Well, hi there friends. Welcome back to another episode of the mother like a boss podcast. It's your host, Kendra Hennessy. And whew. Do I have a good episode for you today. This is going to be a deep one. Not even sure how long it's going to be. I'm being honest to have my outline. I have a lot to say. I have a lot to help you with and guide you through.
And so just buckle up and let's do this. We are going to talk about where to start. When everything feels overwhelming. If I had to put that, uh, all of the questions that I get asked here at mother, like a boss, either through my DMS, in my student groups, in our emails, every way that somebody can talk to me, if I had to put those in a list of like the highest ranked to the lowest ranked, this one would be in the top five, for sure.
Because this is the thing that gets asked the most when it comes to any topic around motherhood, home management, homemaking, parenting, all the things. Where do I start? When everything feels overwhelming, you know, I'm, I am literally overwhelmed by it all. Kendra, where do I get started? And first and foremost, I want to let you know, because this is one of the top ranked questions. You're not alone.
Oh, in fact, this is something that I still struggle with. There are areas I struggle with this, for sure. And I have to go back to everything that I'm going to talk about in this episode and ask myself the same questions. Do the same steps, work through the same issues, because this comes up for me at different times in my life where it feels like there's so much to do that.
You just kind of say, I don't even know where to start you look. It's like looking at a giant mess. In a room and saying there are so much mess. I don't even know where to begin. And there's a lot of reasons that that comes up for us. It's a lot of re there's a lot of reasons which we're going to talk about why we feel overwhelmed.
And it isn't just about being overwhelmed. There's a lot of deeper stuff there, but because this is one of the most common questions I thought let's just tackle it right. In a podcast episode. Now we talk about this in. Many of my courses, but in homemaker issue, my signature home management course, you can get more information at homemakerishu.com
I always like to put that out there for people, because I always get messages. Like I heard you talking about that course and I don't know where to find it. So that's where to find all the information. There's actually a lesson in there about where to get started when it feels overwhelming.
Like when you feel like everything's a mess, when it feels like everything's overwhelming, we actually have a lesson in there about. And I will say, I'm going to talk about this at the end, but we are going to be completely revamping homemaker issue next year and relaunching it in March of 2022. And there is going to be a section dedicated to this, not just one lesson, a section dedicated, because that's how important it is.
And I've seen now. You know, over 22,000 students in total, in all of my programs, I have seen that this is the thing that is holding people back the most from actually getting started. It's not that they don't know what to do. It's not that they don't have the right tools or the skills, or even the mindset it's that they just don't know where to start, because it all feels overwhelming.
And then they're paralyzed. They're like, I can't even move. And so we procrastinate and we hold, hold off and we get angry, which we'll talk about in just a second. A lot of us react in different ways. So we just don't get started in the first place. Okay. You are not alone. I want you to know that. So let's first talk about what it means to be overwhelmed.
Okay. So we all know what it feels like to be overwhelmed. But years ago, when I first started talking about this, I said something pretty bold and it's really stuck with me. And it stuck with a lot of my students and, um, people in my audience. If you were around, back in the day, And that the thing I said was that overwhelment is an illusion.
Now that strikes a chord with people and you may be like real angry at me right now. Like, excuse you do not tell me that being, you know, overwhelmed as an illusion. Ah, no, I didn't say being overwhelmed is an illusion. I said the idea of overwhelm can be an illusion. And I'm going to talk about why the feeling itself is not an illusion.
The art, your feelings are always valid, always no matter what your feelings matter, and they are valid and they're not illusions, but the idea that overwhelm is a tangible thing. We actually turned it into. Turn it into that, because now we talk about overwhelm as if it's a thing instead of overwhelm as a verb, which is what it really is.
Overwhelm is a verb and I'm actually going to define it for you. It says overwhelm is defeat completely or give too much of a thing to someone in inundate, you know, too much, right. Bury or drown beneath a huge mass. You know, those are the, that's what it is. It's a, it's a verb. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming.
You're overwhelmed. It's not a noun, but we've turned it into a noun. We've made it. This thing that feels overbearing, we've sort of personified it in a way. Um, almost made it like a person or a monster or something like. And so what I want us to recognize is that the actual idea that there's just one thing that we can call overwhelm is the illusion, because there's no one thing that overwhelms us all.
