Let’s Fix Your Life Without Burning Out

Welcome to The Chaos Corner — where we laugh, spiral, and figure it out anyway.

This week, we’re talking about the kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix. The mental overload. The unfinished to-do lists. The pressure to “get your life together” while your brain has 37 tabs open at once.

In this episode, we get honest about:
 • Why motivation keeps disappearing
 • The difference between being lazy and being overwhelmed
 • Simple habits that actually work in real life
 • How to reset your routine without trying to become a completely different person overnight

And of course:
 ✨ Big Sister Rule #4: Not all goals are achievable — so make them realistic.

Because healing your life shouldn’t feel like a punishment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Chaos Corner, where we laugh, spiral, and figure it out anyways. I'm your host, Kiara Gray, and let's fix your life without burning out. Welcome back to episode four, everybody. I'm so excited to have you guys back here today. We have a really, really good topic to talk about. So sit down, grab your snack, and let's get started. All right. Today we're going to be talking about the fact that you're not lazy, you're just overwhelmed. Productivity, mental overload. What is setting you off? So let's get into it. Now let's talk about why motivation fails. Well, it's not a system, it's in an emotion. So it usually shows up when something feels exciting, urgent, new, emotional, rewarding. It's like a dopamine effect. But when it becomes repetitive, uncomfortable, boring, slow, or uncertain, then the motivation just completely diminishes. And that's normal, but how do we break that cycle? Like if you said if I really wanted it, I'd stay motivated. So if I really wanted to be skinny, I would go to the gym. Well, that's not always the fact. You have to get in the right mental state in order to fully succeed. So, with that, how do I get emotionally motivated? Well, it gets to a certain point when you're like, am I just gonna do it? Like my podcast. I am excited, I'm emotionally driven. This makes me really excited to do, but I wasn't motivated to do it four years ago. I wasn't motivated to do two years, one year. I wasn't motivated at all to do it last year. But out of nowhere, I just felt this urgency. Like I had to do it. I don't know where it's gonna take me, but I feel really, really good about it. How did I get there? Well, I've put having a podcast on my vision board for over five years, people. Five years, and it took me just now to figure it out and fuck it and do it. And that's really hard because there comes times where I'm just like, how one, how, how am I even gonna do it? How am I gonna record? Two, what am I gonna talk about? Give I woke up one day and I was like, you know what? It'd be a really good idea being a virtual big sister. And this is where it all started to unfold. Motivation for the gym. Girl, I am still trying to figure it out because 21-year-old me was fully motivated. But then when I look at a time, I wasn't as busy. I didn't have so many obligations, I didn't have a lot going on with work. It was literally work, go home, do nothing. So I changed it from going to the gym early in the morning, work, then come home. But then I was also in a phase of going out, having fun, and I was like, well, I want to feel good. And if I'm gonna drink every single day, I might as well fuel my body. And slowly diminished when you get older, and I hate when everyone, I hate when adults tell me, well, when you get older, things change, and now look at me saying that. So that was a big ick on me. But it's not really motivation in your life. You probably just got really busy, and your schedule's changing. You might have gotten into a relationship and you want to hang out with your spouse more than you want to hang out at the gym. Where I don't know if I believe, no, I believe in a relationship weight where you're hanging out all the time, especially if you guys don't live together, or either of you don't have your own place, you're going out, you're gonna go eat, you're doing this, this, and that. You lose track of the other things that you have in mind. You're like, oh, I'm not going to the gym at nine o'clock every single day that I used to. Well, because that's been replaced by something else. So is it a lack of motivation or a change in time and dynamic? It's easy to stop something and start something where you get really motivated to do one thing, but then you lose track of the other. We have a thing about wanting to do multiple things at one time. You continuously try to pile on to your load, like I can do this, this, and this, and my day is gonna go seamless. Well, let's be honest, nobody knows what the day is going to be like. We're gonna have days where, yes, I'm following my schedule. I woke up at 6:30, I'm out the door at 8, I'm at work from 9 to 5, and then I get off, I'm gonna go to the gym, and da da da and this and that. It just takes one call, one text for something to ruin that whole routine. So, how do we maneuver that motivation to keep doing the things that we want to do? And that comes with simple habits that actually stick. What is simple