Robyn Savage (00:00)
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the 17 minutes podcast. I'm gonna start my timer because I've been having a difficult time keeping these episodes to 17 minutes. And today I'm gonna hold myself accountable. So bear witness, I've set a timer for 17 minutes and I've actually taken a little break from the podcast. I just got back from traveling for...
close to three weeks with my family and decided to take a little pause and hiatus while I was gone to be fully present and to sink in with my kiddos and just travel and be and collect inspiration and be in the moment and make the memories and all of those things happened. The trip was absolutely amazing and I'm returning home.
to really just land back into my work, my client work.
my service, rhythms, routines. And, you know, I wanted to talk today about something that has come up in conversation a lot with my clients lately, but also something that I've been feeling deeply in myself. So my guess is there's something that's going to resonate with you in this conversation about overwhelm as an entrepreneur.
and really understanding like how to pick and choose what is serving you, what is going to help you move forward, move that needle forward towards becoming more of who you want to be, helping you achieve the goals that you have for your business. So today we're going to talk all about overwhelm in your brand, in your business, but also as always in your life. Okay. And if you're someone like me, whose behavioral patterns are sort of stuck with the gas pedal on like stuck in go mode, right. ⁓ that's someone
with
high dominance, low pace. You just want things to go, go, go. And then if you mix low conformity in there, like you're a rule breaker, or you're extremely impulsive and intuitive, you're not very logical, then you can work yourself into a frenzy of chaos pretty quickly. So this is one of the reasons that understanding my own behavioral patterns was so helpful, because when overwhelm starts to sort of take a hold of me, I can look at my behavioral
patterns and think, okay, what's going on here? Well, number one, you love to be challenged. So my pattern is to create a challenge where there isn't one.
Okay, so when I'm overwhelmed I can specifically ask myself am I creating this overwhelm? Am I creating the chaos? Am I creating this challenge for myself that is actually creating more harm than good? And I will say that sometimes creating that challenge for yourself Is really positive it lights a fire under your ass and gets you moving and gets you going it motivates you It inspires you it gives you this adrenaline boost right like I'm gonna do this thing
But sometimes when you're stuck in a pattern of creating chaos, and I talked about this on the very first episode of this podcast, so you can go back and listen to that episode number one. ⁓ But when we get stuck in that pattern of creating chaos where there's calm, that's when we are creating overwhelm for ourselves that is.
more harmful than it is good. It's creating bad pressure versus good pressure and ⁓ that overwhelm can create a whole bunch of other problems. Freeze mode, it'll paralysis you. It'll paralyze you and have you sort of stuck in place, not knowing where to start, how to begin or how to move forward. So ⁓
First things first, am I creating this chaos? Am I creating this overwhelm? Is there something I could say no to here? Is there something that I could take off my plate? Is there something that I could decide is not for me in this moment? Can I press pause on an idea? Can I say no to an upcoming event? Overwhelm is often self-produced. So take a look at that. The next thing is, ⁓
And I'm going to talk about pace for a second here. If you've done your identity report, look at your pace measurement. Okay. If you haven't done your identity report, then. ⁓
just get your identity report, but also you can, you can self-reflect here for a moment. Am I someone who likes to follow a process? Am I someone who needs things to be methodical in order for me to flow easily? Am I someone who likes to take my time and move through things with intention and thoughtfulness and following particular rhythms? Or do I like to high tail it, put my foot on the gas pedal and go? Okay. If you are someone
who likes to have your foot on the gas pedal and go then you may in this moment of overwhelm in your life in your business you may benefit from not fully slamming on the brakes but you can imagine this as like a yellow light moment right okay rather than having my foot on the gas cruising down the superhighway in this moment of overwhelm what I'm going to do is just
not even put my foot on the brake, but I am going to release the gas just a little bit so that I can collect the pieces of myself that I am losing. I am going to take my foot off the gas for long enough to notice where I am losing a sense of control, a sense of awareness, a sense of confidence, a sense of trust where I am losing
grasp on what it is that I'm trying to accomplish, where I'm losing sight of where I'm trying to go. And when you take your foot off the gas pedal, the overwhelm immediately stops for me. Okay, if I take a moment and say, okay.
Now I'm not cruising 200 kilometers an hour down that superhighway. I'm actually going 80 kilometers an hour. I can see the world around me. I can put myself in place. I can orient. I can choose again. I can make a conscious choice. I can have intentional real conversations with the people around me. I can check in with my team. I can look at the data, right? Often when we're cruising so fast down the superhighway, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doing, going, going, crushing, crushing, crushing our goals. We aren't actually collecting data. We aren't looking at what's working, what's not working. How could I pivot? What needs to be refined? Where am I leaking time, energy, and money in the business? We're actually just moving so fast that all of the information is like, be like hitting the windshield and like, like pinging off of you.
