Episode #21:

Detoxing from Overwhelm with Neill Williams

So many of us find ourselves feeling overwhelmed with our lives. Between juggling work, parenting, and whatever else we find ourselves facing, we often feel as though somebody needs something from us all of the time. There’s too much to do and just not enough time to do it! Know the feeling? Fortunately, today’s guest is here to help.

Neill Williams is a Master Life Coach and productivity expert. She teaches people how to create and maintain a successful lifestyle and get rid of overwhelm once for all! Neill joins us this week to talk about what overwhelm is, and how we can all manage it to create a happier, more balanced life.

Join us this week to learn how to use your body to figure out what might be going on in your mind! We’ll discuss how to be highly productive and why we all have the power to decide how we feel. It’s time to change your thought patterns and start feeling motivated and energized to create your best life!

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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Why so many people are affected by overwhelm.

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How to purposefully change your thoughts and think differently.

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Why you are not a victim in your own life, even though it may feel like it sometimes.

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Why overwhelm isn’t the real issue, and what is.

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How to break the cycle of having overwhelming thoughts.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast, with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 21: Detoxing from Overwhelm, an interview with fellow certified life coach and newly certified master life coach, Neill Williams. This episode is dedicated to all of the working moms who struggle to do all the things and feel like they, shall I say we, are constantly failing at everything. Yes, I just dedicated this podcast to me, and all the other working moms who are dealing with the overwhelm.

Female Announcer: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Susan Crockett: So, hello, my virtuosas. We are having a great day today, I’m so happy to be here to talk about this topic because I think overwhelm is something that affects most of us as working moms, at one time or another. And Neill has some really beautiful ideas about overcoming the problem, and kind of a very different approach. I’m really excited to share this with you.

So as always, even though I’m a physician, I might even be your doctor, this is not medical advice, you can call me Sue, you’re going to be listening in today on just girl talk conversation between me and Neill Williams, she’s so cool.

So today I am sitting in my house, it is a beautiful sunny day outside. The tubers are on the river, so for those of you not familiar with river tubing, it is the hottest thing going right now. And I live on the Guadalupe River, just off of it actually, my neighborhood’s on it, I live by it. And the Guadalupe River goes through New Braunfels, Texas. And this river is world famous for having inner tubers on it in the summertime.

And it’s not a huge, like it’s not Mississippi wide river, but it’s a good size river. And in the summertime the inner tubes, you can almost walk across them. And everybody’s out there, it’s a great diverse group. There is social distancing six feet apart because of the tubes. Everybody’s listening to music and having a great time. And it is one of my favorite things about Texas, let alone, New Braunfels. So if you haven’t ever been tubing, at least take a look at what I’m talking about, it’s pretty cool.

So, on today’s show we are going to be talking about detoxing from overwhelm, just like you would do a detox for your diet, or detoxing from alcohol or drugs or anything else. So we are going to talk about detoxing from the toxicity of overwhelm. Neill Williams is not only one of our Virtuosa coaching coaches, but she just got newly certified as a master life coach through The Life Coach School last month. I am so honored that she is interviewing with us today.

She has her own private practice as a productivity coach, but she doesn’t do productivity in the way that most of you may think of productivity. There is no time management and do this or do that. She’s got some really interesting ideas in this totally different approach on managing overwhelm.

So we are particularly talking about moms who are overwhelmed today, maybe some of you aren’t moms. I know a lot of my younger listeners aren’t moms yet, but maybe you’re overwhelmed with other things like school, or finances, or work, or marriage, or relationships, or just life, like all the things, right, all the things. So listen up, and I hope you enjoy the show. Here’s Neill.

Alright, hey, Neill, how are you doing today?

Neill Williams: I’m great, how are you, Sue?

Susan Crockett: I am so great. Thanks for agreeing to come on the podcast, I am so excited for our listeners to hear what you have to say about overcoming overwhelm. This is a huge topic.

Neill Williams: Yeah, I’m so excited to be here. So thank you so much for having me.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you came to life coaching and to specifically into your niche and what you’re teaching now. Everybody’s got their own story, let’s hear yours.

