Overwhelm is Optional
- This is the podcast for big-hearted, highly driven professionals who want their life back.
- Each week, we explore ways to gently rebel against the idea that overwhelm and exhaustion are just the price you pay for success. You don’t have to push through—it’s time to work with ease, reclaim your energy, and create the life you want.
- 💡 Meet Heidi Marke
I’m Heidi, a Coach, Teacher, Podcaster, and Author. Having painfully burned out—losing my career, confidence, health, and financial stability—I discovered a better way. Now, I quietly lead The Gentle Rebellion, helping you to:- Stop pushing through overwhelm.
- Redefine success on your own terms.
- Reclaim your time, energy, and life.
Thank you to purpleplanet.com for the music.
Overwhelm is Optional
Crafting a Purposeful Path as the Year Winds Down
As the year winds down, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by unfinished goals or pressure to 'make the most' of the remaining time. But what if there’s another way?
In this episode, I share how to gently reflect, set meaningful intentions, and craft a purposeful path into the new year—without the stress.
🎙️ Welcome to Overwhelm is Optional
This podcast was created to help big-hearted, driven professionals break free from overwhelm and experience more clarity, ease, and joy.
But here’s the exciting news… I’ve moved beyond overwhelm.
If you’ve been listening and resonating with this message, you’ll love what comes next.
I’ve created a new podcast: Deep Heartfelt Success—because success should feel as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
🎙 Join me there → Search "Deep Heartfelt Success" on your favourite podcast platform and subscribe.
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🎧 Free Audio: The One Minute Marke
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Welcome to the Gentle Rebellion where overwhelm is optional. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode. The maple tree in my garden at the moment has gone the most extraordinary autumnal yellow, and watching it there are just leaves falling gracefully slowly. Often what happens is we get storms, autumnal storms, and stuff gets blown down very suddenly and we don't always get the autumn colour long enough to enjoy it, just because of the way the weather is. But this year it's been a slow, a delightfully slow autumn and the colours just beautiful.
Speaker 1:Now every autumn I talk and write and teach about the fact that autumn, with its falling leaves, reminds us of the opportunity to let go of things, things that just don't work for us anymore. So this could be stuff, ways of doing things, thoughts, beliefs, all sorts of stuff. It's just a reminder. I mean, really it's always there, isn't it, that opportunity. So this is just a bigger clear out. This is just an opportunity to just drop into our hearts and our bodies, out of our minds, and just assess the year what's working for us, what's not working for us, what do I not want to take into the following year? It's kind of like a preparation for a deeper, real think about the year and how your life's going, maybe in the winter. So that's great, right? There's always stuff that we can identify. Usually for me it's thoughts.
Speaker 1:One thing I did this morning was I don't know why I looked at the windowsill in my office here and I found this little pot of incense that I bought from a lovely little shop in Glastonbury a few years ago and when I bought it I loved it. I really loved it. I was in my spending time in the middle of the day, maybe doing a yoga nidra and lighting some incense and just basically ending up having a little bit of a snooze, and this was part of my recovery from burnout. But the truth is I really don't like that incense anymore, like I really don't like it. But I thought I couldn't chuck it out because you know it was once treasured and what will I do with it. But I don't burn it because I don't like it. I really don't like the smell of it anymore and probably part of that is a testament to how far I've come. And you know it's just, it's just not of its time anymore, right? So that's going, that's off.
Speaker 1:And then I went through my wardrobe and I looked at that dress that has had a reprieve several times. I got it secondhand. It's been a great dress, it's well-made, but it's pretty scruffy and it I haven't worn it again. That's two summers in a row I haven't worn it. I don't wear it. I don't want to wear it. It's in my wardrobe. It got a reprieve on the idea that when it gets really hot and you want to garden, perfect.
Speaker 1:But the thing is I'm the kind of person who switches out activities far too quickly to change my clothes I'm really bad at. For example, this morning I found myself outside at the bottom of the garden. I just went to take the compost down and then I'm like I'll just move a few of those branches that have ended up in the compost. At the moment my compost at the bottom of the garden has gone wild. I don't quite know what we've been doing.
