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247: From Paralysis to Progress: One Step to Beat the Overwhelm This Season · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  As I am recording this, tomorrow is Halloween. Are you scared?
• 0:06
  I don't know about your neighborhood, but my neighborhood tends to go all out.
• 0:10
  I love walking the dogs this time of year.
• 0:12
  It's quite the holiday these days.
• 0:17
  Much bigger than when my kids were little. But I wanted to ask about,
• 0:23
  you know, a play on the scare of Halloween.
• 0:25
  But I did want to say, if you are listening to this in real time,
• 0:30
  it means there are 28 days left until Thanksgiving.
• 0:35
  56 days until Christmas. 63 days are left in 2025.
• 0:43
  Are you scared now?
• 0:45
  Because what this does to me is it sets in that panic of, oh gosh, I'm not ready.
• 0:52
  I am ready for Halloween because all I have to do is have a bag of candy.
• 0:55
  And I actually bought mine at Costco earlier a few weeks back,
• 0:58
  but I'm not ready for Thanksgiving.
• 1:01
  I am not even had a thought about Christmas this year.
• 1:06
  I had a whole host of things I'd planned to accomplish in 2025,
• 1:11
  and I don't think I'm going to get them all done in 63 days. So...
• 1:17
  What I'm feeling is that sort of take a deep breath, chest tightening.
• 1:24
  How could I have gotten to this place again and be ready for this crazy mad
• 1:30
  dash that I always, always do to myself?
• 1:34
  It's become a part of who we are. And the harder part I'm having lately is the
• 1:42
  overwhelm is becoming more paralyzing than it used to be.
• 1:47
  And I don't know if you're in that same space, but I have some thoughts on what
• 1:52
  we can do. And I'm going to talk about them right after this. So stick around.
• 1:57
  A wise person once said, everybody is a genius.
• 2:01
  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
• 2:05
  life believing that it's stupid.
• 2:07
  Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
• 2:12
  It's time to jump in the water and learn
• 2:15
  how to swim with the current of your life I'm Joy a
• 2:18
  professional organizer mom of four and fellow
• 2:21
  Fishbrain if you're looking for a place to get understanding encouragement and
• 2:26
  ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks then I'm glad you're
• 2:31
  here let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our
• 2:37
  homes unique together we could have a joy loving home.
• 2:43
  If you're anything like me and you feel that sort of paralyzing overwhelm hit,
• 2:49
  I hope that you have sort of analyzed why this is happening versus just chalking
• 2:56
  it up to, oh, it's just who I am.
• 2:59
  So let's just dig in for a moment.
• 3:02
  The problem is when I start to think about all those things I listed in the
• 3:07
  intro, I will think about something, okay, let me just do this.
• 3:12
  But the doing this suddenly hits
• 3:16
  of oh well I have to do these other three steps first before I can get to that
• 3:22
  step oh I didn't even think about that or you think of something and you're
• 3:28
  like but I don't know if I'm doing that right and I should probably look this up first and maybe.
• 3:34
  I should go find somebody who actually is really good at this and I could just
• 3:38
  like maybe print out their list, but then I print out their list and it seems
• 3:41
  like a bunch of stuff I don't do and for my holiday.
• 3:45
  And I don't know, I don't even host and I just need to be able to do this and not that.
• 3:51
  And now all of a sudden there's this party and I forgot to make the costume
• 3:54
  and now I'm living in the moment. And how do I think ahead when I'm trying to
• 3:58
  deal with what fires I have to put out today?
• 4:01
  Like it's just this series of thoughts.
• 4:05
  You are running around like a mad person inside of your head.
• 4:09
  But unfortunately, what that tends to look like from the outside is nothing.
• 4:16
  And that can be super frustrating to those that live in our life, right?
• 4:22
  Especially if you happen to be married to a monkey brain, if you happen to be
• 4:28
  married to other fish, and all of you are just sort of swimming around frozen.
• 4:33
  And I think we could all agree that...
• 4:39
  Doing anything, however chaotic or messy or stumbly or fail-ish,
• 4:47
  I don't know how to make that word in the right context,
• 4:50
  however it might fail, the doing something has to be better than the paralyzing nothingness.
• 4:59
  Because unfortunately from the outside, our nothingness looks like apathy and
• 5:06
  there is no sympathy and apathy.
