Ep #13: Habits to Create a Calm Life

episode summary

Overwhelm is kind of like having a cavity. There's something you can do about it after you get one - go to the dentist and have it filled. But there are also things you can do to prevent every getting a cavity at all. It's the same with overwhelm - there are things you can do after it happens, and there are also ways to (mostly) overwhelm-proof your life in advance.

In today's episode I'll share 3 areas to focus on to help prevent overwhelm, and share strategies for incorporating these tips into your life without adding to your stress.

Tune in, then try out a tip or two and let me know how it goes!

Featured on the Show

• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

• Oura ring

• Bare: A 7-Week Program to Transform Your Body, Get More Energy, Feel Amazing, and Become the Bravest, Most Unstoppable Version of You by Susan Hyatt

• Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast episode 8: Clear the Clutter

• Arin Solange on Instagram

For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.

If you are sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed, I can help. I coach clients 1 on 1 on how to create a more calm, relaxing, intentional life. The first step is to set up a complimentary discovery session right here. 

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Want to learn more about me or my work? Head to my website at www.michellegauthier.com  

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CHAPTERS:

4:44 - Preventing Overwhelm

6:58 - Get Enough Sleep

14:49 - Move Your Body

19:41 - Organize Your Space

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• CLICK TO READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

  Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hey friends, thanks for joining. Happy almost 4th of July. If you're listening to this on the day it drops in the US and you're celebrating the 4th of July, today is a special day for me because it is my baby boy's 16th birthday. I can't even believe it. I can't stand it. Actually, I've just been reminiscing and looking through baby pics and marveling about how time flies. The craziest thing when I think about his actual birthday, the day he was born in 2007, is that I didn't even know he had been born. My own son. We didn't find out that he had been born until July 5th, so two days later. Now, lots of people who have adopted kids don't meet them until much later in their life. So I realized two days is not a big deal, but it is just really strange to think that on his actual birthday, the day he came into the world, I didn't even know he existed. And here he is now mine for 16 years. On July 4th, 2007, so he was one day old,we were at a party at a friend's house and every single couple there had kids except for us, and I had such a fun time at the party and I played with all my friends' kids and I loved their kids. But when we got home I just cried. It had been like years since we started trying to have a baby and we were on the list to adopt and I was just worn out and sad from waiting for so long. So I just find it so ironic that little did I know my baby had been born and that his birth parents had already chosen us, and we just didn't know it yet. And just the very next day I get the best call of my life. This baby boy had been born, his birth parents had chosen us, and they wanted us to come and pick him up that night. We were in complete and total shock, threw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase, borrowed a car seat and set off to go pick him up. It's so crazy to think like how quickly all of that happened and how, even when I was feeling sad, my problem, like the thing I was sad about, had already been solved and the best thing in the world was about to happen to me. So if you're just feeling that way today, like there's something that you've been hoping for in your life, the solution could be closer than you think. So happy birthday to my baby boy, who's now old enough to drive. There isn't a single day that goes by that I'm not so grateful for being his mom and Josie's mom, and for all four of their birth parents, who love them so much and made that hard, hard decision to place them with us so that we could raise them. I feel so lucky. Ooh, lots of love and gratitude today. Today's podcast is not how to prepare yourself for a baby if you are like me, where you were not expecting to get a baby and all of a sudden you have one. But I have to say, just as a general rule, I'm a huge advocate of adoption. I've served on a couple of boards. I've had countless I mean, I couldn't even count the number of conversations with people who are considering adoption. So if you're ever looking for an adoption advocate or you just want somebody to talk to, I am a great person for that. Okay, let's get down to business. All that love. If you are a regular listener of this podcast and you've tried some of the strategies and you've seen them work for you, I am so happy about that. I get great feedback all the time. In fact, someone recently asked me what was my favorite thing about having a podcast and that's what I said that people will comment or email me or just I'll run into somebody just out somewhere at the gym and they'll say, "oh, i used that thing you said about people pleasing and it really helped my day. It just makes me so happy. So if you've had that experience and you want more of that and you want to exponentially just make everything in your life so much better, so much faster, come and coach with me one-on-one. When we work together one-on-one I work with my clients for six months You can get all of the results that you have been dreaming of and we will focus on them every week and you will start feeling better right away. So if you love this podcast, that working with me one-on-one is like the podcast on steroids, specifically designed for you. If you want to do that, you just go to there's a link in the show notes or you can just go to my website, michellegauthier.com. On the Work With Me page there is a link to set up a free session to talk to me about one-on-one coaching. Let's dive right into today's topic. So a lot of the topics I talk about on the podcast, help you react or respond when life feels stressful or overwhelming. So, for example, when you have too much to do, I'll tell you to look at what's in your control and take action from there, which is episode two. When you are spending