If you are feeling you are buried under a mountain of tasks and feeling overwhelmed, this episode is for you.
The true culprit in these situations is not the amount of tasks that you have to do, but how you are used to thinking about them. In this episode you will find out how outsourcing overwhelm by task delegation is not the whole solution to this problem.
We will also learn the insights you need to rewire your thought patterns for a calmer, more centered life.
Join us as we delve into the delicate art of mindful outsourcing, ensuring it's a strategic choice and not an avoidance tactic. I share my own reflections on when to carry a burden yourself and when to share it.
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If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
If you are feeling you are buried under a mountain of tasks and feeling overwhelmed, this episode is for you.
The true culprit in these situations is not the amount of tasks that you have to do, but how you are used to thinking about them. In this episode you will find out how outsourcing overwhelm by task delegation is not the whole solution to this problem.
We will also learn the insights you need to rewire your thought patterns for a calmer, more centered life.
Join us as we delve into the delicate art of mindful outsourcing, ensuring it's a strategic choice and not an avoidance tactic. I share my own reflections on when to carry a burden yourself and when to share it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Atar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you. Today we're going to be talking about overwhelm.
Speaker 1:Michael Pollan, author of how to Change your Mind, talks about how people have more and more ingrained patterns of thinking. But it doesn't matter if you are young or old. Because of neuroplasticity, you always have the option of dismantling the previously ingrained pathway of thinking and you can always start over and coaching targets the old, unwanted patterns of thinking. He uses a metaphor to illustrate how persisting in outdated thought patterns affects your mind. Picture that your brain is a mountain blanketed in thick snow. When you sled down from the peak, a trail forms in the snow. Eventually, many of these sled trails form and repeated patterns deepen and they define certain trails more than the others, making these the default paths. Standing on top of the mountain, even if you intend to slide down a new route, you might find yourself slipping back into the previously familiar tracks, and this is like you trying to approach a problem differently, but inevitably reverting back to your habitual ways of thinking due to ingrained neural connections and pathways. But imagine there's a fresh snowfall which conceals these well-worn sled pathways. Suddenly, you have the opportunity to carve out new roots. This is what coaching aims to achieve. It metaphorically blankets over the old, familiar paths with fresh snow, allowing you to forge new neural pathways. Now, when Michael Pollan talks about it, he is talking about it in the context of psychedelics, but I believe coaching can achieve the same, but in much more specific ways, where coaching will help you cover over a few sledding pathways rather than all of them at the same time. But it is much more effective compared to many other modalities available out there, and very highly efficient and effective at the same time when it comes to old, unwanted patterns of thinking.
Speaker 1:One such pattern is of inherent overwhelm Overwhelm that is deeply ingrained in your mental state, but is not just a result of having too much to do or too much external responsibilities. This level of default overwhelm happens even when the workload is manageable or when you have fewer external obligations. The feeling of overwhelm can still persist. This overwhelm is the product of a well-traveled snow trail. This needs to be addressed internally rather than through practical task management. How most women attempt to solve for overwhelm is through delegation of tasks. But you might be able to delegate a significant pusher of your work but still feel anxious and overwhelmed, because the root cause of your overwhelm has not been addressed and that is your mindset, not the actual volume of work. Overwhelm never comes from the amount of work that you have to do. Overwhelm is a feeling and it can never come from anything external. Your feelings like overwhelm only come from your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Despite efforts to delegate and outsource tasks, the feeling of being overwhelmed tends to persist if the root mental causes are not addressed. This is because the issue is not just simply about the quantity of work, but how you perceive and handle your responsibilities and pressures. For example, if you hire an assistant or delegate tasks to other team members, which theoretically should lighten your load, but if you're still mentally holding on to those tasks, worrying about them and not trusting others to handle them, you won't feel any less overwhelmed. The point is that there's a need of a deeper, more introspective approach to handling overwhelm, something that goes beyond just moving tasks off your plate to something that involves re-evaluating your mindset and approach to your work and responsibilities. Outsourcing any negative emotion is extremely ineffective, because dealing with them is your responsibility, not anyone else's.
Speaker 1:You can hire anyone you like to do the work. You cannot outsource your own overwhelm when you use AI. Let's say, for example, you use AI for copywriting. You now have to manage and oversee the output, make sure that it meets your standards. You have to spend time creating effective prompts. This adds a layer of stress and responsibility. Now you're managing the process rather than actually doing the task yourself.
