#383: 4 Reasons Overwhelm Is Your Friend

Hello, how are you doing today? I hope this episode is finding you well, and I wanna send out a special reminder because I know a lot of friends and people that I work with are going through things right now, and I know they're not the only ones. It's just that I happen to hear about them. A lot of people, I'm gonna say every single person on this planet is going through something right now, and they're not sharing it for their own reasons. They wanna keep it personal, right? They don't wanna seem like they're complaining about anything. And I just want you to have that in mind because when we're walking down the street, it's really easy to make judgements about people or to think things about people. And honestly, we never really know what people are going through. So just give a little extra compassion, a little bit of extra leeway this week when you're walking down the street or you're walking in your office. And just know that there are people going through some things. Maybe you are one of them. And to give yourself some compassion too, if that's the case. All right, so let's jump into this episode.

As I was thinking about today's topic, overwhelm is Your Friend <laugh>. I thought that was just a hilarious title, but I also looked at it as true because overwhelm really is your friend if you use it and you look at it in a certain perspective. And when I look back at my life and my experiences, I know I can take a lot of, of lessons away from addressing overwhelm. And I wanna share some of those with you here today because you might be experiencing this too. You may be feeling buried under work, you may feel behind on everything, or like you're never gonna have time for your bigger dreams. So if you do feel that way, this episode is for you. Overwhelm feels awful. And I remember it vividly from my 15 years as a litigator, the endless files, the late nights, the weekends <laugh> the pressure to perform.

And at that time I thought pushing harder was the only solution. Just grind harder. Just, just stay a little later, just get there a little earlier. But here's what I've learned. Overwhelm can actually be a blessing. So in this episode, I'm gonna share with you four reasons. Overwhelm is a gift. Some stories of clients who turned overwhelm into growth and really benefited their lives, the mindset shifts that help them change their practice in their life as well. Because I think that everybody wants the how. How do they do that? Well, I mean, it took them time, it took them effort. But what I can do is give you the overarching themes so that you can understand what it takes to really make some significant shifts, significant changes in your life. So the first reason that overwhelm is your friend is it's a signal. Overwhelm is your body and your mind saying, pay attention, stress, anxiety, dread.

There's signals that something is out of harmony, something is out of alignment. For years, I ignored those signals and told myself I just needed to grind harder. Ignoring them only created more imbalance. Harmony matters. Overwhelm is your cue to look closer at where you're out of balance. The second reason overwhelm is your friend is it can be a catalyst so that discomfort can push you into the next version of yourself if you let it. For me, overwhelm was the catalyst that led me to really change things in my life, and that led me down the path of looking at what are alternatives to a legal career. And that led me to coaching and entrepreneurship. I would not have sought something new if I hadn't felt exhausted and overwhelmed. And sometimes the universe nudges us with overwhelm so that we'll finally make a change. I'm always looking at the universe as my friend and I look at that as, Hey, here's a signal.

You just need to take a look. Take a closer look at this. So the third reason that overwhelm really can be our friend is that it turns you into a problem solver. When you stop seeing overwhelm as the enemy and you start examining it like a scientist or like a child playing with it, you start to shift into problem solving mode. Nothing has to be perfect. You're just experimenting. You're trying new approaches, and that can open doors you didn't know existed. That shift alone is transformative. The fourth reason overwhelm can be a gift is that it creates space for growth when you address it. Addressing overwhelm doesn't just relieve stress or stop panic, it starts to really create space in your life. So when you look at it and you start to take action on it, it really helps you build some confidence. It you start to see little changes.

And when you start to see progress, you start to believe in your ability to change. And those possibilities keep expanding if you stick to it. So I wanna introduce you to one of my clients. I am completely making up this name. Her name is Maggie, is what I'm gonna call her on this episode. But Maggie came to me really overwhelmed and frustrated that she wasn't yet a partner at our firm. And she knew that she couldn't become partner, she wouldn't be promoted with her current mindset. And she had listened to these podcast episodes enough to know that she needed to make some changes. So when we started working together, we started just working on the foundation of cleaning up her mindset around work and how much work she had and her billing. And she started to manage her time differently. Not only did she begin to bill more hours, but she gained confidence. And that confidence gave her the courage to begin thinking about possibilities. Outside of working at this firm, it's so hard to think about possibility.

So it's so hard to think about possibility when you're overwhelmed because the brain is just gonna tell you, Hey, no, I don't have time. You've got too much going on. You can't do it. And it's very easy to shut down every single thought you have about a dream. But when you start to see progress, when you start to make changes and you see that you can change, you begin to bring out another side of you, a side of you that can see possibilities and even believe that you could do something different. And that's what happened with Maggie. She began to really trust herself that she could follow through on what she planned. She felt more confident about her time. So because she had more time, she could even believe that she could devote that time to creating something new.

And that was really important to Maggie because she didn't have that before. So she, she couldn't believe in doing anything else. She was just trying to keep her head above water. She couldn't think about doing something completely different and devoting her time to that. And you might be in the same position. So the very first thing to do is to address the overwhelm, address the mindset around what's keeping you stuck and feeling behind. So I wanna introduce you to another client of mine. I am gonna call her Sandy. And Sandy was in a similar situation in that she felt stuck. She had so much work to do, she felt like she was barely keeping her head above water. And she was ambitious. She wanted to grow her practice. And she thought the only way she could really grow her practice was to partner up with another attorney that was in her office.

