Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #73| Easily Reduce Overwhelm by Letting Go Instead of Holding On Too Tightly
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When things start to go a little sideways, human nature can often be to just try to grasp on and take control and force the outcome that we want.
- 0:09Michelle Gauthier: Today, I'm going to tell you why that's not always the best answer.
- 0:13Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:25Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, ichelle Gothier, a former overwhelmed working woman and current life coach.
- 0:29Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:41Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining today.
- 0:45Michelle Gauthier: Today, we are talking about two situations where I have recently created a situation for myself where I went from feeling overwhelmed to even more overwhelmed before solving the problem, and so I want to talk to you today about how to cut out that middleman, that middleman of making yourself even more overwhelmed before you solve the problem and instead go straight to the solution.
- 1:10Michelle Gauthier: As women, we often have a tendency, when we're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, to try to control something, and that, in and of itself, isn't bad, but what I found myself doing was really forcing things and trying to control outcomes, and in doing that, just made myself feel worse and more overwhelmed for longer and then finally eventually solving the problem.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: So today we're going to talk about why, as women, we gravitate towards control in times of stress, how forcing outcomes actually increases our overwhelm - so trying to force a solution that doesn't work increases our overwhelm - and then eventually we get to embracing acceptance and letting go and making peace with situations, which is the quickest way to feel better.
- 1:59Michelle Gauthier: So those are the three things we're going to talk about today.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to tell you two stories about how I have recently taken the path of most resistance and caused the most overwhelm for myself possible w ithout meaning to.
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: I'm sharing this with you so that, hopefully, you can not do that.
- 2:18Michelle Gauthier: You can catch yourself before you create that situation for you.
- 2:22Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so here's what happened in my situation.
- 2:26Michelle Gauthier: My kids and I went to Europe this summer - I think I've already talked about that on the podcast.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: We had this wonderful two-week-long trip, got to do all this cool stuff, and the day that we were leaving, we were leaving from my dear friend Simonetta's beach house in Italy and taking the train to Nice to fly back home to the US, and on the way to Nice, I kept getting texts from American Airlines that our flight was going to be delayed, delayed, delayed, which was okay.
- 2:53Michelle Gauthier: That's annoying, but that was okay.
- 2:55Michelle Gauthier: But eventually, by the time we got to Nice, our flight had been canceled and rescheduled for Monday.
- 3:01Michelle Gauthier: So this was on a Saturday, so two more days.
- 3:04Michelle Gauthier: So immediately, that unexpected change put me into this first step that I want to talk about, which is what can I control?
- 3:13Michelle Gauthier: So I've got a whole episode on what you can and can't control and how focusing on what you can control is a good way to solve a problem.
- 3:23Michelle Gauthier: So it started off with good intentions.
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: I called American Airlines.
- 3:27Michelle Gauthier: What I essentially found out pretty quickly was you know, we're in France during the Olympics, our flight was moved to Monday and there were no seats on any plane going anywhere that could get us back to the US sooner than that.
- 3:41Michelle Gauthier: So that took like five or ten minutes on the phone and I controlled what I could control, which was asking the question and finding out what my options were.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: So that was okay.
- 3:53Michelle Gauthier: But then where it went sideways is that I just got it in my head that I was going to force an outcome.
- 4:00Michelle Gauthier: So I was going to force some kind of solution and we were going to get home.
- 4:05Michelle Gauthier: So, bless this woman from American Airlines, who, by the way, was nice throughout this entire conversation, we spent 90 more minutes on the phone and I was asking her, okay, I had a map of Europe on my phone that I was looking at, I'm like, okay, what if we fly to Amsterdam and then we try to get to the US?
- 4:24Michelle Gauthier: Okay, no, not, that doesn't work.
- 4:25Michelle Gauthier: What if we fly to Barcelona and then we try to fly to the US?
- 4:29Michelle Gauthier: So she checked every idea that I had and, after like 90 minutes, the best solution that she came up with was us flying to London, spending the night, taking like a 5 am flight from London which isn't in the right direction if you're trying to get to the US, then back to Madrid, spending all day in Madrid, and then taking a night flight to fly to Toronto, and then from Toronto to St Louis, where we live.
- 4:55Michelle Gauthier: It was ridiculous and it would have gotten us home probably like 12 hours earlier than our newly scheduled flight, which was an easy flight to Philadelphia, fly home, no big deal.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: And it was at that point that I realized, why am I forcing this?
- 5:11Michelle Gauthier: Why don't I just take a look around me and be like oh okay, I have my two teenagers here with me.
- 5:17Michelle Gauthier: I can call my clients and let them know that I'm delayed and we have to move our sessions from Monday to a different day that week.
- 5:26Michelle Gauthier: None of them will be upset with me.
- 5:28Michelle Gauthier: I can ask my brother to watch the dog for one more day.
- 5:31Michelle Gauthier: I can tell the handsome man friend to please pick us up on a different day.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: Like it was really no big deal when I stopped and thought about it.
