Overwhelm

Brian: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the six-figure creative podcast. I'm your host Brian Hood. I'm here with my big bald. Beautiful not as creepy looking today. Cohost Christopher J. Graham. How you doing today? My dude.

Chris: I'm doing great, man. We were just, maybe this'll get edited out, but we were just having a really good conversation about a straight edge. What does it mean to be straight edge? And you and I

Chris: are are weird in this regard

Brian: Are we weird or just you weird. I'm not weird in this regard because

Chris: neither of us drink alcohol and not because we're like, you know, Bible thumpers or something like that. I mean, we are, but not really not in that way, but that's a strange thing too. I only have like maybe one or two other friends that don't drink. but I'm a little bit of a weird anomaly even in the straight edge community

Brian: You're not straight edge, Chris, you're not straight

Brian: edge

Chris: I would, say that I am, but I'm what you call California sober, which means I don't drink, but I did just hit a vape [00:01:00] pen

Brian: containing what Chris,

Chris: containing a it's called Tropicana cookies. It's a sativa strain. I first tried it on our trip to Nam 20.

Brian: which is weird to think about that. We were actually at Nam in 2020, because that seems like a lifetime ago, but that was before it all went to

Brian: poop.

Brian: All right. So let's bring this conversation back really quick, straight edge for anyone who's wondering what the hell that is. It is essentially just a lifestyle decision of no drugs, no alcohol. And as far as I know, back in the day, at least when we were young and everyone was being straight, was claiming EDS is what they call it. It was also no promiscuous sex. So no, like just hooking up with people for the sake of hooking up.

Brian: It was no sex outside of relationships. so I claimed edge when I was like 17. I only did it because I was in like a hardcore band with a bunch of metal core. I'm overstating myself, a metal core band with a bunch of other dudes who were straight edge. And that was just the kind of the scene back then.

Brian: But I was already that way. I didn't like change my lifestyle to be that. And then what happened inevitably after a while was people started falling off the straight edge bandwagon after getting tons of tattoos [00:02:00] for it. And, and fast forward, you know, I guess 20, 20 years now, Almost 20 years now, I've been straight edge and I don't know anyone else.

Brian: I don't think that it's still straight edge from my old background. So Chris thinks he straight as, but I don't think he has a clue what that actually means when he's over there, like hitting a vape.

Chris: but here here's what I'll say. That's adorable is you just said the word straight edge, like 17 times, and I've never seen you gotten so passionate and nerdy on a subject. And I feel like I just got a glimpse of 17 year old, Brian, that 70 brown was like, that's right. This is awesome.

Brian: Yeah. There's a lot that goes into that. The reason I'm passionate about it is not because I really cared that much about straight edge. It's because I saw no stairs. I saw a really interesting cultural thing. When you see this all over the place, it's the loudest And proudest people were the first ones to break edge and you see this in a lot of areas.

Brian: It's like, the people I see this all the time, like you see the couple online, who's like, so lovey-dovey on like social. And then [00:03:00] like the guy cheats, the guy cheats

Chris: man,

Brian: Yeah, we can, whatever, but it, dude, it's it's it's it's it was a fun. time back in the day. And it was, I dunno, it was, it was a good, good, good time in my

Brian: life.

Chris: You're a kind of a dork. I like it.

Brian: Well, let's actually talk about what we're going to talk about in this episode today. Now that we've gone down straight edge, I'll give you this, Chris, you are California sober.

Chris: California's sober.

Brian: you can, claim that title. Cause I just heard of it 10 seconds before we started recording this episode and I have nothing else to base that off of.

Chris: Yeah, that's dude. I'm I'm I feel bad saying this, but let me bring this one. Last thing before we jump into the episode, I've been caffeine free for like a year and a half,

Brian: Oh, that's another actually actually, you know, what's funny, that's another element that a lot of like really hardcore strategies, people said no caffeine. So in that regard I'm not actually truly straight edge. Cause I started drinking caffeine when I was 20.

Chris: right? So who's more straight edge. Me or you. I smoke weed and don't drink caffeine or alcohol. You don't drink alcohol and don't smoke weed, but you do drink caffeine.

Brian: No one on earth would argue [00:04:00] against, smoking weed, not being straight as anyone who's listening right now will back me up, who knows what straight edges, but a good number of people will say, you can still be strange and drink caffeine. Let's let's get away from the semantics because not we've lost 90% of our episode at this

Brian: point,

Brian: or are like, yeah, maybe James, we'll cut this out.

Brian: Or maybe he'll be really interested. Cause he's, I think he might be familiar with that background. So maybe he's actually leaving this end. Let's talk about what we're actually going to talk about Chris. And that is the topic of overwhelm. It is at the time this episode airs it's the end of the year.

Brian: This is the last episode of of the year. If I'm doing my math correctly and I didn't mess something up. and with that comes two things. One is the release of hopefully, hopefully some bad. And two is hopefully some hope for the future. That is 2022, because I think for most people listening to this podcast, one of their worst years was 2020, because that was just a train wreck, not everybody, but a lot of people, 2020 was our worst year, 20, 21 was better in some ways, and not better in some ways, because we're still like as of the winter of 20, you know, the last, the last episode of the year, we still have rampant cases of COVID everywhere.

Brian: [00:05:00] And It's it's just annoying to still be that stuff be around. But all this kind of sums up to the topic of overwhelm. Chris and I were talking before this episode, we talked to, we talked for like an hour and a half before we even started recording today because this is, this is like top of mind for both of us, is this, this topic of overwhelm.

Brian: And we were even talking about like, before. we consider the heyday of our podcast, which was episode 75 through episode 125. There's like a 50 episode stint there where you and I were like in flow state. And the reason we got out of that I think was because of overwhelm on both sides, mostly on your side, because a lot of stuff happened for you.

Brian: And we're, we don't have to go into any of those things, right. The second w w those things will just naturally come up in this conversation, but also in my side. And, and so we're both related to this. We're both dealing with this. I think a lot of our listeners are dealing with this. And so, Yeah, we're going to just discuss the topic of overwhelm and, and what we can potentially do about it for 2020.

Chris: Yeah, so this word overwhelmed, it's been on my mind a lot. I've been thinking about it a ton. And especially as [00:06:00] I've been working through, my own personal stuff and realizing, like I add a lot of very overwhelming experiences as a kid and those, it was a lot to process and I find myself and have found myself, you know, continually, sometimes overwhelmed.

Chris: And I wanted to find what that word means. Overwhelmed to me.

Brian: Thank you for talking down to our audience, Chris. No one knows what overwhelm is. So let's, let's hear the definition from Chris

Brian: Graham.

Chris: in this context. So like I did just say, well,

Brian: Okay. Listeners, we're going to tell you what overwhelmed means because you are dumb. Chris, can you do it

Brian: please?

Chris: He's just usually just gave me back for all my, all the fun I had with your straight edge.

