 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dyle. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you want some extra tips and tricks on how to improve your mindset, go to mondayemail.com right now, once again, mondayemail.com. And I'll send you an email every single Monday of what I'm focusing on with my mindset to improve and so that you can improve your mindset as well. So if you want to go there, I will send it to you and it is absolutely free. Today, I'm going to give you three steps to stop being overwhelmed. And I think this is important because I think a lot of people, especially nowadays, are starting to get extremely overwhelmed with everything that's going on in their life, everything that's going on outside of their life, all of the stuff in the world. And so I was on a group coaching call and one of my clients was talking about something that's going on in their life and they said it's making me overwhelmed and just want to pause. Is there something in your life that's making you overwhelmed? I want you to think about that thing. What is it in your life that is making you overwhelmed? Do you have it in the front of your mind? Okay, we're going to talk about it. When I listen to people speak, I listen on two different levels. I listen to what they're saying to me and I try to listen to what is behind what they're saying. I'm trying to listen to the story that their subconscious is actually telling themself about XYZ circumstance. I'm actually way less concerned about what you do. I'm way more concerned about the story that you're telling yourself. And the reason why is because if I can find the story that you're telling yourself because we're all telling yourself a story in some sort of way. If I can identify what the story is and what you are perceiving it to be, it's usually very, I don't want to say easy. It's easier to dissolve whatever the actual problem, quote unquote, problem is to you. So he was saying, blah, blah, blah, and it's making me overwhelmed. And he said, it's making me overwhelmed. So I mean, if you're in the situation, maybe you ever thought like, hey, work is making me overwhelmed. My schedule is making me overwhelmed. My relationship is making you overwhelmed. I'm here to tell you, no, it's not. You might be like, what? No, but Rob, work is so overwhelming. There's so much that I have to do. No, no, no, no, no. It's not overwhelming. You are making you overwhelmed. When you say, and there's a small tweak here, but when you say it's making me overwhelmed, you are playing the victim. Work is making me overwhelmed. That's like, oh, there's nothing I can do about it. Work is making me overwhelmed. Oh, my schedule is making me overwhelmed. Oh, my schedule is making me overwhelmed. There's nothing I can do about it. It's playing a victim card. It's not taking a powerful place. It's not stepping up to the play and saying, I'm going to fix this. Listen to these words real quick. It is making me overwhelmed versus I am making myself overwhelmed. It is making me overwhelmed is taking the blame and placing it externally. I am making myself overwhelmed is taking it and making it internal. It puts you in a place of power because it's not actually work that's making you overwhelmed. It's the way that you think about work that's making you overwhelmed. It's not your relationship that's making you overwhelmed. It is what you are thinking about with your relationship that is making you overwhelmed. And so when you can say, I am making myself overwhelmed, it puts you in a place of power. When it is external, you cannot change it. When it is you, you can change it. But it also shifts the way that you think about these things. Because you realize, oh, it's my fault. And when it is your fault, you can change it. Now, a lot of people don't like to make things their fault. They like to make themselves the victim. They like to play the victim card. And the reason why is because it's just easier. It requires no effort to say work is making me overwhelmed. It requires effort in our minds when I go, I'm making myself overwhelmed. Because then we go, oh, shit, I got to do something about this, because I'm making myself so overwhelmed. It changes the way that you perceive things when you can say, I am making myself overwhelmed. It puts you essentially in the driver's seat of your own life, which, I don't know about you, I want everything to be my fault. The reason why I want everything to be my fault is because I can then change it. It almost, overwhelm almost never comes from what you're actually doing. It doesn't. Overwhelm comes from what you think about what you're doing. Overwhelm is when you have 20 things on your to-do list, right? 40 things. Let's say you have 40 things. Oh my God, it's such a long to-do list. You have 40 things on your to-do list. Why are you overwhelmed? It's not because of the things on your to-do list. It's because you're trying to think and plan out all 40 of them at one time. You're trying to figure out a way to do all 40 of them at the exact same time. And of course, hell yeah, that's overwhelming, but you're the one that's creating the overwhelm. Because you can't do all 40 of them at one time. You can only do one at a time. There's a whole lot less overwhelm when you have a 40 to-do list is 40 items long. And you go, okay, what's number one? Number one is this. Okay, I'm going to take my time and I'm going to work on number one. There's a whole lot less overwhelm when you just work on one thing at a time versus you trying to figure out how to do 40 things at one time. Because there will never be a way to do 40 things at one time, which in itself makes you feel overwhelmed. And so we're going to go through a couple different things. We're going to go through three different steps to help you stop being so overwhelmed and change the way that you look at it, but also start to change the way that you act and things that you do. First tip, number one that I'm going to give you is just do one thing at a time. Don't try to multitask. Don't try to plan everything out. Just figure out the one thing that is the most important thing and do that thing. The thing that I always tell people, I've been saying this for years. If you get overwhelmed with your to-do list and all the stuff that has to be done in one day and you want to be highly productive, not busy, but you want to be productive. And let me explain what busy versus productive is because busy is when you have a to-do list and you're doing all the things that don't really matter. It's when you get to the end of