• 5:09
  Just to clarify, like that apathy looks like you don't even care at all,
• 5:16
  that you have no interest in getting things going again,
• 5:19
  that you're just you've lost all desire to even try.
• 5:25
  And I know that's not you. I know that's not what's going on in your head.
• 5:29
  It is the overwhelm of caring so much and the interest in trying to figure out
• 5:34
  how to do it right that is happening inside your head. and you don't want it to come out as apathy.
• 5:42
  There's a line in a Taylor Swift song called, You're Losing Me,
• 5:48
  in which she's just screaming basically to her partner, like,
• 5:52
  do something, say something,
• 5:54
  risk something, lose something, choose something.
• 5:57
  Like, she just wants to see some form of action.
• 6:02
  So she knows he cares at all. And I feel like those are also something people in our lives can say.
• 6:09
  Like, I don't care if you mess it up. Just do something. Try something.
• 6:17
  Make some effort. It's not that we're out here expecting perfection from you.
• 6:22
  And it is amazing how much grace is given when we try something,
• 6:28
  even if that something fails.
• 6:31
  I have a perfect example right now that I am kicking myself,
• 6:35
  but it was interesting how my monkey brain husband, who is wonderful,
• 6:42
  interpreted it, but it was just, we had our dog.
• 6:47
  An accident on a very old, fairly expensive antique rug in our foyer that we had.
• 6:57
  And I had done the, actually, he got home first.
• 7:01
  So he did the initial cleanup and blotted and like left some things there so
• 7:05
  I would know where the stain was.
• 7:07
  Not that when I lifted it up, I didn't see that it was obvious.
• 7:11
  But I had just let it be since I got home.
• 7:16
  One, because I've been running around doing stuff too, because I don't go into
• 7:21
  that front portion of our house all that often. My life occurs in the back of the house.
• 7:26
  He has an office in the front, so he had to keep walking past it,
• 7:30
  walking past it, and wondering silently why I wasn't doing anything.
• 7:35
  And finally, I was like, I have to figure this out.
• 7:40
  So I did like the little test plot in a small corner of something I thought might work.
• 7:45
  Well, first I tried one thing that was definitely safe and it did nothing.
• 7:49
  So then I did the tester of something that I thought might help and the little
• 7:53
  tester spot seemed fine.
• 7:55
  So I scrubbed at the spot with abandon and apparently what I tried first mixing
• 8:02
  with what I tried second has now.
• 8:06
  Basically bleached, even though I didn't use any bleach, the spot.
• 8:10
  So now it looks worse than even the stain looked.
• 8:14
  And I was waiting to hear the, oh my goodness, this rug is expensive.
• 8:18
  Oh my goodness, this looks worse than ever. Oh my goodness, she waited three days.
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  Oh my goodness. All the things that in my head were the worst possible scenarios
• 8:26
  of how disappointed he would be at the action I took.
• 8:30
  And he was like, well, I mean, it's okay.
• 8:33
  I mean, you didn't know. You didn't know those two things mixing.
• 8:35
  You tried to do the, but he was incredibly sympathetic at the action,
• 8:40
  so much more sympathetic at the action than at the inaction.
• 8:46
  And I just, I think that's probably the story of anyone in our lives who are
• 8:52
  viewing from the outside, not understanding what's going on in our heads.
• 8:56
  And so what I want to challenge you today is that any action whatsoever,
• 9:04
  even an action that makes things worse,
• 9:08
  even an action that seems like a failure,
• 9:13
  even an action that might actually create the need to do three more actions,
• 9:20
  is still worth doing. I want to give you permission to try and fail,
• 9:28
  to try and make it worse, to try and anything because it's so much better than the apathy.
• 9:35
  It's so much better than the paralysis.
• 9:39
  What's crazy is I couldn't get myself to do anything.
• 9:43
  And then when I did the thing that messed the thing up, I've now already reached
• 9:47
  out to the lady I bought the rug
• 9:49
  from and said, where can I take this to professionally get figured out?
• 9:53
  And it's just, it's one of those things where any amount of motion,
• 9:58
  even if you trip yourself up along the way, will get you closer to where you want it to be.
• 10:05
  And I'll try and circle back and share if there was any kind of solution in my head.
• 10:12
  Worst, worst case scenario now is I might have to treat the entire rug the same
• 10:18
  way I treated the stains and let it all bleach out to this new color because
• 10:22
  at least it will be uniform.