Brian: Yeah, it's exactly this episode. The rest of the episode is going to be me pooping on you.

Chris: Okay. Sounds good. Sounds good. What a, what a turn of events that will

Chris: be

Brian: Yup.

Brian: Exactly. Put your guard up, Chris, just be ready for this.

Brian: Okay.

Chris: I had my vape pen, so I don't have any guard right now, so you're good. This would be a good episode. I won't get offended. So [00:07:00] overwhelm, I think is different than stress. Stress isn't necessarily bad stress.

Chris: Like it, it pushes you forward. It makes you want to complete a task and, you know, change your circumstance. Overwhelm, I think is when you have so much stress that you freeze, that you can't move, that you can't make a decision. And man, this sounds so silly. I get overwhelmed in grocery stores a lot for sure.

Chris: Chores are a complicated place. And I will very often be like, okay this granola or that granola and I'll freeze up and I won't be able to make a decision, but this is so stupid. It's just a box of cereal

Brian: I would like to have a better example for overwhelmed, because to me, if you're overwhelmed at the supermarket, you got a lot deeper issues than that. Cause I'm talking like true, true overwhelm. I liked your definition, which is so much going on in your life. You can't make decisions. And so that leads to, for me, and I think you're the same way.

Brian: It leads to avoidance like in my life when I feel overwhelmed, which is what I feel when I open my phone and see all the [00:08:00] notifications on my phone, I avoid, I don't, that's why I have so many unread messages on social media. So many unread texts, so many unread emails. I think everyone can relate to the, the, the inbox fiasco.

Brian: Email inbox.

Chris: Probably not many people more than you. You, you tend to your inbox overwhelm is significant. Like there are times when. when you text back, like immediately for weeks at a time. And then there are times when you don't text back for weeks.

Brian: it depends on how I feel about you. That's really the that's the true test. How do I feel about Chris at that time? It was how quickly I replied to him. But, but there's, there's, there's a, okay, so there is a balance here because what I have found though, when I do avoidance in some cases is that I find what is actually important to me.

Brian: So we may be kind of skipping ahead of like finding some of the solutions to this. so sometimes the avoidance issue kind of resolves itself. And I get out of the overwhelm because I find out that some of the things that I avoided weren't even things I needed to focus on or care about in the first place, which is why most likely those emails will never get opened.

Brian: Some of those texts will never get replied to, or even read because ultimately it doesn't [00:09:00] change the trajectory of my life in any way, shape or form. Hopefully people at this point can still relate to what we're talking about. it could be, it can come in so many forms, shapes sizes.

Brian: It can come in so many different, various variations, but overwhelm is one of the things that can kill you. Probably quite literally cause it adds stress to your life, but also kill your business because it, it takes you out of, I think one of the most important things that business owners can have, which is rhythm and routine.

Brian: Chris and I, we were talking about this before we recorded, which is the heyday episode, 75 through 1 25 where I felt like we were at our best was because we had such a great rhythm and routine down for, for the podcast. And even talking to like what we felt like were some of our best parts about some of our past business situations, like some of our biggest areas of growth, where we were, where we were in these areas of rhythm and routine.

Brian: And I think that's kind of the subtext of this conversation today, which is. What is the opposite of overwhelmed? And you had one definition and I had kind of another definition, but for me, the opposite of [00:10:00] overwhelm is boredom, which is kind of funny to think about. Like I was saying before this episode recorded was to me the healthiest business as almost a boring business, it's predictable.

Brian: It has rhythm, it has routine. And I think for you and your mom, when you were in your like mastering heyday, where that's all you did all day, every day, nothing surprised you because you'd seen every possible variation of everything ever. and to me, that's

Brian: that's boring. But, but give me your definition of what, the opposite of overwhelmed.

Chris: So again, overwhelm is stress that paralyzes. I think the opposite of overwhelm is flow state. When I'm overwhelmed, I can't make good decisions. I freeze up, but when I'm in flow, state decisions are effortless. It's as if I'm not even thinking the work I want to do the creative, the creative things I want to make just happen.

Chris: And it's this amazing feeling. Overwhelmed. Emotionally certainly feels the opposite of flow state because when you're in flow state, your, you feel as you are [00:11:00] supposed to be, there's this sense of like, this is what I'm supposed to do right

Chris: here right

Brian: did you say what flow state is? Cause not everyone on earth knows what that is. Most people do with

Brian: listening,

Brian: I think, but just really quickly talk about what flow state is. So no one's left in the, in the.

Chris: so flow state in creative world, when you are making art flow state is this magical thing that happens where all of a sudden, if your painter, the paintbrush disappears, if you're a photographer, the camera disappears and it's just you making the art. You're not thinking about your tools at all. You're not making technical decisions.

Chris: You're not making creative decisions. You're literally just intuitively doing the thing that feels the most natural to you in that moment. And there's no resistance at all.

Brian: Yeah.

Brian: I think the litmus test there for a lot of people that can relate to this is when you, when you're so deep into your work that you forget to eat,

Brian: I think like if I'm not in flow state, I'm looking at the clock. When, when is lunch I'm ready to eat when I'm in. It's like 3:00 PM and I haven't eaten lunch yet.[00:12:00]

Brian: Like we're normally I'll eat lunch at 11, 11 30. So like flow state. I like the idea of flow state. I don't think that's necessarily the opposite of overwhelmed, but I think I think there's probably some tie in with like a boring business and flow state because I say boring. It's not really what I'm talking about.

Brian: When I say no one wants a boring business. But what I'm talking about is like, in some ways, predictability is boredom in some ways you have to have some, some amount of predictability to hit flow state, because like when it's not predictable, when you don't know kind of what you're doing in a situation it's really hard to get into flow state.

Brian: There has to be some comfortability with what you're doing in order to reach flow state. And also, I think we're kind of talking about the same thing, so I just wanna make sure people understand. Yeah. When I, when I say boring, I'm not talking about like pushing a pencil at a day job in a corporate office space and like stapling TPS reports together and like, blah,

Chris: Oh, so you made a TPS reports joke because if you

Chris: did, and I was.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. So, but like, looking back at, I'm just going to use you as an example, because this was just, it was just such an apt example. When, when I was thinking about like this sort of like [00:13:00] lack, the, the opposite of overwhelm is when you had built your business up to the, to the point where you just would hit a button, the files would show up in your mastering dog, you would like fade them.

Brian: You would export them, you'd hit another button. It would send where it's

Brian: supposed to

Brian: send and everything,

Chris: the AI would fade them for me.

Brian: whatever, whatever, like, but, but it, it allows you to just focus on getting into a flow state and doing this repeatable pattern. And it was the same with our podcast episode 75 to 1 25. We were in a, in a really good rhythm.

