Overwhelm is Optional

Success versus health Success versus health is a nonsense - clearly its a nonsense! It’s like climbing to the top of a mountain and realising you’d left your intestines at the bottom. And I wonder, as we continue to damage our health by pushing on through the overwhelm and exhaustion to achieve our goals, whether its a way to justify our success. Like driving fast, overworking is an easy habit to...

Mindfulness can help with your overwhelm or make it a whole lot worse. Mindfulness is so much more than just being aware of the present moment. What if the present moment is awful? Don’t add mindfulness to your already overloaded to-do list. Don’t make it yet another ‘should’. And most of all - don’t make it a special occasion. Exploring tuning in and listening to your body to get out of your head...

Most people trying to escape overwhelm don't know what they're trying to get to. This episode answers that question. The opposite of overwhelm is ease. Not emptiness, not absence of ambition, not doing less — but feeling at ease in your life, at home in your body. Able to respond rather than react. Able to aim and achieve rather than flail and just get through. why knowing what you want...

How much are you judging yourself? Your mind can be pretty judgy which can really add to your overwhelm. Catching the mind in its miserable judgy act - becoming aware of how often you are judging yourself is very powerful and freeing. In this episode, I teach the first part of my body mindfulness method - Neutral Noticing - to allow you to start to gain an awareness of how much you judge yourself....

How many times have you told yourself you should do something today? This week? In the last hour? Shoulds add heavily to overwhelm — and most of us are drowning in them without even noticing. This episode brings awareness to just how much you're shoulding yourself, and why that awareness alone is extraordinarily powerful and freeing. why shoulds add so heavily to your overwhelm how to notice...

How you start your day changes everything about how your day feels. This episode shows you how to begin without the overwhelm already winning. Short, practical and immediately useful — including my tuning in method, the power of Neutral Noticing, and why your shower might be the most underrated tool you own. how to get out of your head and into your body first thing the power of Neutral Noticing t...

Your body knows things your overwhelmed mind can't access. This episode teaches you how to listen. This is an in-depth introduction to my tuning in technique — one of the most practical and immediately useful tools I've ever shared. Six years on, it's still one of the most downloaded episodes on this podcast. There's a reason for that. why tuning into your body gets you out of...

A shorter episode to focus on how to use the continued experience of lockdown to gather information on what creates and adds to overwhelm for you personally, and also a chance to practice radical self-care by breaking the normal rules about when to eat, rest, drink and move. Exploring tuning in and listening to your body to get out of your head and move from overwhelm to ease. Find an easier way t...

Episode 3: A special very short episode for overwhelmed parents in homeschooling lockdown (recorded March 28th 2020) If after one week of homeschooling you are feeling in need of some easy ways to get out of overwhelm and start creating more clarity, ease and energy into your life then this episode is especially for you. Radical self-care that fits into your day with as little effort as possible. ...

A special lockdown episode exploring how we can reduce overwhelm at this particularly overwhelming time. So if you’re feeling even more overwhelmed than usual because you don’t know how you’re going to get through or you’re noticing that actually, for you, the sudden removal of some of your usual activities and options is reducing feelings of overwhelm, then this episode is for you. Exploring tuni...

How does the title "Overwhelm is Optional" make you feel? Annoyed that nobody told you sooner? Hopeful that there might actually be a way through? Relieved that someone gets it? I share my own story of burnout: how I worked hard to reach my goals, crashed completely, and got fascinated by what was actually happening. And I share the technique I use several times a day - and teach to ever...