 Hey everybody, welcome back to the first TechSoup Connect Australia presentation of 2023. I'm your host Kat Milner, the chief tech ninja for create your change, and it is my pleasure to welcome to present today Carolyn Handley. So Carolyn is the creator of the holistic coaching program, shy to shining, become the star of your own life. It is a holistic approach, head meaning empowering thinking, heart creating calm, self-compassion, and overcoming social anxiety and voice, making connections with others, getting clear on your own thoughts and ideas, and really learning how to speak up. Carolyn founded My Joyful Life to share the strategies and insights that she has learned over her decades of studying personal growth from psychology to mindfulness, spirituality to life coaching. Her clients describe her coaching as empowering and life changing and especially appreciate Carolyn's practical strategies, her warm, lovely empathy, and her gentle yet challenging approach. It is my absolute pleasure to now hand it over to my friend and colleague, Carolyn Handley. Thank you so much Kat. It's such a delight to be here and thank you and welcome to everyone who's watching live and all those who are watching the replay. It's wonderful to see you. Thank you for giving your time for this. I hope that this is going to really create some strategies and some ideas that really helps you in overcoming overwhelm. So as we get started, I'd just like to ask you, why are you here? What are you hoping for? Do you get overwhelmed? Of course you must, otherwise you wouldn't be here because the heading is overwhelmed to organised. So for each of us overwhelmed, oh because I'm hosting or because your coach is hosting, I think or even if we're hosting, I think all of us sometimes get overwhelmed and knowing what to do and how to deal with it is really, really important because you can just waste energy, time, your mood, the whole thing can plummet when you're overwhelmed and you don't know how to deal with it. So hopefully today gives you the toolbox that you need. So I was saying why are you here and what does overwhelm look like for you? Yeah, funny ways to become more effective and deal with self. Yes, yes. Something about caring for yourself when you're in the middle of the actual world is really important. Too many things, not knowing where to start. Yes, that's so common. We as women, we juggle so many things, the family, the work, the hobbies, trying to stay healthy and household and so many things and not knowing where to start, we'll talk specifically about that today. So stay tuned. So think about what overwhelm looks like for you now. Now imagine a day with no overwhelm. Imagine I've got my magic one here, I actually have magic ruler, I wave it and you have a day and it has no overwhelm at all. Imagine what that would be like. Just try and picture it just, we're literally gonna literally do this for a cut just a couple of seconds. What would it be like to be not overwhelmed for the whole day? Can you picture it? I hope so. So hold on to that picture. Oh, one more question. How motivated are you to do something about overwhelm, to go from the overwhelmed to the picture of whatever you're picturing? Maybe give yourself a score out of 10. Nord is like, I'm just not going to do anything. And 10 is, I am doing everything I can want to get over this overwhelm. So would your score be out of 10? If you're willing to share it in the chat box, that'd be great. Oh, we've got an eight, we've got a nine. Okay. So we're pretty motivated. That's fantastic. You're in the right place. Excellent. Let me just share a couple slides. And this first one, I think. Okay, does that show you my why? Excellent. Okay, so this webinar is for you today. If you are juggling and exhausted, and we've really mentioned that, you work hard, but you don't seem to get anywhere ahead. You're stressing out, and you're stressed, you're stressed to motivate yourself. Some of us teach ourselves, treat ourselves really harshly, and say all sorts of things to ourselves, to get ourselves moving that we would never ever say to our friend. Maybe you're already overwhelmed, and it's only halfway through January. That's not good. Let's sort that out now. Maybe you'd like to make 2023 your most effective yet. And maybe you'd like to look back in a year and really be proud that this year was the year that you actually got unstuck and moving on something, whatever area of life that's important to you. So so this workshop will equip you with tools so you can prioritize, you can stay focused, and you can achieve, ultimately achieve your goals. So as Kat mentioned a bit about me, but I just wanted to share that I actually grew up as an anxious, shy, stressed, and often overwhelmed child and teenager, very self-conscious teenager. And I was often struggling with how do I what do I do? How do I do it? How does everyone else seem to know what's happening in the world? And I really didn't quite understand what to do or how to do it, myself, how to navigate socially, especially myself. So that actually led to a passion for my whole life of studying psychology, self-help books, spirituality, theology, all sorts of things to try and understand what would make my life better and what would help me to live a life that's not stressed, not heavy like a blanket, not overwhelming, but actually joyful and peaceful. And how can I be confident like those other people over there that seem to know what to do? So I became then I having discovered a lot of strategies about this, then I became really passionate about sharing that with other people. And that's why I'm here today. I'm a transformational coach, spiritual director and retreat leader. And I'm really