Welcome to Happy Productive Episode #3 where we dive into Overwhelm (again).
There really is no productivity in overwhelm and it just leaves us stretched thin and over stressed, so why put that on our shoulders? So let’s work together to eliminate it all together!
In this episode learn my powerful Brain Dump exercise and how to start asking Power Questions.
WATCH
LISTEN
SUBSCRIBE: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | iHeart Radio | iTunes | Stitcher
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
How overwhelm leaves no space for you and keeps you on a survival loop
How to see overwhelm for what it is – a lie and belief we’ve bought into
Asking power questions to empower us
Using the Brain Dump exercise and ABCDE priority system to overcome overwhelm
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hello, Hello everyone, and welcome to episode number three of Happy Productive. Today, I want to continue our discussion on overwhelm.
Now, as I mentioned last week, I’m working on a new workshop called Making Your Goals Inevitable. I have to tell you, I’m having so much fun with the content in this workshop! It’s a ton of new stuff that I’ve never taught before but I’m so excited to share with all of you guys in my community.
As I’ve been going through the workshop, I really started to see how overwhelm becomes such an important part of it, and this is why I’m spending a lot of time on it. I want to get overwhelm out of the picture of your life because here’s the thing: when we feel overwhelmed, like feeling stretched really thin or stressed out every day. You know that feeling right? It kind of sucks. And, when you have that feeling, what’s happening is that there’s absolutely no space for you.
What I mean by saying, “There’s no space,” is that when you don’t have room in there for you, you’re not going to feel motivated to change anything about your life because you get into this loop of surviving each day. When you’re in that survival loop, you probably don’t even have the energy for much more.
I know I didn’t when I was stuck in this loop. I didn’t have the energy to really care about my health or if I’d exercise for the day. I didn’t have energy to pursue my hobbies or interests or things that I loved. When there’s no space (and maybe you’ve felt this too), then people start asking you for things, and they’re always asking for more and more and more.
When there’s no space there, you may find that you’re getting angry or defensive, or reacting in a way that’s really kind of unpleasant to be around. Then, you know you’re acting in a way that isn’t that much fun to be around, and then, you feel guilty and you feel shameful. And then you beat yourself up, right? And then the process of it just keeps repeating. And it’s kind of awful.
This is why it’s so important to eliminate the state of overwhelm from your life because then you can create the space to bring in all the fun stuff like love, joy, laughter, patience, compassion, understanding, gratitude, all of those things. But when you’re in a constant state of busy, busy, hurry, rush, rush, survive, I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-next, my-to-do-list-is-endless, then right then all those really wonderful feelings and emotions, the ones that we want to be feeling, get pushed off to the side.
So, this is where if you want to be living a life that you’re really proud of, it means something where you feel things like joy and happiness and bliss on a daily basis. This is why it’s so important for us to see overwhelm for what it is. It’s a lie that we’ve bought into. And it’s a belief system that we have the power to change.
We can start making space once we change it, and we can start making space in our lives for the things that really really matter to us. Now, this doesn’t mean, “Oh, I need some space. And now I have to go out and I have to change the world in this huge, huge way!”
Here’s the beauty of it: this doesn’t mean you have to put more on you, okay? We’re trying to get out of overwhelm, not put more stuff on ourselves. But when you do make the space, then things in your life will change. For example, when you have some space, now you’ll have the time to actually be fully present, say, with your children. Instead of not having space and just brushing them off, when you make that space, now you have time to be fully present with your children. It does change the world; it changes the world through them, which is actually pretty big.
When you have the space in yourself, guess what? Every person that you encounter benefits. And I do believe that when we change ourselves, we do change the world, and in a big way. Got it?
So okay, you get that overwhelm is a belief and you can listen to the past episode number 2 where I dive into that even deeper. And remember, a belief is just simply a thought that we’ve been thinking over and over and over, and we’ve been thinking it so many, many times that it’s now become a belief.
To change it, we have to be aware that it even exists. Then, we can start intentionally thinking a different thought, as we form a new belief. That’s what helps us form a new belief — think a different thought. So, let’s say that you’ve decided to change your belief on overwhelm.
Yay, that’s fantastic!
And, you’ve committed to not buying into this anymore; you’ve decided on a new belief that feels really, really good to you. Maybe you’ve decided, “Hey, I want to feel joyful. I want to feel more happiness each day. I want to feel more productive and at ease each day and I never want to be overwhelmed again.”
