The 1 Trick to Stop Overthinking & Holiday Stress

High-achieving women, this is the key to maintaining your peace and clarity of thought, even when everything around you feels chaotic and overwhelming.

This episode shifts the focus from preventing burnout to integrating gratitude and perspective into your daily life. 

Coach Megan Devito shares her personal experience with recent grief, demonstrating how to use this practice to push through difficult situations, whether you're dealing with loss, workplace demands, awkward family relationships, or just feeling anxious and overloaded.

This isn't "=toxic positivity, it's a real tool.  Learn how to manage your mindset without denying the hard things in your life.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How to find little glimmers of what's going well and cherry-pick positive evidence without denying the hard things in your life.
• The health benefits of a positive outlook, including lower rates of depression, greater resistance to the common cold, and better coping skills during stress.
• How to stop the negative thought loop and build a strategy to feel calm, confident, and in control at work and at home.
• The exact step you can take today to get clarity on the reoccurring themes in your life that are causing you to people-please, feel stressed, and wonder why nothing's working out.

👉 Your Next Step: Schedule a Boundaries Balance Audit! Discover the 7 areas of your life that need attention and get at least one key takeaway to help you move forward. https://www.megandevito.com/workwithme/audit

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Okay, I'm gonna be honest right up front. This episode might be a colossal mistake on my part. ⁓ I will preface this by saying I am recording this about three weeks after my dad died. I'm pretty emotional, but I also feel like this is an episode that I need to share with you because if it's something that is impacting me, I know that other people are dealing with very similar situations. So what I wanna do is, shift the focus from what we've been talking about for the past few weeks, about slowing down, about preventing burnout, and really finding the clarity of thought that you need to have a successful Q4, and integrate a little bit of gratitude into the practice, because we are coming up on November, because it's Thanksgiving, the holidays are the day after Halloween anymore. ⁓ So I'm gonna do this from a place of a lot of emotion.

And this is going to be a little bit of a reboot of episode four. So we're upgrading episode four. If you've not listened to that, that's okay. It's still there, but it's going to be in the archives. And we're gonna move forward with talking about how gratitude can help you experience grief during the holidays or May or any other time it's happening, but also how it can help you push through really difficult situations at work if you're just struggling with

conversations with your boss or just feeling overwhelmed or burned out. Of course, I'm always gonna talk about that and how you can handle the pressure of being around family or dealing with everyday life when things feel very chaotic and very overwhelming. So before you worry about setting any boundaries, before you think about all the things that you have to do to retain your peace, let's talk about your mindset and how you can use that even when everything around you feels terrible to help you recover, to help you move forward, and to help you really enjoy your life. So this week I'm diving back into this concept of perspective, specifically about how shifting gratitude and having gratitude even in really tough situations without denying that things are tough is the best way forward. So if your anxious brain is in overdrive, if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling overwhelmed, this is a great reboot of an episode that I loved the first time I wrote it. I think it's so important and it's something that I practice every single day.

If we've not met before, my name is Megan Devito and I am a coach. I help successful, motivated people break out of burnout, anxiety and stress so that they can feel calm, confident and in control at work and at home and have a balanced life and have the peace and the energy and all the things that they've been looking for. So today I'm gonna help you find new ways of looking at your life and the world so that we can really get out of some of the anxious overthinking that you've been having or the need to constantly be on and to go, to give yourself permission, yes, always to rest, but to change how you're looking at the situations in your life so that you can feel all of those great emotions instead of only the crappy ones. And I'm excited to share this episode for a couple of reasons. One is that this, as I mentioned, is a skill that I have to use every single day, particularly right now in my life.

I'm not gonna teach you any kind of weirdo toxic positivity thing because it doesn't work. Your brain knows when you are lying to you. The other reason that I think this is so important is that I have a way of explaining how you can start to see the world around you in a different way. if you watch the news like I do, even if everything feels like it's falling apart, if you're in a period of intense grief, the world can be really depressing and scary. And I want you to be able to say, even though there are things going on, whether it's political climate or the actual climate, whether you just lost your dad, whether you're in the middle of a divorce or a breakup, whether you're struggling with feeling successful at work or you wanna ask for a raise and everything feels too overwhelming, maybe you were just laid off. This practice is gonna fit in every area of your life. So to preface this, I'm not here to downplay what's going on in your life, I'm in it with you right now.

Very, very much so. And I'm hoping I can make it through this whole episode without having to hit pause and restart. And I'm just not sure. But I want to make life feel more hopeful for you. I want you to feel like there's goodness happening even in the middle of the other things. So let's start by asking this question. It's that glass half full, glass half empty question. And it's legitimate, right? Our perception of how we're seeing the world is very important. So the idea of seeing life through a positive lens or a negative lens or through rose colored glasses is really what we want to talk about today. So your view of the world or of the glass tells you everything you need to know about how your day and how your life will flow because it really does depend on your outlook. 