passionate about seeing people flourish, treating yourself with kindness and respect, and having an empowering toolkit so you actually know how to do, how to face life. And yes, I've got two programs, the one Kat mentioned, Shider Shining, and also another one Love Yourself, Love Your Life about overcoming stress and negative self-concept. And that's the one that I'm overwhelmed to organise to fit into. So insight number one, you can't plan and execute at the same time. I'm just going to unshame my screen. And you can't. What do I mean by that? If you try and plan something and do it at the same time, your brain actually gets a bit frazzled because you're trying to get the plan happening, you're trying to do the strategy, you work out the strategy, but you're also trying to get it happening. And we do that a lot, that's one of the ways that we overwhelm ourselves is to try and do it all at once. I've just got to get this thing happening, so you just start doing it. So one thing that's important is to separate, and that's what we're about to do now, separate, let's make the strategy or the plan, and then let's work out the steps, and then let's actually do them. Once you've worked out the strategy, doing steps is actually not too hard. Creating the plan might need a bit of thinking at the beginning, but if we're not trying to do anything, if we're just trying to say, okay, what's my goal and how do we get there, that simplifies it so much. So let's start. Step number one is what I call a brain dump. I just invite you to have a get gravity pen and paper, or you might want to grab a word document or a note document in your computer. And I just invite you to just stand one or two minutes just writing down everything in your brain. The idea of the brain dump is when you feel overwhelmed, your brain is just worrying with so many things. I need to make dinner tonight. I need to pop out and pick up the dry cleaning. I need to pick up someone from school. Oh, but I haven't paid this deal. Oh, but I need to get something done for an email for something that needs to be done by tomorrow. And your brain is just all these things are cluttering your brain. If you just put them down on paper, or I actually use a thing called one note, and I type everything into one note in a whole file that this is called brain dump. And if I chuck everything there, then I know that I won't forget something. I won't lose it. And once I put it written it down, then you can actually start looking at it and going, oh, well, what have I got here? And what do I need to do? Welcome, Nicole. Lovely to see you. We're just doing first step one of the overwhelmed to organized workshop. And step one is to actually do a brain dump and think, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I've got all these thoughts in my head. Let's write them all down. So I just invite you to grab a pen and paper. We'll just take one more minute. Just write down whatever you can think of, whatever's coming to you that's overwhelming your head. If you can just write a few more things down or if you've actually already got the list, got everything down that's wearing around in your head, then start reading through it. What have you got there? What's the most important thing? So if I don't know if you're familiar with Zoom, but down the bottom, there's a thing called reactions. Can you just give me a thumbs up if you've written down a decent amount of list of a decent amount of things for your brain dump? Yes. Yes. Yes, great. Okay, let's keep going. So insight number two for you today is the Pareto principle. You've all done it fantasy. The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule. Now, we've probably all heard about this, but what this means, research has found that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. That's incredible. So if we just can work out what 20% to do and let go of the rest or hold it lightly, we might actually be able to get through this thing that we're overwhelmed about whatever that looks like. So the important thing is to say what is the most important thing? What is that 20% that's going to make 80% of the difference? So just a quick share. I'm a recovering perfectionist. In my corporate days, I used to have to do all these reports and project plans, things like that. And when I was writing a report, I would actually agonize over it for hours and hours. I'd dot the lines across the T's. And I'll try and make sure it was perfect because I didn't want anyone to criticize. I didn't want to get laughed at. I had all these negative thoughts, which is why I know from a coach to help people with that. But I used to spend hours and hours. And then I realized once I've learnt the 80-20 principle that the 80% of the time, I was trying to fix things up that weren't really going to be a problem for anyone. The 20% was getting the report done, getting the essence, getting the main chunks of information and getting the information accurate. How I exactly wrote it and tweaked the grammar and the spelling and all the things is nice, but it wasn't. That's the 80% that really did make as much difference. So I invite you to come back to your list. Have a look at your list. And the step two is to prioritize. What is most important for you on that list? It might even be what's the most important thing today. There's important and there's urgent. And they are actually different things. The urgent thing might be turn off the pot on the stove because it will boil over or ruin the dinner. But important is the things that are actually going to make that 80% of the difference. So look at the list out of all the zillions of things on your list. What are the other really important two or three? I really like