Brian: We didn't really lack ideas for episodes. every single week, we showed up at the same time, every, every Tuesday and or Thursday and did an episode. and it was just really predictable. There was a really good rhythm to it. There was a really good routine to it. And I think I look at our past year, the struggles we've had around our podcasts, the struggles we've had around our relationship as just friends, and the things that I've been unhappy with in my own businesses are all tied to a lack of routine, a lack of rhythm elective, predictability, a lack of comfort in what I'm doing day to day, week to week.

Brian: And there's a lot of these things that I'm trying to address at my end of year retreat, [00:14:00] which we can talk about. Cause that's going to, I'm still in this from Graham Cochrane. I'm not going to take credit for it. We can talk about what I'll be doing at the end of this year, which is actually happening while this episode airs.

Brian: In order to address some of these things to bring more predictability, more routine. I want, I want to have a boring business in some regards. I want to just know what I'm doing every day of the week, because man, one of the things that you talked about when we were, when we were off air before this episode was you had a set time, like two to 5:00 PM every Wednesday was your, your systems time and your business, where you worked on your business, what kind of routine do you have and rhythm do you have around that now, Chris?

Chris: Well, it's, it's a lot less. And I think a lot of this comes down to. How the podcast has affected both of us. We didn't engineer you. I mean you more than me, but like I just, I came along for the ride and wanted to make it the podcast as awesome as possible, but I didn't anticipate what it would be like to suddenly have an enormous amount of opportunities in front of me.

Chris: And, you know, back in the old [00:15:00] days all I did was wake up in the morning, master music and hang out with my kids and have family time. Like it was, it was great. there was a lot of rhythm to that and that rhythm, I think, allowed me to get into the most flow state right now. There's so many different opportunities, so many different businesses with business coaching and activism, and

Brian: And distractions to.

Chris: yeah, there's so many more distractions, that it's difficult to hit that rhythm.

Chris: And I think flow state to me feels like. A moment. That's resistance free, where you're in your wheelhouse followed by another moment that is resistance free, that you are in your wheelhouse. And I think what happens when you're working in your creative business is you have so many things that you have to do and have to pay attention to that it's moment with no resistance moment with resistance moment, with resistance, no, with no resistance.

Chris: And you've got you're switching. So often a lot of people refer to this as [00:16:00] switching costs or shifting cost. You're shifting from one gear to the next. And when you do that, it costs you creative energy and all of a sudden these moments of resistance, free creativity, they're not lined up anymore. So you don't get that snowball rolling down the hill.

Chris: So you don't get momentum. So you never hit.

Brian: So let's talk about potential solutions to this, and I'm going, just going to go out and say right now, neither Chris, nor I are our experts in this or else we wouldn't be. Ever overwhelmed with anything. I'll say right now, like both of us have had probably the, the, I mean, Chris, for sure. You've had some of the most overwhelming in the past year of anyone.

Brian: I know. But also like, I feel like I've been in the most overwhelmed state in the last year than I've probably ever been. And it's, and it's my own fault. Like, and that's actually, I think we had a couple of things to talk about here on potential solutions or ways to, to, to get out of it or avoid it altogether.

Brian: The first thing is just taking ownership of the situation, because even if it's not your fault, [00:17:00] which the situations that you've dealt with in the last year, Chris are not your fault. Not all of them, at least some of them might be. And I'm speaking in broad terms here. We have to take ownership because if we refuse to take ownership over what is overwhelming us, then we are, we are slipping into the victim mindset or the victim mentality.

Brian: that is a guaranteed way to never solve any problem. Like if we can't take ownership of it, even if it truly isn't our fault, taking ownership over the situation at least mentally help us deal with it. Uh, I mean, what are your thoughts on this, Chris? Cause you, you can probably speak to this more than

Brian: I

Brian: can.

Chris: Oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts on this. So Hey, my therapy is going to be useful for our podcast now.

Brian: Yay.

Chris: so one of the ones that I've learned in therapy is that when you have PTSD, complex PTSD, in my case, there are two things that you need to do work on healing. You need a top down approach and a bottom up approach.

Chris: Your bottom up approach is the stuff that happens automatic. It's how many times you get overwhelmed. How many times a day you have a flashback? How many times [00:18:00] that you're having these unpleasant experiences and you need to get treatment that begins to address the frequency there. You want to have less of these events in your life.

Chris: And the therapy I had for that was called EMDR. And it really helped a lot with that top-down means, okay, you're overwhelmed. The shit has hit the fan. How are you going to calm back down? How are you going to get back to the center of your what's called window of tolerance, where you are your most comfortable and you make your best decisions.

Chris: So I think as we're addressing overwhelm in our businesses or in our lives or anything else, You have to look at the bottom down part of the business, which is going to be system related and figure out, well, how do you make it? So that the whole thing doesn't catch on fire four or five times.

Chris: Or how do you make it so that you can work a little bit less so that you can focus on addressing more of these issues that are, that repeatedly come up and interrupt your day. And then when it comes to top down, [00:19:00] figuring out how do you get back on track? How do you compartmentalize your day so that when something does hit the fan, that you can get back to actually finishing the things that need to be done and not descend into this spiral of distraction and to close up this thought, let me just say one thing.

Chris: I do not have this figured out at all.

Chris: This is the biggest burden I carry. I just, I just want to make that clear that I think this is the work. This is how we become better versions of ourself is we do bottom up work where we focus on having less issues come up and top down work, where we focus on our ability to.

Chris: And to get back on track once we've experienced one of these

Brian: Okay. I don't know how this pertains to the conversation of taking ownership. How does this tie to that? Like the last part, you kind of touched on that, but I don't know if I even understand what you're talking about. Bottom-up top-down I either, either I thought either zoned out completely and miss that, or it just didn't make sense.

Brian: So can you explain that?

Chris: There is a negative rhythm in my life where [00:20:00] say once per day, I all of a sudden get really irritated for no particular reason. And it's, I was figured in some way, and it's affecting my relationships. I'm starting to see the patterns when you start to own that your behavior a big part of the overwhelm that you were experiencing.

Chris: It's a big part of the discomfort that you have. I think that's where you start, start to start to have some ability to hear, and you start to be able to attack this problem from the top down and from the bottom up From the bottom up means you need the bad thing to happen less. What can we do that will automatically make this thing happen less?

Chris: That's a bottom up approach. A top down approach means, okay, the bad thing happens. How do I respond to it? what can I control once there is a fire in my business once I'm overwhelmed versus how do I keep from being in situations where I'm out of control constantly. That's bottom up,

Brian: Okay. So I think I finally understand, just [00:21:00] to clarify, bottom up approach is tackling the deep root cause of the problem top-down is deal with what is your mental as response to that problem? I love that. And I think going back to the original question I had for you, which was, taking. Of the overwhelm. Those are two, I guess, tactical things that you can start to do at the overwhelm. What is overwhelming you and what the bottom what's. The bottom up approach is solving the root causes of those things. Top down approach is changing the way we respond and react to those things, which I think is the more difficult thing personally, because I, I am not, I am not the mental expert.