And there's no one thing that overwhelms us all the time. It's the field. That there's too much to handle. It's the feeling that we have, but the truth is that overwhelm changes over time. And I've told this story before, I'm going to tell it again, because it's really important. And this is how I started to recognize in myself how overwhelm the idea of personifying overwhelm was really an illusion to me.
Um, was that no matter what stage of my life I looked at, I always said I was over with. You know, it didn't matter what was happening in my life. I always claimed I was overwhelmed. I was claimed there was too much to do so back in high school, you know, I was on the swim team. I had friends that boyfriend at different times, I had a part-time job that I might've worked.
And I took classes, you know, obviously I was in school and I would say how overwhelmed I was by all of that. Okay. Because it was a lot to do again, the feeling was valid. The feeling was like, this is a lot to do. There's a lot of expectation. I don't want to disappoint people, all these things. And so I was overwhelmed.
Uh, but then flash forward to college. Now, all of a sudden my life is different. I now have in many cases, more responsibility on my shoulders. I'm working more so that I can make more money. I'm taking college classes, which were much harder than high school classes. Um, I'm having to contend with a car that keeps breaking down that I have to put oil in all the time.
I have to make more money so I can pay for these things. There's so much more to conduct. Also overwhelmed flash forward to I'm out of college. And I start my own business and I'm pregnant. And I had my first child, well, still lots to do. It's different. And now again, I have even more responsibility, more on my shoulders, more personal responsibility for myself, my home I'm, you know, I have a husband, I have a kid now I have a business.
Still overwhelmed and then you're getting the point, right? I don't have to keep going. I then have another kid. And then I started another business. The point being that at every single stage I was overwhelmed, but the truth was I couldn't pinpoint what overwhelmed me. What overwhelmed me really was the expectation that I had to do with.
That is what overwhelmed me overwhelm itself. Wasn't really a thing. It wasn't tangible. I couldn't put my finger on it. It was just. There was too much to do. And the expectation that I had to do it all, not only that I had to do it all, but that I had to do it all seamlessly, that I had to do it all perfectly, that I had to be in control of everything all the time.
And so that's where my, my ID. That overwhelm can be an illusion came from it. Wasn't, um, it wasn't a way to invalidate my own feelings or to invalidate the feelings of anyone here. It was instead, actually it was really freeing for me. And I encourage you to see it as a freeing thing because now all of a sudden.
It's not this thing that I have to fight against. It's an emotion and it's a feeling that I can work through and I can also go back, which we're going to do in a minute. I have a series of questions that are kind of going to blow your mind. I think. We have to go back and look at where does it come from?
Because what overwhelms me is not something that overwhelms somebody else. Right? We all know this in motherhood, you know, it's like you see someone that just seems to be able to seamlessly do something. And you're like, how are they not overwhelmed by their life? But you are. And vice versa. Like maybe there's something that you do sort of seamlessly.
And it's just, I dunno, it's pretty easy. And you just have a routine. And a rhythm and a cadence to something. And someone else was like, how does she manage to do it all? It's because what overwhelms one does not overwhelm another. And again, that's what makes it so different from person to person. And it's also what really hurts us the most is because we're always looking at what doesn't overwhelm somebody else.
How can they do it? Because that, and just that phrase right there do it all is at the crux of overwhelm. This belief that you have to do it all all the time and do it perfectly, do it seamlessly. Do it well, do it without any stumbles or challenges or anything, we're just supposed to do it and get it done.
And so what if instead we looked at, instead of saying, how can I get started when everything feels overwhelming? How well we start to add. Why am I overwhelmed in the first place? What got me here? Why, why do I feel this way? Why do I feel like I am the one that has to do it all all the time now let's just be very honest here that sometimes it's a matter of survival mode.
You know, there are times in our lives, everybody, especially. When you have kids that there are just time seasons moments of survival mode, where you're just trying to get through the day. Okay. And you're just trying to get through those, those moments without breaking, and you're just trying to survive.
