Ever felt like you're drowning in a sea of demands, emails, and endless tasks? You're not alone.
Think of this episode as your life vest, guiding you through the treacherous waters of overwhelm. It's a harsh beast, making even the most successful among us feel inadequate. But it's a beast we can learn to tame by embracing the power of stillness.
It's not simply about being inactive; it's about intentionally finding calm amid the chaos.
I unveil the struggles you may encounter while cultivating stillness and how to identify when your practice shifts from an impossible task to a successful weapon against overwhelm.
This episode is not just about surviving the whirlwind of adulting—it's about learning to thrive within it. Listen in for a guide to reclaiming your peace and finding clarity.
Support the show
Buy me a coffee
Leave a review
Stuff to Light Up Your Life
🚀 Get my book, The Triple C Method®️
🚀 Work with me
🚀 Get Triple C 101
🚀 Do yoga with me
Connect with me:
Ever felt like you're drowning in a sea of demands, emails, and endless tasks? You're not alone.
Think of this episode as your life vest, guiding you through the treacherous waters of overwhelm. It's a harsh beast, making even the most successful among us feel inadequate. But it's a beast we can learn to tame by embracing the power of stillness.
It's not simply about being inactive; it's about intentionally finding calm amid the chaos.
I unveil the struggles you may encounter while cultivating stillness and how to identify when your practice shifts from an impossible task to a successful weapon against overwhelm.
This episode is not just about surviving the whirlwind of adulting—it's about learning to thrive within it. Listen in for a guide to reclaiming your peace and finding clarity.
Support the show
Buy me a coffee
Leave a review
Stuff to Light Up Your Life
🚀 Get my book, The Triple C Method®️
🚀 Work with me
🚀 Get Triple C 101
🚀 Do yoga with me
Connect with me:
All humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit in a room alone. And I read that and I was just like wow, you're listening to the triple C project. Welcome to the triple C project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, use confidence, your courage, so you can live like licks. I'm your host, ryan Spence, the big, broad dropout life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big, hairy, volatious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now, with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey, hey, welcome to episode 87 of the triple C project.
Speaker 1:No major updates this week, apart from one I'm still not living in my house. Two, there is a raging storm currently battering the UK and there's this consistent rain falling outside of my office. And three, I still haven't finished book number two yet, but it's coming along, it's evolving, it's. Had a call with my book coach yesterday, which was really, really helpful just to kind of verbalize and bounce ideas around, and I think the issue is that this I might have said before this book is just it's evolving and having to kind of just let it grow, kind of almost how it wants to, and then look to kind of Shape it once it's kind of fully formed. So it's a process and I'm rolling with it. But anyway, this week I want to talk about an enemy, and I want to talk about an enemy that is so prevalent and so persistent and so persuasive speak, then, so persuasive that it can have you feeling consistently like you are a failure, a failure for not keeping on top of everything, for not keeping all of the balls in the air.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're listening to this podcast and if you are a client or have been a client of mine, then you're going to fall into that category of people who are seen as being ambitious, successful, driven. You know highly effective people, and when you are one of those people, it's in your DNA to just do more, to just get shit done. But you want to be the, or you feel you have to be, the go to for everyone else, and that often comes at the expense of your own wants and your own needs. But what it also does is. It can make you feel inadequate, because, inevitably, there are only so many hours in a day and there are only so many things that you can focus on at any given time. And, even though we may all try to fight against it, we all know scientifically that multitasking is a myth, and you just can't do multiple things at the same time in an effective way. And so what happens is you'll like end up being like a jugular in a circus who can't keep all the balls in the air, and you always feel like you're dropping something. And because you feel like you're dropping something, you beat yourself up for dropping something. And so the combination of feeling like you are not on top, feeling like you're always dropping things, and then the energy that you use beating yourself up for not being on top and for dropping things, culminates in this enemy that always likes to rear its ugly head, and that enemy is overwhelm, and I call it overwhelm with a capital O, because it's this beast that arrives to kind of make you feel bad, feeling adequate, feel like a failure.