Brian: don't even know what to say about like that . Side of things. Like, well, you're the one going to therapy right now related to this stuff specifically with the PTSD stuff you're, you've been dealing with for the past year, year and a half. Like what mentally, what frameworks have you gone through to deal with that top down approach of dealing with the way you react mentally to overwhelm specifically, if you have that.

Chris: Gotcha. Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so many things. So We have, what's called a sympathetic and [00:22:00] parasympathetic system in our brain.

Brian: Okay. Nerd.

Chris: hopefully I haven't missed a, this, this definition up, but your sympathetic system is what arouses you it's. You're not that way, Brian. it's what gets you?

Chris: I was going to say up, but then I know you're gonna make fun of me for that one too.

Chris: It's about what, what gets your energy level up? What motivates you to action? It could make you angry. It could make you excited. It could make you, you know, it, it creates an emotion and lead somewhere.

Chris: So your parasympathetic system is completely the opposite. Its job is to bring you back to normal. So if you're a bird and you're fine and you land and you're eating some bird seed and the cat jumps out your sympathetic, system's like, yeah, let's get the hell out of here.

Chris: You fly away your, your heart's beating. And then the parasympathetic system pops in and says, okay, we're out of danger. We're calming down. We're getting all those chemicals and hormones and your blood out of your [00:23:00] system. And here's the problem with that is I think everyone thinks I dude, synthetic system, man, if I, if I just react, like I'll be fine.

Chris: But what happens if your parasympathetic system doesn't work? What happens if once you're overwhelmed, you stay overwhelmed. That means you have top down work to do. if you think about this in regards to dandelions this front yard that I used to have to mow all the time had to handle. And I used to be like, oh, I'll just mow it.

Chris: I'll just mow it and it'll know all the dandelions over and to be fine. And then I would go inside and I come out two hours later and the dandelions were already an inch above the grass. They had already started to grow back and it was like, you cannot have a top-down approach to dandelions. You can't just get the lawn mower out.

Chris: You can't just start pulling them. You got to go from the bottom, you have to get the roots or those problems are just going to keep coming up again. And I think this is where the conversation about overwhelmed. It's so interesting is in our own businesses and lives. [00:24:00] So often in my gosh, I've been the most guilty of this ever is we just let the same crap ruin our day again and again, and again, maybe we should fix that.

Brian: Yeah, we're trying to cut the head off of the overwhelm instead of pulling it out from the root. thank God for that story, Chris. Cause now I finally understand

Brian: what the hell you're talking about

Brian: with bottom-up and top-down

Brian: let's talk about the next thing on our ally in here, which is for me, at least overwhelm comes from a lot of distractions

Brian: and that's not everyone's overwhelmed. So this is just me being selfish here and talking about what has been overwhelming me is a lack of focus. And I think some of this is self-inflicted and I think some of this is outside sources. I think it's worth talking about both these, because I think everyone can relate to this, which is especially if you're ADHD like me, I think you might be as well.

Brian: Chris, are you? Yes.

Chris: I was diagnosed as a kid, but it's possible that it was PTSD and add, have very, very similar symptoms they overlap. So maybe I have it, maybe I don't.

Brian: Okay. Either way, like distractions. Do you, do you struggle with distractions, Chris?

Chris: What was that?

Brian: Do you [00:25:00] struggle with the distractions, Chris? I know you do. That's all I was asking. It was, it was a loaded question. All right. So let's talk about the self-inflicted because these are the ones that I struggle with the absolute most.

Brian: If I look at my overall. Most of that is from Me trying to do too. much. And I know so many people listening right now can relate to this because we feel the pressure to do so many things. And some of this, some of us may leak in from outside sources, people telling us who we should be, what we should do, all that stuff.

Brian: We'll address that in a second. But a lot of it's just us wanting to do all things as an ADHD entrepreneur. I want to do everything. It's the reason I have so many, I talk about businesses that I have and income streams and stuff. But the reality of that, the non-sexy side of all the businesses that I have and all the income streams I have is that none of them are optimized.

Brian: Some of them are less cared for than others. And, and a lot of it leads to overwhelm because I don't know which thing to focus on. yeah,

Chris: Me too.

Brian: yeah, yeah. I think anyone

Brian: here.

Chris: I [00:26:00] didn't think, I didn't think you okay.

Brian: Oh, this is, this is why, this is why I talk. When I talk to freelancers, like I try to get them to narrow their focus down to one like one service or outcome for one type of client.

Brian: Because what happens is when you try to offer all these services to people, you start, you have the same type of overwhelm and it's, it's that context switching, you mentioned early in the episode where you have, like, you have one type of work you're doing for gym. One type of work you're doing for Billy one type of work you're doing for Helen.

Brian: And now you're context, switching back and forth in your mind has to do these mental gymnastics to reset itself, to focus on what you're doing for that client now. So you have to do revisions for this, and now you have to figure out how to write these things and you have to figure out how to do this and do that.

Brian: It's over. There's no way to run a business that way. And, and so like, I'm speaking with passion right now because I see this in my

Brian: wife.

Chris: Oh, crap. Brian, hold on just a second. I have to reply to this client. They're from. Yeah. And they need a specific type of invoice,

Brian: Yes.

Chris: than my other clients on a second one second.

Brian: Because that's [00:27:00] annoying. I have literally dealt with that where like, people with VAT, I need my, I need this for VAT, stuff like that, some of that's just systems related. So maybe that's a, that's a side tangent, but the reality is the same, which is like these, these massive changes, man.

Brian: So the reason I'm passionate is because some of this is me looking at my wife and her business and what she's doing. So sorry to call her out. So a lot of us, most of us, me talking and looking at myself, some of us thinking about specific people in our community that I know their businesses really well and see the mistakes they're making.

Brian: And man, I'm going to settle down and get off my soap box. So let's, let's talk about this

Brian: because

Chris: Just engage your parasympathetic nerve. Okay. You've got this, Brian, engage

Chris: it.

Chris: Breathe. I actually, you know what? That was a joke, but can I segue and talk more about your parasympathetic nerve real quick?

Brian: Yeah.

Chris: Okay. So check the. Your parasympathetic nerve is actually controlled by what's called your medial prefrontal cortex.

Chris: It is literally third eye. It's right in the middle of your forehead.

Brian: Cool. What does this

Brian: mean

Brian: to people who are not [00:28:00] following your terms right

Brian: now?

Chris: your medial prefrontal cortex is the only part of the human brain that can manage conscious and subconscious activity.

Brian: What does that mean? So what,

Chris: So think about this, you can swallow without thinking, but you can also swallow with thinking.

Chris: You can breathe without thinking. You can also regulate your breath. You cannot regulate your heart. Like you can't just be like, I'm. My heart is going to stop beating for like three seconds and then

Chris: I'm gonna let it,

Brian: I, can slow it down.

