January 31, 2024 • 10 mins
Sally Spicer and Shelley Laslett are back to unravel the universal emotion of overwhelm. Discover a trove of techniques and insights to not just face but conquer overwhelm and unlock your very own growth mindset.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Mindset, a guide to getting out of your
own way and a blueprint for professional success. Today, neuroscientist
Shelley Lazlett is here to help us understand and obliterate overwhelm.
I would probably say I have a fun tendency to
overbook myself. And in doing so, uh, I say yes
(00:22):
to too many things, and then it all piles up
and I start to lose control of the calendar, and
then it all just gets very overwhelm overwhelming, and, um,
I'm not sleeping because I'm stressed thinking about what's coming next,
but then because I'm not sleeping, I'm naturally not feeling
my best. So then it's just an endless cycle of
exhaustion and anxiety.
(00:43):
Shelly, I want to talk about when you're considering a
new professional move, maybe it's returning after a career break,
maybe it's a new role, maybe it's retraining in a
new industry altogether. But you know the change is going
to be difficult and you're feeling overwhelmed because of everything
else that's going on in your life. How do you
decide whether or not you should take that leap?
Yeah, so timing is everything. I would say that you
(01:05):
know your situation better than anybody else will. I think
we're gonna talk necessarily a little bit about apprehension and
procrastination a little bit later on, so I'll park that
for now. But I think overwhelm, it comes back to
first principles. We need to silence the critic and the noise,
and we need to remind ourselves we're still on the platform.
We're not yet on the train, and we're not yet
at the destination. So if you're panicking and worrying about
(01:26):
the future, that's what you will generate. Your brain will
seek to find data points to validate why this might
or might not happen, or I can't.
can't do it because of this. What we need to
do is break down the overwhelm. We need to come
back into the moment, one thing at a time. This moment,
this day, what do I need to do right now?
prioritise and remind yourself that actually you are in control.
Overwhelmed generally stipulates when we feel really out of control. Remember,
(01:47):
our minds are a pattern and connection recognition machine. We
want to be able to predict. Overwhelm comes when there's
too many things that we can't break down and we
can't put into a sequential, or, or I guess, comprehensive
order that we understand.
So
First of all, we've got to silence the critic or
silence the noise. Remember, if it's sort of a conversation
(02:07):
or it's a voice, or it's a, it's a song
you don't want to listen to, you just skip it.
So park the things that are getting in the way
that are just creating noise. And noise can be, Well,
what about this? And how would I go pick up
the keys? And what would that, that's, that's noise. OK,
what do I need to do right now?
Is this role the right thing for me?
Right, if I did take this role, what are the
(02:30):
things that I would do to ensure I could still
be there for school pickup and drop off? Or what
are the things I would do to make sure that
I wouldn't have late night course? Whatever it is, that's
problem solving, that's reducing the overwhelm, that's thinking through the scenarios.
And get really basic, make a list. What are the
reasons this supports what I want, what's the for, what's
the against, and of the against, if I look at
(02:52):
the reasons why, can I practically address any of those challenges?
Could I do it so that, you know, my partner
does the pickup, or there's grandparents, or there's nannies, or
there's family friends? Is there a way it can actually work?
So that's problem solving, that's not getting overwhelmed. So that
list is really important. And then, once you have that list,
(03:12):
kind of investigate it a little further. So if those negatives,
those against, are they stories you've told yourselves? Are they
beliefs about
What other people might think and feel, or are they
actual practical realities about why this might not be the
right time to execute on this idea? Because if there
are things that you're worried about what other people will think,
you have to ask yourself a really clear question. What
(03:35):
would I need to make this happen? What would I
need to make this work? What do I need to do?
What can I actually control here? So if the dream
job's amazing, but it requires you to move to Geneva
and that's not practical, that's not practical.
You know, and invert commas dream job. Beware of dream jobs.
When people talk about dream jobs, I just feel apprehension
in me. I'm like, you either have an understanding that
there's nothing negative about this position, in which case, you know,
(03:58):
there'll be a hard downfall on the other side because
all workplaces have their challenges. Or a dream job is
this point in time, and it's actually what you mean
is it's the right job for right now. But obviously,
that doesn't sound as sexy as dream job, so I
get why people say it.