Speaker 1:There is a shift in the type of work you're doing, rather than a reduction of the work, which can't decrease your overall sense of overwhelm if you don't know how to handle your thoughts when it comes to your career obligations and overwhelm. Reducing work hours or even making significant career changes, like quitting your job altogether, might seem like direct solutions to decreasing overwhelm, but these actions don't necessarily eliminate the feeling, because the root of the issue is within the perception and management of your responsibilities, not the responsibilities themselves. So, even if you do reduce your work hours or you quit, you might start to worry about underutilization, feeling unproductive or feeling that your career progression has suffered. On the other hand, quitting your job will lead to concerns of financial security, identity crisis or just downright boredom. All of these shifts introduce a new type of stress and overwhelm.
Speaker 1:All of this tells you that your overwhelm is not tied strictly to your current job or workload, but to deeper internal factors. It's related to how you engage with your work and your responsibilities. In the Quran it says but perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you, and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you, and Allah knows, while you know not. Surah Baqarah, chapter 2, ayah 2166. We pretend we think we know what's good for us, but we really don't. Until we slow down enough to solve for the inherent overwhelm, a deeply ingrained thinking pattern. Unless you work to think about things differently, the overwhelm will follow you, no matter how much you attempt to solve for it or outsource it. Let's say, as a student, you attend a weekend Islamic retreat to unwind from your academic stress. You choose your company wisely, you travel with a reputable company, you travel in a safe environment, you check all of the boxes, but as soon as you return, you realize that the stress of the studies will return and it doesn't address the time management and study habits that you didn't take care of before you left. A weekend retreat is a perfect example, because you cannot vacation your way out of overwhelm.
Speaker 1:All external solutions to overwhelm are temporary at best. Seeking solutions outside of yourself, such as hiring more employees, ramping up your marketing efforts, even switching careers, they can only provide a temporary relief. But these measures don't address the internal cause of your feeling. Meaning, hiring more staff can temporarily lighten your workload, but if you have a difficulty trusting others or giving up too much responsibility because you don't think that they'll meet your standards, all of the sense of overwhelm will likely resurface. Same thing if you change your jobs it might offer a brief period of relief, but unless you address the underlying issues like perfectionism, inability to set your boundaries or fear of failure, you will likely find yourself overwhelmed again in the new role. These external fixes are usually a part of a broader strategy to manage overwhelm, but without accompanying internal work, they will not provide lasting solutions.
Speaker 1:The Prophet, peace be upon him, said be keen on what benefits you and seek help from Allah. Reported in Sahih Muslim. What we keep doing is learning about escaping, changing the situation, changing the circumstance. But that's an error, because what we should be doing is turning inwards and figuring out what snow groves need to be covered up, what sled trail has been dug so deep that the thought pattern that leads to that trail needs to be changed and released. My personal experience with outsourcing is that whenever I try to fix things externally meaning I try to fix my overwhelm by trying to control other people or giving responsibility to other people, without understanding my own relationship with my thoughts and overwhelm is that that level of outsourcing is nothing less than a disaster. While outsourcing tasks significantly benefits your productivity and it can reduce your immediate workload, it is only effective if you approach it with the right mindset.
Speaker 1:Outsourcing is a strategic tool rather than an escape from overwhelm. If your thinking is that your workload is the source of overwhelm, then every time you try to delegate a task to somebody else, you will need to communicate effectively and clearly which are all of the skills that you lose because you're still overwhelmed but you're trying to desperately unload it on someone else. What you will need is a trust in other people's abilities and a willingness to let go of some control, which again backfires if you haven't taken control of your own overwhelm, because when you can't control your own thoughts, you realize after a rude awakening that you can't control other people either. If you approach it correctly, outsourcing frees up your time and mental space, allowing you to focus on higher priority tasks, and all of the while potentially reducing your overwhelm. But if you use it as just an escape from workload, without addressing the underlying issues like micromanagement tendencies or difficulty prioritizing tasks, it will create more stress in managing all of those outsourced tasks, because not only will you have your own overwhelm to still deal with, you now have other people to manage, which turns it into a power control dynamic rather than delegating effectively and leading.
