Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing
Imagine feeling calmer, more focused, and in control . . . even with a full plate. That’s what Overwhelmed Working Woman, a top 1.5% podcast, delivers for accomplished women every week.
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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. All of this comes with guidance from host and Life Coach Michelle Gauthier, who has 8+ years of experience coaching hundreds of women.
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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
#196| How Discovering Your Primal Question Helps You Go From Overwhelmed to Empowered: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing
Are you constantly doing more but still feeling like it’s never enough? What if the real reason for your overwhelm isn’t your workload—but an unanswered internal need?
In this episode of Overwhelmed Working Woman, Michelle introduces The Seven Primal Questions by Mike Foster—a powerful framework that uncovers the core emotional question driving your stress. Whether you’re asking yourself “Am I loved?” or “Am I successful?”, understanding your primal question helps explain why you over-give, people-please, or push yourself too hard trying to feel “enough.”
In this episode, you will:
- Learn how to identify which of the seven primal questions drives your daily behavior.
- Discover how to transform your core question into a powerful, positive affirmation.
- Find out how your “primal gift” can become your greatest strength once you stop scrambling for validation.
Press play to uncover your primal question and start transforming your stress into self-assurance—so you can feel calm, confident, and free from overwhelm.
Featured on the podcast
Free Primal Question Assessment
The Seven Primal Questions by Mike Foster
Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.
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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...
When someone is overwhelmed, it's often because internal needs like safety or worth or purpose are unanswered. 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. Hi, friend. One of the things that I do a lot in my job is recommend self-help books to people, both to just friends if they're telling me about a problem or something that's really bothering them, or oftentimes to my clients. And I actually really love to read them myself. It's like a double win for me because I can always improve and apply things to my own life, and then I can also roll it into my coaching. So I thought since I have this library in my office and in my head, that I would do a series of Thursday episodes, not necessarily all in a row, but that on some of these shorter Thursday podcasts, that I would give you a summary of a self-help book that I love and have recommended and usually that clients have also used and told me this was a big game changer for me.
Michelle Gauthier:So welcome to the first part of that series. And the book that we're going to be reviewing today is called The Seven Primal Questions by Mike Foster. Today, when you listen, you'll learn what the book is about. So I'll give you a high-level summary. I'll give you some of the key points and what I think is most influential to my particular audience of listeners, all of you, which are overwhelmed working women. So if we look at this book, and I just find this like a funny and cool thing that seems to happen to me, I will often hear about a book just when I need that exact book. So maybe someone has said it to me before, but it just didn't stick. And I can't even remember who recommended this book to be, but I remember reading it cover to cover. It's not a very long book. Let me see. I have it in my hand, so I'm gonna look and see how many pages it is. It's 200 pages, but this has pretty big print. It was a pretty quick read, and also it has like drawings and stuff in it.
Michelle Gauthier:So anyway, it was a quick read, and I read through the whole thing, and I immediately was like, oh my gosh, I want to talk to every single client I have about this. It was that good to me. The book introduces this framework of seven primal questions. And the idea is that one of these questions, so I'm gonna read you the list of questions, and all of them will be questions that you ask yourself at some point. But one of these is probably a question that you're asking yourself. That is your primal question that you're asking over and over. And when you find out what your primal question is, it's usually something that has been triggered early in life and continues to drive you.
Michelle Gauthier:So I'm gonna give you the example of what the questions are and then tell you how you can find out what your primal question is, and then what he suggests that we do once we know what our primal question is. So number one is am I safe? Am I secure? Am I loved? Am I wanted? Am I successful? Am I good enough? And do I have purpose? Is number seven. So the author suggests that again, like I've definitely asked myself all those questions at different points in life, but there's usually one core question that really seems to drive us. And when the answer to that question is yes, we feel very aligned and peaceful and empowered. When it's no or even a maybe, we enter what the author calls the scramble. So patterns of stress and people pleasing and overgiving and self-doubt and chaos. So this really relates to what I talk about, because if your question, your primal question is, am I safe? And that doesn't necessarily have to mean physically safe, emotionally safe. So if you're in a situation where you're constantly asking yourself, am I safe? And the answer that's coming back is no, in order to make yourself safe, what you might do is overperform, people please, overgive, have a lot of self-doubt, and just create chaos in your life without even meaning to.
Michelle Gauthier:So I'm going to give you an example of someone who I worked with, and her main question was number three, am I loved? And remember, this is a question that you're constantly asking yourself. So maybe you're asking about your spouse or your kids or your family or even at work, am I loved? And if you feel like the answer is no, because someone at work has given you feedback you didn't like or criticism, the kind of scramble, the kind of unhealthy behaviors that that will drive are like perfectionism and people pleasing and doing all these things, bending over backwards so that the answer to that question of am I loved can be yes. So it's an attempt to make the answer to that question as yes. So, what to do about this? What the author really encourages us to do is find out which primal question is yours, and then understand the triggers and patterns tied to that question. So, what happens when you ask your primal question? Let's say yours is, am I successful? And you feel like the answer is no. What happens? What do you do when that happens? And then taking your primal question and turning it from a question into an affirmation. So for example, Am I loved? turns into I am loved. I am wanted, I am successful, I am good enough, I have purpose in my life, whatever your question is, to turn it into instead of a question, a mantra.
Michelle Gauthier:The other thing that the author notes, which I think is really good because this isn't a book that's just like, hey, here's your question and here's the problem that you have because of it. He also helps us recognize the primal gift that often emerges from that core question. So for example, if your core question is, Am I loved? You probably have a gift to make other people feel very loved and secure. Am I safe? You're probably a person who can make other people feel very safe. So he gives us both the ups and the downs of what our core question is, and then how to turn it around and use it to your advantage.
Michelle Gauthier:Imagine if your core question was, Am I loved? and you were able to do the work to believe that you are loved, that you're always loved, how much time that would save you, and how much less stress you would have if you just walked around the world knowing that you were securely loved. So, why does this matter for my overwhelmed working woman audience? I think that when someone is overwhelmed, it's often because multiple internal needs like safety or worth or purpose are unanswered. So they're constantly reacting and trying to do things, say yes to things in order to solve that problem. So if you can get to the root of what your primal question is and then start using it as a mantra and seeing the positives of that primal question, then you can really use it to your advantage and reduce the stress and overwhelm in your own life. This is a great book. I definitely recommend it. I will put a link in the show notes to a quiz that you can take that the author has put out where you can figure out what your primal question is and then a link to the book. I put a post out on social media that includes all of the books that I'm going to review so far. And I have asked people to give me their suggestions for books that really change their lives or books that you're just curious and would like to hear a summary about. I've gotten some great feedback and added a couple to my list. So I would love if you sent me a message to tell me what book you would love to see on the list, or if you just go to that post, it's on Instagram and LinkedIn. If you go to that post on my social media and let me know what books you'd like to hear about, I would love to summarize those for you too. All right, I hope you are successful in finding your primal question and turning it around to be your primal gift. Have a great week.
Michelle Gauthier: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 MichelleGauthier.com. See you next week.