the day and you feel like you got nothing done. You've ever done that before where you're just busy all day long and then at the end of the day you're like, I feel like I got nothing done. Why? Because you were probably doing the things that didn't matter. You were being busy versus being productive. And so instead of having that really hard conversation with one of your employees, then you're working from home, you decided to do the laundry instead. So you decided to go for the easy thing. It's still something to be done, but you decided to go for the easy thing versus the important thing. And so what you do is this. You look at your to-do list, you take out a cue card and on that three by five card, the little index card, you write down the number one most important thing, you write down the number two most important thing, you write down the number three most important thing, and you only focus on those three things today. But one thing at a time, you only focus on number one and you don't do anything else until number one is done. And then if you do happen to get number one done today, even if you spent all day working on number one, I'm fine with that because you're at least moving the needle in your life, which is important. So as long as you get number one done, great. That was a productive day. If you just think about every single day, if you got the most important thing done every single day, how productive you would be, how productive you would feel, where you would be in a year, if you got the most important thing done every single day, you'd be in a great position. So one thing at a time, number one, you get that thing done, then you can move on to number two, then you can move on to number three, and you take that cue card, I keep saying cue card. It's an index card, the three by five card, and you put it in your back pocket and you bring that with you everywhere you go. And you forget about the other to-do list. You'll still get those things done. They'll be done, I promise you. You'll figure out a way to squeak in the laundry and to squeak in all the things that you need to get, pick up the kids and all that stuff. But you want to focus on the things that are the most productive, the things that need to be done. And you do one thing at a time. Why? Because think about this, for instance. Let's say that you come over to my house and I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna cook you dinner. Right? You come over to my house and I make steak and a baked potato and a salad. It's all perfectly executed because I'm an amazing cook. It's not true, I'm not. I'm a shit cook. But let's say that it's amazing. It comes out great. And I give you the plate and I put the plate in front of you and you're like, oh my God. Oh, man, I am so overwhelmed. I'd be like, that's weird because it's just steak and potato and salad. You're like, I'm so overwhelmed. I'm like, why are you overwhelmed? Because I can't eat all of this at one time. Like, wouldn't that be crazy to try to take an entire plate of food and eat it all at one time? You just shove all of it in your mouth? It'd be crazy, wouldn't it? Why isn't it any different with your to-do list? You eat one bite at a time. You eat that bite and then when you're done with that bite you put the next bite in your mouth. And when you're done with that bite you put the next bite in your mouth. And eventually the entire plate, if you're eating all of it, which if I'm cooking for you, you better eat all of it, right? The entire plate is done. But you only got the plate eaten one bite at a time. So what's the difference between eating that plate and your to-do list? The only difference is the way that you're thinking about it. When you're eating, you know it's one bite at a time because you've been trained that way for your entire life. That's what you've been doing since you were a child. But the to-do list, we start thinking about all of them at one time. Oh, I have to get all of these things done. No, no, no. One bite at a time. What is the first bite that you have to take out of this to-do list? What's the second bite when you get done with the first bite? Don't focus on the second bite until you know the first bite. What is the second bite now that you're done with your first bite that you need to go after? And you do one thing at a time because you are making yourself overwhelmed. Okay, so that's the first thing. One thing at a time. Also, don't try to multitask. There's proof that multitasking actually makes you dumber. There's also proof that people that multitask put out way lower quality work than people who do what they call single-tasking. So, if you want to be more efficient, you want to be better, put out better work, get stuff done faster and put out better work, you know, that sounds pretty good to me. Faster and better work, single-task. One thing at a time. So that's the first thing. Number two, stop doing too many things. Now, this might sound the same as number one, but it's not. When I say too many things, stop saying yes to everyone. One of the things that I have found that makes people extremely overwhelmed is saying yes to a lot of people's requests. Get better at saying no. And I was reading this morning, I was reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's incredible if you've never read it. Marcus Aurelius was one of the Roman emperors, and he had a journal that he always kept with him. He was a very, very deep philosopher. And he had a journal. It was actually his diary. And when he died, it was supposed to be burned. That was actually the request from him. But people started reading it and going, holy crap, this is really good, and they turned it into a book. So this poor guy, his diary, it was then turned into a book, but he's dead, so who cares? He doesn't know. And so you can read, it's actually incredible, because you can read the most powerful man in the world's thoughts, because he's journaling to himself and it's his diary, and you can see that he still deals with all of the exact same things that we deal with. All of them. It's literally the craziest thing to see the most powerful man in the world, you know, a couple thousand years ago, 1500 years ago, whatever it was, dealing with the same shit that we deal with today. So when I say do less things, one of the things that he said is if you want more tranquility in your life, do less things. And what he said, the next sentence after that, was don't do less things than the fact of stop doing so much. It's do less things throughout the day, and concentrate on what