Neill Williams: Yeah, so I came to mine like a lot of us do, I was the typical overwhelmed working mom in corporate America, struggling to really balance momming with working. And I knew that there had to be a better way, but a lot of the advice that I was getting was to just quit my job or to work less hours. And that just wasn’t a solution that was going to work for my family.

Susan Crockett: Yeah, it’s so hard.

Neill Williams: And so yeah, I mean at some point there are some financial obligations. I actually happened to really like money, I liked my lifestyle. So I didn’t necessarily want to give that part up, but I also didn’t want to be miserable. And I just felt like those didn’t have to be mutually exclusive, I could still, I felt like there was a way to be happy and balanced and still work and be a mom.

Susan Crockett: So we’re told that we can have it all and yet when we’re in that realm, or having kids, and husbands, and dogs, and jobs, and we’re in the middle of building career it can seem really overwhelming. So I know a lot of my listeners struggle with those kinds of problems. And so I am really looking forward to hearing what you’re going to teach us today. You’ve got a couple of points about overwhelm that you’re going to share with us. But before we get to that can you tell me about how you came to The Life Coach School and about your story there, what’s that?

Neill Williams: Yeah. So because I just felt like there had to be a different solution here, I happened to run across Brooke Castillo’s podcast, The Life Coach School, and fell in love with it immediately. And what she taught me, just like everyone else, and yeah, what she taught me about my brain and that I wasn’t really a victim to my life. But I was really in charge of it, really, it just changed everything for me, and it was so good.

And so I just knew through just that transformation that I got listening to her podcast, I knew that someday I was going to go through certification with her and I was going to be one of her certified coaches. And it took about me three years to get there, but I finally did it, I just decided, this is it. And in 2018 I went through certification, got certified, and of course through that process fell even more in love with the whole life coaching industry and that whole career, and helping other people have transformations like I now had.

Susan Crockett: Such a fulfilling thing to do, to be able to watch people come in and use the tools that we’ve learned through certification to upgrade their lives, yeah, it’s so much fun. Cool. So you have your own practice?

Neill Williams: I do, yeah, so as part of that certification process I decided, okay, I do want to do this work in the world, it was so powerful for me. I want to be a part of that for other people too. And I have the skills and the tools and I just also felt like a responsibility to be teaching and helping other people with the things that I now know how to do for myself.

Susan Crockett: Wow, yeah.

Neill Williams: Yeah. So I started my own practice on the side, still working in corporate America and then I also decided to throw my hat in the ring for master coach certification, never really thinking in my wildest dreams that I’d be accepted, and I was.

Susan Crockett: That’s awesome.

Neill Williams: And so that was, yeah, that was amazing, an amazing, amazing process. And through that I completely uplevelled myself again and my whole life, and my business just took off, I think because of my own internal uplevel that happened. It manifested in the external world as a really full one-on-one practice which has been amazing, yeah.

Susan Crockett: Cool. So you’re one of our Virtuosa coaching coaches, and then you also have your own private practice. At the end of the podcast I want to give you a chance to tell the listeners where they can find you if they want to work with you. And tell them a little bit more about your access, okay?

Neill Williams: That’s great, thanks.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome. But let’s get into the meat of the topic today. So overwhelm, this is a really popular thing, everybody’s stressed out and overwhelmed these days. So why don’t you talk a little bit about what that is and how that looks in your coaching practice when you’re helping people.

Neill Williams: Yeah.  Well, most of my clients come to me as the too busy, overwhelmed working mom, either – most of them are entrepreneurs, but I also a coach a fair amount of corporate moms as well. And so that’s just [inaudible] identified, it’s almost like we hear so much about chronic anxiety. But for my people it’s a lot of chronic overwhelm, like that feels like just a part of their everyday life, it’s one of those feelings that’s just with them when they wake up in the morning, and they go to bed with it. It’s just like a constant.

And at some point they just get frustrated with that constant overwhelm and…

Susan Crockett: So is it like the always feeling like there’s too much to do and not enough of me and just leave me alone?

