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
Break Free from Overwhelm: Mind Traps from Yellowstone
The hit TV series Yellowstone reveals powerful mind traps that keep us stuck in overwhelm. In this episode, I explore three key traps inspired by the show—false choices, the illusion of control, and catastrophizing—and how to break free. If you're tired of feeling overwhelmed and pressured to push through, this is for you!
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🎙️ 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.
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Welcome to Overwhelm is Optional. The podcast for big hearted, highly driven professionals who are ready to turn overwhelm into clarity, ease and joy. I'm Heidi Mark, the Gentle Rebel Coach, and in each episode I share insights, stories and practical tools to help you gently rebel against the pressure to push on through, because you matter. How you are in the world matters. Hello, hello, hello. Have you watched Yellowstone yet? I've just finished. I've just finished watching it. I loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it despite any of its flaws. And there are three mind traps that I want to pull out for you because I just found them really, really helpful to think about. So, whether you've watched it or haven't watched it, I am not going to be. If you haven't watched it yet, I'm not going to ruin it for you because it's just too yummy, it's just so good. I just loved it. Anyway, are you ready?
Speaker 1:Mind trap number one so one of the characters is called Casey and he is feeling lost and doesn't know his purpose. So he goes on a vision quest and he spends three days with just a fire, no food, no water, fire and a skin a skin, a fur thing, what do you call it? Like a bear skin thing. Yeah, three days, no food, no water, vision quest. And it's all very exciting until he believes he comes out of this incredibly courageous time. I'm so disappointed because, instead of having clarity to me, he looks really scared and overwhelmed. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of that at all. As you know, I'm a big fan of personal growth and digging deep and finding out what you really want and following your heart. And he comes out of that vision quest and I just thought, yeah, you need a good hot bath and a good meal before you decide what you found out. It just didn't work for me. Ask them a good meal before you decide what you found out. It just didn't work for me. He believes that his future consists of two terrible choices Impossible, impossible to choose between. And that reminded me of the two terrible choices.
Speaker 1:Overwhelm trap To me. When I believe that I only have two terrible choices, I'm overwhelmed, severely overwhelmed, and I need to take a step back, get out of the overwhelm so that I can see all of the other choices. I know this to be true from working with clients, from doing work with myself and also if I just look behind me. I'm sure you can do this. You look back to a time in your life when you felt that you only had two terrible choices, and you will see all of the other choices that you couldn't see at the time. There are always more choices available. The only time there aren't are when we're in a genuine emergency, which is exactly what the overwhelm is for. So that would be something actually life-threatening Like there's a bear in front of you because you don't want to be thinking then. You don't want a million choices before you. You just need to run or freeze or whatever saves your life, depending on what flavour of bear it is. I don't know the bear rules. So, yes, that's what I got from that. I looked at Casey and I thought, no, no, there's so many more choices to you. Please think again. Please think again, casey. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I'm. I've got this other sentence on on my lips here, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I've got this other sentence on my lips here, but I'm not going to say it because I'm not doing spoiler alerts. I refuse to ruin it for you if you want to watch it.
Speaker 1:Mind trap number two. This involves John Dutton. John Dutton's the main character, kevin Costner, and he is the father and head of the ranch. This is a seven generation ranching family and they have had to fight the whole time for this ranch. And one of the traps the mind traps he has fallen into is revealed beautifully in the final series when he has a conversation with his daughter-in-law, Monica, and she says to him he asks her for something and she says, of course, and they've had a very difficult relationship for lots of reasons. And she just says, of course, course. And then she says that was all you ever had to do. Ask Wow, that's powerful, right? So he has spent I'm not going to ruin it for you, but he has spent his life fighting for the ranch and controlling his children in order to save the ranch for them and their children, because that's what his parents did, that's what his grandparents did. It's a big fight. So he believes that the only way to save the ranch and everything he's worked for and his ancestors have worked for is to force his children to do things, not to ask them to force them, because that's probably what happened to him, right?