my trusty yellow highlighter, but you might just want to, if you haven't got it highlighted, you could just use a different color pen or just an asterisk or something. And have a look through your list and mark that if possible the top one or maybe two or three items that are most important on your list. The thing that you think, gosh, if I do this thing, that will actually make all the difference. While you're doing that, thinking about a not-for-profit, if you're thinking about a work thing and you work for a not-for-profit organization, your organization is likely to support a particular cause. What does your organization aim to achieve for your cause? And then which of the things that you're doing in your work is most going to make a difference for their cause or for the organization's support for that cause? That might be one word actually ask yourself. Another thing would be if you're spending time reading and deleting 50 emails, is that really going to help the cause that you're working on or your family or whatever the project is that you're aiming for? Or not? Will commenting on 20 social media posts, scrolling social media, is that really going to make a difference or not? So I just encourage you, we probably have a lot more time than we think because we spend time on those sorts of things. So as everyone, can you just give me a thumbs up? Have you worked out what your most important task is? I just want to hear somewhere. Have a look through. What is the most important to you? Brilliant. Now, step three, once you've worked out what the most important task is, to actually break this really top priority task down into the smallest little steps that you can imagine. You break it down into what is the next step? And then if that looks scary, what is the next step? I like to say to my coaching clients, break it down into such tiny steps that they're so small that they're not scary anymore. How does that sound? So try it. So this is where we actually start creating the plan out of the strategy. So pull out that one priority and just write down maybe one of the next two, three, four steps that you could take. Things that would be really easy to do. If it's too big, break it down again. Once you've got a couple of steps written down, give me a thumbs up if you've got any questions. Write your questions in the chat. All right. So the next insight is that it's actually your beliefs about what you're doing. Oh, do you have the step written down? Nicole, are you asking, do you need to share it? Or are you asking, do you want me to share something? Do you have the step written down to share? I was just asking if you have the steps. I kind of... Oh, the steps one, two, three that we have to. I have them all on separate PowerPoints. That would have been really good to put it on one PowerPoint. So step one was the brain dump. Brain dump. Step two is prioritise, which is most important. Okay. And step three, which we've just done is make a plan. Or what are the smallest steps? Or break down and just follow step. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for asking. You're welcome. So step four is the step is actually what belief is making you feel overwhelmed. When you feel all that overwhelming feeling, what are you actually thinking? Or maybe what are you saying to yourself? Do you know that actually our beliefs make a huge amount of difference in everything that we experience in our day? And very often the beliefs that we have are things that we pass, got passed down from our families, from our society, from our teachers. And we don't even know half of the beliefs that we have consciously. And that's actually the fun for me of being a coach is to help people to identify what is the actual thing that they're struggling with. And what's the thinking that is actually causing that they may not even be aware of. In fact, I was just thinking about it this afternoon as I prepared for this webinar. I can't think of a single coaching session with a client and I've been a coach for six years. I can't think of a single session which didn't include helping the client to challenge some sort of belief, some sort of thought about language about themselves, about how something is. It's so fundamental to how we experience life and it's so fundamental to making a shift and making a change. So the question is, what are you believing that makes you feel overwhelmed? That's not an easy question. It might be things like, oh, my favorite, my favorite, my least favorite, my most common one for myself is, I'm not good enough. I still struggle with that one, but I've said that to my whole life. But somehow everyone else seems to know what to do, but somehow I'm good enough. I don't have time, I've got too much work. There's too many things to juggle, I can't fit it all in. Those are the sort of beliefs that might be behind your overwhelm. So are you able to identify a belief for yourself or a thought? If you need help with this, let me know, because this is the trickiest. Well, this is the fourth step, step four, this step and the next step are tricky. So we can spend a few minutes working on it together if you need the help. I can't say no, yes. What is that little word? That little word no, we can't say no. I just have a kind heart. I just, I mean, personally and professionally, I of course can't seem to say no. I don't have the time. I have seven children. I come home, deal with them. I go to work. I've got to do with work. But then in between all that, people are calling me and I can't seem to say no. And I feel that kind heart and that's why they're calling. Yeah. And that's why they're asking. I love that you have a kind heart and they call that is beautiful. It's your gift. And for