Marly delves deep in this episode to chat about the overwhelm she faced over the past several months. See how Marly came out on top by taking a few proactive steps.
Welcome back to The Marly Dice Podcast. Where do I even begin with this week’s episode? If you’ve been following along for awhile, then you know I went silent this past month. A month. A long time for me to go silent. I had so many of you reach out to me to check in on me and see what was going on.
You all are the best community ever, hands down.
So I want to answer that question here on my podcast before I get too far into today’s episode because it has a lot to with the topic today which is overwhelm.
Overwhelm is, in fact, the reason I have been silent for a month on my blog, on my podcast, on social media, all of it.
In full transparency, this past fall my husband took on a rigorous class at work, which meant lots of hours away from home and lots of hours at work. And he has the type of job where you can’t work remotely. Which left me to take care of our child practically 90% of the time, including nights. And while that was all happening, I was still trying my best to work on my blogging business.
Now, I’m not telling you this story to whine or say boo hoo to me, because that’s just not the case. I’m thankful everyday that I have the opportunity to be home with my little girl. These particular last several months were really difficult for me trying to take on so much without having as much help as I usually have when my hubby is home more.
I experienced complete overwhelm. One day in February I just shut down. It was like I sat down on the couch and I didn’t get back up, not literally of course.
But that’s what tends to happen to us creative people. We go so hard for so long and push ourselves so much that we end up shutting down. And, that’s unfortunately what happened to me.
I want to point out here that nothing traumatic happened or anything like that. I wasn’t dealing with any type of loss. It was just what I would call a shut down because of complete overwhelm. I needed a break. And it’s difficult for me to admit that because I’m one of those people who likes to go-go-go and get things done.
During the last month or so, I really removed myself from my business. Of course I have lots of systems already set in place so it was still running but I was not on the other side of it helping it or improving it or being there for you.
There were so many days when I thought about jumping back in, but what would I say to you? I promised you weekly podcast episodes, and I left you hanging for a month.
That’s not like me at all and I felt so bad about that particular fall that I kinda just wanted to go curl up in a corner. And the other part of me just had no ambition left. It was like I did so much for so long and then it ran out. I was completely overwhelmed and I couldn’t seem to pick up the pieces.
Can you relate to this at all? Have you ever had a time where you were so overwhelmed you just shut down?
Fortunately I didn’t completely shut down in life – I pretty much kept the shut down to only my blogging biz. I spent the last month focusing on my family, being with my daughter and my husband. During that time, my hubby finished up his last class for his job, which means things will start to go back to normal around here.
I’ll get some help with our daughter, which means I can have some time for my blog but also myself.
Another transition I made over the last month during my overwhelm shut down was that I turned to God. I haven’t had a relationship with God for a long, long time and it was like an ‘aha’ moment for me when I finally started building a relationship with him.
You know what’s interesting is that I follow lots of bloggers and entrepreneurs who talk about God in their businesses. And for the longest time, I would just kind of put him by the wayside, like He matters but I’m not going to ask him for guidance in my business. I can do this all on my own. And that was my mentality for a long time.
It was cool that other bloggers and entrepreneurs were talking about God and praising God and trusting God with their business, but I didn’t need to.
But during my shut down, I felt a call to be closer to God. It started with being asked to be a God parent and that spurred investing more time with God and learning about God and creating a relationship with God.
I’ll tell you this much. I never thought in a million years that I would be talking about God in my business. But here we are. And, you know what, it feels really good.
Since I’ve started taking leaps toward God, I’ve noticed everything in my life getting better.
One thing I recently did was join a coaching group – one that I’ve wanted to join for quite some time but just couldn’t seem to justify spending money on.
I felt like it was the right time to join the group, and you know what one of the first things I heard in a video was about – overwhelm.
And, in short, the message was this: you control your overwhelm.
Is that not powerful? It was so powerful for me to hear in that instance because it is so true.
We all control our overwhelm, and we need to make adjustments if something is not working. We can remove ourself from a FB group, we can set up alarms on our phones if we think we’re spending too much time scrolling on FB, we can make to-do lists and just start with the first thing on that list.
There are things we can do. A lot of come to a point where we’re like we have 50 things to on our list and it’s like how can we do them all? It becomes so overwhelming that we just shut down.
But we control our overwhelm. If you make a to – do list, write the list out, then prioritize the list from 1-20 or whatever it is, and then start with number one. And then scratch it off your list when you’re done. It’s better to do one one thing than nothing.
We can write one blog post. We can schedule social media for one week so we don’t feel as overwhelemed with it. Just start with one thing.
We control our overwhelm.
And I realized that I wasn’t controlling my overwhelm during these last several months. I let my overwhelm control me which led me to a shut down.
So, I’ve clearly learned a few things about overwhelm during this time, and I wanted to share my story with you this week because I just think it’s relatable and I know many bloggers who’ve done something similar. They work so hard and then get so overwhelmed and shut down for a period of time.
Overwhelm is something that I think we as blogging business owners need to be more aware of and should proactively try to manage, because we control our overwhelm.
If you’re still listening, thank you so much for sticking around while I shared my story and why I went silent for so long.
Just to recap, my steps for proactively managing my overwhelm are #1. recognizing it. #2. seeking out God and relationship with Him in my business and #3. joining a coaching group invest in myself, and to help me with overwhelm.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, your steps to managing it may look different, but I think at the core we need to realize that we control our overwhelm.
Thanks again for listening, and I hope you have an awesome rest of your day!
BTW – if you enjoyed today’s episode please leave me a review on iTunes!
Facebook community: facebook.com/abrickhome
Instagram community: instagram.com/abrickhome
PIN IT FOR LATER