Speaker 1:I don't know because I haven't watched the other there's. There's um 1883 and 1923, when you can go back and see the stuff before Yellowstone and I'm really excited to watch that soon. But I'm a bit dumbed out at the moment, so we're taking a break. Man, I get involved in these dramas. So that's two mind traps for you. One the belief that we only have two terrible choices. Not true. Not true. There's always an easier way, which we'll be able to see later, and it's just a sign of severe overwhelm.
Speaker 1:Mind trap number two I have to control everything, when actually sometimes we just need to ask. And I don't necessarily mean asking for help either, because I know there can be resistance to asking for help, that's another story. I just mean sometimes you just have to ask, or let go a bit and just see or even ask yourself. This is a good one for me. Is there an easier way, heidi? Is this really what you want? Just asking myself questions. I find that really really helpful. Otherwise, I very easy get into.
Speaker 1:I need to do all of these millions of huge things in order to make this thing happen. Sound familiar. Mind trap number three If this happens, everything is lost. If this happens, everything is lost. Everything I've worked so hard for will be lost.
Speaker 1:So this is really the whole feeling underlying the whole premise of Yellowstone Everything's a fight, it's the ranch or nothing. There is no other way to live and you can understand it because it's a really deep way of life and it's been ingrained in the Duttons Seven generations. They fought for the land. There's lots of strife involved, there's lots of awful things in order to have this incredibly beautiful way of life and this incredibly beautiful, I mean, oh my goodness, montana, how can you not fall in love with Montana, so beautiful. But that belief everything's a fight. If this happens, everything's lost. I can really relate to that. Oh my goodness, that sounds like several times in my life. That sounds particularly the premise I was working on in my career as a teacher. If this happens, everything's lost, everything's lost. Definitely I was running on that, definitely running on that. Can you relate to that one? That's survival, isn't it? That's survival mode. Now I can see it's survival mode.
Speaker 1:At the time I thought I was winning because I thought everything was a fight and that I was winning the fight. Really, I was just having a fight with myself, convincing my body to be quiet and let me get through another day, convincing my mind that it just needed to focus and get these millions of things done and then everything would be okay. I was fighting myself. That's one of the things, one of the many things that I'm grateful that I burnt out for, and now I'm finding different ways of being For me, realising that overwhelm is a series of complex traps. So by overwhelm, I'm putting these mind traps inside this umbrella.
Speaker 1:Overwhelm for me is this big, huge topic that I can geek out on. There's different flavours of it, there's different underlying beliefs, there's thoughts about it. It's just one big screwing with your mind thing, because it's just not true that we have to fight our way through life. We are not in survival mode anymore. We were as humans for a very, very long time, but for most of us today we're not.
Speaker 1:And if you're listening to this podcast, come on, look at what we have the internet. My words come magically across the internet to you for free. That's magic. There's loads of magic. So, instead of overwhelm, how about some magical thinking? Imagine that there are more than the two terrible choices in front of you. Imagine that you don't have to control everything and fight for everything. Imagine that it's not true that if this one thing happens, everything is lost. Imagine the opposite for you. Just imagine, imagine, imagine. Imagine which of these mind traps resonates the most. Which one makes you feel like there's something to gain by considering it?
Speaker 1:I'd love to know. Drop me a line. See you next time. I'd love to know. Drop me a line, see you next time. Thank you so much for listening and for being part of the Overwhelmers Optional podcast. If you want to continue the conversation, please do connect with me on LinkedIn, instagram or YouTube. Let me know your thoughts. I love hearing from you and if you found this helpful, taking a moment to share, subscribe and leave a review would be much appreciated. It helps other people find the podcast. If you're ready to turn overwhelm into joy, you'll find my books, resources and ways to work with me on my website, heidimarkcouk, and on Amazon. All the links are in the show notes. Until next time, keep gently rebelling and making overwhelm optional for you.
