How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed and Start Living Intentionally | Brave Moves Podcast

Are you feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or stuck in a cycle of stress and burnout?

In this episode of Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins shares a deeply personal story about caregiving, travel stress, fear, and the reality of what happens when we live unintentionally.

If you’ve ever felt like you “should know better” but still fall back into old patterns, this episode will remind you that you’re human, and give you a way forward.

Julie opens up about:

•  The hidden impact of burnout and overwhelm 
•  How fear can take over your thoughts and energy 
•  Why living unintentionally leads to stress and exhaustion 
•  The importance of giving yourself grace 
•  How to reset and begin again without guilt 

Key Takeaway:

You don’t need to push harder, you need to pause, reflect, and move forward with intention.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

•  How to stop the cycle of overwhelm and burnout 
•  Why fear can feel real even when it’s not 
•  How to manage emotional and mental exhaustion 
•  The power of giving yourself grace 
•  Simple ways to live more intentionally 

Brave Move of the Day:

Give yourself permission to pause.

Instead of rushing to catch up, choose to:  reflect, reset, and begin again...intentionally

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey my friend, welcome back to Brave Moves. I'm so glad that you're joining me for today's episode. This is your daily-ish podcast. And oh my gosh, it definitely has been daily-ish this week. One of the things that I haven't anticipated as a caregiver is my bandwidth. You know, for so many times in my life when I was in my corporate experience, I worked myself to the bone. I worked myself to the place where I was really going in overdrive and ended up getting burnt out several times. I really think that part of that stress and crazy lifestyle that I lived at one point in my life led me to get to a place where I have an autoimmune. Now, as a caregiver for my mom, I definitely am in a different place than I was in my mid-30s and 40s. And today I know what my bandwidth is. I know how to create intentional margin. But you know what? It doesn't mean that I do it. It doesn't mean that I do it. And I am sure sometimes if you're anything like me, human, you know the thing to do, and yet you struggle to actually do it. And then you beat yourself up because you're like, I should know better. I know this already. And how is it that I can get back into this rut? And here's what happened this past weekend when I went to Georgia for my nephew's confirmation. My mom and I went. Now, I will say, I was not thinking clearly when I booked a weekend trip. I really should have given ours more time so that we can get there, enjoy ourselves, relax, have time with family. My mom would get to hang out with her friends, and at a leisure pace, we would get back home. However, I don't know. I guess I was just looking at prices and saw what was cheapest. So I booked us to arrive on a Friday night on a 10 p.m. flight and return on a Monday morning on an 8 a.m. flight. So here's the problem. When we're doing things unintentionally, we're just trying to check off the list, and that's what I was doing. I was booking airfare because I needed to do it. And I think that when we get into that mode that we are not living intentionally, that we're not actually stopping to think about the things that we're doing, then we live with the consequences later on. Now, if you have heard me talk about a lot of different things, you probably know that although my mom is an American citizen and she's been here since 1959, I was seeing a lot of things regarding ICE agents drawing, dragging people from the airports. And well, I'm not gonna lie, I was a little afraid because, and this is probably gonna rub some people the wrong way. But I want to be honest with you. My mom looks ethnic, and she's a beautiful woman. However, I had all these pictures that I had allowed my brain to make up in my mind about her being profiled and being dragged out and me losing my shit, and then all of a sudden finding myself in some detention uh for ice. You know, because you hear the stories, and my sisters, on the other hand, think I am crazy because to them, they're on the other side of the spectrum. They see that ICE agents are just government workers who are being very helpful in a tough time with TSA is not getting paid and they're filling in the gaps. And this is exactly an example of what happens in our world. We see the world with so many different perspectives. And when we are together, we end up clashing. And not that I clashed with my sisters over the weekend because we had a wonderful trip, but we end up really letting our unconscious bias and the things and the fears and the things that we have already going inside of us really affect how