughts come up in your head.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had this happen the past couple days where something's happening, like a couple things just going wrong at the same time, or I am getting absolutely fucking massacred by mosquitoes outside, like doing my job, just like small tiny things that just are are bricks piling onto this giant pile that I know I am looking at in front of me, which is just all the things that I have to do in my life for the next three weeks.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I can say, I I had so I had so many small moments.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's in these small moments that matter the most.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I had so many small moments where I was like, wow, I could really, really just say right now, like, a fucking course this is happening to me.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Of course it's happening.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is not fucking fair.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this happening?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is fucked up, I shouldn't have to deal with all this shit.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I could have crashed out, and I could have really gone into the spiral of like, oh my god, all this is happening to me.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is terrible.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it it genuinely made me uncomfortable to do this, but it took pure it took pure, pure will for me to take a deep breath and say, you know what?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is really fucking annoying right now, and I'm a little bit pissed off by it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I have way like so much going on right now, so much coming up.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't need this right now.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna acknowledge that.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take a step back, I'm gonna take a deep breath, and I'm gonna think what is the next step that I can take and what is in my control right now.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can I have a better mindset?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can I focus on something that is more advantageous to me creating the experience of life for myself that I want to have rather than being reactive to my circumstances?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is is there anything available for me to change right now?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if not, how can I come to terms with this situation and just accept it as it is and almost carry this like neutral energy towards it?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not this energy of oh my god, fuck this, I'm gonna like burn everything down, this is horrible.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Should happen sometimes.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: You go through overwhelming periods of life, like it is not something that needs to be seen as like this big, bad, awful thing that must be avoided at all costs, like everyone's gonna be overwhelmed at some point.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: But why I say overwhelm is a choice is because it is.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: We always have the choice in terms of how we respond to something, and you can feel overwhelmed.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I you are completely entitled, everyone is entitled to feel overwhelmed.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is not necessarily a choice to feel overwhelmed when it comes to just like the natural reaction in your mind, in your body, in your brain in response to your circumstances.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where overwhelm becomes an actual choice is how you decide to respond to it.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: This takes awareness, this takes practice, this takes effort, and it takes a desire to know that you have emotional mastery over yourself and your life and your situation and how you respond to things, which allows you to be more flexible and have a more enjoyable, grounded, expansive experience of life because you are capable of not absolutely spiraling and losing all of your shit.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Freaking marbles flying everywhere just because you fell into the spiral of overwhelm.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a threshold we get to.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone gets to a point, you have all these things building up, boom, there you go, critical point, you're overwhelmed.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're standing at the edge of a cliff.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And where we have the choice here with these two options in terms of spiraling into overwhelm versus taking a step back and acknowledging what you can control and what you can't, it's like you're at the edge of this cliff where you're overwhelmed, and if you choose to spiral into it, you don't like you just basically fall down the slope.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be morbid, but let's say that that's the first option.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you're at this cliff, this threshold, and you choose to give in to the overwhelm, you choose to spiral and you choose to be a victim, you are essentially just going down that slope, full, like you you are tumbling, you are unwell, and it just makes everything way fucking worse.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like it does not need to be that way.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: The second option, when you're at this threshold of overwhelm, is to pop squat, take a seat, appreciate the view for a second, and say, Whoa, this is a lot.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is a lot.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna let it out a little bit.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I just need to if I just need to get out a little scream, a little, a little, I don't know, rage session, like a cry.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna release the emotion that you're carrying, like you're gonna feel the overall, you're gonna let yourself feel it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen something before that emotions are literally just like a 90-second chemical reaction in the brain.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously there's there's way more depth to that, but I think it's it's true the point that emotions, if you actually just let yourself feel them and you sit with them when they come up, they pass over you like a wave and they don't get stuck in your body and they don't become this whole trauma experience that you gotta go dig up later that sticks with you forever.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like emotions when you actually let them pass and you let them out, you give them an outlet.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's like the healthiest way you can handle them.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that you can do wrong in terms of emotions is ignore them.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think we all kind of know that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, let yourself feel the emotion.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Take a seat, pop a squat at this threshold cliff of overwhelm, take a breath, and just real like reflect on what you can actually control.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's something you can control that can help you feel a little better, that can help manage your situation, then how can you take steps to do that?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's absolutely nothing you can control, sometimes honestly, you just need to laugh.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like some situations are so ridiculous when you're so overwhelmed that you literally can do absolutely nothing but laugh.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's comical, literally comical.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like me, me, the past couple days, guys.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I literally have nine bug bites on the right side of my face.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You heard that correctly, and that is from a work thing, which I'm not even mad about the work thing, it's just like where I was was just so buggy, and they are obsessed with me.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was it was horrible.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: But anyways, like that situation, I can I do anything to really control that?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, not that much.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I had preventative measures for bugs, but like I I can't do much about the fact that there's gonna be mosquitoes swarming me the whole time, no matter how many times I flail my own flail my arms around or how many layers I wear, they're still gonna be around me, even if they can't directly bite me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I could have chosen to be annoyed by that the entire day, but I chose to accept it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I chose to get to this threshold of overwhelm and say, you know what?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can't control that, so I'm just gonna let it be.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I am gonna find peace with the fact that I can do absolutely nothing about this, and that brings me freedom.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: That makes me feel okay, because that's fine, and figure it out from there.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So next time you get to this threshold of overwhelm where you think about, oh my god, I just want to spiral, you you feel the pull to go into victimhood to say all the reasons why this isn't fair to you, and you shouldn't have to deal with this and all the things, which could be absolutely fair points, like absolutely warranted.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: But does it serve you?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Does it actually serve you to be in that mindset?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does it serve you to be thinking like a victim in this way?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Does that actually help you be more of the person who you want to be?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: My guess is usually gonna be no when it comes to these victimhood uh thoughts.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So knowing that, what we can do at the threshold of overwhelm at this great cliff is always choose to just take a step back, take a seat, focus on what you can control and accept what you can't, and move on from there.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna leave this week's episode here.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: You guys, uh follow me on my socials.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I will probably be quite quite active in the next couple weeks.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: We will see.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you for being here and for being a part of this listener community.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I love you guys, appreciate you guys, and I hope you have a beautiful go wow, can't fucking talk.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: A beautiful rest of your day.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Go be your most organic selves, and I will see you in the next one.