Overwhelm is Optional

Overwhelmed? Try This Joyful Transformation!

• Heidi Marke • Season 1 • Episode 217

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Overwhelm steals clarity and joy, leaving you stuck in reactivity. In this episode, I’ll share how to uncover your Heartfelt Priorities and stay focused on what matters most—even when life feels overwhelming. Discover practical steps to turn overwhelm into joy and explore tools like the Gently Rebellious One Minute Journal to help you reconnect with your purpose every day. Find your way back to joy, one minute at a time.

Free workshop: https://www.heidimarke.co.uk/registration-page

🎙️ 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.

💡 Experience Deep Heartfelt Success for Yourself
Book a complimentary Deep Heartfelt Success Session—a no-pressure, transformative conversation designed to help you step into your next level of success with ease.
📅 Book here

📚 The Gently Rebellious One-Minute Journal
A simple, powerful way to stay focused on what matters most.
👉 Buy here

🌍 Website:
Explore practical tools, resources, and ways to work with me.
👉 Visit here www.heidimarke.co.uk

🎧 Free Audio: The One Minute Marke
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Gentle Rebellion where overwhelm is optional. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode of the Overwhelm is Optional podcast, the podcast for big hearted, highly conscientious, lovely, lovely professionals, my favourite people in the world. So this week we're going to be talking about how to turn your overwhelm into joy. So I don't know about you, but this feels like the season for signing up for workshops, manifesting challenges and fitness apps. That's what's leaping out of me from Instagram at the moment, and I just find that quite amusing. What am I up to? Why? What is this pressure of this time of year to get fitter and be better, and oh my goodness. So, with that in mind, just a quick reminder that I actually am running my own workshop, but deliberately on the 5th of January, so that's when all of the pressure of the new year has gone and faded into the madness of ridiculous new year's resolutions that we were never going to keep. That just add to our overwhelming pressure. When all that's gone, come and let me hold space for you to identify what you truly want to be up to in 2025. That's on Saturday, the 5th of January. If you pop over to my website, you can easily find the link Heidi Mark at. Was it heidimarkcouk? Oh, goodness me. Yeah, I'm not the professional call to action statementer. You know what I mean. I'm just me. Hello, welcome to this week's episode. Let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

So this is what happens. We want full lives and we love our lives. We love so much, we're enthusiastic, we're warm, lovely, generous people, we work really hard, we've achieved a lot, and then we get tremendously overwhelmed, to the point where we can't remember what it was we wanted. We can't focus on what matters most to us. We thought we had some clarity. We felt inspired, particularly at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 1:

This year I'm going to have more space for myself, have more energy, focus on what matters most to me, right, and then very quickly we're back to what was I doing? Again, can't see the wood for the trees. How do I prioritize? Forget that. What's the? Is it the Eisenhower matrix? The urgent, important? Everything's urgent and important.

Speaker 1:

I have no idea what you mean. How can anything not be urgent, important? You know what I mean overwhelm. It's a bit of a pain, right. So instead of having full lives, we end up with overloaded lives and it's not very much fun, and then we feel like failures and we feel like we're not good enough. Are you with me? It's a nonsense, right? So let's take that with me. It's a nonsense, right? So let's take that overwhelm and let's turn it into joy. Let's just do that, why not? So what if the overwhelm is just useful information? What if it's just telling you that you're not pointing your compass in the direction of joy? And what if there was an easier way?

Speaker 1:

So this is the method that I've come up with during the past few years and, particularly, have honed and written into my new book, which is just about to pop out onto Amazon. It's called the Gently, rebellious One Minute Journal, and the idea is that you start by identifying what it is that brings you joy and then you stay focused on it. That's it in a nutshell. So the journal provides both a method and space to record what brings you joy, which I call your heartfelt wish list for the year, and then to distill it down into a word of the year, but just not the normal word of a year thing. Obviously not A gently rebellious word of a year thing. Obviously not a gently rebellious word of the year. So a word of the year so courageous and so personal and so connected to deep within your heart that you wouldn't even whisper it to somebody else. If you can parade it around, then maybe it's not enough for you. Maybe it's not deep enough, courageous enough, rebellious enough. So this is a secret word, a word that you would only whisper to yourself, that connects you deeply with how it is you want to feel this year, and then connecting to that daily in just a short, one minute morning practice. So, yeah, it truly is a one minute journal, but we're front loading it by going deep at the beginning of the year, and the year does not have to be January.