Neill Williams: Yes, all of that.

Susan Crockett: Yeah?

Neill Williams: Too much to do, not enough time, everybody needs something from me all the time. I never get to just be with myself or by myself, there’s just always – it’s just too much.

And so your listeners know that overwhelm is a feeling, if they’ve listened to the podcast for any amount of time. And a feeling is really created by a thought. So it’s triggered in the brain and then it flows through the body as a vibration. So when we talk about chronic overwhelm, what we’re really saying is we have some habitual thought patterns in our brain, some habitual overwhelm thoughts that are happening for us.

Susan Crockett: Right. Cool. So from a medical perspective I’m imagining that this is what translates from thoughts into that feeling of overwhelm. Which is ‘stress,’ where we see elevated cortisol levels and weight gain, and all of that stuff that comes from chronic stress that wears and tears on the body.

So this is a really important conversation for us to have I think because you’re sitting there helping these women that are coming to you directly with their problem. But I can’t help but think from my perspective as a physician that this is something that 80% of my patients, you know, I’m going to call it just my patients, they’re all women. So they’re all dealing with these stress levels. So, cool. So how do you approach this with your clients, what do you do to help them? Tell us a little bit about that.

Neill Williams: So first it’s awareness about what that is. So just recognizing that it’s a feeling which is a vibration in your body and understanding what your particular body, what the vibration is. So I’m just going to explain as an example, I’ll tell you, from me it was like a weight on my chest and shoulders and a pit in my stomach. Just this almost nauseous feeling in my stomach and then like I am just being weighed down, like heavy weights on my shoulders.

And so the first thing to realize is that is what overwhelm is, it’s nothing beyond the experience of this vibration in our body. So it’s not actually that bad, so the experiencing the feeling of overwhelm is not that big of a deal. So understanding that at first I think relieves some of the pressure and gives us a little bit of freedom and peace that it’s okay, I’m just experiencing this heaviness on my shoulders right now or a pit in my stomach.

Susan Crockett: So you are drawing them into consciousness of their body and how they’re feeling now. And people might have different feelings. I’m trying to think about how I experience overwhelm. I don’t feel that heaviness, I feel more tingling in my hands and sometimes a headache or in my shoulders, really tightness. But I love what you’re saying about how a feeling is just a vibration in your body, it doesn’t do anything else, it’s just there. And it may be unpleasant but it’s not going to hurt you.

Neill Williams: Yeah. Yeah, so understanding – and I think it’s important for us to get into our body, so your clients may be like mine and myself where I’m very cerebral. Everything is from the neck up and sort of into my brain, they’d understand that. So when someone tells me to look into my body, at first I was like I don’t know about that, I don’t know if that’s helpful, but it actually is.

And here’s one of the reasons for your people who are very cerebral, and very intellectual, and like to apply logic to everything. I think one of the great things about understanding our feelings is then – so sometimes we can notice how we’re feeling in our body before we can see the thought that’s creating it in our brains.

Susan Crockett: That’s good.

Neill Williams: So when you notice that you’re feeling overwhelmed you can just – I like to hit like – remember that old commercial, I think it was a Staples commercial or something, was like the easy button?

Susan Crockett: Yeah.

Neill Williams: Okay, so I can hit the button and then that reminds me to look into my brain to see what overwhelming thought I’m having because I know I’m in overwhelm right now.

Susan Crockett: Like where is that coming from?

Neill Williams: Yes, what am I thinking about that’s causing this overwhelm right now, can I find that thought? Because sometimes we have like 60,000 thoughts a day, sometimes it’s very hard for us to access those to see them. So I think the body’s a good signal for that.

Susan Crockett: Yeah, I never thought about using my body and doing that in reverse. I think most of the time when we think about the thought, feeling relationship I think of it top down, the thoughts first, then the feelings. And I’m not sure that we’ve actually taught this on the show yet about the feelings and the vibrations in the body, and then working backwards to try to find the thought. So the thought’s really the problem.