everyone else, it's a gift. But sometimes for you, I can feel that that's not a gift. That's actually a real challenge because being hearted, the flip side of that is, if you're not saying no, then you're giving, giving, giving to other people all the time. And when do you actually stop and receive for yourself? Yes. And when do you have time to care for yourself? Yes. And I am starting to notice that. Right. That is, hold on to that noticing. Yeah. I'm starting to notice that I am starting to say no here and there. Grace. That's fantastic. It kind of feels weird, but and then I feel bad. Oh no. It has to be done. It does have to be done. Do you know that a lot of women I coach, they're just like you, they're giving, giving, giving the whole time. And the thing is, if you've, I think each of us has a cup. And if we're giving the whole time, but we don't feel our own cup, then eventually we don't have as much to give. It's in our nature too. We're mothers. We're mothers and we, that's a very giving, such a giving role. Always the children comfort, you know, when you think, what do you want? I asked you in some of my coaching, what do you want to do or something like that? And people go, Oh, me. I mean, I had that too. Like you think about what, what do your children want? What do your husband want? What do you, all the things that all the people want? And then last of all, it's, what do I want? Oh, oh, do I actually get to, to choose? Right. Right. I, yeah. It's, and then when you finally get to choose, yes. My, my, I, I don't know what I want. No, how can you, you're out of practice. It's literally, it's literally that you're out of practice. Right. You might need to choose really little things. Start with something simple. Yeah. I can't say, I can say, I can say no. And instead I'm going to choose, you know, to whatever it is, go for a little walk at lunchtime to just my body a little bit or whatever it is, put something in the dinner, sort of specific green vegetable and the dinner that I know that I really need for my health. Even for the children, they're not exactly like it. Well, they don't have to have it. I'm going to, yes. And it's, and it's sell the little thing like that and just practice. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for sharing your, Nicole, your, I can't say no, that's really powerful. I think we can all agree with that. So the next step, so that, so that step was what belief or thinking is making you feel overwhelmed. And then the next step is, so what step, what belief could you have, which would change, undermine that? What, what's something that you could believe to negate that or to, to, to give you the power to say no, to give you the power to change that belief. So let me give you an example. I had a client a couple of years ago and she, look, she was juggling so much. She was working. She had a toddler, a little girl. She had aging parents and a very sick father, and she was really worried about her father and she was in a different state and that was locked down so she couldn't even get there. Like it was really hard. Anyway, so she found herself snapping at the toddler and we explored the whole thing and what she was holding on to was this belief or I have to do everything. I have to do it all myself. But as we explored, we realized that she was actually not telling her toddler. There was a communication thing. She was assuming that the toddler was too young to understand what was happening. How can she share that her father is really ill? She's so worried. The whole COVID thing was it's so complicated. So instead, we explored what would actually help and we explored the fact that the toddler is actually hearing the mother getting snarky and angry and upset and of course the little girl is thinking that it's her fault because that's how children see. If the mother is upset, they internalize it and they think it's all their fault and so her behavior had been absolutely dreadful, really, really dreadful because she was feeling like it was all her fault that she couldn't work out what was going wrong or what she'd done wrong. So the simple solution was just to change the belief from I have to hold it all by myself to actually saying sometimes I can share clearly and honestly with my toddler. So this woman went to a toddler and she said look darling, mommy's sounding upset at the moment but you know my dad is really sick and I'm really worried about him and sometimes that makes me upset and when I'm upset and worried about my dad then sometimes I shout or sometimes I say really rude things and I'm so sorry it's not about you. You are such a beautiful little girl but I'm just upset because of my dad and being him being sick. Well the little girl gave her a big hug which is what she needed actually. Um, how beautiful to to receive that and her behavior problems all disappeared overnight because she understood if the mother was upset she'd give her a hug rather than start behaving you know in attention seeking ways. She transformed everything and all came down to how she was trying to hold everything and juggle everything and do it all herself rather than actually realizing that there was just a simple little communication age appropriate that she could do to turn the whole thing around. So back to you. So you've got your statement what the belief that's making you feel overwhelmed it might be I can't say no it might be uh whatever it is what are you going to do to slip that to actually make it um to to tell it teach yourself something different and belief that actually makes you feel happier calmer and more confident. It might be the opposite but it might not be it's usually not the exactly the opposite so if say the belief was I