Speaker 1:So what is overwhelm? Well, when I looked up the definition, the first line that came out was that it means to bury or drown beneath a huge mass of something. Now, you know what that feels like. Right, it's that feeling of feeling suffocated by the demands of adulting, adulting. You just feel heavy because no matter what you do, no matter how much you move, nothing seems to get done. There's always something else on the to-do list, there's always something that you feel that you're missing, that you should have done, that you haven't done, someone you should have called, someone you should have reached out to, a task that you should have done, an email you should have sent, and this all leads to overwhelm, that suffocation. I imagine that overwhelm is this kind of ogre that rocks up and knocks on your door and as you open it, bleary-eyed and already feeling bad about yourself, it kind of just walks in and just jumps onto your shoulders and weighs you down even further, almost into submission really.
Speaker 1:So some of the things that cause overwhelm Well, you know, it's like when you're trying to work, you're trying to kind of get your head down and do some deep work, and emails keep popping into your inbox and requiring your attention. Or like when my old boss used to just running to my room and sitting as an email came in and I was trying to focus on the task I was doing, but he wanted to talk about the email that just came in which I hadn't looked at yet, and so now I was behind on what I was doing and now I had to deal with this new thing and was being pulled in all of these directions. Overwhelming is like when the phone just won't stop ringing and you just can't get a moment to yourself. You know, normally when you're like when you're on a big deal and you're always getting these calls in, which is stopping you actually doing the work you need to do to get the deal close, and overwhelm kind of occur when you get staffed on a new deal. For example, your boss comes in and says, hey, we've got this new thing and there's a really tight timeline and we really need to get it done. And on the one hand you're thinking, well, it's my job, I kind of have to do it, but on the other, you'll sat there with this painted smile on your face just thinking, fuck, all of these things and I'm going to have to cancel these long-standing commitments just to do this on top of the already excessive work that I've got.
Speaker 1:And it can all feel so oppressive, right, and you think you want to scream. It can make you just want to shout out and just be like enough of this shit. But what do you do instead? How do you deal with that overwhelm? Well, I mean, I used to go home and sit and stuff my face on the sofa with potato chips and, like this, old Doritos was one thing for me, you know, and some people do that, some people stressy, it's a way of comforting themselves. Maybe you chug a glass of wine, yeah, just to take the edge off the day, but one's never enough, right. So you have a second. And then by that point, hey, you may as well finish the bottle and you reach the bottom and there you go, Bottles done. You don't feel any better about yourself, but it felt good while you were drinking it.
Speaker 1:And these are things that are understandable, because what you're trying to do to fight the overwhelm is to effectively numb the pain, numb that feeling of suffocation, that feeling of heaviness. That feeling of my life is just out of control, like I just can't get a grip. I just can't get a handle on anything. I just can't keep all of these balls up in the air. So it's understandable, but here's the thing about those actions that I found myself I know this is that when you've eaten the potato chips or when you down the bottle of wine, then what? Because it isn't like you do that and you feel better.
Speaker 1:You wake up the next morning actually feeling a bit shit because you've got to hang over or you know you've just polluted your body with a family sized bag of chips that you really didn't need to be eating. And so what do you do? Do you just resign yourself to the fact that this is your life, that you will never be on top, you will never feel rid of this overwhelm, and so, therefore, you just continue going through life with this fog of anger and frustration and upset. That's one way right, and I know and see so many people. That is the way that they deal with this, and there was no judgment there at all, because I completely understand, I have been there, I have done those things.
Speaker 1:But the other thing you can also do is decide no, fuck it, enough is enough, draw that line in the sand and think I need to find a way to deal with this. I need to explore ways to escape, to break this cycle of acts that don't serve me, that are quite destructive, that are keeping me feeling disengaged, almost like I look at it almost as being like a bit part player in your own life. It's like you know, when you see move and you see the extra in the background, it's kind of like you, it's your life, but you're the extra because you're not in control. You have no way of steering where it is that you want to go. You're accepting the way that things are is the way that they will. They are always going to be. And again, I get it.