Speaker 1:So I have two compost bays and this is funny because it's right at the bottom of the garden and I can see through the fence my neighbour who has got a gardener. She has three beautiful, very well organized. You know the proper compost systems where you have three big things made out of pallets or something and you turn one to the next and then you cover them with carpet. She has, like the book, looking one like a Monty Don or Alan Tipmash thing, and I don't. Sometimes it looks like that, but it certainly does at the moment. At the the moment it's so bad that if I take a wheelbarrow of autumn cuttings down, I'm literally just tipping them on the path because I can't get to the compost. I don't quite know when it went so wrong. I don't really care, it's quite funny, it doesn't. It's not that important, is it? But today I thought Maybe it's not as bad as it looks. So I scrambled through and then found myself dragging mucky branches out of the compost so I can start using it properly in my best cashmere. And that's just what happens to me. Fortunately, this beautiful cashmere sweater. It seems to be super tough. Honestly, it's so good, I love it so much, and it is the colour of moss. It's a beautiful colour, so it doesn't really show stuff. It doesn't seem to get dirty. I don't understand it.
Speaker 1:If somebody's mucky, I think I should just live in Kashmir, because the stuff doesn't cling to it anyway. That's what happens to me. Does that happen to you? So I'm not very good at changing clothes before I do something mucky, and that's because I like to shift. So if I'm working in my office doing something like this writing, recording a podcast and then I think, oh, I'll just go outside for a bit because it's not raining, and then I just wander around the garden, there's always something to do. I'll just do this, I'll just do that, and then if I think, oh, I should go and get changed, and then do it, it interrupts that flow. Anyway, I just I'm not very good at doing it, which brings us back to the dress. No point keeping it, so that's gone. And that's just a few things. And there's something nice about that.
Speaker 1:If I was thinking about this, it's really bizarre to me. When I have a shower and I get really excited if I have a new shampoo or a new shower gel, anything new, really exciting, oh, it's new. And then I get to this point where the bottle starts going down when it gets to the end. I want it done. What is that about? Is that linked to some old hunter gathering thing? I get deeply excited about finishing and chucking out a bottle of stuff and getting a new one. It's bizarre. I don't understand. I've just finished a bottle of shampoo because I bought a mega one that I bought in March. Couldn't wait for it to go, but when I got it it was like majorly upgraded, recommended it to people and I'm like, yeah, I'm bored of that. Very funny, very, very funny. Maybe I just take it all too seriously. Anyway, who cares? There's something nice, isn't there about?
Speaker 1:Well, there is, for me, anyway, the process of things coming in and out, in and out of our lives, getting excited about new stuff, letting go of stuff. Things don't stay the same, and I think I know one of the problems that leads to me getting overwhelmed is this idea that there's one right solution for all time, and once I've got it under control, everything will be easier. I won't feel overwhelmed or everything will be at ease because I'll have everything under control, because it never happens, because things change all of the time. All of the time and actually I want things to change all the time, because if I get stuck in the stagnant bit in the middle where nothing's changing, that's also no good. So it's this tricky dance, isn't it? Finding what brings me energy and what drains my energy, and where am I. So the idea of letting go of stuff at this time of year is really good, because it's bigger and it's a lovely, lovely, natural reminder.
Speaker 1:But there is also that daily thing of letting go, isn't there? Of just like catching your thoughts doing repetitive, boring old cycles, that typical thing of rehearsing past conversations where somebody hurt you or trying to have a future conversation where you're practicing and you want it to go better. That can clog up our minds so much, can't it? I know that can happen to me, particularly when you get off guard. So, falling asleep or waking in the night, when you've got that semi-consciousness and I find it really helpful to be aware, more aware of that, more intentional, with that kind of hypnogenic state I can't remember how to say it now hypnagogic state in between sleep and waking, it's a much better time, it's a much better use of that time, I find, for me to go into a lovely dream of and I'm going to create this next and I'm going to go to this place next and I'm going to experience this next, and dreaming in the things I want to create, rather than going over the rubbish. So there's a habit. There's a habit worth shifting for me a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Another thing to let go of Unconsciously wasting time rehearsing stuff, catching myself doing that and letting it go, even without the replacing and making it better, because then I get stuck in the. I should be making better use of my midnight ramblings, oh for goodness sake. Use of my midnight ramblings. Oh, for goodness sake, shoulda, woulda, coulda, better, better, better. Which brings me to an upgrade of the letting go of things gracefully, one at a time, like a leaf falling from the tree. So it's a great opportunity and it works.