don't have time and you say to yourself I do have time for everything I need to do well that doesn't feel true if you don't believe it that's not the right statement often it's sort of like you come at a sneaky angle rather than going directly at something so instead of saying I don't have time you could say I always make time for what's most important that's a that's a way to think well yep that's important so I'm going to make time for that of course there's all these other things that didn't get done but that's okay because I always make time for what's most important so while you're thinking about that I've got one more client story and let's call her Kate and she had she really was really struggling she couldn't do all sorts of things she had a real sense of I'm not good enough and I can't do it all and she was she had she had young young children she was really struggling to fit in any sort of self-care for herself her nutrition and exercise but she really needed that her health was really struggling and her simple statement was I can and I share it because it's the most simple out of all the clients I work with this I love it because it's so simple she just said I can whatever people would you know criticize her or she was struggling was how do I deal with all this she would just say I can't I can't and she keeps saying that and that was about a year ago and I spoke to her recently and it a year later she's still saying I can't and it's still helping her so what's the statement you can come up with that will help you you know again if you want to discuss that together you're very welcome to share your share the statement your overwhelmed statement we've worked through together what might be a great statement to flip that or come sideways to that I'm smart I can figure it out that is lovely I can figure it out things can't that's a great one because that's empowering can you see that girls that's empowering I can figure it out means you're trusting that you're actually going to think it through make the effort come up with the answer yeah learning new scary stuff is I can figure it out yes yeah I just use the I can with text style I can I can again someone knows I just have to know who to ask last cat that's a good yes Nicole we're gonna the ladies that are here by the view would like to share what you're thinking that's cool yeah thinking that's good it's not so easy but if you want to actually chat about it together we can chat about it we do have a couple of minutes I don't know I'm sitting here thinking I'll try and I do think of that um you call it a reverse psychology absolutely yes reverse psychology well but I mean and I think I'm trying to think of positive a positive uh you know oh yeah you know the situation a positive situation yeah so Nicole is the thing that you want to do to say no or is the thing that you want to do to say yes to yourself I don't know oh okay we're seeing the same thing you did but sometimes I say yes to me I was five we're on a wavelength okay yeah well I've been saying a lot more yes to myself but yeah I took me and my daughter you know on a family vacation to Hawaii back to long ago nice I'm going well it's not a vacation but I'm going to Mexico in a couple weeks wow but you know there's little things great and well in a ways I guess personally I guess how to positively positive sound positive wouldn't say no you know how yeah without being negative so yeah yeah yeah there's yeah people who out there that I say no there's gonna think that I'm the bad person or and make trying to make me feel bad yeah yeah I'm wondering whether there's a way that you can just say oh look I've got I have so much on at the moment I can't do that at the moment or can't scoot I give options that work for me they'll either choose one or find another way giving options as well yeah yeah I like them yeah no and that can be that could be even limiting like saying um you know they would you to help with whatever and you can know well I can I can help you for an hour on Saturday morning but apart from that I'm fully booked already something like that well yeah I practically am in a ways if I'm not working I'm with the kids and if I'm not with the kids I'm in workshop which are comprehensive yeah yeah here we are yeah and here's my little yeah and my little one just walked in lovely hey little one yeah so I think the challenge is to think about what is what can you do and what can't you do and then be very confident and comfortable with saying no be very confident to say look I'm fully committed I would love to help you but I just am fully committed I do tell people that I I'm I'm very busy I'm just very busy and I don't give excuse or anything it is um just yeah I can't it's actually true at this time of your life with your kids with the going down so young it's actually yeah and this age when they're little is that goes so quickly I know you want to you want to cherish the moments why you can be with them because you know right right as in work wise now I am the admin project assistant office manager and I get very overwhelmed at work okay and and sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I forget what I'm doing or yeah you know I just I get stuck I just it's like where do I get start again yeah or did I need one yeah because the overwhelm you get a totally brain you get the stress builds up in your body what happens with overwhelm is that you get that flight front or freeze response that um they talk about in psychology so that will actually freeze your brain and you'll want to run away rather than actually thinking clearly um so yeah that's the thing so yeah so if you think about work with the things that we've been doing please Stacy thank