#654: When You Feel Blocked and Overwhelmed…

If you've ever found yourself staring at a to-do list that feels never-ending and it actually ends up being paralyzing by the sheer volume of tasks and you... You get things done, but you feel unable to tackle the ones that really matter. Or even if you do, you realize that you have spent all day fighting against yourself and yet you consider yourself a very driven, motivated person.

And you're wondering why it's certain tasks or certain projects are harder to move forward than others. You're checking off the small things, but the big meaningful ones, those projects are staying untouched. It's as if you're drowning in responsibilities and despite all of your efforts and your work in, you're not making real progress. Look, if this sounds familiar, I want you to know you're not alone.

In this episode, we're going to explore why high achievers often find themselves stuck in this cycle of busyness without fulfillment. And we're going to uncover some of the psychological barriers that keep us from moving forward. I'm going to give you some practical strategies to break free from this pattern. By the end of today's podcast, you're going to get a clearer understanding of how to navigate through overwhelm and to take purposeful action towards your goals.

Welcome to the Confidence Podcast. Let's dive in. You're listening to the Confidence Podcast, where we do confidence coaching for driven, high-achieving women who want more. Because high-achieving women deserve high-level confidence. I'm your host, Trish Blackwell. Let's get started. Hey guys, it's Trish Blackwell and you're listening to The Confidence Podcast. This is episode 654.

In today's show, we're talking about feeling blocked. What to do when you feel blocked and overwhelmed. You might be overwhelmed by your endless to-do list or avoiding... significant tasks because of fear or procrastination or perfectionism, or you just go, I need it to be perfect. These might also not be all work-related. Maybe you have an epic...

epic adventure coming up and you're like, well, I just want to pick the right excursion, the right hotel, the right experience, the right timing. And you're putting undue pressure on this perfect experience and it's sucking away your time. And so this episode, we're going to give you some, I'm going to give you some tools, some tools that have helped me, that have helped me not get unstuck, helped me get unstuck because I used to feel stuck despite constant activity.

And what happens when we get stuck in these cycles is it creates a disconnect between effort and fulfillment. And as a high achiever, we are driven to productivity. We are driven to effort. And I want you to truly walk in confidence. that your effort always matters, that there is no such thing as wasted effort, and that your effort always has a compound effect that you will always benefit from. Because when you know there's a compound effect of your effort, you will always be winning.

So let's start and let me tell you why I even realized we need a whole episode on this. I work in my one-on-one work. My clients are high achieving. very successful women who want that next level of success, but know that they're getting in their own ways.

And they're stressed and they're unfulfilled, but they're technically on paper supposed to be very, very happy because they've achieved so much that they also know they have high capacity and they have so much more potential. But some of the overwhelm or imposter syndrome.

And feeling blocked and overwhelmed is keeping them from thinking, well, could I handle anything more? And so this came up in a coaching session where my client just transparently was like, Trish, I am doing everything right. My confidence is where it's at.

But I still feel blocked. Why? And so my answer to her was a couple of things. First, it's what she's saying to herself. And we're going to dive into the narrative of that. What is the narrative? What's the actual narrative that she's saying? The second thing. is that she's just giving herself a choice to be blocked. Sometimes we just have to do what we don't want to do. We have to look at things and be really honest with ourselves and say,

Use the win method. What's important now? And if that thing that is on your list is important, then get it done. I think sometimes we put things off hoping that it's going to magically disappear or someone else is going to have a better solution. You have the solutions. No one is coming.

When we start taking radical responsibility for moving the needle forward on the things in our life we want to move forward, that's when things change. William James has a quote that I absolutely love. It's one of my favorites of his. And is this the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another, because the truth is what we're really talking about today here is stress, because when you feel blocked and you feel overwhelmed.

You now have even more to do. You have a bigger decision weighing on you. You feel a little bit behind. You are creating your own stress. And so first, when you realize your power comes in, the thoughts that you're saying, the thoughts that you're thinking, we've got to take our thoughts back. We win the war with the thoughts that we think.

When you think the right thoughts, it's easier to take the action that's going to get you the results and get you the breakthrough and get you the momentum and get you moving and get that to-do list done. You will stop feeling blocked by certain things, but we have to start being honest with ourselves.

