Holiday Stress and Overwhelm

I’ve been WAY stressed out this month. It’s all been good stuff so I feel a little guilty even complaining (add guilt to the series of emotions making me feel overwhelmed). I’ve been away a lot (great trips and amazing times spent with friends), have some family in town for the holidays (loving that), Beachbody coaching is great and keeping me busy (can’t complain about good business), so like I said- all good stuff, but the sheer amount of busyness this month caught me way off guard and I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed! For me, when I get overwhelmed, I tend to not want to tackle ANYTHING and eventually the overwhelm gets so bad that I have no choice but to crawl my way out of the ditch and get back in action. Fortunately, it’s happened to me enough times that I know the ways that work best for me to dig myself out. I’ve been having to employ all of them, BUT, they’ve been working!

This list may seem like a lot but actually, even doing JUST ONE of these things instantly reduces the overwhelm for me! All of these things are just a matter of getting BACK TO BASICS!

A HEALTHY MEAL. I swear, getting some greens in me makes me feel better immediately. The healthier I eat in general, the more I notice how much my mood and energy are affected by eating the not-so-healthy stuff. So needless to say, holiday treats, large portions at restaurants, and just being away from my normal set of food has taken its toll on how I feel. But the good news is that one little healthy snack already helps me turn it around!

GETTING OUT IN NATURE. It’s cold here in Pittsburgh at this time of year but the fresh air does wonders for my mental clarity and my soul.

A GOOD WORKOUT. Anything that gets my heart rate up!! Insanity Max:30 has DEFINITELY been doing the trick for me. And at 30 minutes/workout I can definitely squeeze that in. But often times when I’m super overwhelmed, it’s hard to give up precious “work catch-up time” to get a workout in so sometimes I have to start with just doing SOMETHING each day (even if that just means some jumping jacks, a quick walk, running the stairs a few times, or turning on some good tunes and dancing around my apartment). Getting back into the routine helps me feel motivated to do more.

“CHUNKING” MY WORK. My to-do list lately has been so overwhelming to look at lately that it makes me just want to stay in bed! The kicker is, 70% of the things on it are not really even all that important to my success and happiness. But they are things that would make me feel better to get done (mostly work tracking/organizational stuff). They’ve been nagging me for a while and I want to get them off of my to-do list once and for all. SOME of these things, I’ve just got to recognize that they won’t make much difference in my life and I’ve got to wave the white flag and surrender. Sure, they’d be nice to get done, but tasks like organizing my old pictures won’t really affect my life and for my own sanity, I need to just call it quits on trying to get these things done. For the rest of the stuff that I decide DOES need to get done, my go-to strategy is to CHUNK. This means I need to break it down into the smallest possible actionable steps to reduce the overwhelm. For example, I’ve been meaning to set up my website for months but “set up website” will forever get glazed over on my to-do list if I don’t make it more manageable. So simpler steps like “log into website account to see what makes sense and what doesn’t,” “ask Nikki for suggestions on setting up website email,” “make list of most basic social media accounts to link to,” “write 1 paragraph website intro,” etc make it way more manageable. I can do those little things! And checking them off gives me pride and momentum!

It also helps to just DECIDE. Trying to mentally balance all the things I need to get done is way too much. So I just need to pick SOMETHING to start with. It may not be the most productive or effective thing or the “eat that frog” task if you’ve read Brian Tracy’s great book. But I can’t waste any more precious energy trying to decide what is. So I’m just going to pick something and in that moment forget about everything else that I need to do and just do it. If nothing else, at least I accomplished 1 thing off of my to-do list!