you so is there is is there a way that you can actually break down because it's office manager obviously there's lots of things that you're juggling and different people and their needs and their requests and all this sort of thing but is there a way that you can prioritize and work at what's the most important well I this organization is a non-profit in education um it's a it's a native organization we learn from our traditional educator I meant traditional um um elders right and create or a professional development for our our our native um community to hopefully become teachers because like 85 percent of our teachers come to Alaska right to teach our Alaskan children and and um we create um curriculum traditional curriculum Alaskan teaching and and um that's fantastic so what that makes it overwhelming at work well it's just all over the place I I I gotta run payroll get all the the payroll documents out to the accountant I got to I get I'm a project assistant trying to get this every everywhere yeah I'm I'm everywhere I'm yeah it's a very small organization be honest with you there's only three of us yeah and I do three roles and right now I've been there seven years and I'm and I just sometimes I feel like I'm on on glass sometimes with my supervisor oh that's challenging and she can't expect me to do everything right because I'm the only one there but I love my job yeah oh well if I love your job that's fantastic so I guess the thing to do is to actually be be really clear on what the different chunks are of the job because obviously you're doing so many different pieces the payroll and your all the different the courses and all the different things and then to work out what's what what do you need to get done each week and is there a way to make it easier and streamlined like for example payroll you might go every Thursday morning I'm doing payroll and I'm actually gonna you know put my phone on you know like answering machine or something for an error or not answer it and ring back so I can just get that payroll done without getting interrupted because when you get interrupted all the figures are jumbling in your head and then and another time you might say I'm just going to do this bit and it's not that you're unavailable much but you just carve out pieces of time where you do something really complicated or really that you need to concentrate I find that really helps me I think that's what I really need to learn how to do is it's really set my time blocks yeah because it's got them the project you know yeah our our our project is funded through the NASA grant and stuff yeah I try to get that out the door as fast as I can and through our board meeting yeah you know I gotta do the board meeting minutes I gotta get that done every two weeks yeah and and as you know that's coming up um we're gonna have to move on in a minute because I'm sorry I'm just now I'm just saying you know what's coming up you know you've got the board meeting every two weeks so that means you can actually prepare in a couple of days beforehand you can do the the minutes you can do that agenda you can do that whatever because it's a predictable when it's coming up don't you yeah yeah yeah so I try to have the document like the format already great so yeah yeah yeah and then I cheat and there's this one app called this script and so it takes voice transcripts that is not that it's not using tech with my tech nowadays that we never could have dreamed of use it great yeah and it gives you two hours of free um free transcribing cool what's cool huh which one's that which one's that yeah it's uh de the script yeah yeah got it cool thank you and I give you two hours of uh voice to text and or you yeah and so which was very helpful but I gotta listen to it again yeah at the same time that I'm listening to it I gotta do the minute in in another doc yeah you know when I'm listening to the minutes I gotta put down all the the tasks for the executive director and me and the board members yeah yeah it's just it's a lot that's what that's what takes so long to do the minutes it takes me like four days to do it for a two hour meeting with sounds like in it yeah sounds like you need some strategies to think how to do it as efficiently as possible well I thought this will help me but yeah well hopefully hopefully by breaking it down into little steps and think and carving out time where you're not interrupted and so you can concentrate because that does slow down hopefully that helps a little bit Nicole yeah I'd just like to share my last tip because I know that cat's gonna jump in in a minute she answered you said I had 45 minutes and it's 43 so I do want to give you a bonus strategy and this is really a fun one because a few years ago well quite a few years ago I was a uni student and studying and I was given this book and I had to read this whole book and write an assignment on it and I started reading this book and I just I just thought I cannot even understand this like I don't care I don't want to know I don't understand it it's too hard it's too boring and I said to my husband can't read this like this is just blah blah blah and he said why don't you make a cup of sitting in your favorite chair and just pretend that you're doing it for fun and see what happens and I thought well I'm kind of desperate so I'll try it so I sat in my favorite chair and put my it was a recliner I can put my feet up it's lovely and had my cup of tea and chocolate biscuit and I sat there and I started reading this book and I actually just read it I'm like I'm reading this for fun and I pretended to it was fun I pretended I was interested and I got interested and the thing that I had not been able to understand suddenly I could