Speaker 1:This is not a judgment by any stretch of the imagination, but I share it because I think you will resonate with this, because I know so many who do, who have been there, who have been in the world that I was in and the feeling, these feelings Stress, eating, the downing of the red wine, you know, and what I learned when I kind of decided to take that second path and draw that line of the sand and say enough is enough. I look back and realize that these things that I was doing, they just weren't helpful and they weren't productive. In the moment they might have given me that initial feeling of release, but in the long term they just were not helping me because it was just becoming this perpetual cycle. And the way that I see it now, in hindsight and having had time to think about it and really kind of journal on what was coming up, is that it is as I say, it is an enemy of overwhelm.
Speaker 1:It is this thing, this what I call sneaky motherfucker, that is appearing to make you feel even worse about yourself than you already do. But why it's sneaky is that when you first have a lot of things to do, when you first feel that, okay, there's a lot going on here, you look at it as though, well, hey, I can do this, I'm a high achiever, I'm successful, like this is kind of what I do. I meant to be productive, I meant to be moving, and so you feel for a moment that everything's fine, you're keeping calm, you're carrying on, you're dealing with everything in a way that feels okay, I can get through this. But then it's almost as if, out of the blue, bam, overwhelm just rocks up and punches you in the face. Now just imagine that You're walking along, feeling fine, and then you just get knocked to the ground, and that's kind of how I see this overwhelm appearing, and it's kind of like now, now you're mine, crushing your spirit and it's attempting to break your soul, so kind of keep you down, almost so that you have no opportunity to get the clarity that you need to get after what it is that you really want. It's this sluggishness, this heaviness that happens in your body after you've been punched in the face and it's the voice in your head that's just sort of telling you that, yeah, sit down, just chill. You're never going to get it done, you're never going to succeed, you're never going to get to do the thing you really want to do. So don't even try, don't even sweat it, and it sucks, right, it sucks when you're there Because you feel like you will never get on top of it. You'll never beat this thing that's in front of you. But what I found and this didn't happen overnight, but what I found is that the greatest weapon to fight back against overwhelm, to get that overwhelm, to just shut the fuck up, is stillness.
Speaker 1:Now, I've talked about stillness before on the earlier episode and I'm probably going to be talking about it more because, as I was saying to my book Ketch last night, I'm really intrigued by this duality in clarity. It's rhymes right when clarity comes through action but clarity also comes through stillness, as I've said before. And there's this great quote that I read this week After my meditation. I have three bucks. Then I kind of read a passage from, and one is the Daily Steric by Ryan Holiday, and the quote for the day, or the quote at the top of the chapter that I read, was from a French. I think he was a French scientist called Blaine Pascal, and the quote is all humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit in a room alone. And I read that and I was just like wow, that that really highlights what I've been thinking how, how I've been seeing stillness work for me in various aspects of my life, including in fighting overwhelm.
Speaker 1:Sitting still alone in a room and focusing on just one thing. It's, it's powerful right. I shared an exercise, two episodes ago, I think, of focusing on your, on your breath, but you can focus on anything. It could be the sensation of your little finger or your big toe or the spot on the wall before you. Auditess has really taken that time to be still and to just focus on one thing. That isn't your thoughts, that isn't your to-do list, that isn't the things that you haven't done or need to do when you get up.
Speaker 1:Now. This isn't toxic positivity bullshit. This isn't. Yeah, when your things are going to shit, just sit down in silence for a few minutes and everything will be well and will be great. Because that ain't true. That's not what's going to happen, and if you've been listening to me or reading anything that I write for any period of time, you know that that is just not how I roll. Not at all. The point is that you sit still and you Just don't think of anything. You don't do anything, you just you just are, you just be, and Thoughts will come up and thoughts will arise, but you just watch them Like you would watch a movie or like you would watch that shitty Netflix show.