Awesome. That’s the first step.
Just decide what’s the best thing for you. Now once you’ve made this decision, then what might happen next is reality. Reality is going to come knocking, knocking on the door, right? Because the reality when we look around might be that you have a To Do list that’s 45 miles long.
You’ve got gobs of projects that maybe you took on because you didn’t know how to say no, you felt guilty, or whatever the reason is, and so you might be asking, “Alright, this is all great, Jennifer, I want to change this belief. But how do I unbury myself from this mess that I’ve created?”
This is a great question to ask because we always want to ask questions that empower us. So, for example, if you’re asking questions in your life, “Why can’t I ever be happy?” or “Why is my life always so hard?” Your brain is going to go to work answering that question and basically present you with tons of proof as to why you’re not happy and why your life feels really hard, which is kind of keeps us again in that negative loop.
So instead, what we want to do is we want to put our brains to work asking a question that will actually help us and that will actually empower us. This really is what coaching is all about – asking really important questions to help our clients get a breakthrough. But this is something that you can do yourself in any area of your life.
Some questions and power questions that you could start asking yourself might be the following:
- How can I cut my to do list in half? (That’s a pretty awesome one. If you’ve got so much stuff, start asking, How can I cut my to do list in half?)
- How can I free up two hours a day just to have that time for myself?
- How can I eliminate the feeling of overwhelm from my day?
- How could I work at a joyful pace today?
Those questions are pretty awesome. So, you want to put your beautiful brain to work on answering those questions. Now, if you ask the questions, and you’re just tempted to automatically knee jerk and say, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to these questions,” I’m telling you right now that’s a bullshit cop out when you say it.
“I don’t know.” What you’re really doing is you’re giving up all your power to find an answer. And we don’t want that. Okay? What’s happening is you’re shutting down those answers. You’re not allowing them to come through. If you don’t know the answer to something, okay, fine but instead of just shutting it down and saying, “I don’t know,” replace this with something like, “I’m learning” or my favorite one, “I’m figuring it out.”
Anything I’m working on, I have figured it out, especially in my business. If you’re a business owner, it’s easy to say, “Oh, I don’t know how to do marketing or I’m not good at sales,” and just shut down those answers. But we don’t want to do that.
We want to switch this to, “I’m figuring it out. I’m figuring out how to get these answers or what these answers should be.” We don’t want to shut those answers down. They’re coming from within us and that’s where all our information is.
Once you start asking the power questions, you’re probably gonna love the results and the answers that you’re getting. It’s way more fun than asking these victim-y questions like, “Why do I suck and always feel like crap?”
A fun exercise might even be to (I love to do this) start every single day by asking yourself one power question. Ask yourself that question, give yourself a little space, and just let those answers flow. Honor whatever comes up for you.
So, when reality might come knocking on your door as you try to eliminate overwhelm, remember the following:
Number one, don’t get into it. Start asking power questions to get the answers that you need to move through it past it and be done with it.
And the number two thing that you can do is my brain dump exercise. I love this one. Inside the Best Planner Ever, right before each monthly tab if you just flip the monthly tab to the right, you’ll see on the left the Brain Dump exercise. If you don’t have a planner, you can pick one up at bestplannerever.com We even provide additional blank sheets that you can download because sometimes, you need way more than the space that we’ve provided.
On the worksheet, it’s basically divided into two columns. On the left is where you brain dump everything out of your head – personal, professional, anything and everything that you need to do. Get it out of your brains and onto paper. Again, this is about creating space. There’s no space in your brain if you’re trying to remember 800 things. So, get it all out of your head and onto paper. If you need 10 sheets of paper, use 10 sheets of paper! It’s okay to use as much paper as you need. Then this is the important part, once it’s all on paper, we just have a massive to do list that’s not really going to serve us. Once it’s on paper, then you want to prioritize it using the ABCDE system. That’s it – ABCDE.
A is a high priority item which moves your goals forward. It might be something that you’re a little afraid to do but you know in your heart if you make that phone call or attend that networking meeting, send that email pitch to that client, whatever you know in your heart will really help you get towards your goals, achieve your goals, achieve your life vision. Those are your A tasks. Everything is not an A.
