Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
Overwhelmed Working Woman is a podcast for accomplished women who want to feel more calm, in control, and focused without adding more to their already full plate.
This top 2% podcast is hosted by Michelle Gauthier, who has over 7 years of experience coaching hundreds of overwhelmed working women.
Each episode offers simple, practical strategies to help you reduce overwhelm, improve productivity, and stop people pleasing. You’ll learn surprising time management hacks, how to do less without guilt, and why the path to calm begins with changing how you think.
If you're ready to reclaim your energy, focus, and peace of mind you’re in the right place. Start with listener favorite: “The Power of a To-Don’t List.”
Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
#173| Pop Quiz: What's Causing Your Overwhelm?: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing
Do you ever wonder why your calendar is packed, your inbox is overflowing, and yet you still feel behind?
In this episode, Michelle reveals the surprising truth—your overwhelm isn’t caused by your schedule or your workload. It’s your mindset. Through a fun five-question quiz, she shows how your thoughts shape your feelings, your productivity, and ultimately your results.
By listening, you’ll discover:
- How to catch sneaky thoughts that quietly drain your energy and confidence
- The mindset shift that instantly changes how you experience stress
- Practical steps to reframe negative thinking so you can feel calmer and more in control
Hit play now to learn how shifting your thoughts—not your to-do list—can transform your week into one filled with clarity and calm.
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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...
It's not your calendar, it's not your inbox, it's your mindset. It always goes back to your mindset.
Michelle Gauthier:You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life. Hey, friend, how's it going? I hope you're having a great week.
Michelle Gauthier:Today I did something a little bit fun. I asked AI to listen to all of my podcasts. They're like well, this is 175. So there are lots of them now and I said listen to all my podcast episodes and summarize the overall themes of what I teach or things that I say a lot, and there were a bunch of takeaways, but the number one theme that came back was mindset. Specifically, it said the power of managing your thoughts to reduce overwhelm and improve productivity. If you've been a podcast listener for a while, you're probably shaking your head now and thinking, yep, that sounds about right. That makes it into almost every episode and it's really at the core of what I teach my clients and how I teach them to change their lives and stop feeling overwhelmed. So that made a lot of sense to me, and I decided for this podcast this week to turn it into something a little bit fun and to create a quiz for you that we're going to do on this podcast episode. Even if you're a first time listener, stick with me, because you'll be able to totally follow along and you might learn something about your own brain and about mindfulness that you didn't know before too.
Michelle Gauthier:If you have been a listener for a while or did coaching with me, you're probably going to nail this pop quiz that we're having today. So here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna ask you a few quick questions, give you a second to think about your answer and then, of course, I'll give you the answer. It's going to be a short episode. It's just five questions. It's going to be fun and it's going to be a great reminder or, if you haven't heard this before, if you haven't learned much about mindfulness before, a great starter to get you started on the path of how much mindfulness can change your life.
Michelle Gauthier:Also, one other funny thing when I first asked it what do I say all the time on the podcast. The two things I say the most are hi, friend, which I think I say at the beginning of every episode, and then, if you enjoyed today's podcast, please leave me a review. So apparently those are two things that I say the most often, so I guess you're probably used to hearing me say that too. But it's true, if you enjoy this episode or any episode of the podcast, it would be amazing if you would leave a review, because we just got bumped up. It's been in the top 2% of the podcast for about a year. It just got bumped up to top 1.5%. So it is really working. You guys are all listening, sharing this with your friends, leaving ratings and reviews, and our percentile friends leaving ratings and reviews and our percentile. So that is top 1.5% of podcasts, of 3.6 million podcasts in the whole world. So thank you very much to everyone who has listened and written a review. Even though I've said it 700 times, thank you for those who actually did it. I appreciate it so much.
Michelle Gauthier:Okay, let's get into our fun quiz. So question number one is, what creates your feelings? So, for example, if you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed or joyful, what created that feeling? The answer is your thoughts. So, for example, if we're thinking about your to-do list and you look at your to-do list and you feel overwhelmed, we know that it's not the to-do list that's making you feel overwhelmed, it's your thoughts about the to-do list. So there's just that little step in between. We feel like it's the to-do list, but really it's your thoughts about it. A thought like, "this is impossible, creates panic or overwhelm. A thought like one thing at a time creates calm. So it's the same list. It's not the to-do list, it's a different mindset that gets a totally different outcome. Okay, keep going here on the quiz.
