42: How to Go From Overwhelmed to Motivated

Andrea Liebross |

www.andrealiebross.com |

Episode 42

Speaker1: [00:00:08] You're listening to the Time to Level Up podcast. I'm your host, business life coach Andrea Libros. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly gain confidence. Make your time productive. Turn every obstacle into an opportunity and finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up.

[00:00:57] Let's do this.

Speaker2: [00:01:05] Hey, my time to level up, listeners, welcome back to the podcast. So today what I've done is something that I have not done in the past. I took some of the audio from my recent masterclass. Day one, the class

Speaker3: [00:01:21] Was called from Overwhelmed to Accomplish

Speaker2: [00:01:24] On day one. We talked specifically about how to move from confusion to clarity and when we're in that state of confusion. What often happens is that we are stressed. We're in what I call STUC stress. This is a concept that I've learned a lot about from a coach,

Speaker3: [00:01:43] Jody Moore, that I've kind of

Speaker2: [00:01:44] Borrowed some of this from and reworked it into my own way of thinking. But stuck stress is very different than progression stress. A little bit of stress isn't so bad. Right. But when we are feeling overwhelmed, we're often stressed and we're in that stress. And that's what's keeping us from being accomplished. So today, I want you to listen in.

Speaker3: [00:02:08] Yes, I did have a whiteboard behind me, but

Speaker2: [00:02:11] You don't need to have that. You're going to get everything you need just by listening and listen and ask yourself, what kind of stress am I in? Kind of stress in my in and. I will give you a spoiler alert. You do have the power to change that. So sit back, buckle up and listen in to day one where we delve in to

Speaker3: [00:02:36] The fabulous topic of stress. Today is day one. We're talking about really going from being in a confused state to a clear one. And I want to let you know that I am using the words confusion and indecision as kind of like cousins to overwhelm. All right. Think about this. When we are confused, when we're in indecision, we're often overwhelmed. When we're overwhelmed. We can't make a decision. We tell people were confused. We don't know what the next step is. Right. So they're all friends. And when we're in that overwhelm, a lot of times, then there is no action. We are stuck. Right. And then we're stressed or we're stressed. And then there's no action, which makes us feel overwhelmed. It's like all related. It's a big tangled mess. Ok. So I want to talk about trying to eliminate that stress, which is a feeling. Right, so that you actually can take some action. And wouldn't it be amazing if we could get to a stress level of zero? Wouldn't that be amazing? It would be amazing. Ok. So if we can get to a stress level of zero, we can accomplish things today. This is kind of the rundown. The rundown is we're going to talk about what creates stress. Am going to give you some tools for achieving level zero of stress. I'm going to answer your questions and then I'll give you a little bonus. I'm going to ask if you have questions, save them till the end or put them in the chat box, and then I will scroll through and find them.

Speaker3: [00:04:13] Ok, so don't have to necessarily save them to the end, but I might not answer them yet. Ok. And I thought my coach told me gave me this little saying this week, and I thought this was really funny. So she said, it's like a radio station. W I am I am FM. What's in it for me? So that's the radio station. So as you listen to that, I want you to think about this. What can you take away from today? What is in this that totally pertains to you? I bet a lot. Ok, so what's in it for you? A lot. But try to start to relate this to your own life. Now, I've never really presented this material in this way. So if you've been following me for a while, you have this is all new. All right. Now, if you have been following me for a while, you know that I am a real big believer that our thoughts create our feeling. Right. This is no new news to you. If you have been working with me and our thoughts create our feelings is part of the model OK, which is another one of my favorite tools that I talk about all the time. But you may know this, but you may not. So circumstances, which are the facts? Ok, trigger our thoughts, which then trigger our feelings and ultimately create either action or inaction and then lead to a result.

Speaker3: [00:05:31] Ok, so right now in our world, there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. We still have a pandemic. I can't believe we're talking about this, but we do. We still have we're in the middle of a pandemic. There's a lot of things that are political going on. We're all we've got kids. We're all worrying that they're going to actually be able to stay in school. There are hurricanes happening. Ok, then there are all the usual problems, relationship work, caring for parents, caring for little kids. And what I'm wanting you to recognize is that I'm not saying that you shouldn't worry or stress about these things, but what I want you to recognize is that sometimes it feels like there's a lot more stress about it than meets the eye. Have you said to someone like you just don't understand? When we say things like you just don't understand, it's starting to create some overwhelm for us. All right. But what if we started to think about things deliberately with intention and on purpose versus on autopilot? All right. So these things, the pandemic, kids in school breaking up with a boyfriend. Right. Those are things that are outside of us. They don't cause our overwhelm. They don't create our feelings, our thought or what are creating our feelings right now. Let's give some examples here. All right. So let's just talk about pandemic. Are kids going to school? All right.