And there are circumstances and situations outside of our control, you know, that that really caused us to be overwhelmed. Those are not in our control. And so it's not that there's so much to do. And you feel you need to do it all. Sometimes it's a matter of, there's just a lot of stuff to do. We're not necessarily talking about survival mode and I'd also really encourage you.
I think we're going to do a future episode where we talk more about survival mode. I've done previous episodes on it, but I want to dive in a little bit more because I think oftentimes we think we're in survival. But we're actually not. And what's happening is we're tricking ourselves into thinking that we're in survival mode, um, as a way to protect ourselves from growing.
It's like, well, I just, I can't, I'm in survival mode right now, but really it's kind of like, I look at it like this, if you were, if you're trying to survive in a body of water, like the ocean and you feel like you're drowning, but there's like a life jacket sitting right next to you. And you're like, oh, I didn't even know there was a life jacket there.
I was too busy flailing to even realize there was a life jacket here. Oh, okay, cool. I can put this on. Oh. And now that I have a life jacket on and I can breathe a little bit more, you know what else? There's a little rowboat next to me. Didn't even notice it because I was too busy flailing and then too busy floating.
And I didn't even realize that's what we want to get to is the point where we realize maybe I'm not in survival mode. Maybe I just think that I am, because my ego hasn't convinced me of that, but that's a separate thing. Well in itself right there. So what I saw, because I speak from experience, you know, these things I talk about, I don't talk about them.
Um, without speaking, from experience, most things I talk about I've experienced in my life. I don't like to talk about things if I haven't, because it's really difficult for me to give advice or guidance or encouragement or help on something. And I've never experienced. And also it's really obnoxious when somebody gives you advice on something and they're like, I mean, I've never gone through it, but I think this is what you should do now.
I want to help you through what I've gone through as well. That feeling of overwhelming, we can trace back many times to misaligned priority. And committing to too much at once. That's oftentimes what it is, it's misaligned priorities. It's I say that these things are important over here, but I'm focusing my attention on these things over here.
And so when those, when, what you say is your priority is not lining up to what you're doing and over committing yourself to things, whether it's in your home, in your job, in your business with relationships, Not setting boundaries, what, whatever it is, it's this idea of misaligned priorities and committing to too much at once.
So this feeling of where do I start? Because it feels overwhelming. The first thing we have to look at really is what are my priorities? What do I prioritize at this season? What do I priorities prioritize today? Even if we don't have the time or the energy or the bandwidth to look at our life priorities and how they fit in.
You know, to, to the greater part of our life. What about just today? What am I prioritizing today? Because if I'm say I prioritize one thing, then I really don't need to focus on the things that aren't part of that priority. So there's almost no reason to be overwhelmed or. Now again, that does not mean that we guilt ourselves for feeling overwhelmed or that we start to say, oh my gosh.
See, I can't believe that I was overwhelmed. None of us know this and in the moment, those feelings are so real that it's hard to get out of that. But if we can just ask ourselves the question, what is my priority right now in this season, or in this day, it can start to help. We also have to notice how we react in the face of being overwhelmed because all of us are different.
Mine is avoidance. Yep. That's mine. And I know many of you can relate. It's like, I'll just avoid, you know, I'll avoid and I will distract myself. It's avoidance and distraction. I'll distract myself with something else that is not important to avoid the thing that feels overwhelming. 'cause, I don't want to sift through what is actually important to me.
I don't want to do that work. So I avoid and distracts some of us shut down or procrastinate or overly worry or over plan. That's another part is like, well, I'm overwhelmed. So you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to spend the next two weeks planning, planning, planning, planning, planning, and then we get to the two weeks is up and we've planned.
And then we're like, Ugh. It's still not good enough though. I'm going to keep planning and we don't actually do anything, um, or freak out, right. Or get angry or, or feel guilty or go down a rabbit hole of shame. We all react to that feeling differently. And we have to honor that and understand how we all react differently.
And so ask yourself, how do I react in the face of that so that we can acknowledge that when we know what our personal reactions are. We can work through them easier without the guilt and shame. But so many of us are used to stuffing that down. We're used to stuffing all of those things down and shaming ourselves for it and feeling guilty about it.