First and foremost, what is it that you're saying to yourself that is blocking you? We are feeling blocked. We have an avoidance tendency or resistance that is in action, which is a result of a thought that we're thinking or an emotion that we're feeling.

which is the result of a thought that we're thinking. So let's start with the thoughts. We rewind it to the thought. Here are some thoughts that are common triggers to create an emotion of overwhelm. When we are in a state of emotional overwhelm, What do we do? It's an action or a reaction or an inaction that's a byproduct. And typically it's inaction, which would be avoidance, which would be putting it on to the next day's to-do list.

Here are some of the thoughts I find most problematic in my own life, but also in the lives of the clients I've done work on this topic where. These phrases will keep you stuck. I'm just so overwhelmed. I have so much to do. I don't know what to do. This needs to be done and needs to be really good. I don't have enough time or I just don't feel like it. These thoughts create pressure.

They create the blocks. We go, I just don't know why I'm blocked. I know why we're blocked. It's because of the thoughts that we're thinking. And these seem really, really innocuous. They seem fine. They seem true. I don't have time. I don't feel like it. I don't know what to do. I just have so much to do. We feel like we're stating micro truths, but what we're doing is we're creating excuses and we're creating powerlessness within us. We are creating our own sense of overwhelm and block.

And then therefore the action that we take is inaction, avoidance or procrastination. Which then, the more you put something off, the bigger it feels, the harder it feels to do, the more blocked and overwhelmed we then feel.

It's the old adage. What's the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Yet we philosophize it. We're how are we going to eat the elephant? Don't worry about it. Just take that first bite. You just have to take action. You just have to get started. You know, there's a fun way. Here's a fun way to practice this. If you have massive amounts of laundry and you're walking by it saying, I'll do it tonight. I just challenge you. Do it for three minutes and then move on.

Anything that feels big, if it's maybe an organizational project, if it's clutter in your kitchen, if it's emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry, make it a game. I want you to gamify your ability to drop everything you're doing and give any task that you want.

Any task that feels bigger than three minutes, give it three minutes of your time. I want you to learn and start proving to yourself that you can do small things and that small things add up. I do this on a daily basis since I do laundry on a daily basis.

And I walk by the laundry room and I, while my kids are talking to me, I go, cool, I'll do this for three minutes. I'll fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold. And then I move on. Do that twice the other day. My laundry's done throughout the day without me having to be intentional about it. Whereas I used to put it off.

And it felt like a big thing to do. The bigger that pile becomes, the bigger of a task it is. Now, that is obviously a very easy metaphor of the bigger things that we really are avoiding, whether in work or in life or in your fitness goals, or maybe it's... in something in your business or your workplace that needs to change. But stop worrying about the mountain. Stop worrying about the block and start taking action three minutes at a time.

Take imperfect action. Take imperfect, bold action. Because the block's not going to go away on its own. It's not going to get easier. We have to accept the hard.

call yourself out also on the self-pity. There's this undercurrent of self-pity when we think, I just don't know what to do. There's just so much to do. I'm not sure where to start. That is a woe is me attitude. And gosh, it does feel good because it's a very viable excuse. It gives us permission to put it off. But you cannot operate a powerful, confident life from an undercurrent of self-pity.

And this happens to me often. I have to call myself out and take radical responsibility, radical ownership of that self-pity voice. And I just say, Trish, this is self-pity. Like, it's really not that hard. It's hard and it's not hard. Another example, we have a here at home. We had a big windstorm the other day and a big piece of our paneling fell off the top of our roof. And so the good news is it didn't fly away. We have it. But, you know, I have to call a handyman or a roofer.

And to be honest, it's just one of those things where you have to call seven people till you get the answer and that somebody's actually going to come. And I'm in that now. And my self-pity can come up because I think, well, why do I have to do this?

Why did the wind have to come? Why is my house the only house that has this issue? Why is my husband not calling? Why is he not bothered by it? Because he's, by the way, not working from home. He works in an office. I'm at home and I see this piece of siding. from my office window every day. All of that can put it off to go, I'll find the roofer tomorrow. And the reality is I just need to take action.

The thing that you're putting off is the thing that's going to keep getting put off. And every time you put it off, it gets harder to do. Stop delaying decisions. Stop delaying action. And call yourself out on, this is self-pity, or I'm making this too hard. Maybe there's a simpler way to move forward. Let me make two phone calls today and every day.

in that area you feel blocked. I need your question to be, what am I doing today to move the needle forward? That's it. We don't need the needle answered. We don't need the needle at full. We don't need the needle exactly where you want it.

What am I doing today to move the needle forward is enough. Because the paradox of being a high achiever is you can often feel very stuck because you're so driven, you have such big goals, but... You're not able to move the needle forward on those goals because you're staying so busy doing a lot of things that aren't important and then avoiding and feeling blocked on the things that are.