• 10:26
  I'm going to try to find out how much it costs to get it professionally clean.
• 10:30
  I'm going to try to go that route first and then the if it all else fails I'm
• 10:35
  basically dyeing the rug a new color.
• 10:37
  Do I love that? No. But is it better than the first stain?
• 10:42
  Yeah is it better than the second stain yeah
• 10:45
  it's it's the best I can do with where I am now but it was doing something versus
• 10:52
  just constantly walking past a rug that had a towel down waiting for something
• 10:59
  to happen to it I just I don't know if that,
• 11:04
  sort of concrete example even makes sense, there was another one I was thinking
• 11:07
  of that I have lived with no light above my cooking surface for probably eight months.
• 11:17
  Oh, we might be closing in on a year if I'm being honest with myself.
• 11:20
  It started with a light bulb burning out and then like trying to find that specialty
• 11:24
  light bulb took forever and then ordering the wrong one and then.
• 11:28
  Ordering a second wrong one and then that one looks so much like it should work
• 11:32
  but the prongs seemed a little too long and we could push it in and it would kind of flicker.
• 11:36
  And so then we pushed harder and we think we broke something back in there.
• 11:39
  And so now that it's actually broken, then that other light bulb burned out and then we try to fix it.
• 11:45
  And some reason it's not working, which means this whole circuit is probably connected.
• 11:49
  And so it needs the right person who knows how to like, I had one electrician
• 11:56
  look at it, but he was like hesitant because it was the range hood.
• 12:00
  And I should probably call a repair person who knows how to deal with the range hood.
• 12:03
  And it just, it was a bunch of stumbled failures that ended up frozen.
• 12:09
  And now here I am circling back to Thanksgiving.
• 12:13
  And we always host Thanksgiving. And we always have the people help cook Thanksgiving.
• 12:19
  And I am now up against the do I want to hear from family.
• 12:26
  That's still not working? How did you not get repaired in a year?
• 12:30
  Are you kidding me? Like...
• 12:32
  So I am finally up against something that seems more terrible than the act of
• 12:37
  trying to figure out how to get it fixed.
• 12:40
  And you know anything in your head where you start thinking of the 800 steps that go with one step.
• 12:46
  Fix light bulb sounds like one step.
• 12:48
  Sounds like one fairly simple step. But in my head now, this has gotten to find
• 12:55
  an actual proper repairman.
• 12:56
  How do I find that person? How do I get that person here?
• 12:59
  What if that person gets here and, oh, wait, yuck, that range hood is kind of
• 13:04
  greasy. I should probably clean that first.
• 13:06
  Okay, but then if I go to all the effort to clean that and then he says,
• 13:09
  this is like irreparably broken, you need a new range hood.
• 13:14
  Then I did all of this work and time degreasing this range hood so that I could go take it to the,
• 13:22
  recycle center and pay for a new one?
• 13:27
  And then I'm like, well, do I even pay the cost to get the repairman out if it's going to end up?
• 13:32
  You see how these cycles inside my head, this fix has been a busy active fix.
• 13:39
  From the outside, it just looks like a stove that doesn't work.
• 13:42
  And I have to envision like, how great is it going to be to cook with a light
• 13:46
  over top of what I'm cooking.
• 13:49
  It just would be amazing. How great will it feel that nobody says anything at
• 13:54
  Thanksgiving because it doesn't occur to them that my light wouldn't still not work.
• 13:58
  Like it just, oh yeah, she fixed it. For all they know, I fixed it the week after Thanksgiving.
• 14:03
  Like if you are listening to the story and going, this lady is chaotic.
• 14:10
  I don't even understand that I'm
• 14:11
  definitely not the right podcast for you because you are not my person.
• 14:14
  But if you were listening to the story and going, yeah, I actually get it.
• 14:18
  Like I have a broken dryer, but I can't call a repairman until I completely
• 14:22
  unearth the whole laundry area.
• 14:25
  And that takes the whole trip to the laundry and Matt, and that takes the this,
• 14:30
  and then I got to like pull out for under and I got to clean this out.
• 14:33
  Or, or what we all can do is just deal with the fact that I guarantee the repair
• 14:40
  people have certain dirty laundry rooms and dirty range hoods before.