I like to call depth over distance. What do I mean by depth over distance? You work on becoming better at just a few things. Only do a few things, but do them really, really well. So when I say do less things, I don't mean like take more naps. I mean the amount of things that you do, instead of doing 10 things throughout the day, do two, but do two of them extremely well. I mean like really fucking well. And that's how you start to master something. Find something that you love to do and do it the best that you possibly can every single day. One of the greatest tragedies, I think that has come with the internet, I think the internet's great, it's helping people and it's not a bad thing at all, is I think that it's very easy to learn things, which is awesome. But in turn, a lot of people are becoming a jack of all trades and they're kind of getting good at guitar and then they're kind of getting good at this thing and they're kind of getting good at this thing and then they're kind of getting good at learning about Bitcoin and they're kind of getting good at this and they're spreading themselves so thin, which is what I mean by distance, I'd rather go deeper into very few subjects versus wider and have a vast knowledge of many things. And so stop doing too many things. Start doing things that you love but get really, really deep into what those things are. Now you might be like, well, I work a day job, this doesn't make any sense. Listen to me, whenever you're not working your day job, if you find something that you love, try to master it, try to get better at it and that's what I mean by don't do so many things. Do less things. Then that flows perfectly into number three of the perfect segue, which is stop doing things that you don't love. Stop doing things that you don't love and I was talking to another one of my clients the other day and he was talking through this and he was saying something to me about how he was trying to do something but he kept feeling like mental resistance towards something. I have to do this thing but I feel like mental resistance. I have to do this thing but it's becoming hard for me. It's hard for me, blah, blah, blah. He kept saying that and that alone shows the way he's thinking about it is that it's hard and when it's hard you're not going to go at something as much. Once again he was making himself a victim in this case but he felt resistance and I said let me ask you a question is what you're doing right now even what you want to be doing? And he's like no. And I was like the resistance that you are finding is because you're doing what you don't want to do. Like you're just not doing something that you want to do. One of the greatest strategies I think that people do is that they give up the majority of their waking hours doing something that they don't love doing simply because they get a paycheck doing it. And I think that more people should I know most people want to be out of the job that they have or a job that they love more they might not hate their job, it might be okay but there might be something better for them out there and I think that more people should do more of what they love and if you do what you love you'll get really good at it and if you get really good at it you can charge a lot of money for it you can make a lot of money doing that thing. It takes time, yes, but you're not doing enough of what you love. Not doing enough of what you love to try to master something but you're also not doing enough of what you love as far as like what's fun to you and so one thing that I would love for you to do is this when you get down with this episode today make a list of everything that you love to do. It could be going for a run it could be meditating it could be cold plunges, I don't know there's all kinds of things it could be make a list of everything that you love and then make a list of everything that makes you happy it could be puppies, it could be you know sunrise, it could be whatever it is and many things you possibly can that make you happy so things that you love on one list and things that make you happy on another list and then look at those every single morning and plan out how you can get as many of those things into your day. It's much easier to go and work really hard when your day is also, you know even if you have a job that you're not a huge fan of but outside of that job that you're not a fan of you still have a ton of things that you love to do because a lot of people have a job that they don't love and then they come home and they don't do anything and then they get really sad and depressed because the fact that their entire life is made up of this job that they hate to make some tired well instead of that what if you were to try to figure out okay I've got this thing that pays the bills let me figure out how to put as many of these things that I love to do and as things that make me happy into my day as many of them as possible that alone will make you feel better and it'll make you feel less overwhelmed and so those three things once again is do one thing at a time number two stop doing too many things try to get really good at a couple things and then just do more things that you love doing if you do that it will be much more natural for you to not be overwhelmed and then the second thing on top of that is what I said first which is change the way that you're looking at overwhelm you are not being overwhelmed by work you are overwhelmed by the way that you're looking at work instead of saying it is making me overwhelmed say I am making myself overwhelmed that alone will flip your perception of the way that you're looking at it it will put you into a place of power which when you're in a place of power you can actually change it so that's what I got for you for today's episode if you love this episode please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at robdialjr I love seeing you guys in the photos that you take and where you're listening to it on a run or on a walk or with your children all of those things so if you do that I would greatly greatly appreciate it I don't respond to every single one of them but I see every single one of them but I literally look at every single one of them because I love to see where you guys are at and what you think about and all of that stuff as well so once again it is Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R and I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode make sure your mission makes someone else's day better I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day