We call this functional freeze, where stress actually leads to inaction. And then you end up going into this productive spiral where you do a lot of things. but not the thing that's of high value. So another huge takeaway for you today, if any of this is resonating, is I need you to ask yourself, what can I do today to move the needle forward? And what has high value to me?

What matters to me? What is most important? Now this is, if you are using my 333 method, you hopefully are already doing this. The 333 method, you can get a free copy of it. Go to trishblackwell.com forward slash 333 method. It's a... 10-minute training video, and then you have my worksheet and absolute full processes. This is the daily habit that's really transformed my nighttime routine and helped me be more productive the next day. But in that, one of the components of it is that you...

Write your three top wins for the next day, your three priorities for the next day. And so when you know what your priorities are, And you always do your priorities first. You will never be blocked or overwhelmed. You go, I have to do, I got to eat the frog first. I got to do the first thing first. You also have to know, I think the other thing that can push us through the block.

is you have to know your why. You have to know why it matters to you. Why are you working so hard? Why do you care about that thing? Is it because you want to climb the corporate ladder? You want to double your income? You want more time freedom? Why does it matter? When you know your why, and it's clear enough, your excuses don't stand a chance. One of the reasons we aren't consistent, one of the main reasons that we don't take massive action, one of the reasons...

that we get stuck in overwhelm is because our excuses mean more to us than our commitments. So it is our job every single day to remind ourselves of what we want, why we want it, and why we're committed to it. That's the power of setting a daily intention and staying focused and knowing what you want. Having done the work to go, what is it that I want? I actually just posted a Instagram reel this morning about this.

Go check it out, Trish Blackwell, Trish underscore Blackwell. But you might have to scroll back because I did, I am pre-recording this episode. But there's a, it's a really great epic bike ride that my kids and I took, my family and I took. where we're biking in Kenya, this beautiful dirt road, and there's this just giraffe walking across the street. And for me, that is my why.

It's my deep desire to see and experience the world and adventure. And so every time I don't feel like doing something on my ads or on the back end of my business or with my taxes or anything with. Podcast SEO optimization. I mean, all of it's tedious. There's stuff that is really not the most fun in what I do. But I do it and I show up and I'm consistent because my why matters more to me than my excuses or my...

Desire to just not do it that day. You got to know why you want or stop waiting for someone to rescue you and magically take the project away or magically change your finances. If you want to change your life. If you want to change anything, the change is up to you. And so the other thing, the element, the other angle I wanted to make sure I touched today is that to remind you that your avoidance.

And a block is just avoidance. And so rather than say, let's call a spade a spade, rather than say, I just feel so blocked, let's ask ourselves a better question. What am I avoiding here? And it might not just be, you know, organizing my blah, blah, blah, blah. But what exactly about that am I avoiding? What am I avoiding and why is it hard? What am I avoiding and why am I avoiding it? Typically, there's something we're afraid of. What am I afraid of? You will feel so pressed down by unresolved.

like things, because there's this desire to go, I want things to be perfect. I just want it to be done well. And sometimes we just have to do things. I want you to let go. That's why I said take imperfect, bold action. Not really, really great action. So let me close out today's coaching on some strategies to move forward. My favorite strategies and coaching tools I teach people on how to prioritize tasks.

are to one, we already talked about focus on what's truly important, not on what's urgent. Focus on what's important, not on what's urgent. So in order to know what's important, you have to know what your priorities are.

There's a big difference between priorities and preferences. Know what your priorities are. In order to know what your priorities are, you have to know what you most want and what's most important. And then you have to know of the thing I want the most, what will move the needle forward the most. here. And we call that the win method. What's important now? The other strategy that a lot of my students love is the ABC123.

Because you're going to be like, Trish, this is great, but I have a lot of things on my plate and I'm balancing a lot. So how do you go and be massively productive and move through the overwhelm and move through the blocks when your to-do list truly is massively long? We pick nine things. That's what we do. We do the A, B, C, one, two, three. So you take a piece of paper, and you're going to write an A column, a B column, and a C column.

A, B, and C, you're going to put the numbers, bullet point them out, one, two, three. One, two, three. So A has one, two, three underneath it. B has one, two, three underneath it. C has one, two, three underneath it. And you're going to ask yourself, what are my A priorities tomorrow or today? If you're doing it day of, I would highly recommend this is done the day before, the night before. As part of your nighttime routine, you close down the day and you prepare for the next day.

