Overcome to Become

–Laughably achievable, small daily habits

Today's episode has a short shownotes, because micro, by definition is small!

Based on the neuroscience of fueling success, we set low goals, celebrate our success, and use that energy to grow. Microhabits are designed for growth.

Find habits that help you reduce your cortisol levels.

Researchers have shown that adequate hydration, moderate exercise, and time spent in nature – even looking at pictures of nature – reduce our cortisol levels aka stress hormones. If you are feeling stressed, burnt out, or just overwhelmed, you likely have elevated cortisol levels. Use these microhabits to begin reducing your stress levels.

Talk a Walk

Levels of Nature and Stress Response

Combined Effect of Walking and Forest Environment on Salivary Cortisol Concentration

Galentines & Valentines: A Time for Self-Care

Dream Big / Start Small

OR 

SMART Goals

How do you manage those goals, when you’ve chosen a few too many? We either adjust, adapt, or we don’t achieve them. Let’s take a look at at the circle of influence.

In the center is YOU. You can control 100% of your emotions and actions. You are surrounded by others. You do not control  those surrounding you, but you can influence them. Outside of that circle is the world. You can neither control nor influence them. What does this mean for us in SMART Goals? Life happens.

It is not a failure, it is a learning opportunity. Learn, adjust your goals, or elements of your goals, and keep working. 

You hear me talk frequently about the fact that I love hiking. And one of the challenges of hiking, specifically in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, is that there are many mountaintops that we need to achieve that do not have paths. It's intentional, and I love that challenge, but I have to say it's a challenging mountain range. From time to time and without the paths being already laid out for you, I have known a few people to get to the wrong mountain top.

What does that mean? You're hiking in this direction and you end up end up on that direction. You went down a gully that you thought was just a valley and all of a sudden was something else. These things truly happen.

And we need to adjust for our own safety. Sometimes we only have a certain amount of time in order to adjust or in order to be safe. One time I was out hiking with my brothers and I do not know how, nobody knows where that miscommunication happened, but one entire food bag did not make it on the trip. Two young 20 somethings were hungry and we were hiking and it was cold at night and you need energy and you must eat in order to keep that energy going and we did not have enough food. That was one problem in our hike. The other problem in the hike was that there was a mountain fire on the next mountain over and unbeknownst to us, they closed the hiking trail that we were on 3 hours after we entered in.

What does that mean and how does that look like? We still have that story to tell today because we're all alive and well and kicking, but we didn't achieve what we set out to achieve and yet, did we?

Our achievement usually is that we're having fun together. We're building relationships together. We took fantastic photos. It was a little cold, it was a little rainy. But if you've ever hiked in the Adirondack Mountains, you'll know that that is more pare for the course than not. And yet we still were able to laugh. We still came home safely. We all have our families, and so our lives go on.

So sometimes what's important about Smart goals is to make sure that we let them go when they don't work for us, and so adjusting and making sure that the smart goals are maybe in the general direction of where we want to go. And if they don't work out then we adjust them when we get there.

Now can I also look back on the other side and say this hike maybe should have never started, given that we were so close to our forest fire. Yes.

Could I say if I know I'm hiking with my brothers ever again like that, we're gonna make sure that we have all the food bags in our backpacks? Yes.

I got to spend three and four days with my brothers, when we knew that our lives were going to be facing changes, relationships and adulthood changes as you move forward. And these are special times that you get to spend. And so we have these stories to share with each other as well that no one will ever be able to take away from us. And I think for us now that is more of a challenge and more of the directionality of the life that we highlight for ourselves and for each other than I hiked mountain peaks 1/2 and three.

Adjusting, adapting, knowing when to throw out the goals and learn from the lessons that we had and then keep moving forward is such an important part of overcoming the overwhelm. Because if we keep forcing ourselves towards a goal that no longer works for us, that is when we start running ourselves into overwhelm. It's when we start running ourselves into burnout.

As an endurance athlete, I have seen too many people, too many friends, approached what is the real and physical definition of burnout. It's when the stress hormones are on overload and your body is almost no longer responding to them because they have been delivered into your body over and over and over again. It takes months to recover from that, of very focused, dedicated healing physical activity at a very low heart rate in order to overcome the physical definition of burnout as an endurance athlete.

Our goal with overcome the overwhelm is to allow you to understand the warning signs to not ever get to that physical level of burnout.

Our goal is to talk about the

If we continue to force ourselves into a goal that no longer works because life has changed because our values have changed because opportunities have changed, then we continue to force ourselves into a situation that will lead us down the path of overwhelm or burnout.

