Overcoming Overwhelm with a Shrug? 4 Do's and Don'ts

“My word is exhausted.”

It was Day One of Dare to Lead and I asked everyone to share one word that best describes what they were feeling. John had a bit of a sparkle in his eyes but he looked tired. He leaned forward and sat with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands.

“I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and it keeps getting heavier and heavier.”

My response? “Thank you for your honesty.” It takes a person who is comfortable with vulnerability to share that in a room full of strangers?or?someone who is trying to tie a knot at the end of a fraying rope to secure a place to hang on. Maybe both.

The response in my head? “I’m right there with you... I feel it too. If you only knew how overwhelmed I feel in this moment.”?<As I’m frantically hoisting up the world on my shoulders.>

The statue of the guy with the world on his shoulders? His name is Atlas. He was the Titan leader of the rebellion against Zeus and the Olympians. The Titans lost the battle so the punishment bestowed upon him by Zeus was to hold up the heavens for all eternity.

In the moment John was sharing, I envisioned the statue, remembered his name was Atlas, which connected me to the book?Atlas of the Heart , where I first learned the real definition of overwhelmed.

I used to think that being overwhelmed was the little brother to being stressed out.?

Overwhelm was the little things piled on top of each other and when that pile got too big that’s when ‘I’m stressed out’ is triggered. But it’s the other way around.

According to Brené’s research,?stress?is like being in the weeds where we have SO MUCH we’re dealing with and emotions show up because we’re not sure we can handle it all.

Overwhelm, on the other hand, is an extreme level of stress where the feeling or thought is so intense that we don’t think we can even function. Jon Kabat-Zinn, author and professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, describes overwhelm as:

‘the all-too-common feeling “that our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the human nervous system and psyche are able to manage well.”’

Stress is “I’m not sure I can handle it.”?

Overwhelm is “Everything is coming too fast, too much, and I’m imploding.”

Here are a few do’s and don’ts when you’re feeling overwhelmed:

Do nothing.?

Kabat-Zinn suggests that the cure for overwhelm is doing nothing. We can take this in both the sense of not making any commitments to moving forward or removing yourself from the environment causing the overwhelm to do ‘nothing’.

It makes total sense that if you can’t process your thoughts or emotions at the height of overwhelm, you’re not going to make a sound decision. So doing nothing is pretty smart advice.

Many of my recent coaching calls started with the words, “I’m overwhelmed.” We slow the conversation down and define what ‘I’m overwhelmed’ means to them. In most situations, the solution that bubbles up is getting back to something they used to do, like working out or going on a morning walk.?

Doing nothing doesn’t have to be literally ‘doing nothing’, it could be doing a mindful, playful, or physical activity that brings you back to the center of yourself.

Do one thing.?

I’m a GSD girl?(get sh*t done)?so when I read that the cure to overwhelm was to do nothing, I laughed out loud. If I do nothing, that pile of overwhelm will keep getting bigger and bigger. Remember Lucy stuffing the chocolates into her mouth and down her shirt? Imagine the pile of chocolates she would’ve had if she did nothing.

For me, overwhelm happens when I have a large to-do list living in my head and I think it all needs to get done in the next 5 minutes. It helps to put pen to paper, figure out the highest and hottest hoop, and do one thing to bring that hoop down and cool it off.?

You don’t have to do all of it, you just need to refocus and do one thing (maybe after a walk around the block... doing nothing).

Don’t blow it up.?

Last week, I was talking with my coach and shared that I was ‘on the edge’... my words for feeling overwhelmed. I had just received an email where an organization in California wanted me to do a three-hour presentation on Authentic Leadership: Crafting Personal Careers and Building Up the Teams Around Them, the following Friday.?

I had never talked to anyone in the organization. I didn’t know the ultimate goal of this session, how many people were going to be there, or even what they were expecting. And how did they expect to cover the topic of authentic leadership virtually, in a webinar format, in three hours? Heck... I didn’t even know who the organization was.

I immediately started worrying about how I was going to create a brand-new three-hour session in a week when I was already committed to ten coaching calls, was preparing a keynote alongside another presentation, working on content for my upcoming retreat, and launching a new workshop the following week. Not to mention the day-to-day administrative work, coffee dates, and showing up in the Braver Together Community.

To blow up the overwhelm even more, I went to “I’m never going to measure up to what they expect. Why does this company think I’m a good fit? Do they know I live in SD and am not the perfectly polished ‘California girl’? There are so many more people who could do a better job than me.”??

Catastrophic thinking. Limiting beliefs. Making a mountain out of a molehill.

I was freaking out without having all the information. I was making it a bigger deal than what it should have been. I was willing to put undue stress on myself because of scarcity thinking and self-doubt instead of trusting my process and standing in the integrity of my work.??

The way I was thinking... the way I was looking at the problem was creating the overwhelm.?

When you find yourself in this position, you can do one of two things:

1. Journal?– write the storyline until you get to the truth.
2. Talk to someone?– my coach talked me off the ledge by asking me really great questions and reminding me of a few things I’d forgotten about myself. Need a conversation like this??Find 45 minutes on my calendar.

Don’t put yourself there.?

Here’s what’s happening in organizations...?

margins are crunched so they let people go;?

which means more work is distributed to the remaining people;?

which means more hours and responsibility for the smaller workforce;?

which means higher levels of frustration and resentment;?

which means these people have enough and they leave;?

which means more work to those that are 'lucky enough' to still have jobs.?

You see the cycle. And if your organization keeps growing and changing, it adds a whole other layer of overwhelm on top of it.

I had a conversation with a woman yesterday who is working 100 hours a week. (I did the math... that only leaves her 68 hours to sleep and take care of herself and her family.) She is in a leadership position which means she takes on the brunt of people leaving. She inherits all their work.

In order to prove her worth to the organization and show them she is a good leader and a valued employee; she takes it all on.?Yes. Thank you. More please. Head down. Working harder.

It’s not sustainable. It’s not healthy. It’s not honoring self.

I asked her how long she was going to tolerate being taken advantage of before she set some boundaries.

I asked her what expectations needed to be set for her to find her way back to herself.

I asked her what she was sacrificing to prove her worth to this organization.

I asked her what it would be like to choose herself and still work for the company she believes in.

In 1957, Ayn Rand published her novel, Atlas Shrugged. It asked an important question: if the world gets ever heavier the more Atlas tries to push it up, what if Atlas just... shrugs?

You are not Atlas. You were not meant to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.

What would really happen if you shrugged? I don’t mean that you jump into a life of apathy or negate your responsibilities. But what would happen if you did nothing for a little while? Did one thing at a time? Spent time reality checking the size of your overwhelm and the meaning you’re making of it? Set healthy boundaries and realistic expectations?

Zeus put the heavens on Atlas’s shoulder for all eternity... he did not put it on yours.

Take it to your journal with these prompts:

• I get most overwhelmed when...
• When I feel overwhelmed, it shows up in my body by...
• What am I doing, thinking or believing in the moments when I get most overwhelmed? What do I make that mean about ME?
• What am I NOT doing, thinking or believing in the moments when I get most overwhelmed??
• What does the opposite of overwhelm feel like? What are the thoughts, actions of beliefs that tend to help me feel that way??
• Of the four do's and don'ts, the one I want to practice this week is... This is how I will do it...