Michelle Gauthier:True or false? If a thought is in your head, it must be true. I hope everyone's yelling out in their car wherever you're listening. False, this is false. Your brain serves up 60,000 plus thoughts a day and most are just thoughts that come as a habit or fear-based noise. Sometimes our brain makes an attempt to keep us safe and gives us serves up lots of negative thoughts. So it's okay, that's not a problem, that our brain will just drop in negative or fear-based thoughts, but we have to have the ability to question them and decide whether we want to believe them or not. You get to choose the ones that actually help you move forward or help you feel better. We think that our brain is a truth-telling machine, but it's really a habit machine. It just gets into the habit that every time, for example, your boss calls you if you have a horrible boss and you see their phone number on your phone that your brain drops in the thought of run away or this is dangerous, or don't answer, or oh crap, what are we going to do now? And that just becomes a habit.
Michelle Gauthier:Okay, question number three is, what is always in your control? Lots of stuff that's out of your control, but what is always in your control? Your thoughts and your actions. Now, if we back up to the question number two right before this, you'll remember that I said your brain puts a lot of thoughts in your head that aren't true. So I'm not talking about the thoughts that just drop into your head. I'm talking about the ones that you evaluate and if you decide to believe them or if you work on having a new thought. So that part is in your control and the actions that you take from those thoughts, either the bad ones or the good ones are in your control.
Michelle Gauthier:Now, question number four is the opposite. What is always out of your control? There are lots of answers for this one, but what is always out of your control? This one, but what is always out of your control? The shortest answer for this is everyone and everything else. So you can't control your boss's mood or your inbox. Things are just coming into your inbox, or your kid's snarky tone, or what your next door neighbor thinks about the fact that you haven't cut your grass in two weeks. You can't control any of that. And because that's true that you have no control over it anyway, I often encourage you on the podcast to spend as little time as possible in that zone thinking about what other people are thinking or trying to control someone else's mood, because you can't do it. So you might as well save your precious energy and put it towards something that is in your control. Okay, last question, question number five.
Michelle Gauthier:Let's just say you sit down at your desk in the morning and the first thought that pops into your head is, I'm not doing enough, or I'll never figure this out, or I'll never catch up to anybody else. What should you do once you notice you've had a thought like that? This is the hardest question. What I would say is there's three steps. When you've had a thought that you don't want to remember I'm not doing enough as an example will create a certain feeling, and having a thought like I'm not doing enough is going to create a feeling like stress, panic, something to that effect. So when you realize that you've had a thought that isn't going to serve you, there are three steps. The first one is to notice it. So if you've gotten to the point where you realize you had that thought, that's step number one, which is about 80% of the battle.
Michelle Gauthier:It's hard to get used to noticing the thoughts that come into your head because so many of them are unconscious. But if you can do that and notice that you've had the thought, pat yourself on the back and then question is this really true? Is there any evidence I can point to the contrary. So if I say I'm not doing enough and I'm like is that really true? No, that is not really true. Think of all the things I've already done this morning. Just yesterday I had six meetings, you know whatever it is and then try to reframe the thought.
Michelle Gauthier:The thought has to feel true. So, for example, if your thought that pops into your head is I'm not doing enough, and then you try to switch that to I'm always doing enough, it's probably not going to feel true. Maybe a replacement thought for that would be I'm giving it my best effort for today, or I know what I need to work on next, or I'm going to prioritize my top three tasks, or I don't have to do everything all at once, or I'm doing enough things for today. There are a million different thoughts. You have to just figure out which one feels better to you than the original thought and then write that down on the top of your to-do list. So how did you do? I really want you guys to tell me. I feel like lots of you probably got lots of those answers right. So there were five total. Send me a message. I have a little link at the bottom of the show notes that you can send me a message on Instagram. You can DM me on Instagram and tell me how many you got on the quiz. I want to know.
Michelle Gauthier:So this quiz wasn't really about getting the right answers, but just about reinforcing how powerful mindfulness is, because your thoughts are the first thing that can shift you when you feel overwhelmed or stressed or any way that you don't want to feel. It's not your calendar. It's not your inbox, it's your mindset. It always goes back to your mindset. So when you change your thoughts, your feelings follow, and that's how you shift your results too. If you think about the kind of work that you will do during a day when you feel completely overwhelmed and stressed versus the kind of work that you do when you feel confident and calm, you get completely different results. If this episode helped you catch even one sneaky little thought, send it to a friend who spirals with you.
Michelle Gauthier:And if you want more help managing your mind, you know where to find me. Tune in twice a week on this podcast. Or if you're interested in doing one-on-one coaching with me, there's always a link in the show notes to set up a free consultation to do that. Oh, also, don't forget, I am doing a fall declutter reset. It's going to be lots of fun. It's going to be five days of podcasts. We're going to look at all different areas that you want to declutter. This declutter challenge has a ton to do with mindfulness, because it all starts with decluttering our mind and then decluttering our space. Thank you so much for tuning in and have a great week. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom. See you next week.