So I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 elements, like six questions that I want. I want you to ask yourself. When it comes to being overwhelmed and these are probably going to be very mind blowing. So I w this is a podcast. You can pause it, pause it at any time, go back to it at any time. Um, so maybe give yourself some time to listen to these and listen to me, explain them, and then come back and ask yourself these questions, write them down and, and give yourself some time to think about it because they are so mind blowing.
When we start to recognize, like, is this really overwhelming or is this something else? Am I overwhelmed or have I been conditioned to believe I'm supposed to be able to do it all at once? Okay. I'm going to repeat that. Am I overwhelmed? Or have I just been conditioned to believe I'm supposed to be able to do all of this at once because truthfully that's really what a lot of this overwhelming is.
It's conditioning that I'm supposed to be able to do all of this. That doesn't make it true. Some being conditioned being, I will even say indoctrinated, I'm being told over and over establishing that belief system doesn't make it true. Uh, there's many things that many of us believe about ourselves, even about the world that aren't necessarily true.
They're just a part of our beliefs. So we have to ask, am I really overwhelmed and don't know where to start? Or have I just been conditioned to believe I'm supposed to do all of this all at once? Am I overwhelmed or have I over obligated myself? You know, now I want to be clear. It could be both. It's like, yes, I'm overwhelmed.
The point is, yeah, this is, this is a little cheeky. It's a little supposed to be. It's supposed to be a little bold in this. It's like, is it really this? Or is it that, am I overwhelmed? Or have I over obligated? We over obligate ourselves to other people all the time and, and to ourselves, honestly. And so if we're overwhelmed, it's like, yeah, but have I over obligated myself?
So I feel like there's too much to do, but in reality, it doesn't actually align with my priorities. I've just over obligated myself to stuff that I don't need to be doing. Am I overwhelmed or am I trying to please people? Am I a people pleaser? Am I really overwhelmed again? Or am I just trying to please?
Am I overwhelmed or am I trying not to disappoint other people big one with women? Big as Vivian from pretty woman was saying big, huge. That is a huge one. Am I overwhelmed? Or am I trying not to disappoint people? Because that feeling comes up when you're trying so hard to do it all right. And do it all perfectly and get it all done and not.
Other people could be our family, friends, spouse, partners, kids, you know, our former selves, our boss, our best friend, our neighbor, someone at school. So am I really, am, am I actually truly overwhelmed by this stuff? Or is it that I'm trying to do so much to not disappoint other people? Am I overwhelmed or am I trying to meet expectations?
I never agreed. Big one, just because someone has expectations of you doesn't mean you're obligated to meet them. That's on them. Their expectations of you are on them. Just like your expectations of other people are on you. They are not obligated to me. Expectations. They never agreed to it's like forcing someone to uphold a contract that you created for them that they never signed.
Right. It would be like if someone came to my house and said, Hey, You owe us money for this house, for this house somewhere. And I'm like, I don't own that house. And they're like, I know, but we wanted you to buy the house. And so, uh, we, you know, put up this contract and we, uh, we created this contract and now you owe us money for this house.
And it's like, I didn't sign that contract. I know, but I had the expectation that. Well, that's not my problem. And so what we do in life is we do this to other people and we let other people do this to us, unbeknownst to us many times a lot of this is unconscious. And so we have to ask, am I really overwhelmed?
Or am I just trying to meet expectations? I never agreed to in the first. Am I overwhelmed or am I craving having control over everything? I'm sorry, but that one is so big. And like, I'm not even going to apologize, not, sorry, not sorry, moms out there. We have control issues out the wazoo. And so a lot of times when we are overwhelmed by all the things we think we need to do, it's because we're trying to have control over everything.
We want the proverbial cake and eat it. I want everyone to help me. I want help. No one helps me. My spouse, my husband, my partner, my kids everyone's lazy. No one helps me, but at the same time we refuse the help. We don't allow people to help us. We want control over everything. We crave control over everything we're used to having control over everything.
So we overwhelm ourselves. We create an atmosphere of overwhelm for ourselves because we are craving having control. And then we call it overwhelmed. I'm just overwhelmed by everything. I have someone. Right now in my head that I can think of that is constantly talking about over how overwhelmed she is.