too much time worrying about what other people think of you, I'll teach you to stop people pleasing, which is episode three. I teach you how to say no, et cetera. But today what we're gonna talk about is we're gonna look at it from a different perspective and we're gonna talk about habits that you can start doing now that will prevent overwhelm and stress from starting. So it's the difference between brushing your teeth so you don't get cavities, instead of getting fillings once you have cavities in order to get them to stop hurting and getting bigger. So today is gonna be the brushing teeth kind of episode. I'm gonna give you a bunch of ideas on things that you can do to make your life more overwhelm-proof, but here's what I don't want you to do. I don't want you to put all these things on your to-do list and cause yourself more stress. I don't want you to beat yourself up because you're not doing some or all of these. I do want you to listen and see if one of these appeals to you and it's something that you could start doing. And for each one, each thing, I suggest, I suggest a couple tiny little steps that you can take, just to get started. So, instead of thinking, okay, I really wanna implement everything on this podcast, choose one and then choose one tiny step and just see if you can make a little progress with that one and see how it affects your life and see if you wanna do more. If you're already doing one or more of these, then pat yourself on the back. Sometimes we forget to celebrate what we're already doing, right, but, for example, one of them I'm gonna talk about is moving your body. So if you're a person who already has a habit of working out or taking walks or playing with your kids, then great. Pat yourself on the back that you're already doing that one. You're helping to overwhelm-proof your life already, and that's awesome. Okay. So listen all the way through, choose one that sounds like it could really help you, choose the tiny step and then, once you've got that nailed, come and listen again and pick the next one. The first way to make your life overwhelm- and stress-proof (more overwhelm and stress proof, it's impossible to make your life stress-proof) is sleep. Breaking news. You've heard it first here: sleep is good for you. I'm just kidding. I know everyone knows that sleep is good for you. That is a very obvious thing. But when we talk about it in terms of stress in our mind, the way that sleep helps if you get a good night's sleep, which is seven or more hours of sleep, it gives us the ability to deal with stress. It helps our memory. So not only does it help you have the capacity to make new memories when you rest your brain, but it also solidifies the memories that you had, or new things that you learned during that day, while you're sleeping. It helps you be more creative. A lot of times when we're stuck in stress, it's hard to come up with a new idea. So sleeping will help you be more creative and it helps you have better concentration. The first thing that buckles or breaks under sleep deprivation is concentration, and so when you can't concentrate, think about how much longer a work task takes you, for example. If you are just not in the mode, you're too tired and you can't concentrate, you can't get through that activity, which means you can't do the next one and you just end up feeling really stressed about it. I read this stat in the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, which is a fascinating book. It sounds weird to say a book about sleep is fascinating, but it has so many interesting facts in it, and one of the things it says is if you have 10 days in a row of getting less than seven hours of sleep, the brain is just as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for 24 hours. When I think about how I used to feel when I would do sleepovers as a kid or all-nighters as a graduate student, I could just get a sick feeling in my stomach for how yucky that felt. So what he's saying is if you go for extended periods without getting seven or more hours of sleep, your brain gets to that same dysfunctional level. Another fact that really stuck out to me when I read this book is the idea that when you're sleep deprived, we don't have the cognitive skills to know that we're sleep deprived, and it just made me think of like when you have a three-year-old and they just are having a fit and losing their mind because you handed them the wrong color cup, like you give them the green one and they wanted the red one, and you know that it's because they didn't take a nap, and they scream and cry and say "I'm not tired if you suggest they're tired, that's what it made me think of. So, as an adult, we really don't get better at that skill. We don't understand how much that tiredness and lack of sleep is really affecting us. So if you are a person who could use more sleep and I can't imagine there are too many people who are like nope, I don't need any more sleep, I'm good on it Here are some small steps that you could take. Step one - tiny step - just notice your sleep. If you have an iPhone, the Health app can really help with this. You can set your bedtime and it will remind you to go to bed and then it tracks how long you sleep, just based on you not picking up your phone and using your phone, so you can notice what time you go to bed, what time you get up. You could keep like a little notepad on the side of your bed or just put notes in your phone, because a lot of times we feel like, oh, I didn't get any sleep, but you actually did okay, or maybe there's a night where you feel like you were really stressed, but in the end you got a decent amount of sleep. So one small step to take is just to be able to clearly understand the problem, like how much sleep am I really getting? Are there days that I sleep more? For example, I always sleep - my phone told me this, that's how I know - I sleep an hour more or two hours more on the weekend I can't remember which one it was, but it was definitely more than I sleep during the week. This isn't so much of a tiny step because it's an investment, but one thing I invested in a couple years ago is the Oura ring O-U-R-A ring. If you don't know what that is, it's such a cool thing. I feel like I should do a commercial for it because I love it so much. This is not a commercial. This is just my own experience with it. It's a ring that you wear and it has sensors in it. The sensors keep track of your heart rate when