Speaker 1:When you're sat binging after another hard day of Overwhelming kicking your ass, just watch them, let them go, and the reason that that helps the reason that I found that it helps is that overwhelm hates it when you're still, because overwhelm thrives when you react to it. It feeds off that that energy, energy, that anxious action you know it loves when you're running on a hamster wheel over and over and over, never stopping, just trying to keep up with the demands of life, with everyone else's Expectations, when you're trying to measure up to the societal expectations of who you are and what you should be, of what it means if that, what it means to be useful and productive, of your only value to the world being how much you can produce and how much money you can make for people and organizations that have more money than they need already. So the way I see Best way I see to fight overwhelm is to refuse to feed it. No, like, like any, any enemy. Refuse to allow yourself to be pushed around, to be hurried, to be hustled to do all the things. Refuse to live your life in a perpetual state of motion, to be getting up and Consistently doing until you go to sleep at night without any time for yourself, without a time out, without a break. Refuse to carry business as a badge of honor. If you're busy, if you feel that you're too busy, get curious as to why and see how you can change that. Don't Hold you up as something to aspire to, because it's a surefire way to burn out, as we all already know.
Speaker 1:Say stillness, overwhelm, hate. Stillness I Mean. It will put up a good fight, it will really put up a good fight and it's going to bombard you with thoughts about all the things that you have to do. You're gonna sit in stillness and try to focus on that one thing, on that toe, on that wall, on your breath, and that overwhelm is going to keep coming up and trying to interrupt you. You know, initially it's going to whisper to you nicely oh, you just got to do this thing, don't sit here, come on, we've got other things to go and do. But as you continue to ignore it, it's going to get progressively louder. It's not screaming at you what are you doing? We don't have time to sit still. We've got emails to read, we've got meetings to attend, we've got documents to draft. And who's gonna do all of that if you're sat on your ass being still?
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've heard those voices, right, you probably heard those voices in your head. You know, and you probably said it to yourself I don't have time to meditate, I don't have time to sit still, I don't have time to do something for myself, because who's gonna do all the other things that need to get done that I don't have time to do as it is. But if you resist, if you continue just being still and letting those thoughts go, letting that voice of overwhelm just flow over your head, it's gonna lose its cool and it's gonna fly into a rage. That's when you know you've got it. That's when you know you've built up a practice that is gonna act as this barrier, or even as this weapon against overwhelm, because now you're under its skin, you can ignore it and now you're in control. You're in control of what you do, when you do it and how you do it. You, you're not gonna let overwhelm Guiltrip you into trying to do everything now, knowing that you're only going to fail. You're not gonna let overwhelm guilt trip you into doing anything.
Speaker 1:And stillness allows you to recognize this. Because when you sit in stillness, your, that's your act of your active resistance. You're your act of taking back control. I've taken back control against that runaway freight train that is overwhelmed. Because when you're sat in stillness, you are being intentional. It's an intentional decision to sit and it's an intentional decision to focus. And when you're being intentional, you're not reacting to everything else that's going around you. You're not reacting to everybody else's demands. You're not consistently thinking about the next thing on your to-do list. You're allowing yourself to just take control of being, of being a human being.
Speaker 1:But it is a practice. It takes time and it's going to feel like an impossible task the first few times that you sit, the first few times that you try to fight against over one. Imagine getting into a boxing room for the first time. I've been there just me. It's tough, you know. The first few times it's going to be hard right, you're going to be out of breath, you're going to hurt all over. You're probably going to get punched in the face a lot of times.
Speaker 1:But the only way to stop that happening is to keep going back and keep getting better, keep practicing, and this is the same thing with fighting over one. You've got to keep going back and taking time to be still and, as I say, the first few times, you're going to grab onto every thought. You're going to dwell on it, you're going to ruminate over it, you're going to stress over it and you're going to feel this constant pull, this constant urge to get back to doing, to busyness, to action, just so you don't have to deal with discomfort of over one punching you in the face or screaming in your ear or in your head, and so you don't have to focus on what's going on inside of you and what's happening inside of you, but I urge you to keep having it Start small. Consistency beats intensity, as I've said many, many times before, and so I want you to start with what feels easy to commit to, and the shifts are going to be subtle, so don't expect some huge overnight success. It's going to be subtle, it's going to take time, like any practice, but it will happen.