Speaker3: [00:06:56] So some people are really upset that their student is still having to wear a mask. And they're like, this is so disappointing that we have to start yet another school year with kids wearing masks. All right. So some people think it's disappointing. Some people feel like it's annoying. Some people feel like it's just inconvenient. Now, some people may even take it to another level and say this is heartbreaking because they're still not having band practice. Kid can't blow in his flute. You can't be first flute in the bit in the orchestra. Some people are just indifferent about it all. So the fact that we're wearing masks is not causing the emotion of disappointment or overwhelm or confusion. It's our stocks that are creating them in a business of relating stuff to business and a business. I could say, let's say today I could say that the fact that the zoom link was incorrect in the body of the email was overwhelming to be like created some stress. It wasn't that the fact that the link didn't work. It was my thought about the fact that the link didn't work. And actually, to be really honest, for a split second, it created some stress. But then I said that's not a big deal. I'll just send out another email. So what we need to do is to learn how to think deliberately. So many people think that this means thinking positively. How many of you have just heard someone say, oh, I just need to think more positive? This is exactly what I am not saying.

Speaker3: [00:08:23] I am not saying that thinking deliberately or with intention or on purpose means that you need to think positively. No. I am suggesting that you thinking deliberately, you think on purpose. This kind of thinking is better than positive. And it is better than happy. Right. And I'm going to tell you why I think that. All right. So if we are not thinking deliberately or intentionally or entreprise and we are thinking on autopilot, oftentimes we end up in a place that I call that stress, which is the kind of stress that makes it really hard to accomplish anything when we have stuff stress. What usually is causing this is that we're future focused right now. Like Andrea, you always say to be future focused, which is true. I often say go to that future self and ask them what to do. All right. But what I mean in this situation is that we're in STUC stress. We're thinking about and worrying about what might happen. Well, I mean, what might happen is that this whole Delta variant like overtakes everything and school gets all shut down. Ok. What might happen is that the people that we're supposed to jump on this class today don't get on because the link was wrong. That's what might happen. Right. That's me being future focused. You guys all know I'm sure you've heard that.

Speaker3: [00:09:42] I don't even know. What this does is to give ninety five percent of the things we worry about never happen. And that leaves us in this stress now stuff. Stress also feels unbearable. I think I spelled wrong and then I corrected. Like, that's not that kind of bear. It's that kind of bear. So there's that stress feels unbearable. You just want it to end, right? Can't this all just go away? Right. Also, you sometimes think I'm going to feel so much better when this is over. And you also want to hurry it up. You want to hurry it up because it's growing in intensity as the days go on. Right. Think about that overwhelm. It never really goes away until you decide it's going to go away. In the meantime, it's just growing in intensity and you start to feel it in your body. So when I talk about feelings a lot, there's emotions. And then there's sensations. And the sensations are in our body. In the STUC stress, we feel that in our body, it also lacks our genius. Ok. So when I work with clients, one of the things they often say in our initial call, like in our initial consult, is that what, Andrea and these thirty forty five minutes you have made everything seem so simple, like this isn't really hard, right? This isn't rocket science. But when we're in this STUC stress, it is blocking our genius. And we can no longer problem solve.

Speaker3: [00:11:07] We become a horrible problem solvers in STUC stress, and then we start to feel self pity. We start to feel resentment. We start to blame. Lay the blame and shame game. We blame others. This week I was doing a lot of blaming my brother because he's not helping, OK? I'm trying to blame him. Right. He didn't make the situation. That's not a good place for me to be putting blame. I also go back, listen to there's a podcast about blame and shame. I'm not sure what number it is, but there's a blame and shame podcast that would help. So here's what happened. Ok, here comes my graph. You ready for my graph? This is like, I don't know, fourth grade math. Here's my graph. So what happens is it doesn't this stress does not help us. It reaches a point where it doesn't help us. On my graph we have over here on the vertical axis, our quality of life down here. It was this very low quality of life up here, very high quality of life on this side. This is our right number of attempts to predict and prevent future problems. All right. And this is like zero attempts and this is 110. I want you to think about a seatbelt riding in a car. Right. So we know that seat belts save lives. A lot of research. We also know that riding in a car, as Erran realized earlier last week. Can be dangerous. We can get hit, people get in accidents, they're injured sometimes, unfortunately, they're killed.