tasks that you do every day that can stick? Well, you get up, you shower, you wash your face, you brush your teeth, you floss, like these are normal things that you've done so many times that just stick. Because you were raised to brush your teeth, wash your face. All right, guys, go brush your teeth, wash your face, wash your hands. You I hope you wash your hands after you use the bathroom. If you don't, disgusting. But I'm not judging you at all. You have to find things that work in your time. You also can't overload your schedule. You can't always say yes to things. I am that friend that'd be like, yes, I'm down to go. I'm always down. Woo, we're going, I'm on my way, I'll be there soon. But then I overbook. So then I'm sitting there looking back, and I was like, oh, I actually had something else scheduled. Ooh, I can't do that today because of this. And you're overlapping your time. So where does your motivation come in? Where does your consistency come in? Being inconsistent can actually lower your motivation. Because if your motivation is to go to the gym, but you don't go to bed on time to wake up early, well, then you just miss the gym because you're too tired. Or, oh, I want to film that TikTok every Tuesday at this time, but you're not putting in your schedule. How are you supposed to time out your time efficiently without building some type of routine? And I just I had to flip my routine recently, um, especially with this podcast. I had to book out time. When am I gonna record? When do I want to post the episode? If you know me, you know I'm very OCD when it comes to organization. My schedule is color-coded, and I love it because I have it based off of certain categories. Me doing stuff with my boyfriend, work, and then the podcast, and then friends. Friends and family are green, my podcast is pink, my personal stuff is dark pink, my stuff with my boyfriend is red, and work is yellow because I don't want to be there. It's no fun. So I found out having a color coordinated visual representation of what the heck is going on in my day-to-day. I realized not charting when I worked actually negatively affected me because I made it seem like it's not a part of my day when it is. But when you work in a nine to five like I do, you lose track of time where it's just like, oh, I just got work from nine to five. It's Monday through Friday, in and out, good to go. Do you not realize how long of a day that is? It's your whole day. You're there for eight hours, and I've accomplished so much work in those eight hours. Why am I not including that work in my schedule? Finding time for the gym. And it's if you're in a relationship where you both work out, you want to go together because it's more fun working out together than alone. But then you realize sometimes my schedule doesn't align with his. Does that mean I'm not motivated? Am I just not gonna go because he's not going? And that's what I'm facing right now, and I need to look at myself in the mirror and be like, uh, who needs advice? You guys or me? Probably me. That's probably why I'm talking. You know, these are my virtual diaries, so here it is. Um, how do we reset our routine? What is a good routine? What do you consider as a good structure for you to work off of? Do you look at your life on a day-to-day basis, a monthly, a weekly? This is the best advice that I've received and continue to give out as I go. Think of your life in quarters. And you'd be like, what in the corporate are you talking about? I'm talking about you have four quarters to the year. In each quarter, there's three months. What in those three months do you want to achieve? Is it reaching a certain weight? Is it completing certain tasks? Is it in these three months of having a routine that you've been so consistent with that you can't break? Because we try to look at our life at the whole year. What do I have going on? What trips do I have planned? Counting down the days till your next event, your next trip, your next girl's night hell, your next date. But instead, why are we not structuring everything in a three-month quarter? What do I want to achieve? So the best advice I could give you guys today for this. Think of your life in quarters. What will you achieve in quarter one, two, three, and four? And see how that goes. And just because it's we're already in quarter two, doesn't mean you can't set goals for that quarter. You might have missed out first quarter, but you still can achieve your year-end goal in that's the starting in that second quarter. How? What's your way of doing it? Well, ladies and gentlemen, the things that we never listen to our parents. Go to bed, find a certain bedtime, stop doom scrolling till one o'clock in the morning on your phone. Go in, go to bed, do your night routine, calm your mind, drink your little tea or your warm milk or whatever you like to do. Wind down, take that nighttime shower, do your five-step facial routine. Get in your comfy PJs, light a candle, read a book, calm your mind down. Because I know I have fallen to the temptation of Doom Scrolling at nine, and you're like, oh cramp, it's two in the morning. Do not, and I repeat, do not start a series, aka a TV series at nine o'clock at night. Because you know well enough. Oh, just one more episode. Just one more, one more. One more, I swear. It's just like reading a book at night. Just one more chapter, it got good. No, close the book, turn off the TV, and wind yourself down. Because if you're trying to go to the gym at five o'clock in the morning, you need to be asleep at 9 p.m. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, go to bed. It's so hard. And I'm still trying to figure that out. But losing out on sleep is taking away from your motivation. Not giving yourself time to wind down after a long workday. And it might be different. Time-wise, it's different for everyone. If you're working nights, you're gonna get off of work when people are getting up for the day. And I was a graveyard shifter. I worked at the casino. I knew what it was like to work 365 days of the year, not having a day off, and waking still awake when everyone's asleep. Best advice I give you for the graveyard shifters right when you get off of work, go to the gym, and then take your ass home and go to bed. I said it. I said it. Now it's going to be different for people with kids. I'm just speaking from a single no kids in a relationship. I don't have to worry about extra responsibilities besides my dog. And he just he's doing great. But you have to manage time. If you're a grade yard shifter, go to that gym at five in the morning with the old folks doing their steps. I'm telling you, it's gonna be the quickest gym shut you've ever experienced in your life. And it will be so quick and easy in and out. You feel refreshed, go home, shower, close your light, canceling shades, and you will have the best sleep you've had in a long time after that. It's going to get take time to adjust, but man, I miss it. And don't get me wrong, I love my nine to five. I do. I love having federal day, federal holidays, not federal days, English. Okay. Um I love having federal holidays off. I have weekends off. It's something that once you start doing, it's really hard to leave because you don't have to worry about. Oh, I'm going out Saturday. Oh, I gotta work on Sunday. Nope. I'm off. I only have to work at nine o'clock on a Monday. So I can have Sunday, fun day, and go out Saturday and be fine. And I know when five o'clock hits on Friday, I'm out in them streets at 6:30. Because you gotta give me time to go home and change, put on a little freshen up the makeup and whatnot. But how do we find a routine? It's not gonna be the same. You can't keep taking other people's routines off TikTok. Tried it, doesn't work. You have to build your own. What works for you? If you know you're a night owl, then alternate it for the nighttime. If you know you would rather go to the gym in the morning than night, or you would rather go to the gym at night than the morning, then do that. Make your own schedule. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you what to do because that is not what this is for. This is just advice. But make a routine, set that motivation because there's nothing more rewarding than being like checking off the boxes of your to-do list and it fully disappearing. Because you've done everything that you wanted to do. And then what makes it even more better is when you've done everything that you wanted to do and still have time to do absolutely nothing. Ah, I have never been so happy that I'm like, I had a productive day, and now I can stay here. It's seven o'clock at night, I already had dinner, and you're telling me I could watch about three episodes of a series that I started or read a couple chapters of my book. Oh that's motivation right there. Knowing that I've done everything that I feel like I needed to do, and it's done, and I don't have to think about it. It's out of my head, it's gone, it's over there. But when you're making these routines, setting these goals, are you making them realistic? Mm-hmm. I said it. I said it. Are you making it realistic? Are you making a routine for someone that doesn't have the same body style, work life, or lifestyle as you? Mm-hmm. Are you looking at a gym talker? Talker? Are they gym talkers? Content creators. Let me say it proper because it's an actual career, and you give the two-finger clap because you did that. But these content creators have the time to go to the gym any time of the day. Have the time in the morning to do their morning routine videos. When I tell you some of those are not realistic at all. Because what do you mean you got up at nine? And then you're like, I woke up. I put laundry in. I cooked food. I got ready for the day. It's 12 o'clock, I'm going to the gym. 12 o'clock? I'm on lunch at work. What do you mean you're just going to the gym at 12? You you have a weekday off? Ooh, that's rare. But you know what I'm doing on my weekday off? Not a damn thing. You know why? Because there's nothing more rewarding than being home when no one's home. I had to step back for a minute because there is nothing more rewarding than being home when no one's home. So, what goals are you achieving? What are we wanting to do, ladies and gentlemen? Are we wanting to set a routine? Just try it out for a couple days and never do it again? No. We are not. And I quote, having New Year's revolutions.