Neill Williams: The thought is the problem. It’s just that when we’re in it sometimes it’s hard to see the thought. So the body gives you a signal that there’s something going on. And if you pay attention to your body you might be able to figure out what’s happening in your mind that’s causing the sensation in your body of the overwhelm.

Susan Crockett: That’s great.

Neill Williams: So, awareness is always number one, we have to start with awareness to know what’s happening, to know what it is we even want to change or need to change, or if we want to change anything. We don’t have to change this of course, so that’s the first thing.

Susan Crockett: Exactly.

Neill Williams: Yeah, is that, overwhelm’s just a feeling and it’s not that overwhelm itself is that bad, that’s not the real problem with overwhelm, experiencing the feeling is not going to kill us. It’s not going to cause any really physical damage, it doesn’t feel great, but we can sustain that.

Susan Crockett: So what is the real problem? Yeah, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Neill Williams: No. That is the perfect next question. So the real problem with it is as your listeners probably know, because they know the CTFAR model, our feelings fuel our actions, our behaviors, what we do, what we don’t do. So when we think about using overwhelm for our fuel, if that’s what we’re experiencing on a daily basis, you think about – it’s like filling up your car with watered down gas. It’s not going to perform as well as it would with high octane gas.

Susan Crockett: Right. And so if you’re never stopping to look at that feeling and back up to the thoughts to figure it out, it’s like you’re just fuelling your body with bad stuff all day long. That is eye-opening, that’s mind blowing, that’s cool, it just went…

Neill Williams: I love it, I love it.

Susan Crockett: Okay, so wow, so the fuel, it’s fuelling your actions and then your reality. So my goodness, okay, so how do you help people work through this, what do you help them do with it? How do you get good fuel?

Neill Williams: Yeah, right. So we kind of want to choose the fuel, and because I’m a productivity coach, this is where this all comes into the work that I do, because to be highly productive you want to fuel yourself with the best that you can, the highest quality fuel you can get. And so once you’re aware of the overwhelming thoughts that you’re having, the thing that’s triggering the overwhelm, that’s when you can start to redirect your brain to think something else on purpose, that creates a higher octane fuel for you.

So if we think about it in the productivity space, and the way that I believe productivity works into our life, which I think is a beautiful parent to virtuosa, is it is the way that we create the best life for ourselves.

To be highly productive means we’re going after our goals, we’re creating our best life for us. And so to access the high octane fuel to help propel us towards that, we have to think about what do we want to feel? Because as we actually get to choose that, which seems crazy, it seems like it’s crazy to think that I get to decide how I want to feel in any moment, and actually every moment of my day.

Susan Crockett: And you know what, it seems crazy but I was never taught that until I was introduced to life coaching. And that’s one of the really powerful things about it is you get to choose if you want to stay there. But you get to choose what else you want to think. And what I really love about what you’re teaching is you’re not telling people how to reorganize or reprioritize their life. You’re not giving them a schedule so that they can get de-overwhelmed and overwhelmed, right?

Neill Williams: Yes.

Susan Crockett: You’re working at it from a very different perspective, which is how do you want to show up? What would your best fuelling for guiding your actions then be? So that’s so cool.

Neill Williams: Yeah, and this is why I come at productivity from a completely different standpoint than just like the tactics of time management and scheduling. I never even talk about time management, I really talk about personal management, and this is part of it. This is me controlling myself and my hours, and that’s how I get to my highest productivity.

Yeah, so you think about do I want to feel motivated? Do I want to feel confident? Do I want to feel excited or energized? What is the fuel that I want to give myself right now? And what are some thoughts I can be thinking that create that fuel for myself? And that is really the way to get to the higher octane fuel which you know like if you’re – I mean think about how you show up when you’re overwhelmed, versus how you show up when you’re energized.

Susan Crockett: Totally different.

Neill Williams: It will look totally different.

Susan Crockett: Same set of things to get done, but totally different, yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Neill Williams: Yeah. And you’ll probably get them done in a much more efficient way because you’re, again, you’re energized, you’re fuelling yourself at a very high level. And so your productivity, your output is much higher.