Brian: I don't know if that's cause it's slowed.

Chris: you, it's not something like breathing where you, where

Chris: you can.

Brian: Yeah. How many people listening right now? Like when you'd mentioned swallowing, consciously you did it. And when you talk about breathing consciously, you like either intentionally

Brian: breathe

Brian: in or you hold your breath. Everyone

Brian: does

Brian: it.

Chris: Now, all of a sudden it became a conscious activity instead of a subconscious. That was because your medial prefrontal cortex just was like, what's up guys.

Chris: I'll take it from here.

Brian: So is there any other, was it just a fun fact or was there

Brian: a point of.

Chris: there is a great point to this because your [00:29:00] medial prefrontal cortex is a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious.

Chris: You can engage it with your breathing. So when you're overwhelmed, when you are in a situation where, where you just don't know what to do, you are frozen or you're enraged, or you're just too excited. The, the act of choosing to breathe, making conscious decisions about how long you're going to hold your breath.

Chris: How long are you going to hold the inhale? How long am I going to hold the out the exhale? Like, what are you? Are you going to breathe through your nose or through your mouth? This is a huge part of yoga.

Chris: Huge.

Brian: I was, about to make fun of you just like medial prefrontal cortex, just because that's just the nurse thing, but that's actually a great, like, I find

Brian: myself when I'm overwhelmed. My natural response is to take a very deep

Brian: breath

Chris: I've seen you do that.

Brian: like that. That's just like,

Chris: No. Nope. you just inhale. You just inhale

Brian: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Chris: you

Chris: inhale

Chris: and hold your breath

Brian: and

Brian: so it's funny, like my wife I'll like have headphones in music [00:30:00] playing, like I'm on my laptop, I'm working and

Brian: she'll just, I wouldn't even, I won't even know I'm doing it. So this is actually not what you're talking about. Cause I it's, it's an unconscious thing, but I'll do it. And my wife will be like, are you okay?

Brian: I'm like, yeah.

Brian: let me alone.

Brian: But I like this, you, you, by breathing, you engage that part of your brain, which helps you start to deal with some of the overwhelm. Is that what.

Chris: Yeah. Well, it's almost, I think for a lot of people, what happens is you have two main systems in your brain conscious and subconscious. There's an author, Daniel Kadimah Kennan who won the Nobel prize for this, but he calls it thinking fast and. You're thinking fast as your subconscious it's. Oh my gosh.

Chris: I'm suddenly jealous of this person. I'm not totally sure why. Oh my gosh, that enraged me. I don't know why. Oh my gosh. I'm suddenly physically attracted to that person over there. All subconscious

Brian: explained every emotion I've ever felt for you right there, Chris, those three things.

Chris: and then thinking slow. That's your conscious, you can only do [00:31:00] math with the slow side of your brain. Perfect. Example of this is I've got three kids and my daughter and aura is just a beacon of light and energy and

Chris: awesomeness. She's unbelievably fantastic.

Brian: Nice voice by.

Chris: though. I appreciate that. That was a stranger.

Chris: They had like some

Chris: distortion, but Nora she's six. And so sometimes she gets overwhelmed she starts to cry and she has to spend some time calming down. And lately when she's, you know, gotten her, her lid up, as we like to say, What I have found is that if I ask her a math problem, I say a Nora would seven minus two.

Chris: She'll be like five. It's interesting because she's, re-engaging her thinking slow mind. And it's, it's this, the shift between conscious and subconscious, when you're overwhelmed, there is an element of the subconscious that's absolutely happening there. You have a deeper psychology that is coming to the surface, and [00:32:00] you probably don't understand it.

Chris: And it's a normal part of the human existence, but it can also ruin your business and your relationships and finding a way to use it could be breathing techniques. It could be I'm a big fan of this show that the foundation that's on apple TV, plus one of the main characters counts. She just literally is counting prime numbers.

Chris: So she'd be like, oh 1, 5, 7, 11, and she's just going through and she's at like 4 million, 200 and whatever, and that's what she does to bring her, her overwhelmed down. And I think doing that top-down work means figuring out what are the tools that work for me, putting the headphones in and listening to like Spacey sends the theorial brand Eno music seems to help me with that.

Brian: Same.

Chris: so I put those headphones in and okay, this I'm a little bit better. Taking a shower helps for me doing yoga helps for me playing the guitar [00:33:00] helps for me a lot.

Brian: the, so this is great. Top-down this is a way to deal with these symptoms of overwhelm, but I still think you're right about needing a bottom up approach. How do we dig this out from the roots? Because again, for myself, my overwhelm is mostly self-inflicted. It is, I have taken on too much on my plate and I need to pull out some of those things from. And.

Brian: get them out of my life. So that's one of the things I'm going to working on. I mentioned this at the beginning of the episode where I have a retreat I'm actually on right now, the day, this episode airs is the first day of my retreat. I'm following along with Graham Cochran's kind of thing where he does an interview retreat look at, what's worked, look, what's not working set goals for the year plan content for the year.

Brian: And another thing I'm working on, if I have time is working on some, some project management stuff to kind of SIM central simplify and centralize all of my projects into one place. So I'll be looking at a few project management systems and maybe we'll talk about on the podcast, but part of what we'll be working on the end of this year is starting to rip out some of those things from the root.

Brian: So that I'm not so overwhelmed because I have [00:34:00] such bad, shiny object syndrome where I want to do all the things I want to see all the things I want to experience all the things. And while that's fun, while that's interesting, while that's engaging, while that uses the part of my brain that I enjoy using the negative dark side of that is it just leads to massive overwhelm.

Brian: And that leads to the point. All the things that I'm doing, I'm mediocre at. And I, for the longest time, I've always told myself I am mildly successful in everything that I do. And so, like I looked at the band, I was in back of the day, I was in a metal core band called my children, my bride, they're still around surprisingly, but like I played metal core music and we were mildly successful.

Brian: We T we were signed, we toured all this stuff. I started my studio. I was mildly successful. I was never the biggest studio in the world when I was recording bands. But I, I got pretty good at it. I was mildly successful, you know, six figures on just a home studio. Then I moved to mixing mildly successful, six figures doing that.

Brian: And then I'll move to courses and mildly successful doing that seven figures doing that great [00:35:00] mildly successful in real estate, mildly successful with software. Like none of these are, are our grand slams. And I think the reason for that is because I have never really focused and put all my eggs in one basket.

Brian: And I, I think it's time I start to do more of that and narrow my focus down so that I can be excellent at something for one. Instead of mildly successful at so many damn things. Because again, it's that, it's the, for lack of a better term, it's mental masturbation. It's like me wanting to do all these things just because I want to just tickle my brain.

