Latest / Good Morning From The Chicken Coop! / Season 5 - Episode 52 - The effects of cognitive overload

Transcript

Season 5 - Episode 52 - The effects of cognitive overload · Good Morning From The Chicken Coop!

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome to the good morning from the Chicken
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  Coop podcast. My name is Kim Johnson and I am
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  a mastermindset coach, creative strategist, and also happened to
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  be a farmer. This is my chicken coop and I
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  come out here every day to. Record a podcast to.
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  Teach distinctions, possibilities, new ways of
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  thinking, and just bring some joy into the world.
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  So welcome to the coop and let's start your day off in a
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  fantastic way. Hey everybody, good morning.
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  Last night I was having a coaching session with a client
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  who happens to be a physician, and we were talking about stress
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  and how stress was affecting him.
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  And you know, and the reason I'm telling you all of this is
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  because I think it's important to realize that stress effects
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  every human. Even doctors have issues and
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  they know how bad stress is. He was going into very great
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  detail about how the stress was affecting him, how it was
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  showing up, what the pressure was doing, all of these
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  different things. And in the process of this, and
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  we were breaking it down bit by bit by bit, we got into a very
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  deep conversation about the root cause of all of this and where
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  it comes from and how a big chunk of it that I believe
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  personally, because I see it every day, is the cognitive
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  overload that's put on us. Now, that's a very fancy term
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  for saying it's too much coming at us too quickly.
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  It's our brains cannot handle everything that's coming at us
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  constantly. The bursts of energy that allow
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  us to be able to do that are meant to be used short term.
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  They're meant to be used for panic situations.
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  They're meant to be used for things that are in intense in
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  the moment, like if it's a car accident or if there's someone
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  drowning or there's a fire. Danger is usually involved and
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  they're meant to be used short term, short term, short term,
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  not long term. And like in his case, in an
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  emergency room, you're in that constantly, you're at that
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  heightened level constantly. And that has an effect.
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  And it what a big part of that effect, what we see in doctors
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  is that they become detached because they can't handle that
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  level of cognitive overload all the time.
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  So they seem aloof, They seem attached, detached from
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  everything. They seem like they just are are
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  breezing through two things, but it's really a safety mechanism.
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  And then a byproduct of that is how does it all show up in the
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  body? How does it show up where
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  exhaustion comes in or high blood pressure, diabetes,
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  There's a there's a list of things nearly every single
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  disease out there can be attached back to some form of
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  stress being involved as a symptom of it.
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  So in the process of this conversation, he asked me a
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  question. He said, do you think the
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  average person suffers cognitive overload?
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  Like if you're, are your clients suffering cognitive overload?
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  And I said 100% because of how we attach meaning to things.
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  And we've talked about this a ton of times.
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  We, I've brought it up on here, I've put it's, it's in books.
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  I mean, I have written about it, talked about it, blogged about
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  it. When too much comes at us too
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  fast on a consistent basis, we experience symptoms that we
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  don't know where they're coming from.
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  It's like we have this litany of mystery symptoms and then we try
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  to blame it on other things, but the reality is the information
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  is coming at us too fast. We can't handle it.
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  And therefore we start to have symptoms of it because we're
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  we're still working through the information.
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  We're still going through those motions, but it's coming at us
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  so quickly. We're thinking we're making it
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  work, but we're not. And then we start to get sick in
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  one way or another. Now I know for myself, I go back
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  to what am I making this mean? Is this really urgent?
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  And I can't stress enough again. And I did this to him.
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  This is all about what you're making things mean.
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  So if you go back and you ask in any way, shape or form, you
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  could be in a fight with your spouse and you could say you
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  hear something and immediately you react and now you're at that
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  heightened peak. You're everybody's fighting, but
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  that moment you made it mean something.
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  So if you can go back and say, was I accurate?
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  What did this mean? Am I willing to die on this
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  hill? If you can come back enough to
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  identify the questioned and what you made it mean, that helps you
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  break the pattern of that cognitive overload and it helps
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  you settle down and make choices that don't feel like you're
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  having a dinosaur chasing you ready to bite your head off.
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  That stops the, the repetitive pattern, which interrupts the
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  whole thing and gives you an opportunity to recalibrate.
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  And in the process of this, he's like, wow, So you think that if
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  we just start asking ourselves questions about is this really
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  urgent? Is this necessary?
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  You know, what should I focus on more than one thing at a time?
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  That was another part of it. It, it should I just focus on
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  one thing at a time? And then that I'm like 100
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  percent, 100%. And he's actually making a list
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  of questions so he can work them in with his patients.
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  And I think that's so cool. So I'm going to encourage you
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  all to make a list of questions that help you interrupt that
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  cognitive overload so you can change the pattern and have a
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  happier day. So hopefully this is helpful, my
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  friends, come up with your list of questions.
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  For me, it's always like, is this how I choose to respond?
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  Is this the right? Is this the right trajectory I
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  want to go on? Is this helping me or hurting
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  me? Those are the kind of things
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  that will interrupt the pattern and give you an opportunity.
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  All right, my friends, I hope you have a blessed day and I
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  will see you tomorrow. Bye.