STRESS-RELIEVING PRACTICES. In addition to the ones above, I love making GRATITUDE LISTS to remind me of what’s really important (even if it’s just a quick mental list). Saying a quick prayer or asking God, the universe, and my angels for help makes me feel like I don’t have to do this on my own! Thinking about who in my life I can ask for help makes me feel a whole lot better too. Why muddle through something on my own when I know a bunch of people who are much more proficient at things like setting up a website? And let’s not forget that youtube and google are my friends in terms of teaching me how to do things that seem overwhelming too. I also have printed sheets of quotes that inspire me. Taking 30 seconds to read over some INSTANTLY makes me feel more inspired. Saying mantras, meditation, a quick 2-minute yoga session, visualizing my big goals, thanking God for my struggles (which automatically seems to remind me that my struggles aren’t that bad and that there’s a bigger purpose at work here), reading a book, listening to Joel Osteen or my favorite Hay House authors online (youtube, Hay House Radio, their websites, etc) make me feel more grounded because I know I have my own personal “spiritual team” rooting me on, all of these things have so much power! Even a cup of hot tea can remind me of what’s really important and bring me back to the present moment.

MOST IMPORTANTLY- REMEMBERING I AM NOT ALONE! Like I said above, I have lots of help (from the people in my life and from God and the spirit world), I am supported. But it also helps to remember that we ALL feel overwhelmed at times- especially during the holidays. We need to give ourselves a break! There’s a lot more on our plate than usual (in terms of our to-do list and our actual plate haha!) plus we’re out of our normal routine, our sleeping patterns are off, that’s a lot for anyone to handle!! I heard a talk from one of my favorite authors recently who reminded me of this. If someone who I consider a teacher when it comes to all things spiritual, who embodies zen, is feeling stressed, then that definitely gives me permission to feel OK about feeling stressed myself. It was a great reminder that I can hang onto it, or I can just let it pass through me. It is up to me whether I want to feel stressed or not. It is all energy, I can allow it to flow :)

Any of these things above makes doing the other things so much easier. And the more of them I do, the more momentum it creates. More importantly, I’ve learned to enjoy this process and have fun in these “rebuilding” phases. OVERWHELM HAPPENS. IT’S OK. It gives us a chance to take inventory of our lives, re-evaluate, and course-correct. Then we can get back on track in a more meaningful and intentional way and continue to live our lives better than ever!!

I hope these tips/tools that help me are able to help you in some way! If you have other techniques that help you, please feel free to share below!

Much love!

Katelyn

Disclaimer Copy: Katelyn Lesk is an Independent Beachbody Coach.

Hope for anyone going through a rough time

*This post is for anyone who has ever dealt with any kind of anxiety, depression, or general feeling of feeling down or lost or not like themselves. Sorry it turned into such a long one but I didn’t want to leave out any details that may help someone who needed to hear that specific thing. I hope the story I am about to share with you helps!

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Hi everyone! I wanted to fill you in on some things that have played an important role in my life over the past couple of years in shaping the person I am today. I know a lot of you probably know a lot of the pieces of this story but I didn’t realize until I was in Gatlinburg, TN a few weeks ago sharing my story at our coach retreat that probably not many people know the full story and how it’s all kind of come full circle and I wanted to share it for anyone who can possibly relate and maybe give some hope to anyone who is struggling or going through a tough time in their life.

So as many of you know, I was VERY stressed back in 2011/2012 when I was doing a lot of traveling for work but you may not know how down it had me and I may not have let on how deeply it affected me. I generally live my life as an open book (as many of my beachbody customers and coaches know, I am NOT afraid to share when I am struggling, when I’ve missed workouts, when I’m behind on my business and messages- like right now- or when I’m just plain in a little bit of a funk). But in this situation, it was a little different. It was very tough for me to talk about without getting very emotional and quite frankly, I often times didn’t WANT to think about it more often than I already was. And it’s not like anything terrible was actually happening to me so I think there was a self-imposed guilt factor in terms of complaining about an opportunity that most people would be grateful for. Plus my anxiety was so bad at times that I wasn’t necessarily thinking rationally about the support I know I could have had all along if I had been more open about how stressed I was.