we are showing up and how we're viewing the world around us. You know, my sister Georgie, because she felt that TSA are the helpers and not how TSA, IS are the helpers, she came in with the perspective that, hey, this is so wonderful. They're making things easier at the airports. And although, you know, they're still a long line, they are helping us get through security. And I saw TSA and them not getting paid as a terrible thing. And the fact that the ICE agents were brought in, I saw it as a thing that, you know, can cause chaos, can cause disruption. They were profiling, they're trying to get rid of TSA. And my friend, this is not a political podcast by far, but I'm not gonna separate my ideals and my views and my values and share what I was thinking. Why? Because it affects my mental health, it affects how I show up. So, anyhow, the trip was uneventful and it was wonderful. Bradley Airport, if you're in New England, is a great airport to fly out of from gate, from the check-in counter to the gate. We made it in seven minutes flat with my mom. It was wonderful. Now, on the way home, we showed up at Atlanta at 4 a.m. And let me tell you, it's hard to get an 83-year-old who's never been a morning person to get up and get herself together to go to the airport at that time. But all those hours that we sat in the airport, I couldn't help but to feel a little bit of fear. And this is where I'm going to share something that I think it's not only a reminder for me, but a reminder for you. Your fears at times can be false evidence appearing real. And I am not discounting the fact that there are some terrible things happening. But when we allow our fears to not only get the best of us, we are on edge. We become a lesser version of ourselves because our mental capacity, our emotional capacity are just being taxed. And you know what? It totally came to pass when on Monday, when I finally made it home, not only was I exhausted physically, but emotionally. And I ended up taking a three-hour nap and had dinner and proceeded to go to bed at 8 p.m. and slept till 7 a.m. the next morning, which led me to think, is it worth it that living unintentionally and that we are rushing through life then gets us in a situation in which we become stressed and then we end up taxing ourselves, our body, our mind, our spirit, and we are not showing up the best for ourselves. Now, it is a vicious circle. It is that cycle where we see, what am I doing? I can't believe I do this. Now, I had to pause, and in pressing that pause button, I had to think, what is next? Should I then continue my week in an overwhelm manner? Should I continue in a way that I'm just trying to catch up and make it better and forget what happened? No, I needed to unpack it. I needed to unpack it so that one, I saw some of the places that I needed to improve what I did when it comes to travel with my mom. Number two, I also needed to really sit down and process the fears and feelings that I had. Number three, I had to see that yes, there's always a different perspective to what I have. And if I am not aware that we all have our different perspectives and somewhere in the middle is the truth, we are going to continue to be at odds with people. And lastly, my friend, the one thing that I had to do is I had to say what will give. Because if I'm jumping back into work a hundred times faster and more productive than ever because I'm trying to catch up and I'm trying to, you know, do the things that I didn't do because I rested on Monday, then this week would still continue to be something that will continue to tax me rather than giving me the space to begin again. So here's the lesson for all of us. And here's the brave move for you, my friend. Give yourself grace when you fall back and when you revert to some of the programming that we have that at times hasn't served us. And when we do that, give yourself grace to let go of things. Let go of the things that maybe you want to do, should do, but at the end of the day, we'll get you back into this overwhelm cycle, into that vicious circle. For me, not doing many things for the business, and in addition, recording my daily-ish podcast was one of the things that I had to let go. And rather than beating myself up for it again, I decided to start again intentionally in a way that makes sense. And this is the one thing that I want to encourage you to do: be intentional, be willing to be imperfect, be willing to revert, and then stop and listen. Got up with child of the 90s, because if you if you immediately thought of what I was thinking, um, I love you for listening. Anyhow, stop and listen to yourself, listen to your fears, listen and question yourself and say, Julie, is this real? Is this right? Is it possible? And how can I do this better? And how can I begin again, one brave move at a time? My friend, thank you for being here and thank you for listening. And until next time, don't forget, go confidently in the direction of your dreams.