you're sleeping. Even when you're sleeping, if you're in deep sleep or light sleep or REM sleep it automatically figures out when you're working out, based on your heart rate. So all throughout the day it's keeping data on you and when you're feeling rested and restored and when your heart rate's up or down. This was really helpful to me as far as sleep goes, because it really made me realize how I can affect my own sleep. For me personally, going to bed earlier. I think I'm just naturally kind of a morning person and going to bed earlier made me get better, deeper sleep. It was also really helpful in terms of it gives you a readiness score every day, so there were days where I realized today would actually be a better day for me to just get another hour's sleep instead of getting up and working out. So that was the day that I need to recover. So, anyway, if you want to make a bit of an investment, that's really cool. It's kind of like an Apple watch in terms of what it can collect data-wise, but I think it does even more. But it does not give you any messages or texts or anything like that, which I like. You have to go to the phone and look at the data that it's collected. Anyway, that's not such a tiny step, but if that's something that sounds interesting to you, you should totally check it out. I'll put the link in the show notes. Another small thing that you can do if getting sleep is something that you really need, is to take a 30-minute nap. I do this all the time, probably more days than I don't. I'm laughing when I initially wrote this podcast - when I write them, I just like make bullet points to remember to say things, and I wrote down naps good, alcohol bad. Maybe that's all you need to know for your sleep. Oh my gosh. This is another interesting study that was mentioned in that sleep book that I mentioned before. I'm just going to read it to you exactly. But in places where people take 30-minute naps as just part of their regular day this is the quote" it's perhaps unsurprising that in small enclaves of Greece where siestas still remain intact, such as the island of Ikaria, men are nearly four times as likely to reach the age of 90 as an American male." So I mean, my first thought on that is couldn't we have also checked on some women in this? But the study's about men, but I can't imagine that it would be so dramatically different for women. I absolutely love that because I love the power of an nap. I think turning off your brain at some point during the day and just getting a little rest, for me, it makes the evening hours so much easier, the hours when you're helping with homework and making dinner and doing all of that stuff. And then the last tiny step that you can take is to skip the nightcap. Having alcohol before you go to bed definitely I mean, there are many studies that support that it, definitely breaks up your sleep. It makes you more likely to wake up. For me, I used to always think of having a glass of wine before bed as something that would help me calm down and make me feel ready for sleep. And maybe it does make me feel ready for sleep. But I definitely wake up lots more. And now my Oura ring tells me that that's true if I drink before bed. Same goes for eating a big meal before bed. So if you're kind of hesitant because you don't really like that one, just try it for like two or three nights and see how it affects your sleep. Okay, so sleep is the number one suggested way to have a less stressful life, but number two is moving your body. Just like sleep, this is not groundbreaking news. Everybody knows it. Working out is good for you. Let's talk about specifically why it's good in terms of stress and mental health. When you work out or you move your body, it releases endorphins. I've always heard that word. I didn't necessarily really know what that meant, but endorphins are a natural I'm reading a quote here a natural cannabis-like brain chemical. It also releases other natural brain chemicals that can enhance your sense of well-being. So when we move our body, we actually release these chemicals that naturally make us feel better. If you just think about it, if you've been ever in the situation where you're sitting at your desk, or if you don't have a desk kind of job where you're just working so hard and focusing on it and then you break it up by going for a walk. I'm even thinking about when I would just walk to my car at lunchtime to go get lunch somewhere. Getting up from your desk means your shoulders can relax for a second and your mind can just turn and focus on something else. Also, moving your body helps you sleep better, so it's like a two-for-one. You can get that first subject we talked about at the same time. I'm a morning workout person myself and I always find that it's amazing, no matter how I feel when I walk into the gym, even if I'm feeling stressed or like I have a million things to do that day and I'll come out and nothing has happened. It's not like anything got done while I was working out, but I just magically quote "magically" feel great after I workout. So if you're a person who is already doing that, you know the effects of working out and how that can help you. But if you are not a person who regularly moves your body, here are some small steps that you can take. First of all, I talked about this a little bit at the beginning of the podcast, but I feel like people will say I really need to start working out, and what they mean is I need to go from zero days a week to like six days a week of working out. Start small. You can go for a little walk, even one day a week. You can dance in your kitchen. You can take a walk at work, even if that just means making a loop around the office on your way to and from the bathroom. Just going the long way. You can jump on the trampoline with your kids. You can take them to the pool and swim with them. Not laps, but just, you know, swim in the pool, have fun with them. Or do laps if that suits you. I would never do that because I am not a great swimmer. You can also just meet with a friend, even for a short walk. Our bodies produce that endorphin when we exercise at all. So when you have depleted all of your concentration and focus, just take a stroll. I have a friend, a long time friend from high school, who happens to live like a block away and when one of us is having a particularly stressful day, we plan a walk. So if one of us texts the other and says, can you walk today at four o'clock, it's