unknown 20:54

Ugh.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

They're not realistic. They're not real. Everyone does them for a week and then we all stop. What's the point? Who came up with the idea that you have to have a New Year's revolution every year? You know how many New Year's revolutions I've had? I haven't achieved not a damn one. Not a damn one. Nope. Who has time? I'm like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we do a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. Ooh, I I'm going there with y'all. I am so sorry, but we gotta be a little blunted on this sometimes. We say a lot of things, but we don't do it. Don't tell me, show me. But instead of someone else telling that to you, tell that to yourself. Look yourself in the mirror and be like, I'm gonna stop telling myself. I'm gonna Do this. I'm gonna prove to you that I can switch the dynamic. Stop talking, do it, do it, do what you need to do, set that routine, find motivation, continue to be productive. But you're also allowed to take a break. You are allowed to give yourself rest because there are times you're gonna have a mental overload, you're gonna be burnt out, you're gonna do everything that you had planned and structured for the week, and you're gonna get to Friday and be like, I just can't. Because you know what happens. We set routines, but we don't set rest. That should be a sound effect. I'm gonna add that in later, but to go on, we do not set time to rest. And we think it's being lazy when in reality you are mentally drained. You need to be able to take a minute, go back and be like, you know what? I did my best, but I need a break. That's okay. It's okay to take a break. It's okay to be tired. There's nothing more that irritates me when someone says you're being lazy. Oh, you're tired. You don't know what it's like to be tired. Huh? Do you have no idea what I went through today? Do you have no idea how many tasks that I've done in just a short period of time? And it can be parents telling you that. It could be siblings, it could be coworkers, it could be spouses. You're not doing enough. You didn't do that much today to be tired. Bitch, a bitch is tired. And then I and what do you want to do about it? I'm tired. I worked hard. But other people's mental exhaustions are not the same. Some people work in fight or flight. Some people don't know how to take a breath or know when they're having a full-on mental overload. They're just used to the chaos. You see how I put us in there a little bit. Um, but there's gonna be times where you're not gonna be able to know when you need to rest. Schedule it. If a job can give you a schedule, why can you not schedule yourself? It's easy. It's truly easy to do. But you also have to make sure you are setting time aside, but also allowing things to change based off of situations that may or may not happen. You might have time to do those things today, but you're gonna struggle to do them tomorrow. You're gonna get a call and be like, I know I had this stuff today, but I really want to go out with friends because they just call me about going to dinner or going into a movie. That's okay. Do it. Because you might already be at a mental overload and you don't realize it. So when you're like, oh, I kind of just wanna go hang out with friends, or I really don't have the motivation to go today. That's okay. Don't do it. Don't go. Don't follow your routine. I can only be as consistent as I let my emotional state go. You know, you might just be having a rough patch at work. Maybe you're going through a lot of stuff personally. Maybe you are having issues in your relationship. Maybe you're having issues in your family and you just don't have the emotional capability to have the motivation to do those things. Because, like I said, motivation is an emotion. And if you're not emotionally able to do those things, they're not going to happen. You're gonna have those weeks of, I just can't. I don't feel like it, I don't want to do it. I just want to bed rot, eat greasy food, and move forward. And that's okay. You just have to know when. And that is not all goals are achievable, so make them realistic. You're not gonna lose 150 pounds in a month unless you're on Ozempic. And I'm not saying Ozempic's bad. I'm not saying weight loss procedures are bad. But are you being realistic with these goals? You're only going to stick to a keto diet for 75 days, and there's gonna be no cheat days, I'm not going out to eat. Some of you might be able to do that, but some of us aren't able to do that emotionally. If you're only able to go to the gym once a week or twice a week, good for you. Hey, at least you fucking went. While those people are saying, I need to go to the gym, I need to do this, and they still haven't gone. You can't compare goals, and you can't compare expectations of these goals. Bodybuilders, they go through a strict system in order to look the way they do. Supplements, workouts, eating habits to get to the bodybuild that they want to be at. Gymnasts, work, day and night, eating habits, routine to get to the where they're at. You need to find the routine of where you think that you want to be at. Where is that? And I'm not saying find a body double and be like, this is what my body, I want my body to look like, this is where I want to be at. No. Because a lot of motivation, I feel like me especially comes down to like weight and routine and how my physical appearance is. But maybe my motivation right now is to record podcasts and to continue doing something that I truly love doing and being motivated in that. That's hard. Because in my head, I'm like, I want to work out, I want to lose weight, I want to do this, I want to do that. But it's not my priority right now. What is your priority? We have to set goals that are achievable, but we also have to make them realistic. So take time to sit down and really think of where you want to be, what you want to achieve, but do it in quarters. Set a year-end goal, but see what you can achieve in each of those quarters. Instead of just having one goal for the full year, set small goals, small milestones, and see where it leads you. Whether this be physically, mentally, financially, doing the one thing that's been in the back of your mind that you haven't done, whether it be going to get that degree, going to take that one class, starting a new business, starting that podcast, taking photos, starting photography, taking that initial step to achieve those goals while making them realistic. But when you're trying to achieve so much in a short period of time, you're going to feel overwhelmed. And while doing that, when you don't achieve those goals, it's perceived as laziness. But you're not lazy, you're just overwhelmed with everything that you're trying to do all at once. It's going to take time. You're going to have to sit there and be like, hmm, maybe I need to dial back a little. Maybe I need to think, reflect, redo, and move on. And I'm going to repeat it one more time before I leave you guys here today. Not all goals are achievable. So make them realistic. All right. That's it for today's trip through the chaos corner, where we laugh, spiral, and somehow figure it out, anyways. If you made it this far, you're officially part of the chaos. So don't forget to follow and come back next time. Because let's be honest, the chaos isn't going anywhere. Until then, stay a little chaotic.