Um, and it's also the playing through the scenarios. So,
if I could remedy all those things that were the against,
(04:19):
how would I feel? Would I actually feel overwhelmed about this,
or would I feel quite comforted? And if you can remedy,
you can find practical solutions for those against, but you
still feel overwhelmed and you still feel uncomfortable, then you
need to dig a little deeper. You know, it might
look good on paper, it might look like the right job,
but I just don't, it doesn't feel right.
You know, there's been times that I've had fantastic opportunities,
(04:42):
fortunately put in front of me.
That look great, but I'm like, I just don't care.
I just don't care about that product. I'm just not
excited about it. I'm just not motivated to want to
work on that thing. That's an amazing opportunity. That's an
amazing gig.
But I just don't care in the same way that
(05:02):
I care about this other stuff. And when I say
I don't care, it's not like I don't care at all.
It's just I'm not motivated. And what I know is
that if I'm not motivated, all the really cool things, salary, location, perks, people,
some of that's gonna rub off, and I'm gonna get
that inherent graining in myself that I'm not being true
to myself, that I'm not being honest, and that's gonna
(05:23):
make things worse for me. I'm gonna get that really
uncomfortable feeling.
So that process is just about understanding, am I overwhelmed
because I don't know how it's gonna work or am
I overwhelmed because I'm worried it's the wrong decision. And
those things are a bit different. So that process is
just about working out which one it is and then
choosing the right path from there.
OK, so the flip side of that hesitation for me
(05:45):
is determination. Being committed to the long-term goal, even if
it's tricky, and even if you get some setbacks in
the short term. What are your strategies for doing that? Yeah,
so determination is, is good and bad.
You know, like determination versus headstrong, stubborn, you know, it's
actually the same thing. It just depends on how you
dress it up. So what I wanna say there is
that any strength overplayed becomes a weakness. I think blind determination,
(06:09):
like the pursuit of your goals, independent of everything else. So,
sacrificing my career responsibilities,
Sacrificing how I feel at home, sacrificing the person I
want to be to my family and friends and my community,
that level of determination can be quite detrimental. So it
doesn't mean that that dream isn't important. It just means
that it has to be balanced with the existing arenas,
the places that you already are, and the impacts to them. Now,
(06:31):
I think I'm guilty of this, so sometimes I can
become too determined as well. Like, I sometimes I'm blind
in this pursuit of my determined ideas, and then I
have to kind of check myself and be like, Oh,
hang on, you're not turning up in the places that
you said you would turn up and you're not being
the version of you that you want to. Is this
thing as important right now? Does it need to take
up all of this air time and energy right now? So,
(06:53):
Determination, if we think about it, if we go back
to what I was talking about with Angela Duckworth's doctrine
of grit, it's just perseverance. But it's knowing that that
determination doesn't have to be at a 10 all the time.
Sometimes it's gonna be at a 2, sometimes it can
be at a 5, sometimes it can be at a 1,
and all of that is OK. It doesn't mean that
(07:14):
you're not determined and you just have to, like, whip
yourself into gear and drive hard at it like you've
never driven before.
It just means that it has to be balanced in
relation to the other things that you now need to
do and the other sort of roles that you play
in your life now. It's quite easy to be that determined,
you know, when you're younger and you don't have those responsibilities.
(07:36):
And it's equally, you know, easy to be determined when
you feel like you don't have anybody else to think about,
is that yourself. So, the determination part is it just
has to be balanced, right? And if you take your
foot off the accelerator for a period of time and
you don't go 100 miles an hour, it doesn't mean
you're less determined or you're less likely to succeed. It's
just about pace. It's about marathon pace, not sprint pace.
(08:00):
OK, let's talk about growth mindsets. I feel like it's
a term most of us have probably heard at some point.
What is a growth mindset and how do you build one?
