Overcoming Exhaustion During Trying Times

Stop Living So Defensively, It’s Exhausting!

We live defensively in an attempt to protect ourselves. There is certainly a time and place to be on the defense but we are not meant to live in that state moment to moment. It truly is exhausting and it limits our ability to connect well with life, others, and even with ourselves. We are living through an extremely chaotic time and in some cases, things may feel quite dangerous even, but we are not living in danger moment to moment. If you are reading this right now, then you are OK. Be sure to note the moments when you really are OK, when you aren’t in imminent danger. Imminent danger is rare. When there is imminent danger, you can trust your physical and psychological system to respond appropriately. You don’t have to be on guard at every moment. You don’t have to be in a defensive mode all day long. Relax from moment to moment as you can. Do take note of what is going right and when you are safe. I think you’ll see that you are safe in far more moments than not. Take a listen to this video.

RIFFING ON REALNESS

Listen to Episode 8 today called DEALING WITH EXHAUSTION. I believe you will enjoy it and find some real gems that can help you to get more rest and experience more ease and flow.

You can find the podcast here on my site or on the major podcast platforms. Here’s a link to our podcast on Apple.

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I am Carla Royal, a mindset and performance coach working with high achieving, high-performance entrepreneurs and business owners who are quietly dealing with hidden anxiety and stress. I help my clients find more head space, be less guarded, value mistakes, sleep better, find more meaning, be less judgmental, be more confident, and lead more effectively. If you’d like to learn more, set up a FREE Clarity Call where we will explore what’s going on for you and how I can help.

Dealing with Stress, Anxiety, & Overwhelm

Help in Overcoming Overwhelm

If you are feeling overwhelmed, take a listen to this video. I’ll share with you how to take unnecessary things off of your mind so that you can attend to the necessary things. The brain tends to think that there is imminent danger when there is none. It could be just a shadow, not a scary monster. Clear up those shadows, and you’ll have your resources available for the true monsters.

Putting Down Pain

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As long as you clutch your past and grasp at your future, your hands can't receive anything else. Not "accepting what is" causes us to suffer and keeps us from seeing ways that we might be able to change the situation if it needs changing and finding something wonderful that can emerge in a situation that feels so awful.

RIFFING ON REALNESS

Listen to Episode 6 today called Dealing with Stress & Anxiety. I believe you will enjoy it and find some real gems that can help you experience more ease and flow.

You can find the podcast here on my site or on the major podcast platforms. Here’s a link to our podcast on Apple.

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I am Carla Royal, a mindset and performance coach working with high achieving, high-performance entrepreneurs and business owners who are quietly dealing with hidden anxiety and stress. I help my clients find more head space, be less guarded, value mistakes, sleep better, find more meaning, be less judgmental, be more confident, and lead more effectively. If you’d like to learn more, set up a FREE Clarity Call where we will explore what’s going on for you and how I can help.

How To Stop Overthinking

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Overthinking is not good for you! I imagine you already know this. When your mind is cluttered and ramped up, you suffer. Overthinking leads to stress. Do a quick google search and you can find study after study showing the damage that overthinking can cause.

Harvard psychologists believe that humans spend about 47% of waking hours lost in thought and this tendency leads to reduced happiness. They conclude this:

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind." Killingsworth and Gilbert

Today, I want to share with how ramped up thinking works and what you can do instead that will help you settle your mind so that you can experience more ease, flow, and clarity.

Let’s look at the Thought Cycle starting with this thought: “Business is down this month. I’m failing!”

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  1. Here is the thought: “Business is down this month. We are failing.”

  2. Can you see how the stressful thought that “we are failing” leads to the stressful feelings, then to the stressful behaviors, then to the stressful results, and then it REINFORCES the original stressful thought that “We are failing”?

  3. Many people attempt to change the undesired outcome by intervening at the level of result, behavior, or feeling, but the most effective intervention happens at the LEVEL OF THOUGHT.

Let’s change that stressful thought just a bit. Instead of the story “We are failing” let’s see what could happen if we get CURIOUS about business being down.

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  1. Getting curious instead of buying into the story that you are failing can change everything. Now you are in the flow! Now you are flexible, able to pivot when needed, able to tweak, able to work well with your team, and much more. 

  2. The original thought of curiosity leads to feelings that open you and give you more flexibility, which leads to behaviors that are helpful and lead to better results. These better results lead to NEW, FRESH THOUGHT. Now you have much more clarity, ease, and flow.

You see, negative thought ultimately reinforces negative thought leaving you too narrowly focused, too weighed down. It’s like you’ve put blinders on yourself.

Positive, or even neutral, thought, on the other hand, reinforces positive emotions, behaviors, results, and NEW fresh thought! You are able to tap into your creativity, flow, resilience, resourcefulness, and much more. You can pivot if need be. You can ride the wave if need be. You are able to find your way no matter how difficult the situation looks.

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In the original Thought Cycle diagram, the fact is that business is down. Anyone in business knows that the world of business is a roller coaster ride. The problem in this situation is not that business is down. The problem is the story you attach to business being down. Deciding in that moment that you are failing actually impairs your ability to get creative and curious about what may be going on.

If the thought occurs to you that you are failing, you don’t have to take it so seriously. You don’t have to take it so personally. You could let it move through you.

You could get curious instead and see where that curiosity takes you. This will serve you. This will bring you back to clarity more easily and you’ll find your way to more flow, flexibility, and ease as you deal with a down month.

Riffing on Realness episode 5 is live here on my site and will be live on all the major podcast platforms tomorrow. In this episode, entitled Creativity: The Hidden Cost of Dogma & Rigidity, Juliet and I take a deep dive into how dogma and rigid thinking can hinder creativity and flow. Take a listen!