Brian: I want to engage my brain are these new, fun and exciting things because I love starting things. And I think so many people can relate to wanting to start things, but they don't finish things. And that's man, I'm done. I'm settling down

Brian: now.

Chris: that was, I think, such a healthy thing for you to verbalize. And I'm really excited to see, like we're having to, I think in every business and every career, you have these moments of, of niche,

Brian: Nice Chris niche.

Brian: I'm in the nice

Brian: [00:36:00] train

Brian: today.

Chris: okay. You you've you've changed. I, I noticed that you had recently switched up how you're pronouncing it had cooler people on the podcast

Brian: back and forth, but I believe this is someone can correct me on this, but I believe it's a French word and they pronounce it niche. So I'm going.

Chris: All right. That's very cool.

Brian: on whatever the hell you were going to

Brian: say.

Chris: Okay. So I think it's so healthy to have these moments of like, I'm going to niche down, I'm going to focus more. I'm doing the exact same thing right now.

Brian: I look at it less like knee niching down more like just planting a flag cause I'm, I'm reading a book right now. I highly recommend this. It's called the dip by Seth Godin. It's about an hour and a half audio book. Just get the audio book. It's fine. But with that, the whole everything in that book is talking about these thoughts in, in a much better way, which is like entrepreneurs, we start something and we have this upper trajectory, but then there's a thing called the dip and it's the people can call it the valley of despair where you fall down.

Brian: It's no longer fun because you've hit this first point of resistance where you have to make the decision. Do I want to be excellent at something? Or do I want to be mediocre at a bunch [00:37:00] of different things? I am mediocre at a ton of. I am mediocre at an incredible amount of things. I'm a Jack of all trades, but I've never really made it through the dip in anything I've done because the other side of the dip is where you start to skyrocket.

Brian: It's where you have mastery. And I don't think I've ever mastered anything to be, to be completely honest with

Brian: you.

Chris: Well, I think a lot of people would push back, especially like people that are big fans of you, Brian, and be like, what are you talking about? You're absolutely spectacular at an enormous number of things. When you say grand slam, you're talking about like on the evening news. You know, I, you know, IPO company, like some, you know, something absolutely totally huge.

Chris: But what I want to address is that you are really, really good at a lot of things, but most of that has to do with what you got good at first, you got good at learning.

Brian: True. And that's, I mean, if you go back to episode one of this podcast, that was pretty much the thesis of this entire thing is like we were, we are lifelong learners. We got to where we were at episode one, by [00:38:00] being lifelong learners and buying books, courses, investing in ourselves, getting better, what we do and that's, but along the way, we've always, we always are going to hit a plateau or a roadblock.

Brian: And this is an inevitable part of being a business owner, I believe, or a person in general. But the thing is, can we break through these roadblocks that we hit these ceilings that we hit? And I

Brian: know I will, and I know you will,

Brian: but.

Chris: Yeah. It's part of the journey.

Brian: So I think to try to bring us to the point of, of talking about knowing when to quit something, because this is an area that I, I have not been great at. Like I said, I do, I am all over the place. In so many different things. I have my hand in so many different cookie jars.

Brian: And I think knowing when, when, when to tactfully quit or retreat is probably a better word from an area so that you can focus that mental bandwidth and power into something else, because I am not as effective in all the things, like all the things that I'm doing. I am varying levels of good at those things.

Brian: But some of those things take up a lot of my mental bandwidth and I may not be explaining that well, but I think a lot of [00:39:00] our listeners can, can relate to the fact that you have, you have so many different things going on, life, business, hobbies, whatever, whatever those things are. And you, you may, you may enjoy those things.

Brian: Again, these, some of these things are self-inflicted and they're good, but they're not serving you. And that's, my problem is I have so many good things that I love to do, but they're not serving me because they're overwhelming me. And so when something, even if you enjoy it and like it, if it overwhelms you, ultimately, it's a bad thing.

Brian: If it's not helping, if it's not the best place for your time, Effort and energy that it's again, not really serving you in my opinion. So that means that you may need to pull those other things out from the roots. That's the bottom Upwork you were talking about earlier, Chris taking those things out of your life so that you can focus refocus that mental bandwidth and energy into that one thing.

Brian: And, and this goes back, this is kinda like the pumpkin plan conversation with Mike and the pumpkin plan. The whole, I'm not going to go into it, but like when you're trying to grow a prize winning pumpkin um, I actually watched the time-lapse on YouTube about this. They were growing like an 800 pound [00:40:00] pumpkin, which is mad.

Brian: It's the biggest pumpkin I've ever seen. There's probably bigger ones. I don't know. But what they did was they basically cut off all of pumpkins on the pumpkin vine and they just isolate that one pumpkin and let all the energy go into that one. Pumpkin. I think that's kind of what the pumpkin

Brian: plan book

Brian: is talking about,

Chris: but the bit in the video did you watch, was it organic? Like

Chris: what did they grow? The punk, the pumpkin's in an organic.

Brian: I don't know what's that have to do.

Chris: Because I want to know if the pumpkin was straight edge Brian.

Brian: Oh, that was so off topic and not even good as an organic dude or straight as people are. Some of the unhealthiest people have been around the eat, like tater tots

Brian: and

Chris: Well, but yes, it's a pokey and he can't do drugs or drink alcohol. It

Chris: can only absorb nutrients from the soil.

Brian: Just take swinging a miss Chris, take that. Cut it, James. Like not, not worth keeping in. Cause it's so far distracting.

Chris: If you cut that out,

Chris: we're going to have word sprint,

Chris: So yeah, Brian, you know, I, I think a big part of that comes back to this, this dandelion analogy You can solve your problems with a [00:41:00] lawn mower if you have dandelions, but you have to mow your lawn every two or three hours during certain parts of the year.

Brian: It's called switching costs. We we'd be addressed at an earlier part of this conversation, which is

Brian: you're gonna, you're gonna move from dandelion, dandelion, trying to train every little one individually, and they're gonna grow back before you can get all the other ones

Brian: done.

Brian: That's the way it works.

Chris: eventually, eventually there's going to just, you're not going to be, to keep up

Brian: It's the world's worst game of whack-a-mole.

Chris: exactly. And what you are saying is that taking that lawn mower and going and cutting down the dandelions, it's a good thing. The lawn does look better when you do that. It is a good thing to do, but good can be the enemy of great.

Chris: If you're taking that second pass over the lawn the next day, just to get the, to get the, the, the dandelions. That's good, but it would have been great to get your freaking little pry bar tool out and to actually go for the root.

Brian: All right. There's one more thing I want to talk about before we move on. And in this discussion, even though it's gone on forever, but you know what, we haven't done one of these, these dual episodes a long time. So we can go long on this, [00:42:00] overwhelmed from outside distractions or outside sources, because these are the harder ones I feel like to, to take ownership on because like with COVID, we don't have control over that with all the bad things happening in the world.

