Affirmation: When I'm Stressed and Overwhelmed (Shifting from Chaos to Calm in Business and Life)

After years of feeling trapped in the relentless cycle of stress and burnout, I discovered a powerful affirmation that has become my North Star: "When I find myself in a state of stress and overwhelm, I choose to breathe and treat myself lovingly so that I may respond consciously to the challenges of life." This episode of Effortlessly Productive invites you to explore the transformative power of this affirmation and how it can help shift your mindset from stress-induced chaos to calm, conscious responses. Join me, Annie Veblen-McCarty, as I unravel how acknowledging our feelings, coupled with mindful breathing, can help us navigate the entrepreneurial journey with authenticity and grace.

Together, we'll take a closer look at how our nervous system operates under stress and how we can transition from the reactive state of fight, flight, or freeze to a more balanced, creative, and logical state. It's all about embracing the human experience, accepting stress as normal, and utilizing tools to regulate our emotions. This isn't just about productivity; it's about living a fulfilled life and building a business that reflects our true selves. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a leader, or simply someone seeking a new approach to life's challenges, this episode is packed with insights that will empower you to harness your inner resilience and thrive.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, this is Annie Veblen-McCarty and I'm gonna teach you how to be effortlessly productive. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and I got sick and tired of experts preaching what business and life should look like and what I should be doing as a leader and to turn a profit, only to find myself wasting time, burned out, feeling inauthentic and still not making any money. On this show, we are ditching the shoulds. I'm giving you permission to do business differently. As a certified master coach, I believe that everything you need to have success and build the life and business of your dreams is already living on the inside. I'm gonna empower you to lean into what you do best, help you see your path forward clearly and give you the strategy and action steps along the way to become effortlessly productive. Let's dive in.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Welcome to this episode of Effortlessly Productive. This is another one of my affirmation episodes where I share with you some of my daily affirmations, why I have those affirmations and how they have helped me. And, of course, you are always welcome to borrow them if this serves you, if this feels good in your body, if this is helpful in shifting your mindset and your beliefs, tapping into that subconscious, in shifting your mindset and your beliefs, tapping into that subconscious. Definitely borrow these, please. So the affirmation that we are going to be working with today is when I find myself in a state of stress and overwhelm, I choose to breathe and treat myself lovingly so that I may respond consciously to the challenges of life. So let's break this down because that's a long one. So when I find myself in a state of stress and overwhelm, that happens. That is part of the human experience of life. Right, there are gonna be times where we have those added stressors. Maybe you are just kind of existing in a state of stress because of whatever is going on in your life or business, and that is okay. We all go through those seasons. Maybe you're feeling very overwhelmed. I know at the beginning of this week I had a lot of overwhelm happening because of kid schedules getting disrupted and then impacting my normal schedule. So it happens to all of us. No matter how much work we do, there are going to be times where life throws things our way that trigger off that stress and overwhelm. So, number one that is normal, that is part of being human and it's okay. That's part of why we have this affirmation, because this affirmation reminds us that this is normal, number one and it is okay to feel this way. All of our feelings are valid and we also have tools. When we are feeling this way, when we are stressed and overwhelmed, I choose to breathe. So that's number one because sometimes we want to shift and make ourselves feel better right away. We're just looking for that quick fix, that quick solution where we're like just get rid of this feeling. I don't want to feel like this. This is negative. I don't like this.

Speaker 1: 3:12

So when we are stressed and overwhelmed, we are in our sympathetic nervous system response right, the fight or flight. That is what happens with stress. Usually, stress is more of a fight or a flight. Overwhelm can often look like a freeze right, fight, flight or freeze. Overwhelm is often freeze, sometimes flight. So when we find ourselves there, we are in our synthetic nervous system and it's really important to start to shift into our parasympathetic nervous system, especially with business and just life in general. When we are operating in that fight, flight or freeze response, the logical part of our brain is not really turned on and the creative part of our brain is definitely not turned on at all. I did an episode about this like a few weeks ago. So if you're curious and diving in more, go look for that episode. But breathing accesses our parasympathetic nervous system. So this is a tool to sit in those feelings, sit in those emotions, giving ourselves permission that this is okay. It is okay to feel this way, it is normal, it is human. There is a reason why our body is doing this. It is trying to protect us. And then we are breathing so that we can shift back into that logical, creative, parasympathetic part of our nervous system. It's that nervous system regulation that is so important.

Speaker 1: 4:40

As entrepreneurs, we realize we're stressed and overwhelmed and we're breathing. And the next part of it is I treat myself lovingly. We're literally sitting there giving ourselves a big giant hug, because sometimes we need that human connection in that hug and sometimes that can't come from anybody else at the moment. It can always come from you. We treat ourselves with love. It's not that shame of why are you feeling this way. It is that acceptance of this is how I'm feeling in this moment and I am going to love myself. No matter what, I'm going to give myself that extra love that I need right now. Right, if we think about if we had a kid come home and they were stressed and overwhelmed and crying. Most of the time, we're going to give them a big hug and that's what we're doing with ourselves. So think about yourself in these moments as your child or, if you don't have children, like how you would reach out to another human who was in that state. So we're gonna treat ourselves lovingly and the reason why we're breathing and treating ourselves lovingly the last part of this affirmation is that so I may respond consciously to the challenges of life. This part of the affirmation reminds us that life is going to throw us challenges. It is not going to be smooth sailing the entire time. You will face challenges in life and that is okay. That is part of life.

Speaker 1: 6:02

When these challenges come up, it is really important to respond consciously, and this goes back to what I talked about what is happening in our brain when we are stressed and overwhelmed. We are in that sympathetic nervous system response. We are in that fight, flight or freeze mode and when we respond from that place, we're not responding consciously, we are responding from the primitive part of our brain that is taken over. It is now running the ship and it is fighting, flighting, running away or freezing and doing nothing. That is not a conscious level response. That is subconscious, pre-programmed, very primitive response.

Speaker 1: 6:44

This part of the affirmation reminds us how important it is to respond consciously, because when we can bring that parasympathetic nervous system back online, bring that logical and creative part of our brain back online, we suddenly have a very different response to things, and it often is a response that is going to help us be able to walk through these challenges, not fight, flight or freeze these challenges right. We're going to be able to respond logically. We're going to be able to think through things. We're going to be able to problem solve. We're going to be able to think through things. We're going to be able to problem solve. We're going to be able to be creative. Sometimes we're going to be able to just sit in those challenges and acknowledge that it sucked, and this is part of that human experience and it will be okay.

Speaker 1: 7:27

That is why I have this reminder in my daily affirmations. Again, I will read it back to you so that you have the full thing in its entirety, now that we've broken it all down. When I find myself in a state of stress or overwhelm, I choose to breathe and treat myself lovingly so that I may respond consciously to the challenges of life. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Effortlessly Productive. I will catch you on the next one. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.