And I'm sure she has again, feeling valid, always, but then you look at her actions and it's like, no one helps me. I have to do everything myself. But then when someone asks to help her, it's like, you don't do it right. Anyway, you don't even do it. You had said I have to do everything myself. Well, we have to pick it up.
That's a conversation about martyrdom, which we have talked about on this podcast before. So asking, am I overwhelmed or am I just con craving control over everything? Okay. Those questions right. There are so important to just to start to starting this. Okay. Just starting this conversation with your. And then saying, what is my priority in this moment or in this season, if you want to go a little bigger, you can say in this season, but in this moment, if you're overwhelmed, because we're talking about starting, when it feels overwhelming, great in this moment, what is my priority?
If you looked again, if you looked at a messy room, you know, and you're just like, oh my gosh, it's so much, I'm overwhelmed by all of it. You look at maybe a pile of photos that you want to put. To photo books, you want to put into photo albums and you're like, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming, right? There's just so much here.
If you want to get started, we have to ask yourself, well, what's the priority. The priority is to get all of these in this book, but we get to choose by when, see what happens is we say, well, I have to do it all. Okay. But do you have to do it all today? No, we get to choose when, unless it's something outside of our control and that's a different story.
But in this case, in many of these cases, we put those self-imposed expectations onto ourselves. No one else does it. No one sat down and said you are obligated to put all of these thousands of photos in these photos. Tonight. No, we do that to ourselves. So then that causes overwhelm for us, which then causes us to react in whatever way we react.
Maybe we overly plan procrastinate, avoid distract, however we do it. And then now what happens? The photos don't get put in, instead of saying what's my priority in this moment? Well, my priority in this moment is to spend the next 20 minutes doing this. Great. That's it? Well, my priority overall, my goal overall is to get these here.
In the next month. Awesome. So now we can just little by little work on it, but my priority in the moment is just to do 20 minutes of this, because I know if I do 20 minutes, then it's better than zero minutes. Right. And then what would help me feel better right now? We just don't ask ourselves that enough.
We don't ask as moms. We just don't ask what would feel good for me? What would make me feel better right now? Just to get maybe just to get a little bit done of something. Would it feel better to see a little bit of progress. Great. Then do that thing. So here are three things that you can do right now.
If you're feeling very overwhelmed in a situation and you want to get started, number one, breathe yet. Another thing we don't do enough of really breathe. Obviously we're breathing all day unconscious. We don't even recognize it's completely involuntary. Thank you body. But I'm talking about the conscious breathing, the really.
Deep breath that we give ourself the honoring of our body and our nervous system. And recognizing when we're in that fight or flight moment and saying, I can breathe. I feel myself. I feel my feet on the ground. I feel my hands. I'm just going to. The next thing that I'm a huge fan of when we're overwhelmed by anything is do a brain dump, just brain dump, everything out.
Lot of times, what is most overwhelming is what is going on in our head that we don't actually get out. We're S it's like, it's swimming around in there and we need to get it out and just put it somewhere where we can see it visually, because not everything that we think of in our head is something we're actually going to do.
It's just swimming around in there and it's creating. This muck and this, this like soup of stuff and it's, it's really murky. And so we have to get it out to go, oh, you know what? I have this down. And I don't know, like a week later I'm looking at it. I don't even care about that. You know, check it off, erase it, uh, put a line through it.
Um, but doing that brain dump is such a huge way to just get it all out. And then my favorite thing to do, put a timer on for five minutes and get. Obviously it can be longer, but I just love the five minute timer, put it on for five minutes and do something because that five minutes is going to create momentum for you.
It's going to help you feel less overwhelmed. Is it going to solve everything? Probably not. Those feelings are going to be there and it's going to take a long time to work through them, but at least it's getting started. Right. We are always trying to not feel how we feel instead of recognizing the feelings for what they are and what they can teach us.
And so what I really want to leave you with. Feel the feelings feel the overwhelm and work through those feelings. Instead of trying to say, I just never want to feel overwhelmed again. That's probably not going to happen. It's probably not going to happen that there's never a good, really never going to be a time where there's like just the right amount of things to do for your season, for your particular, uh, emotions that day for your mood.