Brian: We don't have control over that with some of the things happen to you, Chris, we don't have control over that. Like, I feel like there there's, there's, there's multiple sources and I'm not going to try and go into all of these, but there's two, there's two main culprits. I feel like that are. That adds to overwhelm to our lives.

Brian: And that is our circle of influence. So that's friends and family, and then that is like the news.

Brian: And I think for a lot of people, the news is a huge source of stress and overwhelm.

Brian: Chris,

Brian: what, what do you, what do you think? What do you think about these things?

Chris: A lot of it is you have to keep in mind what the news is. Job is. And man, you know, we've talked a lot about college and how our education system could be so much better. I actually kind of have a degree in this. This was like most of what I learned in college,

Brian: You went to college. Oh, that's right. The Ohio state. That's

Brian: right.

Chris: no, I went to the [00:43:00] Ohio university, which is a different

Brian: Oh my bad. Sorry,

Chris: predates the Ohio state university by of

Chris: years.

Brian: you both have the same intolerable feature about it as you emphasize the word V in it.

Brian: So

Brian: congratulation.

Chris: that's another story. Let's just Ohio state gets the word V I'm just mocking them by saying the Ohio university. I digress that and I'm very confused. What are we talking about again?

Brian: I think this entire episode is us digressing. you're talking about the job of the news. What is

Brian: the

Brian: point of

Brian: the new.

Chris: right? The job of the news initially in the 1940s and fifties and sixties was to do the right thing, was to inform people. It was a public service by NBC, CBS, and ABC. And then you had, you know, other news organizations, but these networks would be like, okay, we're going to entertain people and we're gonna run commercials, in order to make money.

Chris: And then we'll share the news. Cause that's the right thing to do because we have the best platform to do it on. And we're just going to try to be trustworthy. And we're just gonna really try to grow the brand trust [00:44:00] by doing a great job in the news. And then in the seventies, all the news organizations were bought.

Chris: So NBC isn't his own isn't its own company anymore. I believe it's owned by GE and they're all ABC is owned by And what is it CBS? I forget who owns CBS, but they're all, all part of these multinational corporations. And what happened is these corporations walked in, took one, look at the books and went like let's in money on the news.

Chris: We're not going to do that anymore. We have to figure out how to make money on the news or you're fired. That was how they did it. And for the past re decades, if you can't help the news, make money as an employee and you get fired and they find somebody who can, which brings up the point of what is the news, his job it's to get you to watch commercials.

Chris: And how do you do that? You fixate people, you try to get them to not be able to change the channel. And when that happens, it's a sad thing. You see someone that, you know, gets like a Fox news addiction or whatever it happens to be, and they're just [00:45:00] glued to the TV. They think that that's the most important information than in the entire world.

Chris: The news is John. Is to overwhelm you it's to make you think that the world is such a crazy ass place that you need all the information you can or else the world's going to overrun you. And that's why you need to have Fox news on, in the background.

Brian: Well, if you're picking on that one network

Brian: a while, while, I don't like that network, the other ones are just as bad in their own way,

Brian: because they're all doing the same

Brian: thing.

Chris: I just have more Fox

Chris: news addicts in my, you know, friends and family.

Brian: Same, same. Which going to friends and family, you have the same issue in your circle of influence because social media is built the exact same way.

Brian: The whole point of social media is to keep you stuck on the platform. And a lot of that is just based on engagement alone. And some of the most highly engaged content is related to the news or outside sources or things outside of your control. was it so just to kind of like to knock that out as well, I think social media slash news should not be part of your day-to-day routine or [00:46:00] rhythm.

Brian: I think that's toxic. I, this is just, this is a hundred percent at this point, personal opinion.

Chris: Well, and here's a piece of actionable advice with, with the personal opinion that I share with you sometimes just delete the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik, TOK, whatever it is, just delete the app and just go for a couple of days without it. We'll just see how.

Brian: Yeah, there's, there's a uh, question I've had kind of bouncing around in my head that I wanted to debate somebody who's addicted to the news. So I'd love to hear arguments in the comments on YouTube is when you, if you're addicted to news and you consume a lot of news, you consider yourself a well-informed person.

Brian: Give me one significant action. You've taken from that, from that informed view on the world. I would bet that you likely can't come back to me with, with any significant action you have taken based on the news that you've been given. Not any more than an uninformed, new non news person. What, because almost all new.

Chris: Hopefully, no one that participated in the January six insurrection is [00:47:00] listening to our thoughts

Brian: I didn't say FA I didn't say fake news, Chris. I said real news.

Brian: Oh my God. But that would be, that would be one group of people that could say that they did participate in one significant thing. And I would counter that with saying and what was the effect of that?

Chris: Yeah, well, good Lord.

Brian: Okay. Anyways, we got off way off topic here.

Brian: I would love to debate that with somebody. Cause I would like to see like what real actions you're taking from being informed. I don't think most people do anything with that information. It's like the people that read book after book, after book, without taking any real action

Brian: on

Brian: it.

Chris: Yeah. Or the people that listened to episode after episode after episode of the six figure cradle podcast.

Chris: Well, that actually creating the systems or scheduling time to work on

Chris: your

Brian: No, no joke. Can I just talk about that for a second? You shouldn't be listening to this podcast in a lot of cases. I'll say it right now. We should. I mean, just being honest with you, like every, if you're bingeing through episodes right now, what that means is you're adding an infant list of to-do items for you to be doing all the time, especially if you're [00:48:00] trying to play catch up and binge through our backlog.

Brian: So what happens when you have a list of a million things you need to get done, you're overwhelmed and you don't do any of them. And so you just keep listening to episode after episode, I can relate to that cause I've done that.

Brian: And it's, it's, the same. It's it's in some ways they're no better off than the person who sits and watches Fox news all night, every night and never does anything about what they

Brian: learn.

Chris: Let me wait. Devil's advocate just a

Chris: little bit

Brian: I know. That's what I say in some ways, not in

Brian: all

Brian: ways, in some

Chris: in some

Chris: ways.

Chris: you're right. But in other ways, it requires an enormous amount of motivation to make a lifelong commitment or potentially lifelong commitment to a new lifestyle. I'm going to start this business.

Brian: I'll give you that there is a certain influx of inspiration you get when bingeing through this new, if it changes your mindset, your approach, if it gives you, if it gives you hope, if it gives you a clear path forward, I can see all those things because I have had those like mind shift mindset changes in my.

Brian: head.

Brian: But I will say though, it's it just depends on what it's doing in your brain. If it's opening up average avenues of opportunity, giving you hope, inspiration, all those [00:49:00] things keep going forward. Great. If it is merely just giving you a list of things to do that you're never going to do because you're overwhelmed and not taking action.

Brian: That's when you have to draw the line and say, this is now toxic

Brian: for

Brian: me, it's, it's just adding to the

Brian: overwhelm.

