Journal Share: Turn Overwhelm to Insight

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Episode Summary:
In this episode of Differently, Carla Reeves shares another powerful journal entry to highlight the impact of interactive journaling. If you're feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations, this episode will provide valuable insights into breaking the cycle. Learn how to identify patterns in your thinking, shift your mindset, and take ownership of your thoughts to create meaningful change.

Key Takeaways:

• The power of interactive journaling as a tool for self-awareness and personal growth.
• How feelings of overwhelm are often caused by thought patterns rather than external circumstances.
• Recognizing the common habit of collapsing multiple responsibilities into a single, urgent demand.
• Strategies to release pressure and gain mental clarity.
• Key questions to reflect on when feeling overwhelmed:
  • What is your go-to response when overwhelmed? (Avoidance, overworking, numbing, etc.)
  • How long have you been feeling this way? Is this a recurring pattern?
  • What does making progress truly mean for you?
• The importance of addressing the root cause rather than just the symptoms of overwhelm.
• The role of childhood experiences and learned behaviors in shaping how we handle responsibility today.
• Practical strategies to regain control and move forward with intention:
  • Release pressure and apply love.
  • Separate real pressure from perceived pressure.
  • Identify small, actionable steps towards progress.

Resources & Next Steps:

• Experience interactive journaling and coaching support at carlareeves.com.
• Connect with Carla through the podcast show notes and share your thoughts.
• Subscribe to the podcast for weekly inspiration and practical insights.
• Share this episode with someone who might be struggling with overwhelm.

Call to Action:
Feeling overwhelmed? You don’t have to navigate it alone. Explore Carla's coaching programs and interactive journaling to break free from recurring stress patterns. Visit carlareeves.com to learn more. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and subscribe for more transformative conversations!

Thanks for listening – see you next week!

Learn more about Carla:
Website: https:/www.carlareeves.com/
Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reevescarla/
Connect on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@differentlythepodcast

Go to https://carlareeves.com/freeclass to get The Class schedule, sign up, and/or pass it on to a friend. Each month is a new topic. Come hang out and learn with us for FREE!

Get your copy of 5 Ways to Manage Your Mind

Go to https://www.carlareeves.com/getunstuck.com to download Carla's on demand journaling workshop + exercise to help you stop spinning and start moving forward.

Explore Coaching with Carla: https://bookme.name/carlareeves/lite/explore-coaching

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Thank you for listening!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Carla Reeves, and this is Differently.
Whether you feel stuck insurvival, navigating a change or
seeking more for your life, maythis podcast be your weekly
nudge to take a risk to build alife that is uniquely bold,
authentic and in alignment withyour deepest values.
What if you worried less aboutthe bumps in the road and

(00:23):
instead got equipped for thejourney?
Get ready to rethink what'spossible.
Thanks for choosing to listento this podcast.
I know there are many placesyou could be and I'm honored
that you are choosing to be here.
So this is going to be oursecond journal share episode.

(00:45):
Last month, I opened up myjournal to share with you, and
these episodes are designed toshow you the power of
interactive journaling and alsowalk you through my coaching
approach, and as you listen,there are going to be things you
can apply right in your lifetoday.
So, as I mentioned in the firstepisode it was on January 23rd

(01:08):
it starts with journal share inthe title, and I had shared that
.
I started training guides thislast year to work inside of our
new offering, re-imagine, whichis an interactive journal and
life dashboard that I've usedwith my clients for years, but
we're now offering this as astandalone where you can journal
with a journal coach, trainedby me, on the other side of your

(01:32):
journal not AI, a real humanand someone really committed and
trained to help you get out ofyour own way and challenge your
own thinking.
And as we did that training, Iwas reminded of the honor that
it is to peek inside ofanother's journal and life and
how we find ourselves in thestories of others.

(01:54):
We so often think we're alonein our thoughts or feel like our
thoughts are crazy, and I cantell you that, after reading
hundreds and hundreds ofjournals over the last decade, I
can tell you that we're farmore similar and alike than we
are different, and we strugglewith the same thinking
challenges, despite ourcircumstances.