Speaker3: [00:12:28] Riding in a car is dangerous. So what happens is we think about that seatbelts. We're like, OK, I know it's like you thinking about the seatbelts. I know that wearing my seatbelt, I can wear my seatbelt and I can go ride in a car and go places. It's going to improve my quality of life. If I can go places, my life would be so much better. So I'm going to wear the seat belts. I'm thinking about riding in the car. Seat belts are helpful. I'm trying to predict and prevent future problems by wearing my seatbelts. But if I go beyond thinking about wearing my seatbelt and I start thinking about, yeah, well, I can wear my seatbelt, but things still can happen. And the other guy, he might be drunk. He might run the red light. You might whatever. Ok, if I keep thinking about those future problems, I may say I don't even want to ride in the car and I may never go anywhere. So then my quality of life goes down. It can get to kind of like a tipping point. So let's think about this. Let's think about this. This is like fresh in my brain, kid going to college. So, OK, here's me being a good mom, getting ready. I'm getting the kid ready for college. This can even start like twenty one years old, right. Get to a point up.

Speaker3: [00:13:40] He's ready to go by. If I keep worrying about his preparedness for college, my quality life is going down like it gets to a point. You can only worry so much. You can only stress so much. And then the stress is useless. Kind of like the law of diminishing returns. Ok, preparing for today. All right. I actually, to be really honest, check all those links yesterday. And they all worked real, OK. Now, could I have sent the email? I mean, I could have probably done a million things that I didn't do, but I would have been kind of like law of diminishing returns because I would have just spent too many hours stressing about blink. So I did what I could do. And then I let it go. And my quality of life remained up here. It wasn't down here. I wasn't waking up in the middle of the night worrying about this masterclass. Ok, so that is kind of what stress can do for us if we keep stressing, if we keep trying to think about the future. There's another kind of stress that friends with overwhelm, but it is called progression stress and progression stress is going to become your new best friend. Progression stress helps you accomplish and get to a place where the stress is zero because you have accomplished things. Now, if you are experiencing or in the state of progression stress, you are very much current problem focus you're solving for the problem at hand.

Speaker3: [00:15:03] I solved the problem at hand, but the link didn't work. I didn't worry about tomorrow yet. That's not helpful. If you are thinking about parenting, you know how our brains. This is a this is a great one. I have a coach friend that says when we parents in our kids, we don't know what to do with them or worried about them. We all think that they're going to live in a van down by the river. That's when we are not all right. Problem focus. That is us going to the future. So no one is living in a van down by the river right now. Right. We just have to help them with what they have need help with. Today in your business, we can go to what if I don't hit my goal? What if I just stay stuck in this place I'm in now? What if I don't get a new job? What if my boss doesn't like what I did? That's all future focus. Let's just focus on what we can do to that current problem. Now, progression stress can be intense, but it is tolerable. You can focus on what you need to do today to get to where you want to go tomorrow. Don't worry about tomorrow yet, but we can focus on what we need to do today. Right before this call. Had a client, she's like, oh, my gosh, my brain's on overload. I have so many pieces of this project.

Speaker3: [00:16:10] Let's just focus on what we can do today and not worry about future progression stress. It diminishes. It actually goes away. Miraculously, as we take action. Isn't that amazing? I mean, I keep going back to parenting, but think about all the things you've worried about, about a kid or even if you're like, managing people. Think about all the things you worry about. If your people are going to perform at work and then they start to do things and then that stress goes away. Now, it might be filled with a new stress, but it diminishes as we take action, progression stress. It helps our genes, it helps us problems. It helps us see that things aren't so bad. It's actually kind of useful. Imagine that. And it creates the feelings of determination. It creates commitment. It creates motivation and curiosity, courage. Look at all the things that it actually creates. Isn't that amazing? So you actually get to be a problem solver, which is amazing. Now, in the chat box, I want you to pause and I want you to share with me what thoughts do you think cause breath. What are some of your repeating thoughts that cause stress? And is that stress that those thoughts cause? Is that stress? Stress or is it progression stress? What do you think? Is it stop stress or is it progression stress? So this work product isn't good enough. Is that thought helping you deal with the current problem or is that future focused? Ok.

Speaker3: [00:17:38] Yeah, it's stuck. What else what else are you thinking? Cindy says she's got a lot of stuff. Stress, Julee not spending enough time on a client project. Yeah. Like, is that really help? Think about this. You're thinking that. And guess what? As you're thinking it, you're not spending time on the client project. Isn't that funny and ironic? Crazy, right? Meeting goals in numbers. Am I going to meet them or. That's a question I won't meet them. Is the really the thought? What if I don't meet them? If I don't meet them, something will happen. That's that versus thinking about, OK, today this is what I have in front of me. Not I don't give my kids enough attention. They're all going to live in a van down by the river. We can only do what we're doing today. It's not useful. Are this is what I want you to think about this. Are any of the facts with Aaron or Julie? Sandy, Sandy, Monday they all share? Are any of those useful? Right. Not useful. What about a trend of your position that becoming redundant and being sent? Yes. Like I'm going to get eliminated. My position is no longer going to be needed. That's kind of stuck. Stress. Instead of thinking, hmm. What can I do today to make myself useful and to make this position not redundant and to show them the value I'm bringing. Notice this. Everything is always fine in the present in the moment.