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I am Carla Royal, a mindset and performance coach working with high achieving, high-performance entrepreneurs and business owners who are quietly dealing with hidden anxiety and stress. I help my clients find more head space, be less guarded, value mistakes, sleep better, find more meaning, be less judgmental, be more confident, and lead more effectively. If you’d like to learn more, set up a FREE Clarity Call where we will explore what’s going on for you and how I can help.

More Ease in The Moment

How to Deal with Each Moment More Easily

In today's video, I start with a poem by Juliet Fay who is my friend, colleague, and co-host of our new podcast Riffing on Realness. Juliet gives us some powerful advice on how to move through life with more ease and flow. We are living in a time of high stress and we have choices about how to approach these times. This is what I explore in these 4 minutes. If you want to take a deeper dive, then listen to our latest Riffing on Realness episode where we talk about how to deal with existential dread. I believe you will find it helpful! I invite you to subscribe to our podcast. We would be delighted to have you along for the ride.

More Ease in The Moment: Dropping Self-Judgment

In today's video, I talk about how to have more ease in the moment by dropping your judgmental voices about yourself. When we get caught up in our painful stories about ourselves, we clutter our minds unnecessarily. Thoughts scream. Wisdom whispers. When we are caught up in our screaming thoughts about ourselves, we have far less flow in our lives, we have far less ease. If we can wake up to our thoughts of self-criticism and leave those thoughts alone, they will move through us more quickly. Take a listen and see how it is for yourself.

I also want to let you know that I'm finally back on Instagram and you can find me at CarlaRoyalCoach. I look forward to connecting with you!

RIFFING ON REALNESS

Please check out my new podcast called Riffing on Realness. I would love for you to subscribe. My co-host, Juliet Fay, and I are having a wonderful time talking about how to be real in a culture that is rampant with superficiality. I do believe you will enjoy and find some real gems that can help you experience more ease and flow.

You can find the podcast here on my site or on the major podcast platforms. Here’s a link to our podcast on Apple.

Curiosity and Openness vs Perfectionism and Judgmentalism

In this week’s blog post, I offer you a video and my new Podcast, Riffing on Realness, where I go into ideas of judgmentalism and perfectionism vs curiosity and openness.

Openness & Curiosity vs Dogma & Divisiveness

In this video, I get real and expose to you the anger and judgmentalism I woke up feeling one morning. I talk about how easy it is to collapse there and I give some tips on rising out of that and approaching life from a different perspective.

Riffing on Realness is Live!

I’m thrilled to announce that my podcast, Riffing on Realness with cohost Juliet Fay, has gone live.

If you are wrestling with how to be real in the midst of rampant superficiality and it’s causing you to overthink, be too guarded, and not live your potential, then you are in the right place.

In this podcast, Juliet and I explore how, dropping the masks, being real and vulnerable, can help you connect, adapt, and find a richness of experience amid the chaos.

Hit subscribe on the player below to never miss an episode. New episodes air every Tuesday. We would love it if you’d take a moment to rate and review so that more people can find us. We welcome your topic suggestions!

I would love to hear how these ideas land with you in the comment box below.

Activate Your Imagination for More Ease & Peace

In this week’s blog post, I offer you two videos where I encourage you to live more often from your imagination, how this actually works with brain science, and how it will make a difference in your life. As always, don’t take my word for the ideas I present here, play with them for yourself.

Live From Imagination Rather than Indoctrination

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Are you living from indoctrination or imagination? If you want more flow, ease, and enjoyment, learn to activate and live from your imagination. We’ve all been indoctrinated by families, cultures, and religions but we can become aware of that and live from a freer place that gives us more creativity, more juice, more enjoyment, and more authenticity. Take a listen!

How to Find More Compassion Through Imagination

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In today's video, I continue our discussion about the dangers and value of living from our imaginations. Imagination can lead to compassion as we put ourselves in others' shoes. Dogma separates us. Imagination can connect us. Life is a beautiful, rich, and nuanced gray. Imagination can open our hearts and our creativity.

How to Find More Ease & Flow

In this week’s blog post, I offer you two videos where I dive into helping you find more ease and flow and less suffering. Yes, it’s possible no matter what is going on in your life right now. Don’t take my word for it, experiment for yourself with the ideas I offer here.

How to Reduce Suffering

In this video, I talk about how you can reduce your suffering and live with more ease and flow. It's important that we interrupt our habits of thought that are stressful. I talk about one way to do that here.

How to Experience More Flow & Ease

In this video, I talk about how can experience less suffering and more ease. We tend to suffer so much because we are caught up in habits of thoughts or stories and narratives that we've created in order to help us manage day to day circumstances. Neuroscience shows us that we don't experience reality directly, rather, we experience what we think about reality. So it's vital to be aware of our stories and make certain that we don't over identify with our stories, thoughts, and feelings.

Keep Training Your Brain for Relief

In this week’s videos, I continue the exploration into brain science and how to work with your brain to achieve more flow, ease, and wellbeing

What to Do When Feeling Overcome by Emotions

In today's video, we continue our discussion about the brain and how to optimize it to work for us rather than against us. You may be surprised to learn what's really needed when you are feeling bad. Experiment with the idea I present in this video. I and many of my clients have found it life-changing.

Brain Hacks to Help You Feel Better

In this video, I continue our discussion about optimizing the brain to work for you rather than against you. These are some very practical tips that will help you shift out of craving, gloom, anxiety, and other "bad" feelings. Learn how to balance your brain activity and reset it to normal so that you can feel better.