On the surface, I felt like I had a dream job. I always always loved working for my company (I was an engineer was a medical device start-up company). I loved my coworkers, I loved and believed so strongly in our product, and I was excited that my role within the company changed frequently enough to give me a lot of experience in a lot of different areas. So when my boss asked me if I’d be willing to take a role traveling internationally to Germany, Austria, and a few other places in Europe to help with our clinical trials, surgeon training, and product launch, I jumped at the opportunity. I was also told in this role that I may even be moving to Germany temporarily (6 months to a year) if the need arose. They knew I loved to travel (I was infamous at my company for always paying to extend my trips during conferences to take advantage of the sightseeing) so everyone, including me, thought this would be a great fit for me.

It only took me a few trips to realize that this was not at all what I had expected. The stress of navigating foreign countries alone; figuring out language barriers, train systems, and driving rules; and having limited to no contact with my family and friends at home (limited internet, expensive phone charges, and even the time difference made it all hard to feel connected or supported) made it stressful as-is. But there were so many ways I felt like I was being pulled out of who I was as a person and my normal personality, like having to deal with sleazy sales guys essentially trying to throw me at the surgeons for their own business benefit was awful. Can I handle myself in situations like that? Yes, absolutely. I learned very quickly the importance of setting clear boundaries even in situations where a normal person would assume they should not be necessary (thank you Michael Nilo- I will never forget our convo about this and the advice you gave me). I also learned how to be very authoritative when a distributor we were working with over there continued to make it very difficult to get our job done because of his own ego and need to appear one way in front of the surgeons and another way behind the scenes.

Long story short, this all made me feel completely out of my element. I need MEANING and CONNECTION and AUTHENTICITY and the whole world of this job felt so fake and icky and disconnected and unawakened.

The more I did this, the more I fell into a deeper depressive state. I was constantly having to be away from my friends and family. And for what? To be in this world where I didn’t feel good at all? Even when I was at home, I could never really enjoy it because I was always either trying to gain a grip after the last trip or prepping for the next one. I felt lost and I definitely did NOT feel like myself. Every morning when I would brush my teeth, I almost always cried when I looked in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t recognize the hollow, blank look in my eyes. I didn’t recognize the stress I was carrying in my forehead lines. I didn’t recognize the lost, empty look of a face void of a smile for months. I could see pain written into every feature on my face.

It was hard for me to want to be around friends and family because I just felt sad all of the time. Even when the traveling finally started to dissipate, the anxieties I had picked up during that time lingered on. I all of a sudden had weird social anxieties that had developed somewhere along the way- for example, if I was going to go out with friends, I had to have a way to leave whenever I wanted in case I started to feel sad. I ended up telling a lot of my friends this and I was SO GRATEFUL for all of their support during this time. But it was still hard. I didn’t enjoy a lot of the things I used to (which made me feel worse because it made me feel like something was WRONG with me). I still to this day carry on a lot of the control factors I developed while traveling- I ALWAYS need to be the one to book my flight, to pick the location/duration of layovers, I never check a bag (one less thing I have to rely on someone else for). Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these travel habits serve me well but at the time when they formed, it wasn’t just for travel efficiency- it was for a desperate sense of control in a life where I felt like I had none.

The crazy part is, there was SO MUCH GOOD that came out of this. It was what led me into so many of the personal development books and spiritual development that have made me a happier and more positive person than ever (eventually). It was during this time that I read “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsh, Wayne Dyer’s “Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life” (Hay House is now one of my favorite publishing companies, which has led me to majority of my favorite authors), a simple but extremely uplifting book called “The Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon, “New Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz, and was led to a website called High Existence by my always enlightening friend, Diego Andrade, which opened up a pandora’s box for other self-help and self-empowerment internet resources. This new awareness finally started to break me of my automatic negative thought cycles and gave me a new focus and goals and purpose. I became mildly obsessed with doing my best to improve my thought pattern.