• 14:43
  I could deal with the fact that I don't know this human. And if they're judging
• 14:47
  me on a greasy range hood, they're judging me on a greasy range hood. It's not my business.
• 14:51
  I won't know if he's talking about how bad it was behind my back.
• 14:55
  I won't see him again, hopefully.
• 14:57
  So it's one of those things like we have to weigh all these things that are
• 15:02
  paralyzing us and just make it stop. Just.
• 15:07
  Make it stop. So what I am challenging you to is I am challenging you to have
• 15:14
  my voice in your head and my voice in your head when you start to go,
• 15:19
  okay, you're right, Joy, I'm done.
• 15:21
  I'm done being paralyzed. I'm going to do something because doing something,
• 15:25
  anything is worth me not appearing completely apathetic in my family,
• 15:32
  to my family, to my loved ones.
• 15:34
  So I'm going to get up and I'm going to do the step that I want to do.
• 15:40
  And if that leads me to, I can't do that without doing this,
• 15:44
  then I'm going to take that step.
• 15:45
  And if I can't take that step without doing this first, then I'm going to take that step.
• 15:51
  I am going to take a step in the right direction towards something that has
• 15:56
  just been hanging over my head.
• 15:59
  Because for November, my goal for you is to clear out your head, clear your head space.
• 16:08
  It might not feel as valuable to anybody else.
• 16:14
  But the peace you're going to feel by clearing that thing that is just hanging
• 16:19
  out in your head, mucking up, getting anything else done is so worth it.
• 16:25
  We're going to clear those cobwebs that have tangled everything else up in your head.
• 16:31
  So what I would love for you to do, I really challenge you to do this,
• 16:35
  is to declare it to somebody, a loved one, a trusted friend.
• 16:42
  Email me. I'm joy at joylovinghome.com and say, Joy, my one step for November
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  that I'm going to clear out is this.
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  Share it with me and then follow up with me.
• 16:56
  I'm going to jump into both my groups, and I'm going to show you how bad this rug looks right now.
• 17:02
  And I'm going to keep following up on that same picture.
• 17:06
  What next step I'm taking. I already took one of them this morning,
• 17:10
  and that was to reach out to the rug lady. I peeked right before I hit record.
• 17:14
  She already said, oh, oh, I have a person in Alpharetta. Let me look them up.
• 17:20
  Alpharetta is super close to me. So I should be able to roll this rug up and
• 17:24
  get it in my car and get it to the place that I need to get it to,
• 17:29
  to see what is going to take to try and fix it.
• 17:32
  Think of your one thing. I also need to fix that light.
• 17:37
  If you are in any of my groups and you want to say, Joy, what's happening to
• 17:42
  the light? I would appreciate the accountability.
• 17:45
  We talk on my Tackle It Tuesday groups all the time about what's the thing that's holding us back?
• 17:51
  What do you want me to ask you about the next time I see you?
• 17:54
  So that we have some accountability with each other, not only when we're working
• 17:57
  together during our hours of Tackle It time, but even when we say,
• 18:04
  ask me about this time. next time we see each other.
• 18:08
  See if I found this. I've been looking for this.
• 18:11
  Something that you want help with accountability-wise. You can do it in my free group.
• 18:18
  You get there by going to bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
• 18:22
  I'll put a link in the show notes.
• 18:24
  You can join my membership group. It's $10 a month.
• 18:27
  We do the weekly work together calls that happen four times every Tuesday.
• 18:32
  We do it by asking and checking in with each other. And if you don't want to
• 18:39
  join the groups, that's fine.
• 18:40
  That's totally cool. But we're all people like you and they're fellow fish brains.
• 18:43
  Find somebody, a trusted friend and say, hey, can you just somewhere make a note?
• 18:49
  This is a really good thing to ask a monkey friend. And just ask me if I ever
• 18:53
  got that light figured out.
• 18:55
  And just keep asking me if I ever got that light figured out because I want
• 19:00
  to be able to be cooking Thanksgiving morning with the light on my stove.
• 19:05
  So anyway, sorry, I felt like I made that a lot about me.
• 19:08
  I hope it resonated with you somehow. And I hope if it did, you'll share that
• 19:13
  with me because I love to hear from you guys.
• 19:15
  All right. Until next time, don't panic about all those numbers I shared at the beginning.
• 19:21
  Just step forward into any form of action. You can do it. I know you can.
• 19:27
  And continue to choose joy.