Chris: Well, and we haven't mentioned this super recently, but we used to very often refer to this podcast as an advice buffet. And I really, really like that. We did that. I'm like, we're going to have some ideas. We're going to have some thoughts. We're going to have some recommendations, but please do not take all of them.

Chris: That is the guaranteed path to failure is to do everything.

Brian: All right. Last thing I'm going to, we're gonna wrap this up, cause this has gotten so fricking long friends and family circle of influence. This can lead to a lot of root issues of overwhelm for people for multiple reasons. I'm not even going to get into those, but there's the Tim Ferris.

Brian: It's not a Tim Ferriss quote. He made it popular in our circles, at least from, I think as far our work week. And he stole from somebody else, which is the quote is you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with. And so if, if the people you're your friends, if your [00:50:00] family are just adding to your overwhelm, if they're dragging you down in some way, shape or form, this is going back to the previous conversation of having to take ownership over your overwhelm in order to solve that become the Victor.

Brian: Instead of the victim, part of that is cutting ties, at least on a day-to-day level with. Not cutting ties permanently. We can't do that. That's not, it's not right and it's not effective. And we literally can't do it in most cases without getting really angry people in our lives. But we can definitely do it with friends.

Brian: If they're, if they are drink dragging us down, cause some, again, some friends in our lives are simply there because they've always been around and those tend to be some of the worst kinds of friends because they just happened into your life. You would have the same school. They're just around all the time.

Brian: You don't really have anything in common. You're not building each other up. And a lot of those types of situations, I know from my past in Alabama, people tear each other down instead of build each other up, my friend group now looks infinitely different than it did in Alabama when I was living there growing up.

Brian: So my, those are like my last thoughts on like this, this can lead to overwhelm. This can be a [00:51:00] potential root cause of it. So It has to be, it has to be.

Chris: It does. And it's a complicated conversation because there's a number of issues at play here. Should you surround yourself with toxic people? Absolutely not. However, toxic is a complicated term because it could mean that that person has some health issues or it could mean that you have some health issues or it could mean both if you have an irrational dislike of a people group or, and, and, and, you know, I think most people would think to themselves.

Chris: Oh, well, racism. Yeah. That's absolutely. I'm not, I'm just saying an irrational dislike of any. You know, I had an irrational dislike for Catholics for a long time.

Chris: I had there was a family on our street that was super Catholic and I didn't like them. And I didn't know why.

Brian: So are you, what are you saying here? Are you saying you should cut the people

Brian: out of

Brian: your.

Chris: What I'm saying is that sometimes you should pause when you, when you have distinguished that someone is unpleasant to be [00:52:00] around or toxic. I think you should ask why first? Why am I do I not like being around this person?

Brian: Yeah. Cause I, I could see someone who, this is just one example, someone who's very much on the victim mindset, the victim mentality, feeling like they're in a toxic situation, simply because people around them are trying to genuinely help or give them advice or help them out in some way. And because they're a victim, they cannot accept that advice or that help.

Brian: And so just by being told the truth, you hate that person. I've seen that before in the past. That's likely not anyone listen to this podcast. I don't think that's relevant to our listeners right now, but I do like pausing and asking why you think they're toxic because that could lead to deeper issues that need to be addressed, which goes back to the root, digging up from the root, the overwhelm.

Chris: You know, it's a, it's a funny thing. I feel like if you made a decision to work in a creative field, instead of having a high paying job in the best country to have a job in the best time to have a job.

Chris: Maybe the history of the world with [00:53:00] very few exceptions. There's a little bit of crazy there. And one of the things that I see and that most of the people that I love and hang out with, see as well, is it creatives often have a lot of baggage. Brian, do you feel like that's been your observation of creatives as a whole?

Chris: We're a little bit pickier.

Brian: At the dance around a little bit.

Chris: Yeah, but yeah, so yeah, th th we tend to be a little bit more picky, and I think that has a lot to do with creativity is a great way to avoid dealing with your problems. It's really easy for me, for me as a kid to be like, I'm gonna play guitar instead of thinking about the in my life. And so I got good at guitar.

Chris: And so for awhile, that's what I did for a living. And I think for a lot of people, you have to ask these really, really deep, hard questions. One of them might be a great, a great, example of one of these hard questions about why do we react to. Is to ask yourself if my mom was extremely proud of me, why would she be proud of me?

Chris: What would I have [00:54:00] to do to win my mom's approval? And then just look around and see if you're already doing that thing. Same thing with your dad, your parents, you know, play a big role where your overwhelm comes from. And I hope this isn't, I hope I'm not like getting out of my depth here. I'm not a psychologist or therapist or something like that, but it's a, you know, it's practically a meme, you know, this therapy like, oh my mom.

Chris: So I don't know. Brian saved me. Am I too deep on this?

Brian: honestly, I think this is a good place to, to wrap this up in this conversation, just because it's so long, but any last words here, Chris, for, getting out of 20, 21, dealing with the overwhelm both top down and top and bottom up and bringing 20, 22 into the world with the best possible chance of success and avoiding overwhelm.

Chris: Absolutely. the first thing I want to encourage our listeners to do is if you are, you know, a new year's Eve resolution type of thing, new year's resolution type of thing, make it your resolution to spend time every week at the same time, [00:55:00] working on your business instead of for it.

Chris: And what I'm going to do in 2022 is every week on Wednesday from 12 o'clock to one o'clock, I'm going to put one hour into my overwhelm. I'm going to look at my whole life and figure out what are the things that are overwhelming me that are making my life crap.

Chris: What are the dandelions that I've just been mowing down instead of digging up the roots?

Brian: I'll also do another challenge, which is it's not actually a challenge. It's a, it's an added to that, which is look at the things that need you to just be cut out of your life in general. Like that, that to me is my theme for 2022. It's not a resolution. It's not an hour I'm putting for every Wednesday at 1:00 PM.

Brian: To me, it is big picture, what needs to be cut out of my life to make room for the things I want to be excellent at the things I want to really do my best at in order to. Achieve the outcomes that I want to achieve in business terms. It's who can I help the most? And what can I cut out? That's going to take me away from doing that.

Brian: So that's my goal for 2022, which is like, I need to cut [00:56:00] things out to make room so I can focus. And I think focus leads to habit rhythm routine. And it allows me to start doing the things you're talking about, which is every Wednesday at one o'clock like you used to do, it's like getting a habit and routine and rhythm into this podcast.

Brian: It's cutting out the things that hold me back from having any habit, routine rhythm in my life. Yeah. That's my 2022.

Chris: I love that, man. I think I'm going to call that overwhelmed Wednesdays

Chris: and just hanging out for an hour, work on the overwhelm and uh, let's see.

Brian: So that's it for this episode of the six-figure creative podcast tune in Brighton early next Tuesday morning at 6:00 AM. I believe for the next episode until next time, remember it takes more than passionate to become a six-figure creative