Why Every Decision Feels Like Too Much — And What To Do About It

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I was looking at the week ahead. I had 15 things that I'd wanted to get done, and some of them were carried over from the previous week. All of these things were going to require time and a chunk of mental energy. In the past, I relied on inspiration to accomplish many of them, but I found myself completely drained. And I honestly couldn't tell you why. Whether it was having my week usurped or the weight of the global news, it didn't feel like I had anything worthwhile to contribute, which just made all of these decisions even harder. And that thought, of course, joined hands with all of the other negative thoughts I had experienced over the weekend, almost as if they were forming a Red Rover, Red Rovers, and SK right over line that I was never going to get through. Hi, I'm Super Kate. Welcome to Connecting with Super Kate for women who are tired of being tired and don't want to just get through it anymore. I let myself feel stuck. I let myself feel the overwhelm and the sadness of everything. My brain was comparing me to everyone who was really good at pushing through. So I chose to pause and feel the emotions. I watched a TV episode that I knew would kick start the tears because I know I feel better after that floodgate has been released. And the cry felt good. I felt proud that I didn't fall into the just push through attitude that got me into my previous burnouts. And afterward, I was able to look at all of these decisions with more clarity and the ability to focus. On top of all this, my emotions were all over the place. Lovely paramenopause. With those hormones fluctuating even more, we have added internal stress. And that doesn't help our emotional regulation. And if you are in this incredible season of life, I want you to know that the emotional dysregulation you're feeling isn't weakness. It is biology. Your body is doing what it's supposed to be doing. And it deserves to be factored into how you approach your days, even when our culture wants to ignore it. So on top of that, I started thinking about all the expectations that we put on ourselves and how many of those expectations have been informed and built by that culture we grew up in, how we're made to think that we'll always have an answer, how we're made to believe that if we aren't performing exactly as we would on the best day of our lives, then any performance less than that is a complete failure. And so I looked at all the things on my plate and I knew I had some decisions ahead of me. One of the biggest skills that we can build, especially for those of us who are used to doing all the things for everyone, is to be able to discern what the priority level is. And there are different tactics on how you can go about this. One of the widely used ones is the Eisenhower matrix. It's a combination of importance and urgency. You can do the thing that is most important and urgent. You can schedule the thing that is important, but not necessarily urgent. You delegate the thing that is not important, but it's urgent. And you eliminate the thing that is neither important nor urgent. And while I have used a bit of that in the past, I've found for myself and my clients that everything feels important and urgent. Everything. So we need to use other questions to discern our prioritization. And it's easy to get caught up in feeling everything is important and urgent, especially when we're used to stepping in and keeping others from feeling bad. So we just do all the things for them. It's easy to live in an everything is important and urgent world when the news and social media are constantly conspiring to give us a sense of anxiety. And there are perfectly good reasons to feel anxious in the world right now. And this is where a dysregulated nervous system is also going to struggle with understanding what is important and what is urgent. Because in that dysregulated state, everything is an emergency. And if you haven't already been working on your emotional regulation, this is a great time to start. Being able to discern your priorities and manage your time will go a long way to supporting your mental and physical health. We're constantly making decisions throughout our day, even when it doesn't seem like we are, because many of them are second nature. But those decisions add up, especially when they're big. Deciding when to cross a road or making a left-hand turn are seemingly small everyday decisions. Add those to all the emails you haven't decided whether or not to answer yet, or the conversation you're scared to start. Each of these compounds throughout the day, and unmade decisions are open loops in your brain. And your brain carries them. And that doesn't allow your brain to conserve the energy which it so desperately wants to do. If you're adding scrolling on social media, watch those numbers of decisions tick up because you are making a decision on every single one of those videos, whether to watch or continue to scroll. I did a test, and even though I stopped for a couple videos, I was averaging around 100 videos in five minutes. That's a hundred decisions. Or you're probably closer to 400 in 20 minutes because many of us can't stop at just five. So it's really no wonder why we're exhausted and overwhelmed. Today's episode is here to bring you a few questions I used to help myself through decision making. And some of these I utilized during this recent feeling of overwhelm. Let's take a step to navigating some of what's on your plate right now, and your body is going to give you some insights. So it will be helpful if you can give yourself a couple minutes to breathe slowly to calm your nervous system before jumping into these questions. Go ahead. Pause the podcast for that breathing time. All right. You ready? Here are the questions. How long have I been putting off this decision? And has it been one day or three months? If this was finished right now, how would my body feel? What is the time commitment for this decision and follow-through? And if you don't know, take a good guess. And last one, if there's one decision that stands out above all others, can you commit at least five minutes to it right now? All right. You've made another decision to go through these questions, and simply choosing to approach your decision making from a grounded place is an opportunity to show your body that you're on its side. Each time you acknowledge how this affects your body, then take steps to move in a better direction. All of that will compound so your nervous system is not as overwhelmed by all of your decisions. So go through those questions, rewind, go backtrack on this episode and approach each of these questions. Even with the non-body one, notice how your body is feeling because the more you feel anxious with the answer, and that feedback can mean you are avoiding it for a good reason or avoiding it just because it seems overwhelming and you don't want to take the time to break down all the little steps you need to take. I look forward to hearing how these questions have supported you. And if you're coming up against some more walls and you want to get some momentum going, book a momentum call with me. We'll jump on the phone for 60 minutes and knock out some of those decisions that have just been weighing you down. Click on the link in the show notes. And thank you for joining me. New episodes are released each week, and I look forward to connecting with you.