But when she started cleaning up the overwhelm, when she started really understanding how to manage her time, how to manage her energy, clarity happened, she started to see that, wait a minute, she didn't even want a partner. She just needed to trust herself. And she began to gain that trust by learning the skills she needed simply to manage her time. And it sounds so simple, right? But it's not. There's so much brain power that goes in so much mindset that goes into creating boundaries to really structuring your day in a way that makes sense for you. And when she started to trust herself, she started to recognize, oh, wait a minute. The only reason I want to partner up with this other person to build a practice is that I didn't yet have the confidence to do it on my own. But once she got that clarity and when she realized she could trust herself and had that confidence, she realized she actually wanted to have her own fingerprints all over her business, and did not want somebody else involved in it.

She wanted that freedom to make those decisions. All right, so let's break down some of the things these lawyers did differently. And really it's about more than time management. It's about believing in yourself. So the very first thing, the very first step that needs to happen is that you begin believing in yourself. You begin taking actions from a place of belief that it's possible, that it's possible that you could have a different life, that it's possible that you could manage your time, that it's possible that you could stop feeling overwhelmed. Because if you're taking action from fear that nothing will change. Or if you're taking action from scarcity or belief that you know you have to work harder and that there's some something else, some magic pill that you need to take, or another book that you need to read, or you need to listen to another 20 podcasts, then that is really keeping you stuck where you've been.

So what they did is they acted from a belief in possibility that they didn't have to feel overwhelmed and that their life could be different. So when they did that, you know, they, they signed up for a strategy session, they worked with me, and the first skill that they learned was how to become the observer of their thoughts. They learned how to separate themselves from the running commentary in their heads and could see their thoughts as optional all of the thoughts that were creating their feelings of overwhelm, all of the thoughts that were telling them they were behind, or that they couldn't say no, or that they had to do this, or they had to do that, or they couldn't do that. And so that was the very first step. And that's foundational is really beginning to become that neutral observer and separating yourself from that running commentary.

The next thing they did is they built self-trust through small wins, learning how to follow through on something, celebrating that, right? So you can have all the small wins in the world, but if you're not acknowledging them and you're not celebrating them, it's not gonna register in your brain. So that was something that they learned how to do. They learned how to celebrate themselves. They learned how to recognize when they had wins, and they were recognizing that they were following through on their time commitments, and that it was showing them proof that they could rely on themselves to do what they say they were gonna do. The next thing they did as a result of these is they started to recover from setbacks quickly. So anytime they had a failure, they didn't dwell on it because they knew they were acting as the scientists. They knew that what happened could be worked backwards, just like a scientist working an experiment to see exactly what happened and to make small tweaks.

So that was something they started doing differently, is they really started to be the scientist in their lives. They stopped judging themselves for what did or didn't happen, and then they were able to make change. Another thing all of these lawyers did differently is they started to make growth fun. Because once they saw what was possible, they just kept going. They said, wow, you know, I can see that I can manage my mind around time, and I actually have more time now. I can work four days a week instead of six or seven days a week. I can leave the office early to go to a hair appointment or get my nails done. I, and this is something I saw, oh, I can leave the office early to go to yoga. I can do these things for myself. And it became this situation for these lawyers in particular where they weren't out to prove anything to others.

Like they weren't out to prove what they could do to anyone but themselves. They were just curious, well, what else is possible for me now that I've cured overwhelm, now that I can focus my mind, now that I've become the problem solver, now that I know how to be a scientist in my business and managing my time, now that I know how to set boundaries, know now I know how to ask for what I want and make it happen. Well, what else is possible for me? What else can I do? And it became this game for them. They just started seeing what they could do, what was possible. Oh, well, you know, I'm gonna work four days a week, but I'm gonna double my revenue. Let's just see what happens. Let's see how if we can make that happen, why not? And then they just worked on the mindset to make it work.

And that's the work that we did together. 'cause once you see mindset works for overwhelm, you see that it works for everything. And so they began seeing that and they kept working on themselves and they kept doing it. And they just kept doing the same work that they did with overwhelm. But none of that would've been possible for them if they hadn't recognized overwhelm as something that was a dis in disharmony in their lives, that something that they wanted to change and that they could see a possibility to change. And then once they dove into solving for overwhelm, it became a catalyst for even larger change. And it all started with just that very small desire to stop feeling overwhelmed, to stop feeling bad. So I want to offer to you that this could be a catalyst for change for you if you let it.

It could be something that changes your whole life if you let it. So here are some things I want to say now that we're wrapping up. First is you always have a choice. You can keep pushing through and you can keep grinding, and you can keep waiting for the next vacation to hopefully make things better, or you can decide to make a change. Now, overwhelm is not the end of anyone's story. It can actually be the beginning of a new chapter. And if this resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment, tell me what you think, and let me know if there are any topics that you are interested on hearing more about. And if you're listening to this on the podcast app of your choice, then I'd love to hear from you on Instagram. You can go to at dina dot cataldo and DM me. Let me know what stood out for you in this episode and let me know what topics you would like to hear about. Thank you for being here. I will talk to you in the next episode. Bye-bye.