Speaker 1:

This is so important. What is it about this whole? Oh, it's January. Yeah, there's energy and we want to write, to ride the energy, but personally, I want to do it without the pressure. So let's remove the pressure. Let's just move, move new year to when you want it. So that's what I want to talk about today. So I just want to go into a little bit more. So let's, let's just imagine that if you really knew what you wanted and you focused on that, you would have an amazing year. Let's just imagine that's possible and then let's make that possible.

Speaker 1:

So, instead of thinking I want too much and wanting so much that you can't hold space for it in your head. It's all too much, and then that's what leads to overwhelm. So then you downsize your dreams to get rid of the overwhelm, which doesn't lead to more joy, or at least it can lead to more joy in some ways, because it's like now I've got space, but it's not who you are. You want more. So, instead of that normal cycle, what we're doing is we're saying okay, what matters really to me now? This is more than the normal this year. I'd like blah, blah, blah to be a million times fitter, a million times more organized, a better friend like the secret invisible. Get better, at least. This is way past that into getting out of our heads, into our hearts, our bodies, asking the questions deep within us how do I want to feel? Because everything we do is in order to change the way we feel. So, if we go straight for the end goalpost, how do I want to feel? How do I want to move through this year?

Speaker 1:

There's an essence to that, and I found it to be different each year, which is interesting, isn't it? Because you think that you'd always want the same, but I think you don't, because you're ever expanding and getting excited about different things, and that's good, right, we want to be always wanting more, but we also want to be able to sit in the joy of what we have now. So it's the ability to me, it's this skill of being able to sit in the joy of what I've created now at the same time as enjoying the wanting of what I'm going for next and and holding those in a balance so that the priority, the priority for me, is joy. I didn't realize this, I thought I had other priorities, and then I went deeper and deeper and deeper and thought yeah, it always comes back to joy, and by joy I mean and it could mean something else to you, and it's important that you work out what it means to you, for that that to me, means joy. My entire being comes alive. So my heart feels full and expanded. My body, every cell in my body, is just filled with joy. I don't really know how to describe that. It's like a bouncy, fullness, a deep satisfaction with life, a freedom, an ease, a carelessness, in a deeply caring, warm way. It's a whole mixture of things.

Speaker 1:

So my question to you would be what is it for you? What is it joy? Is it something else? Is it calm? Is it peace? What do you want? What's the feeling now? I'm calling it joy because I used to go for from overwhelmed to ease, but ease doesn't feel enough because I always want more. So do my clients. So from overwhelmed to joy just feels deliciously expansive, in whatever way that means to you. Or call it something else.

Speaker 1:

So if you ask yourself deep within yourself, bypassing your mind, going deep, allowing the questions to resonate through your body, which is what we'll be doing in the workshop and it's really nice to have, I find it so much easier if somebody does this for me than trying to do it on my own. But you can do it on your own if you get the journal, or you can just do it from this video or this podcast episode. So what do you want to feel? How do you want to feel? What brings you joy? These are the central questions to me for the year. They're the ones that bypass all the others to do with how, what do I want in terms of fitness? What do I want in terms of work satisfaction, relationships, my home? They're the next layer, right.

Speaker 1:

So the deepest level is how do I want to feel? What brings me joy, what do I want to feel? How do I want to be moving through the year? And then, knowing that it's overwhelmed, that blocks well, blocks both the feelings of joy and expansion and ease, but also blocks the access to the information about what brings real joy. And then it becomes, oh, but that's bugging me.

Speaker 1:

If I get rid of the thing that's bugging me, I'll feel better, and then everything becomes when this, then that. That's how we end up in that perpetual cycle of doing more in order to feel better, but never reaching the end of the to-do list where there's this golden pot of ease, because it doesn't exist, because the truth is that's their surface level things. The deeper thing is, is the, is the heart going to the heart of the matter, literally asking the heart what brings joy and going for that straight away, regardless, and then out of that will come the, the practical steps. So we're going really deep and this, the, the problem I'm trying to solve here, this, the overwhelm, is that really annoying scattering of attention and energy. So when you end up with with this constant feeling like everything feels urgently important, I can't see the wood for the trees.

Speaker 1:

I, when you lose your abilities, prioritize that. That's it right. That's that massive frustration. It's like I know what I'm trying to do but I just can't do it. I keep getting distracted. Everything else is taking my attention, which leads to real resentment, I think, and bitterness and snappiness and anger because, quite, quite obviously, because you're not doing what brings you joy. So it's just, that's a really useful bit of information, but it's really unpleasant.