Speaker 1:Also, engaging in single focus activities like yoga, meditation, massages, trying to take a walk all of these provide relief from stress and overwhelm. They work by giving you a break from constant mental chatter, but as soon as that activity is over, the chatter comes rushing back, like a scene in a movie when you try to hide all of the junk of your house in a closet, but it breaks open and the junk explodes everywhere right when the guests are visiting. If you try to push the overwhelm in the closet while you try to attempt to give your mind relief with single focus activities, it will only work as a band-aid effect. You haven't addressed the mindset that keeps pushing your thoughts down the well-traveled groove of overwhelm. Then, no matter how many activities you're escaping with, no matter how healthy these activities are and no matter how good you are at them, the sense of overwhelm will likely return once the activity is over. You will feel great after your yoga session, but you will return to the work environment where you're unable to set boundaries, say no to additional tasks or you constantly worry about work.
Speaker 1:All of the stress will resurface. Do the wellness activities, do the creative writing, painting or whatever your outlet is. It's surely better than most activities out there. All of these are definitely better than most activities out there that you can engage in as an escape. But allow yourself the understanding that, of course, overwhelm will come back, because the thought I have so much to do appears factual, but it is a thought which continues to create your overwhelm over and over again. If you're thinking thoughts of overwhelm like this one, you cannot outsource the amount of work you have to do, because the overwhelm will come back about all of the people that now you have to manage. You cannot outsource a solution to your negative emotions. If you think generating copy, writing papers or grants is overwhelming, you cannot outsource it to AI, because then creating copy that fits your needs, editing what AI generated for you, coming up with the right prompt for the AI. All of that is going to start creating overwhelm.
Speaker 1:Outsourcing is a double-edged sword. While it may initially seem to lighten your load, it will present itself as a new set of challenges if you don't know how to control your mind or how to manage it, because suddenly you're not just responsible for your own work, but also overseeing the work of others. This added layer of management demands your time and attention, which will create a different kind of overwhelm. Outsourcing requires you to communicate your expectations clearly, monitor the progress of your tasks and ensure that everything that you want meets the required standard. But not managing effectively leads to a cycle where you're constantly checking in on others, correcting errors and just redoing the work that doesn't meet your expectations. All of the time and energy spent in these activities will accumulate, bringing you back to the state of stress and overload. If you want to stop feeling stressed out and you start taking more yoga classes, you schedule a massage every week. You might even have a temporary win where these techniques will help you feel differently, but soon enough the same old thoughts of stress will start creeping back in about how all of the massages are so expensive or you don't have time to keep doing yoga.
Speaker 1:The art is about taking on the effective mental load, with or without outsourcing. Is your mental space occupied by keeping tabs on everything and everyone, or is it being occupied with all of the things that you have to do and you have to do them alone and you have no help? And there's so much to be done. All of this drama is where the solution lies. Overwhelm always only comes from the mind and if you haven't addressed it, there's no amount of outsourcing that you can do to physical human beings or to virtual assistants that can take care of that. If you're overwhelmed at your job that's 45 minutes away and you switch to a job that's 20 minutes away, the change of the distance is not going to cure your overwhelm. It will displace it to other areas, like this job doesn't pay as much or people at this job are much more unfriendly. You have to learn to coach your mind. You have to learn to direct it so it does not create overwhelm.
Speaker 1:I personally love outsourcing.
Speaker 1:I am a huge fan of it, but I had to learn to do it in a way that is not an escape from my overwhelm and it is something that I keep in check very closely, and I frequently ask myself a question before I outsource Is it is something that I keep in check very closely and I frequently ask myself a question before I outsource Is it an escape or is it something that I can truly manage?
Speaker 1:I encourage you guys to do the same thing, because, no matter what you do, you cannot escape your internal work. With that, I pray to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. O Allah, knower of the unseen and the evident creator of all that exists, grant me the serenity to navigate the storms of overwhelm that often cloud my heart and my mind. Bestow upon me the wisdom to understand that true peace comes from within. Help me internalize the lessons of patience and trust in your divine plan. Assist me, o Allah, in differentiating between the burdens I should carry and those that I should entrust to others. Grant me strength to face my responsibilities with a calm heart and clear mind, and let me remember that the ultimate relief and success lies in turning to you, o Allah. Allow all of us the resources to create peace of the mind and heart. Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.