Yeah, so I think, um, in popular times, mindset has
lost a lot of meaning and in some cases, sort
of like gets completely taken out of concept. Like, it's
used as, oh, I'm really suffering, I'm having a hard time. Oh,
you just need the right mindset. But that, but I'm
(08:21):
talking about mindset, and what I'm about to explain it
does not apply to that situation. Mindset isn't this blanket
or you just need X mindset and all your problems
will go away and everything will get easier. Mindset simply
means the way we view things, and our perspective, which
frames our thinking and thereby,
Sort of influences what we see and how we behave. Well,
we're talking about growth mindset. It comes from a lady
(08:41):
called Carol Dweck, and Dweck's book about growth mindset, it's, uh,
called Growth Mindset The New Psychology for Success, is all
about how do you position yourself into an opportunity to
learn versus trying to be right from fear of failure.
I think Paul Dweck, as an author, has probably suffered
the price of popularity, where people take her doctrine out
of context constantly.
(09:03):
And we often see it, um, in neoliberal democracies, where
it's just like, you just have to try harder and
just ignore all those structural inequalities and challenges that are
in your way. That's not what growth mindset is. What
we're talking about in growth mindset is we
Basically believe that, uh, people with their most basic abilities
have developed through hard work and that brains and talents
(09:25):
are just the starting point. You know, who you are
is just the starting point. But what we actually do
through a growth mindset is this belief in getting better,
this belief in these are opportunities to develop, to enhance,
to grow, to adapt. These are not opportunities for me
to fail as a person, and therefore fail in what
I'm doing.
Fundamentally a growth mindset is a belief in getting better,
(09:47):
not being perfect, cause perfect doesn't exist.
In our next episode, join Helen McCabe and Jamila Risby
as they share how they cope with Overwhelm and how
they forge a sense of decisiveness.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Focus on your why. When things are getting tough, it's
easy to lose sight of why you just started doing
something in the first place. Your why is the reason
behind your
Goals. It's not the goal itself, it's the reason you're
pursuing the goal. So your why is what's going to
keep you going when things get hard, when they get challenging,
and it's what's gonna give you some real determination to
keep pushing things forward.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Mindset is created by FW Jobs Academy with support from
the Australian government's Office for Women.
Welcome to Mindset, a guide to getting out of your
own way and a blueprint for professional success. Today, neuroscientist
Shelley Lazlett is here to help us understand and obliterate overwhelm.
I would probably say I have a fun tendency to
overbook myself. And in doing so, uh, I say yes
(00:22):
to too many things, and then it all piles up
and I start to lose control of the calendar, and
then it all just gets very overwhelm overwhelming, and, um,
I'm not sleeping because I'm stressed thinking about what's coming next,
but then because I'm not sleeping, I'm naturally not feeling
my best. So then it's just an endless cycle of
exhaustion and anxiety.
(00:43):
Shelly, I want to talk about when you're considering a
new professional move, maybe it's returning after a career break,
maybe it's a new role, maybe it's retraining in a
new industry altogether. But you know the change is going
to be difficult and you're feeling overwhelmed because of everything
else that's going on in your life. How do you
decide whether or not you should take that leap?
Yeah, so timing is everything. I would say that you
(01:05):
know your situation better than anybody else will. I think
we're gonna talk necessarily a little bit about apprehension and
procrastination a little bit later on, so I'll park that
for now. But I think overwhelm, it comes back to
first principles. We need to silence the critic and the noise,
and we need to remind ourselves we're still on the platform.
We're not yet on the train, and we're not yet
at the destination. So if you're panicking and worrying about
(01:26):
the future, that's what you will generate. Your brain will
seek to find data points to validate why this might
or might not happen, or I can't.
can't do it because of this. What we need to
do is break down the overwhelm. We need to come
back into the moment, one thing at a time. This moment,
this day, what do I need to do right now?
prioritise and remind yourself that actually you are in control.
Overwhelmed generally stipulates when we feel really out of control. Remember,
(01:47):
our minds are a pattern and connection recognition machine. We
want to be able to predict. Overwhelm comes when there's
too many things that we can't break down and we
can't put into a sequential, or, or I guess, comprehensive
order that we understand.