I also had spent a TON of time while in the midst of this depression thinking about what I would want to do if the stress became too much and I had to quit my job. I made a TON of lists about what had made me the happiest in life, what I felt most passionate about, times in my life when I felt the most satisfied and effective, etc. I thought about starting my own charity (only thing that stopped me was that I didn’t have a specific cause that I could focus on). I started volunteering a lot. I LOVED my time spent tutoring and helping with the family program at Light of LIfe. And this all eventually led me to discover the Beachbody coaching opportunity, which was absolutely PERFECT for me. Looking back, it incorporated every single one of the things that I had written down on my lists and completely nailed all of the things that made me happiest (helping people, health and fitness, showing people their self-worth, helping people work through their own fears and blocks). AND, I could do it while traveling if need be since it was all online (there wasn’t much else I could commit to at that time because I never knew when I’d have to go away again). AND, if I had been upset that day and maybe it was a day where I had been crying or wouldn’t have wanted to venture out into public, it didn’t stop me from going on facebook (nobody can see a puffy face through a computer screen!) and doing my best to help the people I was working with or create even more meaningful relationships with them.

The coaching was actually the first thing that started to bring me out of my year and a half long depression. I finally started to feel like ME again. I felt good. I felt like I was making a difference. Additionally, I felt a sense of CONNECTION again. A connection to the people I was helping, a connection to my true self again, a connection to the universe and all the people and wonderful things in it, a connection to a higher power.

Fast forward to our Fit Family Network Coach Retreat a few weeks ago in Gatlinburg, TN. I was sitting with 50 of the most amazing, open, caring, accepting, supportive, encouraging, positive, incredible people I have ever met. Talk about feeling CONNECTED!! :) :)  I was sitting on a panel with fellow my fellow 1-star diamond coaches, Kelly Grignon, Sarah Roberson, and Sandy Tocci. Scottie Hobbs asked me a question about why I do what I do. He said I’m smiling all the time, bubbly- what makes me so happy about what I do? I told the story that I wrote about above of a time and place when I wasn’t so happy and how it got me to where I am today. Deciding to become a Beachbody coach has honestly been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve grown so much as a person and it has increased my spiritual expansion, self-belief, and belief that all things are working out for the best and for our greatest good beyond anything that I could have ever dreamed of. It sounds cliche’ when I say it, but the last 2.5 years of coaching have truly been life-changing.

An interesting thing happened when I got home from the retreat though. I realized that with all of the AMAZING stuff in my life (I am seriously BURSTING with happiness everyday), I remembered that I still have my emergency stash of Klonopin (anti-anxiety meds) in my purse. Even though I’ve probably only taken about 5 in the entire 2 years this all was going on, I’ve still kept them as a security blanket just in case I were to have some kind of awful panic attack. I realized that it’s finally time to let them go. I don’t need my security blanket anymore. I have a TON of people supporting me. I have never felt more connected and supported in my entire life. Not gonna lie, I did feel some mild resistance when I pulled them out of my purse but that’s just old habits and old brain patterns kicking in. There is no better drug than the love and support of my friends, family, fellow coaches, my beachbody customers, and all of the wonderful people in my life.

I wish I could tag all of my wonderful friends and family who have supported me through all of this; who have always supported me and who continue to support me with everything I do. You are all amazing. I feel SO LUCKY to have so many wonderful people in my life and I definitely would not be the person I am without your influence and support in my life. Not to mention, through all of this struggle, I have found within me the ability to feel connected no matter what, even when I am by myself. As Wayne Dyer would say, “you can never be lonely if you like the person you’re with when you’re alone!” And I do :)  My tool chest for feeling connected has grown exponentially: from Hay House conferences, to walks by the river, to a chat with Nikki, to a yoga class with Chelsea, to a call with my amazing life coach, to convos with my challengers, to laughing and joking with friends, to quality time with my family and playing with my sister’s puppy, to an incredible coach retreat in the beautiful smoky mountains with our fit fam, to dancing in my room by myself, I can ALWAYS get connected any time I choose to be. I’m pretty sure that is one of the greatest skills and lessons I could learn in life.

For anyone who can relate to this story in any way, please please PLEASE don’t hesitate to reach out to me for love and support. Now, more than ever, I believe that ANYTHING can be worked through with love and support. Sending love to all of you, always.

Love,

Katelyn

Disclaimer Copy: Katelyn Lesk is an Independent Beachbody Coach.