Speaker 1:But then I got thinking about the redwoods. So the redwoods I visited in Northern California on my road trip last month were ridiculously big, bigger than I can possibly explain. Go see them. It just they don't. It blows your mind. But I'm like, well, but why? Why are they so big? Because I kind of feel like we're just told so if you look in a book or if you look up trees, it's like, well, oak trees grow to this size and this goes to this size and this goes to this size, and then that feels like a school book. Answer yeah, these are the facts. They grow to this size. But the fact they grow to that size is a measurement of the size. It's not why or is that the biggest they can grow or the smallest they can grow, it just is. This is it? This is the average size of these trees, which isn't enough for me. So I want to know why.
Speaker 1:So I did read some of the information boards and there are three things that make them so tough. And because they're so tough, they live longer, which means they get bigger because they have more time. So one of them was they are pretty much resilient, impervious to insects, because they give off a strong piney smell. The other is fire finds it really hard to kill them. They're so tough. I mean, we saw ones hollowed out by fire and they were still alive. And the third thing is they're really, really big but have really shallow roots, which you'd think well, that doesn't make any sense, but that's because they're all interconnected. So basically, the tree is the forest, the forest is the tree. It's all one. So they're super good at working together and it's really hard for them to fall because they're all held up right.
Speaker 1:So the thing I want to concentrate on this week is the fire. So what happens at the base of redwoods, like a lot of trees, is they get tiny little shoots and those shoots can become another tree and then it just spreads because they're all interconnected. But if you've got lots of little shoots coming off, your energy is going into that. Right, you're supporting that. Now I don't know if it's true, because I couldn't see the top of the trees, so I can't tell you if the ones with more shoots on the bottom aren't at all. But let's just imagine this is true. Let's imagine that the energy for the redwood can either go into the base sprouty bit or it can go upwards, because that's probably true, that seems likely. Upwards, because that's probably true, that seems likely. So I'm going with that for this purpose.
Speaker 1:And then fire goes through, doesn't kill them but burns off and I think it did say this somewhere. Actually I don't think I'm making this up, I think I read this somewhere. It burns off the little tiny bits and then they just grow into these magnificent tall trees. So that's really cool, right? The fire is actually helping them. So then it got me thinking how is that relevant for me? So I can gracefully identify a thought or a habit or a belief or an object that I no longer want and I can thank it and let it go. But sometimes I want more, sometimes I just want to burn loads of stuff when I'm just like done with a way of thinking or a way of doing something or a belief about myself. That's just not for me anymore. And I thought about the power of fire and this also felt very relevant for me because I have the kind of mind that is overwhelmed by shoulda, woulda, couldas and ideas. So I have I kind of do, I'm very, very good at holding lots of projects at once because I have really good systems to keep them out of my head and I get a lot done and I'm proud of how good I am at creating stuff and making stuff happen and I'm excited.
Speaker 1:That's who I am. I get very excited. I have lots of projects at once in the spring and summer and what I've realised is not all year. So at this time of year, all of those things I feel I ought to be doing are in the way. Let me explain.
Speaker 1:So last year I start at this time of year actually I started writing this book about the Gentle Rebel's Guide to the Year and it had rituals and tools for each month and I didn't have time to complete it. Well, partly because I realised really I needed to test drive it. It didn't work, it wasn't ready for publishing, so what I did is I gifted copies to everybody in the Gentle Rebel community and then we started the year with it, together with a really good workshop, and that set us up for the year. And then I've continued to come back to mine because it has regular checks, check-ins for monthly celebrating, letting go and then identifying what you want for the next month, and then also quarterly ones. So it's really helpful. I find it really helpful.
Speaker 1:Anyway, one of the things I've learned to do to help me decide what I want to focus on each month, each year and each quarter is to find my heartfelt priorities. So there's loads of priorities, that's normal, but on the basis that everything we do is in order to change how we feel. So everything we do is in order to create an experience, a different experience than we have at the moment, or to continue an experience Based on that. Going a bit deeper, why do I want these things? Are they precious Shoulda, woulda, couldas, need to be better, need to do better, or are they things that I really, really want to do, things that make me grow as a person, live a fuller life, be more me? So that would be the difference between the shoots at the base of the redwood and the redwood growing taller, reaching for the sky or wasting your time with these tiny little offshoots.