B task is something that’s important. You’re going to do it, you have to do it. It might be a meeting with a client, it could be vendor meetings, employee reviews, anything that is absolutely important. Those are your Bs.
C is things that can be procrastinated and put off until later.
Now, here’s what I discovered. When I started diving really deep into productivity and would put things on the list. Necause I love making lists and I love crossing shit off the list! I know you’ve done this too. All of us little closet list makers, putting things on the list just so you can cross it off, right?, I found I was putting a whole lot of C tasks on my list. C’s were super easy to do and super easy to cross off, and I could feel accomplished because, “Hey! Look at all the things I got crossed off my list!”
However, the A’s, those really important things that might be a little scary, are easy to procrastinate. Those were not getting done. As a result, I wasn’t seeing the progress on my goals that I wanted to see because the A’s were not getting done.
So, be aware of the difference between an A, B, and C. C’s can be put off to later so they could be grouped together.
D is delegate tasks to ask for help. This could be asking your husband to wash the dishes or your kid to do the laundry or assigning people to your team. This might be vendors asking you to do things that are really their job. D is getting that stuff off your plate and not taking on so much.
E is eliminate. Now, eliminate doesn’t have to mean, “I’m saying no to it forever.” Sometimes, I eliminate things off my list that maybe just don’t fit this quarter, and I’ll move it to another quarter or a later time. And sometimes, it’s an idea, but I decided not to do it. So, I’m just getting rid of it for good. It’s eliminated.
Once you’ve gone through your massive list and assigned a letter to each item, then you can start working on the list. Now it’s a little bit more manageable because you have an order and a priority to it. You might schedule one or two A tasks each day, but keep them short. They don’t have to be four hours long. They can be 10 minutes. Sometimes it’s a phone call and email, just a little thing that you need to do to get that door open. It could be a 10- or 15-minute task scheduling your Bs, and then you can pull them off the brain dump list once they’ve been scheduled in your planner. C, again, can be put off; they can be grouped to later. D is delegate in the Best Planner Ever. On your Daily Planning Sheet is an ABCD section, so even if you’ve delegated something, go and write it down. Like, if I want to check back in three days later or a week later, I’ll just go flip to that date in the future and write it down under my D. Also, that is my reminder to go and check on something that I might have delegated.
This exercise is so powerful that I do it with every client who comes to me, and they’re like in a totally overwhelmed state. This is the very, very first thing we do because it clears up space in our brains so that we can then think. Depending on how overwhelmed you are, you might actually have to do this daily until you get a handle on things, and that’s okay. You might only have to do it weekly, and that’s okay. I really use mine monthly.
I rarely, rarely get into a state of overwhelm. This space, this page, becomes a holding space for any projects that come up that go on to that page in my month. From there, I’m able to schedule things out throughout the days and the weeks and the month. Works pretty good!
When we see these things on paper, it feels so much more manageable than trying to carry it around in our brains. From there, we can take action. This is a practical, tangible thing that you can do to work towards your new belief where you never ever have to work in a state of overwhelm ever again. Depending on where you’re at, it might take a few weeks, it might even take a month, maybe two months, to fully clear through it. I say, “Do the work.” Isn’t it better if it took you two months to really get caught up and organized? Wouldn’t that be better than a whole lifetime of overwhelm?
Yeah, it would be.
That’s our lesson for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for spending time here with me today. I really appreciate it. I love each and every one of you. I really encourage you to start asking power questions, do that brain dump exercise, and make some space for yourself. When you clear space, then you have room for the things in life that really matter. You can go out and start to do those things because now you have the space.
If you enjoyed this, I also want to invite you to come check out my coaching programs. Goal Achievers is my Life Coaching Program where we take all this material and we apply it to our lives. We dive deep into one life topic each month, and we focus on and apply it in a way that’s fun, achievable, and never overwhelming. If you’re a business owner, you might love Inner Circle. We do the same deep dive on just one business topic per month. We also learn how to eliminate the frustration, the stress, and the overwhelm from our businesses so that we can have spectacular fun each and every day in our work.
You can learn more at Best Planner Ever.com. If you’re looking for the planner, or for coaching, find it here on jenniferdawncoaching.com
So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here with me today. It’s an honor that you’ve brought a little piece of me into your life today. Now go out there and have a super Happy Productive day! Bye!
xo
Jennifer