(02:16):
My hope is that these episodesoffer you a new insight and
inspire you to either maybebegin a writing practice as a
tool and vehicle for navigatingyour life, or maybe it has you
explore your own journals deeperif you are already a journaler,
or maybe it's going to call youto take the next step with us,

(02:40):
where we combine the power ofcoaching with a journal, where
we combine the power of coachingwith a journal.
So in this short episode today,I want to share a snippet from
an anonymous journal, and onethat represents so many that
I've read over the years.
Here's the short entryEverything feels like too much

(03:01):
right now.
Work deadlines are piling up, myfamily needs more of my
attention and I can't shake thisfeeling that I'm dropping
important balls.
I want to make progress, but Ifeel paralyzed by all the
competing things.
How do others make it look soeasy?
I just don't have the capacityto do anything else.

(03:24):
End of journal.
These feelings and symptomscapture the essence of how many
people feel when they startcoaching with me.
They feel stressed, they feeloverwhelmed, they're running on
empty, they're spread thin andit's beginning to impact some
really important things in theirlife, which just isn't okay.

(03:45):
When you feel overwhelmed, Iwant you to start to think about
what's your go-to.
Do you pull away?
Do you work harder?
Do you grab a glass of wine?
Do you work harder, thinkingit's going to get you somewhere
or that there will be less to doand you'll have more time once

(04:08):
you get more done?
Or is it lashing out in waysbecause you're spread so thin
and then you later have regret?
I get it.
Life can feel full and it's easyto feel powerless, especially
if your mind and your thoughtsare running you instead of the
other way around.
So I'm on a mission to help younot get sucked into the vortex

(04:34):
of thinking that if you justworked harder, if you just did
more, if you just got better ormore efficient, that things
would be better.
I did that.
It's how I lived for many, manyyears, trying to please and
work harder and make sureeverybody else was happy and
putting my needs at the verybottom of the list over and over
again.
It didn't serve anyone and itleft me empty.

(04:57):
It doesn't work and it's a lie.
The truth is that you're goingto feel better when you take the
reins of your life in a new anddifferent way.
That disrupts this pattern,because until you break the
pattern, the hamster wheel keepsgoing.
Because until you break thepattern, the hamster wheel keeps
going.

(05:20):
So let's take a minute and justlook at and notice what's
happening in this short entry,because there's key patterns
that I think we can all learnfrom.
One of the first things that Inotice is that overwhelm is
often a consistent habit oftaking on too much, but it's
also a thinking problem, becausewhat happens is we begin to

(05:40):
feel overloaded and then ourmind begins to spin and add to
it, making things only worse andfeel heavier.
The other thing that happens iswe often collapse things, so we
start to feel overwhelmed andthen all the things we have on
our plate collapse family work,community, church, all these

(06:02):
commitments we have.
It feels like they're allurgent and they all need to be
done today, and so that cancreate a spiral again that just
creates more weight andheaviness, and so that can
create a spiral again that justcreates more weight and
heaviness.
So when I'm working with someone, one of the things I want to do
first is to help them releasesome of that pressure so that
they can have a little bit ofmobility again.

(06:23):
And the way I do that is byhelping you separate from your
thinking and so that we can findwhere you do have control to
shift your experience a littlebit.
And so in this entry you noticehe or she is talking about, you
know, dropping balls like this,fear of dropping balls, and so

(06:45):
just that idea and thosethoughts create stress and fear
and all kinds of emotion, and wetend to do that in our mind.
We get dramatic in our thinking.
That makes us feel a certainway which causes us to behave a
certain way, which often derailsus, and while there might be

(07:06):
some truth to that, there'slikely a lot of things that are
not true, and so my job is tohelp them pull that apart so
they can see what's real andwhat's perceived.
So there's like perceivedpressure and there's real
pressure, and if you can learnto separate the two for yourself
, you're going to have morepower.