Speaker 1:

So imagine that we can just stop going around in that circle of doing more in order to feel something. Instead, feel the feeling now, then work out what steps would bring more of it. Can you see? We're turning it upside down. We're breaking that age-old cycle. We're gently but firmly rebelling against the idea that you have to work harder and get more done to feel safe, grounded at ease, calm and have space for joy. We're finding we're connecting to the joy first and then, from there, deciding how to prioritize. We're turning it completely on its head.

Speaker 1:

So this also, by doing this, if you, if you can have a structure. So once we've got the, this is what I want to feel. It also enables us to break that reactivity which is linked to that. Everything feels urgent and important because once you recognize oh, I'm in that everything feels like a priority, whereas clearly not everything can be a priority. Oh, I'm overwhelmed. Oh, now I'm going to check my heartfelt priority list. Can you see? It's a, it's a ability, it's a, it's a higher level skill structure, practicality tool thing to help you break that even more. So this is both aiming higher. We're aiming straight for joy, not just for ease Look at me. Not just for ease. Yeah, not just for ease. You want more, right, you want joy as well. And we're going for even more practical steps.

Speaker 1:

So this, for me, is I've been quite surprised, actually, because it took me six versions of this journal to write and I just thought it was going to be more of a, more of the same as in, not more of the same as in. Oh, that's so boring. I mean more of the same as in. I had it, I'd written out the gentle rebel way. I knew where I was and instead this hot, this whole new kind of even higher level way of moving through my year has come to me and I love it. I'm really excited about it.

Speaker 1:

I'm not entirely sure I'm explaining it brilliantly. Please go and check out the journal when it comes out on Amazon. I'm waiting to get my copy. It's about to be released, about to to be released. They're just checking it. It explains it really clearly in that. But let's let me see if I can make myself clearer. I expect I'm sounding clearer than I think.

Speaker 1:

I'm always speaking my way to clarity when I record a podcast episode, which is why I don't know why I think it's popular and connective. Right, because I'm not reading a script. Yeah, I've got notes in front of me. I'm not reading a script. I'm literally speaking my way to clarity. I'm sharing what I'm finding at the cutting edge of the gentle rebellion. I'm blazing, quietly, blazing my own trail and sharing with you what I'm discovering on the way. I'm blazing, quietly, blazing my own trail and sharing with you what I'm discovering on the way. So I hope that resonates, bear with me here.

Speaker 1:

So the problem is this, to me, is the biggest problem we can't stay focused on what matters most to us and that causes us pain. That's what's draining us, that's what's frustrating, that's what's irritating, irritating us, that's what makes us snappy and grumpy. We just want to stay focused on what matters most to us and then we spend times of the year, particularly this time of the year. I'm recording this on the 31st of December 2024. Particularly this time of year, we tend to do some work or allow space to find what matters most to us, and then we lose it. And this was driving me mad, because this happens to me as well. I get really excited.

Speaker 1:

I know what I'm doing, I set my compass and then I find that I'm doing other things. And it's not that the other things are bad. The other thing is all good, but there are so many good things in life that if I have a scattergun approach, I find it unsatisfying. I don't want to do everything, but there are some things that matter more to me. If I have a scattergun approach, I find it unsatisfying. I don't want to do everything, but there are some things that matter more to me. If I've identified them, I want a way to keep my mind focused on them, and that's what I've been up to, and that's what this new work is that's coming out of the Gentle Rebellion right now.

Speaker 1:

So, number one identify what matters most to you. Get out of your head into your body. Ask those, those questions. How do I want to feel? Based on the idea that everything you do is to change how you feel. Work out what the feeling is that you want whether that's safety, ease, calm, joy, whatever it is identify the essence of that. Then from there you can start allowing lists to come out. So I will end up with lists of things I want to do to the house, things I want to do to look after myself better, things I want to do in terms of trips, time I want to spend with different people, books, I want to write podcast episodes you know my work stuff and then I will end up with lots of lists and that will be the kind of capture, the capturing of ah, this is what's important to me, but it'll all be in line with this feeling that I want. And if something's out of line with that feeling, it will be easier for me to work out whether it's genuinely deserving of a place on my very precious and important heartfelt wish list for the year.