So
First of all, we've got to silence the critic or
silence the noise. Remember, if it's sort of a conversation
(02:07):
or it's a voice, or it's a, it's a song
you don't want to listen to, you just skip it.
So park the things that are getting in the way
that are just creating noise. And noise can be, Well,
what about this? And how would I go pick up
the keys? And what would that, that's, that's noise. OK,
what do I need to do right now?
Is this role the right thing for me?
Right, if I did take this role, what are the
(02:30):
things that I would do to ensure I could still
be there for school pickup and drop off? Or what
are the things I would do to make sure that
I wouldn't have late night course? Whatever it is, that's
problem solving, that's reducing the overwhelm, that's thinking through the scenarios.
And get really basic, make a list. What are the
reasons this supports what I want, what's the for, what's
the against, and of the against, if I look at
(02:52):
the reasons why, can I practically address any of those challenges?
Could I do it so that, you know, my partner
does the pickup, or there's grandparents, or there's nannies, or
there's family friends? Is there a way it can actually work?
So that's problem solving, that's not getting overwhelmed. So that
list is really important. And then, once you have that list,
(03:12):
kind of investigate it a little further. So if those negatives,
those against, are they stories you've told yourselves? Are they
beliefs about
What other people might think and feel, or are they
actual practical realities about why this might not be the
right time to execute on this idea? Because if there
are things that you're worried about what other people will think,
you have to ask yourself a really clear question. What
(03:35):
would I need to make this happen? What would I
need to make this work? What do I need to do?
What can I actually control here? So if the dream
job's amazing, but it requires you to move to Geneva
and that's not practical, that's not practical.
You know, and invert commas dream job. Beware of dream jobs.
When people talk about dream jobs, I just feel apprehension
in me. I'm like, you either have an understanding that
there's nothing negative about this position, in which case, you know,
(03:58):
there'll be a hard downfall on the other side because
all workplaces have their challenges. Or a dream job is
this point in time, and it's actually what you mean
is it's the right job for right now. But obviously,
that doesn't sound as sexy as dream job, so I
get why people say it.
Um, and it's also the playing through the scenarios. So,
if I could remedy all those things that were the against,
(04:19):
how would I feel? Would I actually feel overwhelmed about this,
or would I feel quite comforted? And if you can remedy,
you can find practical solutions for those against, but you
still feel overwhelmed and you still feel uncomfortable, then you
need to dig a little deeper. You know, it might
look good on paper, it might look like the right job,
but I just don't, it doesn't feel right.
You know, there's been times that I've had fantastic opportunities,
(04:42):
fortunately put in front of me.
That look great, but I'm like, I just don't care.
I just don't care about that product. I'm just not
excited about it. I'm just not motivated to want to
work on that thing. That's an amazing opportunity. That's an
amazing gig.
But I just don't care in the same way that
(05:02):
I care about this other stuff. And when I say
I don't care, it's not like I don't care at all.
It's just I'm not motivated. And what I know is
that if I'm not motivated, all the really cool things, salary, location, perks, people,
some of that's gonna rub off, and I'm gonna get
that inherent graining in myself that I'm not being true
to myself, that I'm not being honest, and that's gonna
(05:23):
make things worse for me. I'm gonna get that really
uncomfortable feeling.
So that process is just about understanding, am I overwhelmed
because I don't know how it's gonna work or am
I overwhelmed because I'm worried it's the wrong decision. And
those things are a bit different. So that process is
just about working out which one it is and then
choosing the right path from there.
OK, so the flip side of that hesitation for me
(05:45):
is determination. Being committed to the long-term goal, even if
it's tricky, and even if you get some setbacks in
the short term. What are your strategies for doing that? Yeah,
so determination is, is good and bad.