By being aware of these signals, we are able to limit, overwhelm and adjust and reset the goals so that they work for us and that they align to our personal values. Set your goals, chase them, chase them with all the energy that you have. And when you realize that it's not working, stop.

Readjust. Assess. Move forward in a different direction and take value. Cherish all the lessons that you learned along the way. Chasing excellence will never hurt you.

Burning yourself out by chasing excellence along a path that isn't in line with your values will.

Finding Peace in Goal Setting: Inch by Inch

Celebrate: Inch by Inch Goals

1.1 Goals & Overwhelm

1.2 Dream Big / Start Small

1.3 SMART goals

Refine your dream by visualizing what happens when you make it happen.

I struggled to breathe. Literally, I struggled to breathe. And in hindsight, I think I know that much of it was an allergic reaction to some of the things that were going around and also what was happening in our local water supply. Swimming in the outdoors, unfortunately struggling to breathe when you're in an endurance sport is actually a big deal. And when you're in the water, you really do not want to have an anxiety attack, which will only exacerbate that. We also know that in aging athletes, and sorry to admit but I do fall into that category, but in aging athletes there is something called exercise induced bronchioconstriction (EIB).

It's sort of like having an asthma attack, and one of the things that exacerbates it is cold water. And unfortunately, swimming in cold water with potential allergens only exacerbates the entire problem that I was having with breathing, so going into Nationals this year, I was struggling physically and mentally to jump into the water and race my heart out.

I needed a visualization technique to get me through the day. I needed to find a sense of calm. I needed to find a reason to want to race. And I needed to find an image that I was going to hold tight in my brain as I was going through working through the emotions of being afraid to swim in cold water.

I needed to find an image that would work for me that I could handle getting into cold water and overcoming the fear associated with not being able to breathe.

So my visualization while I was in the water was this image of calm and this image of safety. Yes, my swim is 25 minutes, depends on which course we're doing. But I needed a sense of calm, I needed something that would help me regulate my breathing, and I needed something that would give me the focus that I needed to complete and so this was my visualization that I choose to share with you. And then the other reason that I visualize the other part that I have for my visualization in my racing technique is also.

More Reading

When the Map You're Following is Wrong!

Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of Overcome to Become, the podcast hosted by yours truly, Angela Buckley. We are here today to talk about SMART Goals. There are two accepted meanings for SMART:

Why do we have SMART goals? They help us dig in. 

 More Reading at the Blog:

Inch by Inch Goals

Finding Peace in Goal Setting

Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of Overcome to Become, the podcast hosted by yours truly, Angela Buckley. We are here today to talk about our second topic of the series, and that is: dream big and start small. So once again, 

Overcome to Become is all about understanding what the 

are that we need  to understand to impact our 

Understand your passion

Look for a 25 year plan

Define it FOR YOU, not based on what others want for you (or from you).

Get a mentor to help you define your goals

More Reading at the Blog: Finding Peace in Goal Setting

Have many small goals

Celebrate milestones along the way

More Reading at the Blog Inch by Inch Goals

So what's your goal? What's your legacy? And then how are you going to break it down so that you can celebrate those successes along your way? Today's episode is really just focusing on understanding that big picture, breaking it down into the small steps so that we can celebrate as we go. Thank you very much for joining me. I look forward to bringing you more tips to Overcome to Become subsequent episodes. Have a good day.

Please help me to continue these series by writing a review wherever you prefer to listen. Thank you for your time and interest. I appreciate your support.

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www.strengthinnature.com

"In order to be good professionals, good parents, good community citizens, we have to have an ability to take care of ourselves first."

 Are you an aspiring leader who knows you have more to offer, but you can't seem to get ahead, do you frequently feel overwhelmed and undersupported? Listen to the overcome to become podcast as we talk about actionable tasks and mindsets that you can apply to begin leading yourself.

Hi my name is Angela Buckley, your host and author of the Strength and Nature Leadership series. I'm a mother, consultant, triathlete and author. In Overcome to Become I share with you the science fact and experience proven lessons I've learned in my own leadership journey to beat burnout. Thanks for listening.

This is going to be an 8 season series in which we will talk about many of the topics that approach overcome the overwhelm. So getting started right now, I think in our first session, what we'll just be talking about are some of our goals to overcome the overwhelm. So one of the things that we know about overwhelm is that it's physical, it's mental and it's emotional.

Topics Addressed in this series:

 Triad of Overcoming the Overwhelm

Follow me @CreativelyEfficient on Instagram.

www.strengthinnature.com/blog