Speaker 1:

Now, I did this last year. It worked really, really well and I and then from there, anytime I'm like, what am I up to? Again, I can check back with my heartfelt wishlist and know is it in line with this or not? Am I adding more into my year unnecessarily, because I don't need to add more in to feel joy, to feel the joy and ease I want, I need to focus on what I've already identified. It's the constant re-identifying, the re, those feelings of like oh, I've got clarity again, oh, it's gone. You know, it's like washing a window and then the window gets dirty, can't see out, and then you wash it again. Oh it's sunshine out there, and then it gets dirty again. You're like what am I doing? Keep washing windows. It's that, it's that. Oh, I've got clarity on what I want. I've lost it. Oh, I've got inspired action, I've lost it.

Speaker 1:

This is about recording it in such a way that you can stay focused on it. So when I get my copy and I am buying my own copy of my own journal because I it's what it will work, because I've tested it last year, it's really practical, I'm really proud of it. Please go and check it out, see if it's for you. Um, I will have a page where my heartfelt wish list is for the year and that will guide me through the whole year. I can just pick up and go am I in line or am I going off, getting excited and overwhelmed because it's one or the other? And that doesn't mean I can't edit it. Of course, it's my life, it's your life, do what you want.

Speaker 1:

But I just felt the need for us to have a structure for our minds where we can just go look, mind, it's already decided. You don't need to overthink, you don't need to overanalyze, you don't need to re-decide, it's already here, there, remember, remember, remember. And then I've broken that down into checking in with heartfelt priorities. You take the heartfelt wish list, break it down to heartfelt priorities which are the practical steps to make the wishes come true, and then you break that down, you check in with that every month and then you check in that with that every week. So you're breaking it down from the wish for the year, which has an overall essence which is captured in a very deeply powerful, secret word of the year very courageous, heartfelt, personal to you, the essence of which you can feel in your body every morning and that will guide you through your day. That's how you want to feel, move through your day. That's who you want to be.

Speaker 1:

And then you're breaking down your heartfelt wish list, which is the goals which I write as done. So I am, or I have blah, blah, blah, present tense. So my subconscious knows it's real, it's becoming, and then the practical steps are your monthly heartfelt priorities and then your weekly heartfelt priorities and then each day. All you then have to do is check in with that word of the year, which is a feeling. It's not a word. It's the essence of how you want to feel that year, whatever joy ease means to you. That's my method, that's what I'm, that's what I'm up to this year. Stay tuned for more. Let's see what we can create together.

Speaker 1:

If you want me to hold space for you and guide you into your heartfelt wish list, please join me on the 5th of January. If you catch this episode in time, I'd love you to be part of the amazing group of people who are gathering. Go to my website, heidiemarkcouk, to find the link, easy to find, and the journal will be on Amazon and you can use that start. It's not dated. Use it starting any point in the year, and that gives you your mind a practical structure to keep you focused on what matters most to you. Because what happens when you focus on what matters most to you? How good do you feel? Don't you want to feel that more? So, really, that's it right.

Speaker 1:

Identify what matters most to you, truly, deeply, courageously, rebelliously, and then stay focused on it. That seems to work. Overwhelm joy. Turn your overwhelm into joy. Love to know what you think of my new method, my new thoughts or my latest collated thoughts. Right from the cutting edge of this gender rebellion, I'm on blazing my own trail quietly over here. I'd love to know your thoughts. I hope you found this helpful. I hope you'll join me at the workshop if you catch this in time and you can make it, and I hope that you buy the journal, use it and it literally transforms your overwhelm into joy. Any comments? Please get in touch. Leave below. Thank you so much for watching. See you next time. For more resources to help you gently rebel, please visit my website wwwheidymarkcouk. Hello, it's me with a quick commercial break. Oh, it's funny doing commercial breaks for your own podcast.

Speaker 1:

On Sunday, the 5th of January, purposely time to be post the new year crazy. I'm going to change my whole life and make it so much better. New year's resolutions nonsense. I'm inviting you instead to hang out with me and the wonderful group of people who are gathering to start the new year in a more effective and intentional way, by reviewing last year and then setting your heartfelt priorities for 2025. And then I'm going to give you ways to help you stay focused on what matters most to you, once you've identified that, holding space for you to do this is a pleasure and a privilege.

Speaker 1:

It's something I do most turn of the year times. I didn't do one last year or the year before. This one is free. Sometimes this is paid. It's well worth paying for. Please, if this calls for you, come and join me. I'd so love to meet you. I'd so love to have you there. It would just be joyful and wonderful to meet you. So just pop over to my website, heidimarkcouk, and click on the banner at the top to reserve your spot, or, obviously, you can click on the link in the show notes below. See you there.

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