Right? So overwhelm is often in my world really multiplied when I am going so fast, my high pace is out of control. I like to go quickly. I don't like to wait. I have no patience. Right? So when I'm cruising so fast,
that I can't collect the information, that's when overwhelm really spirals out of control in my world as well. Okay, so if you are someone who really loves to move fast, then you're going to want to... ⁓
Take your foot off the gas pedal for long enough that you can collect the information. See what's really going on. Evidence over feelings. Yeah? Facts over feelings. Facts are gonna give you the truth. Your feelings are gonna tell you how you feel in a moment. Valid, true. We wanna listen. We wanna know how you feel. And we want the evidence and the facts because when you remove your feelings that are temporary and you focus on the
and look at the evidence, well, often your feelings will change. You'll say, ⁓ right, okay, there's the truth. There's what's really happening. And then you can make a really well-informed decision. The last thing we're gonna look at in terms of overwhelm in your business, if you are a rule breaker, then I'm talking to you. Hands up if you love to break a good rule. I love to break a good rule. I'm not gonna lie. Love breaking rules in business.
love breaking rules all over the place and not for the sake of breaking a rule but for the sake of exploring or experimenting with how something different something outside the box something divergent something that's not a typical rule or linear
way of thinking could actually produce a better result or lead to a better outcome or make people around me feel better, have a different experience that's actually more of what they want. Okay, so we're not talking like, you know, ruthless rebellion here. We're talking like, how could I look at this differently? Live outside the box, create a business that's outside the box, divergent thinking, creative thinking. You see what I'm saying? So if that is you, then sometimes overwhelm
is perpetuated by this frenzy, this need to do things differently, reinventing the wheel, ha ha, coming up with new ideas constantly, forcing ourselves to be in this creative vortex all the time because creativity is rule breaking, right?
Robyn Savage (09:48)
So what can happen when we're stuck in this sort of flow or this pattern of constantly recreating, constantly ideating, constantly breaking the rules and rebelling against what society is telling us to do. And we wanna do all these different things. We can actually create overwhelm. I mean, this feels overwhelming, right? It's like, yeah, babe, put some systems in place. It's like the bumpers at a bowling alley.
Right? Like you can still have your own crazy swing, your own crazy bowling pitch, you know, I don't know what it's called where you roll that ball down that bowling alley and get your strike. You can do that however you want, but the bumpers on either side are going to help keep things within the line and the systems and the automations and the processes that you put in place in your business are those bumpers. So you can be
you know, nonconforming and rebellious and as creative as you want within those bumpers, but that's gonna help you reduce the overwhelm and the chaos by giving you a framework, by giving you a structure or like a container to create within. Yeah. So tons of overwhelm in the community lately and a lot of the overwhelm is driven by your patterns. Okay. I've named three of them today.
We talked about your need to create chaos and challenge when there isn't one, ⁓ the need to move really fast and the need to break rules. And all of these are super A plus qualities for entrepreneurs. It's amazing to love a good challenge. It's imperative that you want to be challenged if you are trying to become a successful entrepreneur who has an impact. Like you're challenging.
structures and systems in society, you're creating a challenge in your life simply by not having a nine to five job. That's a challenge in and of itself, right? But when you create too much challenge and it becomes chaos, then you're gonna perpetuate overwhelm, which is not what you want. It's not ideal, it's not necessary, right? The second thing we talked about was your speed.
Right? If you're moving so fast that you can't collect information in order to make better choices, then you need to take your foot off the gas pedal, slow down just a little bit, not halt, but slow down just a little bit so that you can see what's going on around you, collect that information and make the next best choice for yourself. And the third thing we talked about is conformity and your need to break rules, your need to be rebellious, to be creating and
how important it is to have structures around that so that the creativity doesn't become chaos, which is synonymous with overwhelm. So that's all for today on the 17 minutes pod. I'm feeling a bit of the overwhelm myself. So I'm going back to my systems. I'm looking at my identity report. I'm seeing where I'm like really perpetuating those old patterns that create a little bit of that overwhelm for me.
the identity report will show you where these patterns show up for you. You won't have to guess. You don't have to say, hmm, Rob, I'm not really sure what my patterns are because the identity report lays it all out for you. And these patterns are where we self-sabotage. They're also our biggest opportunity for growth. They are also our biggest blocks, our biggest blind spots. So as entrepreneurs, we start to see
more of ourselves, we start to understand how we are wired behaviorally, what our patterns innately are, then we can become conscious of them. And when we become conscious of our behavioral patterns, how we thrive, how we hold ourselves back, our hidden strengths, our really glaringly obvious weaknesses, when we see those laid out for us, then it becomes useful information that we can actually make
choices around. We can create change, we can take action that moves us closer towards what we want, and we can reduce friction in terms of not doing or repeating the patterns of the things that we don't want or that don't help us become who we want to be and create the businesses that we want. So grab your identity report. ⁓ Also keep in mind you guys like there's some really really awful awful things going on in the world right now.
And that in and of itself perpetuates a shared collective energy of overwhelm. So go easy on yourself. Go easy on yourself. Take deep breaths. Help where you can. Pray, be in your community. Give back what you can give back. But also know
that the overwhelm isn't just within you, it is being felt on a collective level right now. And ⁓ protect your peace. Okay? I love you. Grab that identity report. Let's discover what your patterns are. Hold yourself close. Hold your loved ones close. Get out in the world. Do your work. And I love you. I'll talk to you soon, next week. And my gosh, we kept this under 17 minutes.
How do you how do you like them apples? See you next week,