You know, like determination versus headstrong, stubborn, you know, it's
actually the same thing. It just depends on how you
dress it up. So what I wanna say there is
that any strength overplayed becomes a weakness. I think blind determination,
(06:09):
like the pursuit of your goals, independent of everything else. So,
sacrificing my career responsibilities,
Sacrificing how I feel at home, sacrificing the person I
want to be to my family and friends and my community,
that level of determination can be quite detrimental. So it
doesn't mean that that dream isn't important. It just means
that it has to be balanced with the existing arenas,
the places that you already are, and the impacts to them. Now,
(06:31):
I think I'm guilty of this, so sometimes I can
become too determined as well. Like, I sometimes I'm blind
in this pursuit of my determined ideas, and then I
have to kind of check myself and be like, Oh,
hang on, you're not turning up in the places that
you said you would turn up and you're not being
the version of you that you want to. Is this
thing as important right now? Does it need to take
up all of this air time and energy right now? So,
(06:53):
Determination, if we think about it, if we go back
to what I was talking about with Angela Duckworth's doctrine
of grit, it's just perseverance. But it's knowing that that
determination doesn't have to be at a 10 all the time.
Sometimes it's gonna be at a 2, sometimes it can
be at a 5, sometimes it can be at a 1,
and all of that is OK. It doesn't mean that
(07:14):
you're not determined and you just have to, like, whip
yourself into gear and drive hard at it like you've
never driven before.
It just means that it has to be balanced in
relation to the other things that you now need to
do and the other sort of roles that you play
in your life now. It's quite easy to be that determined,
you know, when you're younger and you don't have those responsibilities.
(07:36):
And it's equally, you know, easy to be determined when
you feel like you don't have anybody else to think about,
is that yourself. So, the determination part is it just
has to be balanced, right? And if you take your
foot off the accelerator for a period of time and
you don't go 100 miles an hour, it doesn't mean
you're less determined or you're less likely to succeed. It's
just about pace. It's about marathon pace, not sprint pace.
(08:00):
OK, let's talk about growth mindsets. I feel like it's
a term most of us have probably heard at some point.
What is a growth mindset and how do you build one?
Yeah, so I think, um, in popular times, mindset has
lost a lot of meaning and in some cases, sort
of like gets completely taken out of concept. Like, it's
used as, oh, I'm really suffering, I'm having a hard time. Oh,
you just need the right mindset. But that, but I'm
(08:21):
talking about mindset, and what I'm about to explain it
does not apply to that situation. Mindset isn't this blanket
or you just need X mindset and all your problems
will go away and everything will get easier. Mindset simply
means the way we view things, and our perspective, which
frames our thinking and thereby,
Sort of influences what we see and how we behave. Well,
we're talking about growth mindset. It comes from a lady
(08:41):
called Carol Dweck, and Dweck's book about growth mindset, it's, uh,
called Growth Mindset The New Psychology for Success, is all
about how do you position yourself into an opportunity to
learn versus trying to be right from fear of failure.
I think Paul Dweck, as an author, has probably suffered
the price of popularity, where people take her doctrine out
of context constantly.
(09:03):
And we often see it, um, in neoliberal democracies, where
it's just like, you just have to try harder and
just ignore all those structural inequalities and challenges that are
in your way. That's not what growth mindset is. What
we're talking about in growth mindset is we
Basically believe that, uh, people with their most basic abilities
have developed through hard work and that brains and talents
(09:25):
are just the starting point. You know, who you are
is just the starting point. But what we actually do
through a growth mindset is this belief in getting better,
this belief in these are opportunities to develop, to enhance,
to grow, to adapt. These are not opportunities for me
to fail as a person, and therefore fail in what
I'm doing.
Fundamentally a growth mindset is a belief in getting better,
(09:47):
not being perfect, cause perfect doesn't exist.
In our next episode, join Helen McCabe and Jamila Risby
as they share how they cope with Overwhelm and how
they forge a sense of decisiveness.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Focus on your why. When things are getting tough, it's
easy to lose sight of why you just started doing
something in the first place. Your why is the reason
behind your
Goals. It's not the goal itself, it's the reason you're
pursuing the goal. So your why is what's going to
keep you going when things get hard, when they get challenging,
and it's what's gonna give you some real determination to
keep pushing things forward.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Mindset is created by FW Jobs Academy with support from
the Australian government's Office for Women.
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