Susan Crockett: And you’re making better choices.

Neill Williams: Yes, totally. And then that’s going to show up in your R line, your results are going to look somewhat different. Maybe you have the same things created, but you created them in a smaller amount of time. Or maybe the quality of them is at a totally different level than when you came at it from overwhelm. There’s going to be a difference in your R line when you’re fuelled from a different emotion.

Susan Crockett: Exactly. Well, this is so awesome. So the take home that we want to leave our listeners with today about all of this is – give me a take home nugget, what’s your quote, your nugget for this?

Neill Williams: Yeah, I think the best way to think about it is the analogy that we gave earlier, how do you want to fuel it yourself? What emotion do you want to put in your tank today? And you have to keep re-deciding that throughout your day. So it’s not as if you get up in the morning and you think, okay, well, today I’m just going to be excited, and you think an exciting thought in that moment. We have to keep doing the work of fuelling ourselves.

So you have to keep redirecting your brain, if you’re in the habit of overwhelm, it’s because you’re in the habit of overwhelming thoughts. And so to break that habit you have to think thoughts that are not overwhelming.

Susan Crockett: So you just have to do it every day, you have to be constantly catching yourself. When you’re doing that habit of overwhelm to go like, is this really what I want to be doing, and then grabbing out those other thoughts that you’ve predetermined ahead of time throughout your day?

Neill Williams: Exactly. I like to think about it like a detox, once you become, like you kind of get addicted to this emotion of overwhelm and the overwhelming thoughts that you’re thinking. And so think, when you’re detoxing think about it like you’re doing it slowly over time. So it’s not as – I don’t want your listeners to think like, well, tomorrow every single minute I’m going to choose a thought that will make me not feel overwhelmed, that’s not realistic.

Like tomorrow can you commit to maybe 30 minutes where you’re choosing to think on purpose in a way that fuels you to be motivated, or confident, or excited? And then maybe for an hour the next day, we are going to do this over time. Just like you’re detoxing off of anything else, detoxing off the overwhelm is going to be done slowly over time if you want it to be done in a very long term sustainable way.

Susan Crockett: I really like that, because it really takes the pressure off of us for the perfectionism and for getting it right, right away. So thank you so much, Neill, for coming on the show with me today, excellent lesson, so much fun to hear your ideas, and just a different perspective on approaching this.

I want to make sure that our listeners know how to find you other than on virtuosacoaching.com, because you’re one of our great coaches. But tell a little bit more about what you’re doing in your private practice and how they can find you after the show if they want to work with you.

Neill Williams: Yeah, so if they want to learn more about productivity and personal management, kind of in that arena. I have all kinds of great information on my podcast called Unbusy Your Life. So they can tune into that, and lots of great free resources.

Susan Crockett: And we’ll put all of these, by the way, in the notes, the transcription notes, but also just in the podcast notes below that with all the links for our listeners.

Neill Williams: Awesome, thank you.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome.

Neill Williams: And then they can also reach me at my website www.neillwilliams.com, so Neill is N.e.i.l.l, or on social at Neill Williams Coach. And then the last thing, my one-on-one practice is pretty full, I would take people on a wait list. But I am transitioning to groups, so I am launching a group program called The Productive and Peaceful Life. And anyone who’s interested can just go to my website to find out more details. Or if they wanted to send me an email they could do that, and they can access that through the website.

Susan Crockett: Great. When is your launch for the group coaching?

Neill Williams: The first group will be August 1st, 2020.

Susan Crockett: August, fantastic. Well, thank you again for coming and joining us. And I am so glad to get to know you a little bit and hear about the managing overwhelm and I’m going to say bye, so thank you.

Neill Williams: Thanks, Sue, bye.

Susan Crockett: Bye.
	
Okay, wasn’t that amazing? So here’s what I’ve shown you today, we’ve talked about overwhelm, but not from a way of fixing it from what you have to do or that action line. This is totally different. We have had a good conversation with Neill about using our brain and our thoughts, and putting the right kind of fuel into our body emotionally to be able to handle the otherwise overwhelming tasks of life. I think that’s just incredible.