(07:37):
The next step is we're going todo that and is the deeper work
to help you so that you don'tfind yourself here again and
again repeating the same cycle,because that's what usually
happens, and these are somethings that you can begin to ask
yourself, to crack open what'sreally going on here.
And, instead of addressing thesymptom with a glass of wine or

(08:01):
avoidance, or working harder andharder and more, you can start
to make a shift in breaking thatrepetitive cycle.
That's going to give you powerto create lasting shift around
overwhelm in your life, and myjob here is to help you assess
what are the blind spots thatare not just tripping, that are
tripping you up here, but arealso tripping you up in other

(08:25):
places, because if I can helpyou do that, I can help you not
only shift this part of yourlife, but likely this shows up
in other places too, and whenyou change it in one place, you
then have the tools to change itall over your life.
So the deeper work in this caseis to start to explore and
identify the places where thisis a habit or a survival way of

(08:49):
being that causes you to take ontoo much.
This might come from a role youtook on as a child.
Maybe you grew up in a largefamily and you were a child that
had to take on a great deal ofresponsibility early.
Maybe you grew up in a largefamily and you were a child that
had to take on a great deal ofresponsibility early.
Maybe you grew up with a singleparent and you had to be

(09:09):
responsible starting from a veryyoung age.
This becomes a strength youhave and sometimes we overuse a
strength where it ends upbecoming a weakness, and I see
that a lot with clients.
Where they're so good at takingthings on, people start to know
them as the go-to person, butthey don't know how to do this

(09:32):
in a healthy way in their lifetoday and have healthy
boundaries and likely, whilethis may have been a strength at
one point in your life.
Today it might be producing alife that you're drowning in,
right and all of thisresponsibility.
So there are ways that you canbegin to shift this.
Once you recognize it in a veryloving way, that starts to

(09:54):
change things over time.
Other things I'm curious aboutand would ask in response to
this journal, either in ajournal response or on our next
call together is how long haveyou been feeling this way?
You know, is this familiar?
Is this showing up again andagain, and again?
Like we talked about, we'd alsoexplore what is making progress

(10:19):
.
You know they wrote aboutmaking like just this desire to
make progress and instead ofjust living in this unfulfilled
desire, start to drill down intowhat is making progress really.
Look like, what could somesmall steps be in that direction
and start to get them out ofthis spin or this rut, because

(10:42):
the moment we can do that,things start to open up.
So you can see, it's a processof not only helping you to
alleviate some immediatepressure and overwhelm, but also
to address the pattern so thatyou don't find yourself here
again and again and again.
So, as we close, I want toremind you of a simple

(11:04):
prescription for overwhelm thatI've talked about it again and
again release pressure and applylove, because if you can
release some pressure and relaxa little bit, you're going to
have greater clarity, moreoptions, more mobility.
We have a tendency to be soincredibly hard on ourselves and

(11:24):
place enormous amount ofpressure, so when you find
yourself in this spot, rememberthat you have the ability to
step back.
Apply love, remove pressure soyou can move more freely, and
there's a quote that I haveshared with you before that says
we all carry a load the heaviesin our head, so meaning that

(11:46):
the sense of urgency andpressure is often
self-fabricated and unnecessary.
This is just a glimpse of howinteractive journaling can help
you move from overwhelm toinsight and forward intentional
momentum insight and forwardintentional momentum.
In our coaching experiences.

(12:07):
You get very personalizedfeedback from a live human no AI
here on your journal entries,plus access to our life
dashboard where you have thatongoing.
If you're ready to experience agreater level of support and
clarity in your own journey oryou want to break through this
overwhelm pattern that shows upagain and again in your life,

(12:28):
but you feel like you needsupport to do that, go to our
website.
Check out our programs, carlaReevescom, and remember your
thoughts are powerful.
Take ownership for them,because they are the very
stepping stones for your growthand positive change.
Let's do this.
Remember a deep change in theway that you live requires a

(12:51):
deep change in the way that youthink.
Thank you for tuning in to thisepisode of differently.
It's been an honor to sharethis conversation with you.
You know, one of the keys toliving fully is to take action
when you're inspired to do so.
I hope you found that spark ofinspiration today and would you

(13:14):
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