- 5:39Michelle Gauthier: So once I kind of let go of trying to control the outcomes and force something that wasn't gonna happen, the second I sort of put that message out into the universe of like, okay, I'm just gonna accept this, all these amazing things started happening.
- 5:54Michelle Gauthier: So I'm hot and sweaty and frustrated and I decided I'm going to walk to a nearby hotel because it showed that they had rooms online.
- 6:01Michelle Gauthier: I tell the woman I'm traveling with my two kids, our flight got canceled, we need a place to stay tonight.
- 6:07Michelle Gauthier: I'm obviously hot and sweaty.
- 6:08Michelle Gauthier: She shows me right to the room before I even paid, turns down the air conditioning to show me how cool it is in there, gives me a glass of water, says we have tickets to this local beach that you can use, etc, etc.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: It's like everything started opening up the second that I just let go of control and we ended up having the nicest, nicest two days.
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: We went to the beach, we just rented bikes and rode around.
- 6:35Michelle Gauthier: It was the perfect ending to a wonderful trip and it was exactly what we needed, and I would have missed it and forced us to fly all night in various directions and countries if I had just stuck with my
- 6:50Michelle Gauthier: 'I am going to solve this' solution.
- 6:52Michelle Gauthier: I am going to force this problem to be solved.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: So the reason why I really want to share this with you today is because I think that a lot of us, especially when we are accomplished women who are used to being able to get things done - sometimes things come up where the best option is to do nothing or just to accept what the situation is.
- 7:14Michelle Gauthier: It's not always the case.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: Like, for example, let's just pretend that we had to get home for, like, a family wedding or something.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: I might have taken that crazy option, but we didn't.
- 7:26Michelle Gauthier: And so the real thing that I want to teach you today on this podcast is to, number one, notice when you find yourself taking that first step of trying to take control when something feels unexpected or overwhelming.
- 7:41Michelle Gauthier: Again, not a problem, in fact, that's a great step.
- 7:44Michelle Gauthier: Look at what's in your control, take some steps, but then don't forget to stop and ask yourself wait, what if I just accept this?
- 7:52Michelle Gauthier: What if I just do nothing?
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: Is there any way that this solution could be better than the solution that I had thought of?
- 8:00Michelle Gauthier: And, honestly, I wouldn't have chosen to have a two-day delay, but it was one of my favorite parts of our trip.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: So if you can pause and ask yourself, even in a work solution, a work situation, could this option where, let's just say, I don't know, there's a reorg and your team changes, or something like, could this solution actually turn out to be good or better than the original one that I was trying to force?
- 8:24Michelle Gauthier: Okay, Michelle's Do Less for More Success tip for today ties in exactly with this episode, and the tip is - let's think back on that story that I just told you throughout this podcast.
- 8:47Michelle Gauthier: I could have saved myself 90 minutes of my life if I had just paused and asked myself the question, do I actually need to do this?
- 8:58Michelle Gauthier: Would it be better to do nothing?
- 9:00Michelle Gauthier: So today I challenge you, somewhere in your life, to ask yourself that question.
- 9:06Michelle Gauthier: When you're rushing around to do something, ask yourself, wait, is there any way that I should just not do this or just accept what it is?
- 9:16Michelle Gauthier: Even if the answer is no, it's better.
- 9:19Michelle Gauthier: Like, for example, this morning my daughter missed the bus and it kind of threw our whole family into a flurry of okay, let's jump in the car, etc, etc.
- 9:27Michelle Gauthier: But I found myself pausing and thinking, okay, are there any other solutions?
- 9:31Michelle Gauthier: Is there anything that I could do to make this less stressful?
- 9:34Michelle Gauthier: And the answer in this case was, not really.
- 9:36Michelle Gauthier: I'm not going to let her stay home from school the whole day.
- 9:39Michelle Gauthier: There's no secondary bus coming, none of the neighbors are driving to school that I could ask just to give her a ride.
- 9:45Michelle Gauthier: So I'm just going to go ahead and do it, but just pausing and checking to see if your solution is the one that you want to do, sometimes you'll find that actually I don't need to do anything about this and save yourself a bunch of time.
- 9:57Michelle Gauthier: So give that a try, just somewhere in your life today.
- 10:01Michelle Gauthier: Today we've been talking a lot about making yourself more overwhelmed, not on purpose, by trying to force outcomes.
- 10:08Michelle Gauthier: If you've been feeling overwhelmed and you can't exactly figure out why, I have this awesome quiz on the homepage of my website, which I will put the link in the show notes where you can take the quiz and figure out what is causing your overwhelm.
- 10:23Michelle Gauthier: And not only does it tell you hey, here's the problem, it also gives you three solutions that you can do to try to help yourself feel less overwhelmed.
- 10:33Michelle Gauthier: So if you're feeling overwhelmed and not sure why, take that quiz and find out more.
- 10:37Michelle Gauthier: Okay, have a great week.
- 10:39Michelle Gauthier: See you next time.
- 10:40Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 10:47Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 10:51Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 10:53Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.