Speaker3: [00:18:56] Everything is always fine in the moment. Everything is always figure out. If we think I can solve this, let's get busy. I'm on it. I will be OK somehow. What can we do now? Progression stressed. The good kind comes from thinking about solving things, and we can start to think about solving things right now in the present moment currently. So think about the thoughts that are creating either progression stress or stuck stressed. Now, if we want zero stuff stress, we want to stress level zero, OK? And we don't want any stuff stress. Here are two things you need to do. You need to identify this stress and be prepared to examine your head. Ok, what thoughts are you having? Are they thoughts? Are they fat? I'll give you a clue. Anything about the future is going to go in the fat line. Now, this is not as easy as it sounds, because Monday's comment, I don't give my kids enough attention. There's a part that she didn't add on to that. I don't give my kids enough attention so they will become whatever. Or that means I'm not a good mom. She's thinking I need to give them attention so that they whatever that's future. Right. So those are all her thoughts. Identify your thoughts. And then the next piece here is to be willing to be wrong about that. This is a lot of what we do in coaching. We are learning and coaching to think more deliberately.

Speaker3: [00:20:32] And when we do that, we sometimes have to realize that our thoughts might be wrong. Right. What if my position isn't redundant and I'm not going to be sent home? What if I'm spending the exact right amount of time on the client project? What is what I'm creating at work is amazing. Your brain wants to be in the right more than it wants you to feel better or achieve goals or to lose out on your goals. Your brain's job is to make you feel better. So it's trying to make you feel better by telling you you better get cracking. You might lose your job. Your brain is not offering you. You might be wrong about that. You're not going to lose your job. But you need to start to be willing to be wrong about your thoughts. And if you think about this, like as we try to accomplish something, it's a journey. Like there's probably steps to it. And we have to be willing to be wrong along the way. No one ever went from zero to 100 without being wrong along the way. And note, I want you to know, too, that the next piece of this is really telling yourself the truth and then to get moving. And when you tell yourself the truth and you get moving. Amazing things can happen. All right. Here's what can happen. If you're telling yourself the truth, then you're not indulging in feeling scared, because that's the truth all the time.

Speaker3: [00:22:03] It's not necessary. Think about this. Let's say there's a box of chocolates and you eat one and then you walk by it again, because later you have another one and then you're like, oh, after dinner, I deserve a third one. There is nothing wrong with eating chocolate. Right. There is nothing wrong with it. But it's not. Necessary, right, it's not fueling your body, especially like three chocolates, and really it would really be OK if you never ate chocolate ever again in your entire life. But we like eating it because it tastes good. It's comforting. It goes down easy. It's kind of like the stomach stress. It's not necessary. You would be super fine for the rest of your life if you never had any more stress. But we're used to being there. It feels OK, because we don't have to make any decisions or move forward. And we all have to feel that fear. Now, it's not a problem to experience fear or being scared. That's not a problem unless we make it a problem. We often sometimes describe things in STUC stress as something that's just happening, like it happens to us, like it's not optional, like we just noticed it almost like I'm forty nine and I'm stressed. I'm confused. I'm not sure what to do. Your brain doesn't recognize this as optional and caused by your thoughts. It just thinks it is. It just thinks that stuff stress is just the thing because you're on autopilot.

Speaker3: [00:23:34] So it thinks this is the place to be. The truth is overwhelm and confusion and indecision. The truth is that that is caused by a mismanaged mind. Now, I'll give you an example. Financial planners don't know if we have any on the top. We have a financial planner. We meet with this guy a few times a year. And I find myself about 20, 30 minutes into the conversation just wishing it was over. It's kind of boring to me. A lot of the lingo I'm not super familiar with. It sometimes causes stress because he's talking about saving money. So oftentimes those conversations create the overwhelm for me, create that feeling because of the topic that I'm not interested in. It's not my language, and I don't really want to be interested in it. What happens is when I kind of go into that place, then I start to zone out experiences to start to zone out. So that feeling allows me to kind of be unconscious. It allows me to not engage in which it was all over and ask when it would end. But I'm curious and I did this I decided last time that I was not going to be overwhelmed. I was going to be all in asked millions of questions. And it allowed me to stay engaged because, of course, I am capable of understanding what's going on. I can ask questions, I can learn. But being overwhelmed and zoning out allows me to hang out in my lower brain, which is uncomfortable versus hanging out in the higher Problem-Solving brain.