Speaker 1:So I have this well-practiced practice that's not a regular sentence of getting out of my head into my body, connecting to my heart and identifying what really matters to me and I call those my heartfelt priorities and then I pick those, stick them on the wall, I have them by my bed and I have them in front of me here in the office and that helps me not get distracted into doing other things. It's also linked to that lovely saying about most of us overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year. So this helps me not get overwhelmed by all of the things I think I ought to be doing and help me focus on what really matters to me. And I find this really powerful. And now, as I'm saying this, I feel like I ought to share exactly how to do that more specifically. I ought to share exactly how to do that more specifically. So we will be doing that in the Gentle Rebel Community New Year workshop together, and I'm wondering whether it would be worth offering it to people outside of the community at a low cost so that you can experience that too. If you'd be interested in that, can you just drop me a line, because then I'd know whether it's something worth going to the effort of offering externally, because it would be lovely to just get people from the podcast together on a little Zoom call and we could go through that together, because it is a really powerful practice. So do let me know. Just email me at Heidi, at HeidiMarkcouk, or reach out through social media. Okay, so usually I have I don't know between.
Speaker 1:For the year I had 10 heartfelt priorities and that's been so helpful. They were themes for the year connected to a word, so so good, and that's what we did in that workshop. Really powerful, because you can just keep coming back to it. Oh, that's what I was up to, that's what I really wanted. I've got distracted. That's why I'm feeling overwhelmed. It doesn't mean you can't shift courses during the year. Of course you can, but if you've gone deep enough, you should have revealed what you really want, and it just makes it so much easier.
Speaker 1:So I found that really powerful this year and then each month I'll have between five and eight, which is too much, so I'm trying to go with four to five each month, so it depends on the size of them. Some of them are finishing off of things or just one thing I need to focus on to do with the house or something, but a reasonable, smaller amount, not like the whole year ones. But this month I'm rebelling even more and what I'm doing is recognising that for me, autumn and winter are different energy and I need to slow down and go within, and I just want to do things differently. It's definitely my season for writing, so what I've done this month is picked only two heartfelt priorities and I'm sticking with them, not just for the month, but for the rest of the year. Woohoo, I can't tell you the freedom, oh my goodness, it's just incredible, because it honours who I am at this point in my life, how my mind works, how I work, what works. It's just, it's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, there's still other things to do. It's not like I'm not doing the daily tasks, but it's the project base, it's the deeper stuff, it's the bigger things I want to achieve. So that's what I'm doing, which is really cool, and this reminded me of the Redwoods, because in order to do that, I've had to go further than letting go gracefully like a leaf falling from the maple tree and I'm burning off those shoots. I'm literally going no, and I'm burning off those shoots. I'm literally going, no, it's, it's, it's almost like I'm. I've, first of all, I've imagined them burning off and then, secondly, I'm just, instead of letting them go, I'm just like, well, they no longer exist. It's deeper, it's almost like having, you know, horses. I don't know why they have this. Horses have those blinders on which stop them seeing sideways. I don't know what that's about. I'm not a horsey person, but anyway, sometimes I feel like I need those. It feels like that. It's so nice, it's so calming. So is that either of those projects? And part of the reason it's calming is because if I don't do that, they won't get completed because they're big things. One of them's writing my next book and one of them is difficult to explain, so I'm not going to bother. Anyway, they're linked. Anyway, I'm just mumbling now, which is fine, I'm allowed to mumble. It's my podcast.
Speaker 1:So how would you feel about burning off, like in this powerful, allowing yourself to be free and reach for the sky way? Does that feel good? If it feels good, maybe try it, whatever, in whatever way. That means obviously I'm not talking about actually burning anything, although sometimes it's really fun to burn stuff, isn't it? Stuff in your house where you're like I don't need those photos anymore, I don't need those notes, I don't need the receipts, because it's less than it's more than seven years since I did those accounts.
Speaker 1:Like that kind of stuff's nice, isn't it? I was talking to somebody the other day so they just discovered loads of stuff and just cleared it out. Such a good feeling. There's something very powerful, isn't there about fire? So using an imaginary fire to let go of the stuff that's just crowding you and pressuring you and pulling at you, but which you actually do not have the space for, and although some of them might be wonderful things, is this a time for you to just focus on just one or two things, to calm everything down as the year comes to to a close, or not? Have a great week.
