Have you been wondering how to stop feeling overwhelmed by your life? Let's
take that on today at Live On Purpose TV.
As we talk about being overwhelmed, let's first get into the concept of head trash.
This came from an idea that I picked up from Noah St. John. He was a guest on my
podcast, you can link to the conversation I had with him down there in the
description. Noah pointed out that we get trash in our head around certain topics
or issues, sometimes I refer to this as programming where we create a story that
doesn't necessarily serve us well but it drives the show. Language for example,
we're having this conversation today in English. Alright, did we decide to have
it in English? Was it a choice or is it simply what we're programmed to do? Now
some of our viewers are not native English speakers and maybe you're seeing
subtitles for this video, that's a little different situation, you've been
programmed with a different language. It's not that I grew up thinking I want
to speak English my whole life, I was just programmed by my parents, my society,
my culture in English. This is what I'm talking about.. Programming is something
that's much more subconscious, it's below the surface, we're not aware of it, we
don't intentionally do it and this happens in almost every aspect of life
so your work, your relationships, your relationship with money. In fact, that's
the conversation I had with Noah St. John, he has a book called how to get rid
of the head trash, your head trash about money specifically. So just notice that
this happens and our programming then drives everything else, overwhelm. You
know, I've sometimes wondered what would it be like if we can be perfectly
whelmed? Nobody talks like that. Well how you doing? I'm whelmed, perfectly
whelmed. We say underwhelmed and overwhelmed but we're never perfectly
whelmed. What would that look like? Kind of a strange concept. Overwhelmed usually
means that there's more going on than we think we can handle or that things are
not happening according to our expectations and it's exceeding our
capacity to actually deal with it. Go back to the programming for a minute,
we're creating a story about being overwhelmed that comes from our
programming, our experience ,whatever it is and we're running with that story and
it's affecting how we feel. I've said it before, you're never wrong about how you
feel, how you feel is a hundred percent consistent with the way your mind is
processing your experience and that is being driven by your programming so I've
got four steps for you about being overwhelmed and what we can do about it
and step number one is to write the story. Identify or clarify or write down
the story around your being overwhelmed, get it out in a place where you can
actually look at it and evaluate it differently so the story might sound
something like this.. I have too much to do, there are too many
demands on my time and on my resources. I can't handle this thing that's happening
at work or in my relationship. I feel overwhelmed so the story behind it might
take any of those forms. Identify it, tell it, write it down,
let's get clear about what the story is. Now before I go to number two, I had a
colleague recently who shared with me an idea that ties right into this and it
has to do with movies. You know when you go to a movie and maybe it's a movie
that involves some kind of danger or peril or suspense and as you're
sitting there, you feel the feelings associated with that condition but how
often do you go screaming out of the movie theater. You don't go screaming out
of the movie theater. Why? Because your mind intervenes and says, dude, it's a
movie, it's not real, you're watching a movie, you paid eight bucks for the
popcorn, stay in your seat. So your mind overrides that for you, you know that
it's not real, you know that it's fake, you know that it's a movie. What this
colleague shared with me is that we have mind movies, mind movies that we're
watching up here somewhere. Think about it, most of the stuff that has you tied
up in knots is either predicted or remembered. Predicted or remembered, you
think about it. Everything right now is probably fine,
the things that have you upset, anxiety is about what's going to happen or what
you're predicting will happen, depression is about what has already happened in
your remembering of that. Predicted or remembered, it's not here and now so it's
not real, it's a movie, it's a mind movie, it's something that I'm watching in my
head. What if you don't enjoy the movie that you're watching? We'll get up and
walk out, right? Or start a new movie, Vicky and I were sitting in the living
room last night, started a movie, didn't like it, turned it off, started a
different movie. Oh, how simple is that? Watch a different movie. So this brings
us to number two.. Identify how this story or this movie is impacting you. This is
simple because you know how you feel.. Overwhelmed, right? How is this story
about, I have too much to do, there are too many demands on my time, I can't
handle what's happening to me right now? How is that impacting you? Well,
probably has you feeling overwhelmed and upset and stressed and you're not as
productive as you normally are and you get behind on things and you drop balls
because you're just flustered, tipped over emotionally. How is it impacting
your relationships? We come home and we kind of yell at your spouse or you kick
the dog, it's probably not helping, right? But this is how it's impacting you. What
about at work with your coworkers? Are you able to be as productive as you want
to be? How is this impacting you? Get clear about that, that's step two. Step
three, answer this question.. Where would I be without this story, without this movie
playing in my mind? What would change? Where would I be without it?
This isn't an illuminating experience especially if you didn't realize that
you have any choice in the matter. So as you imagine just taking that mind
movie and moving it off of the screen of your mind, you're getting up and walking
out of the movie basically or taking this story and saying you know what, I'm
setting that aside for a moment, where would you be without it? Notice the level
of peace and maybe excitement and energy that comes into your life because you're
no longer watching the movie or packing the story around. Imagine that, visualize
it, get clear about it. Now this leads us to the final step number four, make a
conscious choice. Do you have to stay with the movie? Huh, maybe not. You know
what, until we see it as a choice, it's not. So the first three steps help us to
see that wow, maybe I have some choice in all of this, maybe my feeling overwhelmed
is secondary to a choice that I've made that I didn't even know I was making.
Getting clear about what the story is, how it impacts us, what our life would
be if we didn't have the story in our life, that opens up a whole new
possibility that maybe we could opt out of that story and as a result we would
stop feeling overwhelmed. We may even have exactly the same amount of things
to do in the same amount of things waiting for us to accomplish or whatever
but the story being changed changes our entire experience of it. Kind of helpful
right to understand that some of those things aren't even real, it's a mind
movie. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, would you please share this with
someone that you care about?