You can also do the ABC123 in terms of a, you know, strictly speaking, professionally, you could do it in only regards to your personal life and your personal growth, or it could be a combination. So the A priorities that you ask yourself, what are my top priorities? A, B, C. So my most important three things for me to do that day tomorrow or today.

And then B, what is like, once I get those done, what would the next top three be? And then C is like, cool, I can't believe it. I'm moving through these. You always, another way to remember the ABC is you always do your A's, period. That's how we make sure we're never blocked. We don't give our choice. They're in my A priorities. They get done today, whether I like it or not.

And then we remind ourselves sometimes it's going to feel hard and sometimes it's not. I accept the hard. I can do hard things. And everything I want is on the other side of what I don't want to do. So my A priorities get done always. My B priorities, I like to think of it as like my days are even better when I get those done too. A's are always get done. B's are it's better if I can get them done, but it's not the end of the world. And C's are I'm crushing it.

Today, I'm crushing it. Or you could even say, I can't believe I got them all done, right? And so if your A's, if your B's don't get done, then the B's get rolled up to the A's the next day. But this is a good way for you to start practicing, truly choosing. What's going to move the needle forward? What does have higher value? It's very easy for everyone to go, well, everything's an A priority. It's not, and it truly can't be.

And so now you have to use your own wisdom and start trusting yourself. And based on your goals and your vision of what you want for your life, how do I know what my A priorities are, what my B ones and what my C ones are?

Some of the work I do with people in the College of Confidence. There's also time boxing and time assigning. What that is, is giving yourself a task, your priority. And then also giving yourself a very firm time frame to get it done, meaning I'm going to put it in a time box. I have certain things. I had a I don't have it in front of me, but hypothetically speaking, if I'm looking at my work week.

I might have a project that doesn't have a deadline because I work for myself. And so that project is going to be done tomorrow between 9 and 9.30. It's a project unless I time box it. So I gave myself 30 minutes in this example to do this thing. Without time boxing it, giving myself a time limit of 30 minutes, there's a good chance it would take two and a half hours.

And then I time a sign. I said at 930. So I time box and time a sign all the time in my life. And it helps me push back past some blocking and overwhelm. Now, here's an example of what that looks like in my personal life. As you, I think you, yes, as you know, my family and I are currently, actually, we're prepping. We're not yet there. We're about to go leave for a pretty epic adventure in Australia, New Zealand. Shout out, by the way, if you're a listener in Australia.

I'm going to be doing two podcast meetups in the month of July, one in Melbourne and one in Sydney. So follow me on Instagram, reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email, trish at trishblackwell.com. They're going to be free. We're just going to have coffee, have a cup of a glass of Prosecco, hang out. I just want to hang out. So those will be coming up. They're both on a Sunday. I want to say July 12th and 21st. So more info to come on that.

But there is one, we were looking at this excursion, you know, I'm booking Great Barrier Reef snorkeling with my kids and my... husband and my husband loves fish like love so it's important to me like it's like crazy how much he loves fish and we didn't know this until he and I got married in Bora Bora and we did one of those over over water chapels and over water bungalows and like

I saw a whole new side of this man I was about to marry. He could snorkel for hours. I can't. I'm a swimmer. I love it. I love it. I'm all about it. Brandon could snorkel for seven hours. And he's a... pretty terrible swimmer I mean he's not a bad swimmer but he's not like he never competed like he's I it's just I'm a swimmer he is not and this is the man who won't stop swimming after fish he just chases them around he's like

something in him. It's like the seven-year-old little boy in him comes out. And so this is the context that I have of planning this one epic snorkeling adventure that he's been looking forward to for years. And I'm spending time back and forth between which...

excursion company, and then there's two days that we have to do it, and what are we going to do the second day? And here's how I'm using time assigning and time blocking. Because, look, we wouldn't call that overwhelm. We'd be like, oh, I have so much research to do. But y'all, I could spend 17 hours looking up and comparing reviews on these two, these multiple snorkeling companies for the Great Barrier Reef. Or I can time box and time assign. And so I'm halfway through.

my steps on my process for this. But as of tomorrow, everything's going to be done. I give myself one more hour. That's my time box. I'm giving myself one hour. And tomorrow... It's Thursday at the time of my recording. And I have from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. while I have a kid doing a sports activity, a tumbling event. So from 6 to 7.