like, yeah, okay, you know we need to do that for the other person's sake. And sometimes they're short and sometimes they're long, but we always end up feeling better. And I'm laughing as I say that because we always end up laughing. It doesn't matter how frustrated we were when we start walking, we always end up making each other laugh. So meet with a friend is a great small step to take, and my last small step in the category of moving your body is to try to think of something. And maybe the first small step is just to think of something and do a little bit of research on it. But think of an exercise or a way to move your body that sounds like fun to you. And then just try it once and see what you think. A great book to check out on this topic is Bare B-A-R-E by Susan Hyatt. I'll put the link in the show notes. But the whole book is based on adding more pleasure to your life in order to love your body. The book has a ton of great ideas for choosing a workout or movement that sounds like fun to you. But some of the ones that I was like, oh gosh, these are all great ideas. She's got pages of them. But ballroom dancing, boxing (I think I told you on a podcast I tried that one, that was fun), hiking, kayaking, pickleball - I wanna join a pickleball league. I feel like that's the new cool thing to do. All of the tennis courts in our area are being turned into pickleball. I love those. Pole dancing, sex, skating. One of my girlfriends took up roller skating and she loves it so much. Surfing, whatever sounds like fun to you. Research where you can do it in your area can give it a try, because the idea that exercise has to be hard and miserable just isn't true. It's supposed to be fun while you're doing it and then you'll get the benefits after. Okay, my third idea for how to overwhelm proof your life is to have an organized home. Just even saying that out loud makes me automatically think of any place in my home that isn't organized. So if that just happened to you and you're like, oh overwhelm, just remember we're talking about taking small, tiny steps to move in the direction of having a more organized home. How does it help to have a more organized home? Cluttered home, cluttered mind, is how I think of it, and this is a hundred percent true for me. I think everyone is affected by the space that they're in, some people more than others. I literally can't think clearly when my home is a mess. It saves so much time too when you're organized. If you think about every unfiled piece of paper or item of clothing on the floor is just a reminder of something that you still need to accomplish, and so it just takes up so much time and energy. Every time you look at it and the thoughts that you have about it and the reminder that there are things that you need to do. And think of the time that you could save if you could just picture in like a year, if you could magically add up all the time that you waste in a year looking for things because they don't have a place that you can easily find them every time. I just cleaned out my car yesterday because I was having someone come to detail it and I literally found five missing water bottles in my car, most of them in the trunk. And I get so irritated because every time I go to work out in the morning and I want to just grab a water bottle and put some water in it, I can't find one and I'm like I know we have 1700 water bottles. Why can't I find a water bottle right now? Another thing that organizing will do is just allow you to exercise control over something. So a lot of times when I'm coaching you guys on this podcast, what I'm saying is let go of everything that's out of your control. You can't control that. You don't want to worry about that because you can't control it. Organizing is totally in your control. So if your jonesing to control something, start organizing. It feels good and it has these great results so that you can just wake up in the morning and feel so much more calm in your own home. So if this appeals to you and this is the thing on this podcast that you want to try. Here are three small steps that you can try. Number one listen to podcast number eight on decluttering and declutter one small area. Maybe you clean out your car, like I did, or one drawer, or your purse. Episode eight gives really specific instructions and even has a free downloadable worksheet that you can use for reference. The other thing you can do is just take a second and think about in your house The area that weighs on you most mentally. We have these cubbies right when you walk inside our kitchen and every time I think of them I just sort of feel stressed because I know there's so much crap in there. So think about what that area is for you and then invite a friend to come over and work on it with you and return the favor and do the same thing at their house. That makes it fun. You can do a fun visit with a friend and you can both feel better about an area of your house. Even if you take absolutely no 'action-a ction' like start cleaning something out,something fun you can do is just start dreaming of your organized space. Think about how you would love for your house to look, even just in your mind. Look at Pinterest, watch The Home Edit on Netflix. I will put the name of an organizer I love on Instagram, Arin Solange, I'll put that in the show notes, and just start dreaming about what your home could look like. Even daydreaming about it will eventually get you to take action on it. There are two other big areas that I really want to talk about and I'm gonna do separate podcasts on, because they are so important to creating a life that is less stressful. One is doing a morning routine and one is having a time during the day to quiet your mind, so like meditation or something like that. So I'm gonna do separate podcasts on each one of those, and you'll see those coming up later on this summer, but for now, take one of those three areas that I talked about sleep, moving your body, or organizing your home and take one of the tiny steps that I recommended and let me know how it goes. I'd love to hear from you. A s always, if this was helpful, please leave a review. That would be wonderful and help other people find this podcast as well. Have a fantastic day, and I hope that when you implement one of these, you'll wake up tomorrow feeling a little bit less stressed. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.

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