That day overwhelmed. Is going to happen and we just have to honor it for what it is. And I look at it, like, I just don't want to be chronically overwhelmed. I'm working through the chronic, that overwhelm as my default. I don't want it to be my default. I want peace and structure and happiness and joy and all those things to be my default and overwhelming as something that happens that I can work through.
Okay. Whew. That was a lot. That was a lot for a, for an episode. It's very deep again. I would go back and listen to this afterward, take some notes, breathe through it. And then do some of the things that we talked about in here, especially around prioritizing putting a timer on getting to work, but most importantly, asking yourself, why am I overwhelmed in the first place?
Like, where is it coming from? Because it's going to be different for all of us. Now, as I mentioned, this is something huge, um, that we discuss inside homemaker issue, which is my signature home management program that helps moms in every single season, create a home that's manageable and I life that's uncomplicated and you can get all the information at homemaker ish.
The letter u.com. Now here's something big that I am announcing today. Uh, we are closing homemaker issue after this week. So if you're listening live great, if you're not listening live, um, then you may have to get on the wait list. We're actually closing it until March of 2022, but like late March of 2022, so awhile.
Um, and the reason for that is like I said, we are completely revamping it. So I'm going to be, um, completely rerecording everything. And re-imagining it and adding things. I mean, it is. We're going to talk about it all when it happens, but wow. The, the amount of value that our students are going to get, because you get lifetime access to it in these updates is incredible.
And so we're doing kind of a last, you know, a last ditch, if you want to get in, get in for this price right now, because it will not be this price. When we open it back up in March of 2020. Especially with all of the updates and upgrades that we're making. And so coming in now, I know the question is like, well, why would I join now?
If you're going to, like, I'm going to go through the lessons, you're going to revamp it. Know the basic sentiment of everything inside homemaker. She was the same. We're not changing, uh, our mission or anything. So you can join. Start listening to all of the lessons and get started. And then what a lot of our students do, even when we don't update it is they come back six months later and go through the lessons again, because guess what?
Their season has changed. And our students, especially those that have been in since 2016, when we opened it for the first time. I love the updates because what it does is it forces them to kind of go through it again and get a refresher on it. So you're getting the best of both worlds. You're getting all of this right now when you join, which means you can get a jumpstart on all of this and go into the new year.
With, uh, routines that work for you and your family, and a complete mindset shift and help with everything from meal planning, to cleaning, to time management and schedules and goals. All of that, you can get started with that. And then. Do our huge relaunch and completely update everything. You get access to that it's lifetime access.
You don't pay for the updates. You're going to get everything lifetime, which is incredible. We have so much to add next year. Can't wait for that. But this is the last time we're going to be closing the doors so that we can really. Focus our attention on the remodel as I'm calling it, which is all going to happen in February of 2022.
So you're not going to see any of those things. If you join right now, we're doing it on the backend and then we'll do one week. We'll just update everything and send out emails and let you guys know it's going to be great. Um, but we're just closing it down now so we can focus all of our attention on the backend and not marketing and, and all of that stuff.
If this sounds like the thing for you, if you've been on the fence for a while, this is absolutely the time to join, uh, before we close the doors because you won't be able to join until March of next year. Um, and I don't want you to have to wait. homemakerishu.com
Um, we have a video walkthrough there. We have every everything there that you need to figure out if it's the right thing for you. And, uh, that's how you can come in and join us before the doors closed. This has been a fantastic episode. I am a really happy with this. I might go listen to this myself later on, because there are areas where I am feeling a little bit of this overwhelming, and I, it is time for me to take my own advice.
I appreciate all of you for listening and sharing your thoughts with me on Instagram and sharing these episodes out. I'm just so grateful to all of you for sharing this out with your friends and your family and your audiences. It really just, it does my heart so happy to know that we're reaching people all over the world and we're reaching new people every single day.
So thank you for that. Thank you for leaving your amazing five-star reviews. Those are so important. I just love you and adore all of you so much, even if we don't know each other, just know that from afar, I adore you and I'm so thankful for you. So have a wonderful week and as always go forth and mother like a boss.