Speaker 1:Eventually you will begin to notice that when that overwhelm appears, when you're feeling this weight on top of you, when you're feeling this suffocation arising, it won't hang around for long, because you're going to know what to do, because now you've rubbed it off its power, you're going to know OK, things are feeling a bit heavy right now. Let me take some time out. Let me take some time to be still and to just sit, and the more that you do this daily, the easier it's going to be to notice when the overwhelm appears and to push it away, so you can continue in a way that is sustainable to you. Because, as great as it we may think, it looks to be constantly running around doing, to constantly be seen to be busy and important, to constantly be carrying this weight of overwhelm on our shoulders it's not sustainable. It is going to lead to burnout and even if you don't get there anytime soon, it's going to prevent you from gaining the clarity you need to get control of your life, to get to where it is that you really want to go, as opposed to reacting to all the things that everybody else really wants you to do. You're going to stop feeling like you're constantly on that hamster wheel, running and running and running but never getting anywhere, and you're going to tame that overwhelm. But to do that, you've got to get still. You've got to get still. So I hope that you have seen yourself in this episode, because I know that we all have bounce of overwhelm. I still do now. I've had them with writing this book and had them with renovating my house, and I'm so grateful that I know what to do, that I have this weapon, that I have this practice to recognize and fight back against it so that it doesn't become this progressive thing that continues to weigh me down day after day, week after week.
Speaker 1:My practice of sitting in stillness daily is it's not even something that I do anymore, it's just who I am. But that wasn't always the case. There are many times when I would do what I said at the beginning of this episode, I would sit and stressy on my sofa, binge watching crap shows on Netflix or YouTube and downing wine. I didn't even really want it, but it was a way of trying to alleviate the weight of overwhelm, the feeling of being a failure, the feeling of not being on top of things, and control of things, of keeping all the balls up in the air.
Speaker 1:So stillness, justness, is your weapon of choice against overwhelm. It's something that I share with my clients and I'm glad to be able to share it with you here today and I hope that it helps you. I hope that the next time you feel everything is on top of you, that you remember this episode and you take the time to just stop, whatever it is that you're doing, and sit and be still and build this practice up on a daily basis, and I hope that it really works for you. It's something that you keep coming back to and I'd love to hear how you get on with the practice and any insights you took away from this episode. To do that, you can hit me up at Iamryanspentcom, hit me up on Instagram at Iam, underscore Ryan Spence, or find me on LinkedIn. This is my new home pretty much.
Speaker 1:I know a lot more than you are us right now and tell me, tell me what you take away, tell me how it feels for you to sit and stillness. How long did you sit for? What came up for you? Whatever it is, you want to share. Maybe you share this with a friend and you hold each other accountable and you ask each other each day have you been still today? And you help each other along and you compare notes and you share insights, because when you see it's working, you're going to want to do it more. But in order to see that it's working, you've got to sit through the period of time when it doesn't seem like it is working, when it all seems quite impossible. So there you go.
Speaker 1:Stillness helps you, my way of helping you to overcome overwhelm. And if you listen to this episode and feel like, yeah, there was really deep overwhelm, it's something that really comes up for me and this practice is cool, but I really need more support, more accountability. This is what I do, one of the things I help my clients with. If you head to imrinespencecom slash coaching, check it out, check out what I do and book yourself a call and let's chat. Let's see how we can help you create a more sustainable existence for yourself, where you are setting boundaries, where you are not constantly people pleasing, where you are exercising your right to say no to things and to put yourself first sometimes, and all of the things which allow your mind to be clear and allow you to be more intentional about the way that you live and about where it is you want to go and what it is you want to do and who it is that you want to be. So that's it, hair. I am Rinespencecom slash coaching and I look forward to seeing your call pop up on my calendar and having a chat with you. That's all for this week.
Speaker 1:Thanks, as always, for listening to me here on the CCC project and until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit. Thanks for tuning in to the CCC project. In the spirit of the CCC, there's three things that you can do to support the show Head to ratethispodcastcom slash CCC or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how this show can help them. Everything you can do Share Share this episode. Share a previous episode with a friend, someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this hair show. And number three head to Iamrinespencecom. Get on the main list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to. My new book Start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. We appreciate you being here and until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living like let.