Speaker3: [00:25:03] Right. So this stress is part of your lower rate. It can't be down there. You don't have to solve any problem. You can just be like, this isn't my thing. So notice telling myself this is confusing is not leading me to clarity. Being confused leads me to more confusion. It leads me to more fogginess when there's something that like we are super invested in, we tend to go into that progression stress. But sitting in that financial planning meeting, sometimes I'm not committed to solving the problem. I'm just committed to zoning out. But when I commit to solving the problem and all of a sudden I feel like I'm making progress, but I have to go to my higher rate. Now, think about building a business. Your brain wants to be overwhelmed and confused. It wants to be there. Ok, think about technology. Like if I told you to go make an Instagram real, you'd be like, no, no, no, no. I mean, I'm pretty good at technology, but I'm not making a real. So really what's going on is you are capable of making an Instagram real. It's a result of me not managing my brain or else not managing our brains around it. So you might say to me, Andrea, aren't some things just confusing or overwhelming? I mean, isn't that just the way it is? And I want you to try on the answer of no, try answering that question is no.

Speaker3: [00:26:18] There is just my brain trying to stay comfortable and indulging in the confusion and the overwhelm and the fear. So what do we do about it? We decide to believe the truth and get headed in the right direction versus pointed back towards fogginess and confusion. But in order to do this, you've really got to tell yourself the truth. And the truth is, you're scared. You're going to fear, you're going to get it wrong. You won't get it resolved if you make the wrong decision or the wrong choice. Are your kids going to live in the van down by the river? That's the truth. But I want you to put faith in the fact that you don't need to control everything. I want you to put effort and belief into just gathering the facts, making the decision, access, the progression, stress and moving forward. So the truth gets you headed toward clarity and focus versus I'm scared and confused. Doesn't get you there. Just sticking there. Now, if you avoid making a decision because it might be hard, you're probably avoiding making the decision because you'll have to move forward. And then you might fail. That's the truth. Our brains tell us to stay confused because it's much safer and easier than making the decision and moving forward. But when you tell yourself the truth, you're getting some leverage over your brain and you realize that overwhelmed isn't happening to us.

Speaker3: [00:27:38] We are allowing it to hang around. We're settling for it. So you can decide that failure is not a problem and that you might succeed. You might be wrong and you might succeed. Ok, so there is where this getting it wrong comes in. You might be wrong. You might actually succeed. And then when we talk about taking action and we're going to talk about this more as the week goes on. Ok, when we talk about that, the fat I'm going to leave you with today is just try something. Everything that you try that doesn't work is one step closer to what does work. But only if you supervise your brain. If you fail, here's what happens if we fail one time. Many of us go right back to overwhelm. I've not failed. I've found a thousand ways that won't work is a famous quote from Thomas Edison. I've not failed. I've found a thousand ways that don't work. So what we really need to do is just get busy figuring out how Dan Sullivan and everybody else that followed him. He always says that we're either succeeding or learning. Those are the only two options succeeding or learning. So that's kind of what I want you to think about as you think about how to get moving. So but I want you to recognize that you don't have to do this alone. You don't have to do this alone. So what did you think of that?

Speaker2: [00:28:55] And I ended there by saying, you don't have to go it alone. So you don't have to go it alone, OK? Oftentimes when we're in that stuck stressed, we are stuck inside the peanut butter jar. One of my favorite analogies, you are stuck inside the peanut butter jar. It's pretty sticky in there. And when you're in there, you cannot

Speaker3: [00:29:13] Get yourself out of it. You can't read the label.

Speaker2: [00:29:16] So what I offered to the participants of the class, and I'm going to offer to you, is to hop on a call with me and let's explore how you can get help. I may be a great person to help you. I may not be right, but you don't know what you don't know yet. And why not have some help getting into that progression stress? And why not have some help reading the label or figuring out what action you need to take, how to get moving? So. You can always go to my website and book a call. You can also just direct message me on Instagram or on Facebook and we can set something up, but this is not a good place to be, my friends in that stek stress progression stress is so much better. Ok, until next time, remember, there is always an opportunity to level up. Have a great day.

Speaker1: [00:30:13] Thanks for tuning in to today's show. If you're ready to commit to personal and professional growth, move forward, make money and manage life. Head to Andrea Libros dot com. That's a and d r e a l i e b r o s s dot com to find out about the ways we can work together. Until next time, go Lavallette.