So now we are coming to the part of the show that is my favorite part of the show, that’s what we’re listening to and reading. Neill and I had a really interesting conversation about this because at first when I asked her what she’s listening to, she said, “Well, piano music, my son plays and we listen to a lot of relaxing classical and all that.” And I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know if my listeners would like that.”

And then we did the podcast and I thought, I know exactly the music for this podcast, and it’s got a story behind it. So the song is called In the Meadows, it’s by a composer and pianist named Stephen Richard Thomas Brown. We’re going to put some links for you in the footnotes from the podcast. It’s from an album he wrote called Songs for the 21st Century.

Now, the way I first came across this is there was a YouTube video circulating with underwater footage from Fiji and Tonga. We’ll put that in there too. So this underwater footage has 33 million views, 33 million, can you imagine. And this is the background music for the video, it is beautiful. And if you’re overwhelmed, this music is calming and peaceful and so is the YouTube video, I could stare at it all day, it’s beautiful.

So, you can download the music for free at Bandcamp, we’ll put the link, stephenrichardthomasbrown.bandcamp.com. We’ll put the full link in the post podcast notes. But here’s the story. So somebody had shared with me this Dakuwaqa’s Garden, no, I’m not saying that right. The underwater footage video, the YouTube video with the 30 million views, and I just absolutely fell in love with the music, I thought it was so beautiful.

And so I Googled the composer and at that time he had a website, I can’t find it now to put in the notes. But I actually wrote to him and asked him if I could purchase the sheet music because I used to be a musician in a life before I was a doctor and all of that. My first love was music, so I started playing piano when I was four years old.

And anyway, we corresponded back and forth and he ended up selling me a copy of the sheet music and he put it all on this really pretty little notebook. And it’s sitting, right now it’s sitting in my library, my study where I’m doing my podcast, it’s got this big bookshelf on it with my piano next to me, it’s actually my piano from childhood. And I’ve got a section of the bookcase set aside for music. And this music, which is signed by him as the composer is sitting at arm’s length from me.

So when I was thinking about what music to do for today’s podcast, that came to mind and I thought, you know what, that is such a beautiful little reminder about our connectivity in life. And I hadn’t thought about that music for a little bit. And it just seemed just perfect to share with you all today.

So I noticed when I was looking for his website that you can now download the music – sheet music for any of those that are musicians or have kids that are musicians, the sheet music is available as a very inexpensive download from Sheet Music Plus. So we will put that link in the post doc notes too. The post – did I just say post doc notes? That’s funny; you should probably leave that in there. We will put that in the post show notes too. Enjoy.

What we’ve been reading, Neill is working on reading the 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington. So of course as a productivity coach, this is a really interesting book. If you’re interested in figuring out how to do more with less time, then check it out. You can find it on Amazon.

And then when I asked Neill what she’s watching or Netflixing or whatever, she said, “You know what, actually I’ve been watching a life coach this week named Trudi Lebron.” Her name is spelled Trudi T.r.u.d.i, last name is Lebron L.e.b.r.o.n. Her website is trudilebron.com. This is fascinating because Trudi is a diversity racial equity coach. She’s an educator and a coach and she does training about cultural competence, racial equity, diversity. She is a biracial Latina, she’s racially Black and White and ethnically Latina.

So she is a brilliant, brilliant coach and she is doing a lot of teaching these days due to the changes that are happening in our society regarding racism and racial inequality. You can find her not only on her website, but also her podcast, it’s called The Business Remixed Podcast, because she does a lot of business coaching. She has Instagram and Facebook pages and we will put those in the links as well.

So there you have it. Next week we’re going to be interviewing coach, Robin Ola about how worry and anxiety affect weight loss and what to do about it, for all of us struggling with that, that’s an awesome podcast coming up next week. I hope you’ll join me for that. And I will see you in episode 22. Have a wonderful week. Love always, Sue.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

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