I'm time boxing. I will make all the decisions. I will book the reservations. Everything's going to be teed up by tomorrow at seven for sure. Because I've given myself one hour to do all the final research and compare and compare all the things.

reviews, the five-star reviews, the one-star reviews, the timing, the locate, all that. It can all be done, honestly, probably a half hour. But I'm giving myself a time box of an hour and I've time assigned it as if I had a boss telling me what to do or a teacher telling me what to do. at 6 p.m. tomorrow. So that's how you use time boxing and time assigning. Then the other thing we have a massive breakthrough is learning how to say no to yourself.

We have to set boundaries and say no to ourselves and say no to others, to non-essential commitments. Stop being afraid to disappoint other people and stop being afraid to make yourself. Be uncomfortable sometimes and do what you don't feel like doing. The Amelia Earhart said the most effective way to do it is to do it. Saying no can be one of the ultimate acts of self-care.

Not just preserving yourself from non-essential commitments to other people, but self-care for yourself, saying no to that extra scrolling, extra Netflix show, extra whatever. in order to care for your future self and your future goals. And then the final way that you're going to get through these blocks, again, like we said, we're not blocked. We're choosing to be blocked. We're choosing.

to stay stuck in our excuses. So we say, I'm not blocked. I'm acting in avoidance. I am proactively avoiding something. When I call myself out and I acknowledge I'm avoiding this. Well, now it's action and I need to be responsible to change my actions. I'm not blocked or stuck. You are never blocked and you are never stuck. You are avoiding. And once I can claim and accept that I'm avoiding, now I can do something about it.

And one of the ways you can do that is through practicing mindful daily intentions, setting a daily intention, making sure you're doing your journaling, making sure you're setting daily affirmations. You're fixing your focus every day in the morning. How do you do that? Certainly you can listen to the podcast, but there's no better method than journaling. If you don't yet have my journal mastery bundle, I sell it for 17 bucks. I'll make sure the link is in the...

in the notes for you. But it is all right there. I teach you, I have a four minute journaling method. I have multiple journaling methods, but the core one that you have to master to be focused on your mindset is all taught in there. Affirmations can be done so simply they take a minute ahead of time. But it's really, really amazing what two to three minutes can do in the morning to change the rest of your day so that you don't fall into haphazard avoidance.

You don't get stuck in thinking, I just feel blocked. I want you to refuse to do what most people do. Most people overthink. They're inconsistent and they don't take action. They get blocked. And if you're a high achiever, if you're driven, if you have big goals in your life, I just want you to go, oh, cool. That's not me. So I won't. I'm not going to fall into getting blocked. Period.

If this episode resonated with you, by the way, and you're ready to take more action and you want to maximize and you're an action taker, but you're not optimizing yet. And you're really good at doing things, but you don't feel fulfilled from the work that you're doing. Yet everyone around you is like, hey, you're doing great. And you know that you are. And you know you're really good at checking the box and getting things done.

although you feel blocked, but not necessarily on productivity, you feel blocked in your fulfillment, you feel blocked in your happiness, then I would highly encourage you to check out my happy high achiever method. I currently, I don't release it all the time. It is currently available for limited time.

go to trishblackwell.com forward slash HHA. I'll make sure the link is in the notes, but it's the happy high achiever method. And I teach you in that method how to not just have a great work ethic, but a truly great life ethic, how to achieve more. with less stress and more fulfillment. And other episodes, if this is also resonating, that you will definitely enjoy, it's episode 520. That one is Overthinking and Overwhelm, How to Create Mental Peace.

Also, episode 601, social anxiety, because that might be how some of this is displaying how to stop overthinking social situations. I hope that this coaching today encouraged you. If it did, please reach out. Let me know. Share the show on Instagram. Send it to a friend. Make sure you leave a review if you haven't yet. Say hello on YouTube or on Spotify or if you're watching the video. And I just want to remind you of one final thing. You were made for more.

now go live like it thanks for listening to the confidence podcast and allowing me to be your coach today in your life if you love the show please let us know by leaving a review in itunes are you encouraged by what you learned Share this episode with a friend and let us know that the show is changing your life by saying hi to us on social media and Instagram, Trish underscore Blackwell, or on Facebook, Trish Blackwell Coaching.

Ready to take what I teach and really take it to the next level? Join us today in the College of Confidence. It's my group coaching program that you can join risk-free and cancel anytime. In the COC, you'll scale your confidence, your courage, and the changes you make in your life it's the coaching support and community you've been looking for go to www.collegeofconfidence.com to get started if you love the podcast

You will love the College of Confidence even more and see even more transformation in your life. Come and see for yourself. I'm cheering you on, friend. See you soon.