understand it it was like it was amazing it was like this sort of cloud lifted and I went wow I can do this so I just the hot tip if you're really struggling with something that's complicated is pretend that you're doing it for fun pretend that like oh I'm gonna do this for fun you're gonna put on some poppy music if that's not gonna stop your brain you know focusing on what you're doing um because um our minds are actually like I've said before we've got these blind spots we've got these assumptions that we make about life by actually telling yourself hey I'm gonna do this for fun um then you can actually trick your brain into knowing how to do it trick your brain into doing its best rather than blocking um I uh I love um as I said I love coaching with mindset and thinking because our thinking is so powerful and our thinking is the thing that really makes the difference between how we see the world and how we could see the world and be more powering or how we see the world and make it overwhelming um I love exploring um so let me just see yeah I think yeah so I think that's where I'd like to leave it and I think we're out on the 45 I think it might be 44 minutes actually we started a minute late didn't count but it was aiming for the end with a good pass um so just uh to reiterate so right away write all the things down think I like these for me so number two is what's important and that might not be what's urgent but what's really important and what's going to make all the difference step three is make a plan and actually strategy work out your strategies step by step step four is what belief is making you overwhelmed step five is create a belief that actually makes you feel better something that makes that makes that that overwhelming belief less powerful for you and it might not be the opposite and the bonus strategy is pretend you're doing it for fun so I hope that's been helpful and um I've hit a cap I was writing notes oh actually I had one more question and that is I love it if you're put could put in the in the chat was there one thing that really jumped out at you like something that you just really thought that was that that was really helpful sometimes it's good to stop before you leave the webinar like this and actually digest it and think what was really helpful so you can make sure you remember that thing so if you can share that in the chat just the thing that you thought was most helpful that would be really good for you good for me you can't plan and execute at the same time yes yes really really important tonight I personally really loved that if you're struggling with being overwhelmed take a breath and pretend that you're doing it for fun it's I love that great because I know for me that when I get really overwhelmed with stuff I just want to curl up in my in my bed with my comfy blanket and watch Netflix yeah just binge watch stuff because yeah I just want my brain gets overloaded so it shuts down yes but if you are having fun with something you tend to enjoy it more and you tend to engage with it more so that is to me just an amazing suggestion excellent I hope it works for you can I hope so too I'm sure it will all right so everyone thank you so much for joining us today here at TechSoup Connect Australia and please put some love up for Carolyn for taking the time to meet with us and talk about going from overwhelmed to organized and all of the amazing value that you have brought to today this is because I've actually known Carolyn for I don't know a good year or two now I think we've been in some communities together and I know what she does but I've never experienced what she does so this has been a real treat to actually experience firsthand um and gain a real feeling for what it is that you do so thank you so much for that um do you have some contact information that you can put up on the screen sorry I don't mean to put you on the spot there so that yes I couldn't notice that yeah oh and share perfect and that's something that's got something my email address connect at myjoyfullife.com.au if you want to get my weekly tip so if you just want to ask a question or you have a conversation about what we just did um my website it's a bit smaller the bottom is myjoyfullife.com.au is my website and that's got all sorts of information and uh there's a blog there with all sorts of topic that might be excellent thank you can you drop that can you drop that in the chat so we could just copy and paste it great idea thank you okay try okay so if anyone would like to reach out to Carolyn to learn more please email her at connect at myjoyfullife.com.au or visit her website myjoyfullife.com.au so our next presentation is going to be on the 1st of February with Barbara Clifford talking about negotiation and influence so that should be really interesting about how to gain more support for your organization and there's a whole bunch of different things with that so we'd love to see you at the next webinar so do we have any other final questions or thoughts feel free to unmute yourself and join the conversation if you don't want to drop it in the chat if there's anything else that you have either a question a comment um for Carolyn or a myself actually just while you're thinking about that i've just dropped the email and the website in the chat and i might also drop the facebook group i've got a facebook group where i pop in every week and share share tips and i also i have do free challenges four times a year and also it's a tiny program so if you're a woman and you're interested in that then this is the facebook group perfect thank you so much okay well everyone thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you next time have a great rest of your day