So let me explain what I mean. Let's say that you wake up, and you hurry through your morning routine and all you've got is like a leftover muffin on the counter and some lukewarm coffee. That is a nightmare for me. Like I don't like to wake up late. I like my mornings to flow and I like what I like for breakfast and it's not lukewarm coffee ever. So let's see you're there. Okay. And you rush out the door because you have to get to work and maybe you have kids to drop off at school. You buckle your seatbelt and the coffee sloshes out. It's all over the shirt that you were going to wear to work.

Have you had a day like that? Because I know how I have. It's not the best way to start your day. And you're probably feeling stressed maybe even just listening to this because I bet you've had something similar happen. So let's just stop for a second and get out those rose colored glasses that I mentioned and I want you to imagine yourself putting them on. And when you put these glasses on, it changes what you're allowed to see or what you choose to focus on. Does that make sense? So you put on these glasses and it's gonna change what it is that you see happening in your life. It's not changing what is actually happening. It's changing what you look for. Kind of like it gives you tunnel vision, or maybe you can pretend like that rose colored lens only allows you to see the things that you want to focus on right now. 

So we want to start looking at what's actually going well. And you're going to have to do this on purpose because your brain's going to tell you everything that's not working, everything that might be dangerous, everything that you think that you're doing bad at or anything else that's making you feel really intense potentially negative emotions to try to protect you from feeling awful it will even keep you in the middle of like trying to wallow around in grief or in Like that's what's not working at work the coffee on your shirt because it's trying to get you to go home Hide away stay safe because even if you feel bad, you're still safe.

That's something that I think is really important is that bad, when I talk to clients, when I'm working with clients and they tell me I just feel bad, that's not necessarily an emotion. But emotions can cause real physical pain. They can cause real brain fog and like real problems communicating with other people. So if you have negative emotions, it's coming from how you're seeing the world and yes, the situations in your life. But I want to offer some quick mindset shifts on that first scenario that I gave you.

What we want to do is we want to find little tiny glimmers of what's going well. So let's start with you woke up three cheers for you, right? Your body and your brain flipped on and you woke up. Some people didn't. So right away you're pretty damn lucky. Say thank you for that. I know it's small and maybe you're like, ⁓ yeah, but I didn't even want to get out of bed. Okay. But I also heard the phrase once that any day that you're above ground is a good day.

So let's focus on that. Maybe you have to start with, but my bed is warm. That's amazing because some people don't have a bed. We're picking things, right? We are definitely cherry picking what we're looking at. That's part of the process. Are we denying that there's coffee on your shirt or that you were late or that your coffee was lukewarm or that you're just feeling like crap this morning? No, we're just choosing to say at least this. The other thing I want you to kind of lean into is the fact that you had a muffin on the counter. Some people don't have food.

And even though your coffee was lukewarm, my husband actually likes lukewarm coffee. So it's just a personal preference at that point. In the past, I've had students, I was a teacher before I was a coach, I had students who didn't have food. They were so grateful for anything that they could get. You got dressed, which means you probably have clothes. Do you have shoes on your feet? Some people don't own shoes. Are you driving a car? Most people in the world don't have multiple cars. This is a very American thing. You got to work safely. So these little glasses that we put on that are helping you see what's actually going well in your life, yes, I know it's a stretch for some people, but we're not denying that there's chaos. We're just saying that, yes, there is chaos. And yes, I am choosing to look at this. 

Now this is a really simple scenario and it's one that you're like, yeah, it was a bad morning, we all have those. But let's go a little bit deeper and this is where you have to stretch yourself, okay? I'm not gonna go super deep into the story about my dad, other than to tell you that he was absolutely my best friend and the person, like he and my mom, spent tons of time with them, I'm very close. My brother and I have said we had like the royal flush of parents, honestly. So it's been a really rough three weeks for me. And the thing that has kept me moving forward is being grateful that I had so much time with him. So much time. Does that mean I miss him more? Absolutely. But in the middle of that, I can focus on how much I miss him or I can focus on how much great time I had with him. It doesn't negate the fact that I want him here. It does not negate the fact that I feel terrible grief, or that I'm on the verge of crying all the time, it just helps me focus on the fact that I had so much good time with him. 

My dad died suddenly. I can be grateful for the fact that he didn't suffer, that he didn't have to be sick in front of all of us because he would have hated that. I can be happy with the fact that I kept my dad until I'm gonna be 50 in two weeks. I had my dad till I was almost 50 years old and some people don't get that. So it's not negating the hard. It's not. It's hard, you guys. It's so hard. But there's also goodness in there. And as a person who is a believer, I believe in Jesus, and I'm a Christian, and I believe there is more. Life is not the end of the show. For me, I have the belief that he's maybe hanging with his best friend from college, or my grandparents, or that I'm going to see him again someday. And I get to have the fun game with him right now, where I'm like, are you around? 

I was actually right before I came upstairs to record this episode. I was downstairs grabbing my microphone out of my office room and no joke, I walked out of my bedroom and I smelled him, which yeah, I know brains are weird, but I literally smelled my dad in the basement and I just stopped to talk with him. I'm like, are you here? Like, don't make me cry. I have to go upstairs and talk about you on a podcast and it's things like that. So it's finding gratitude in little things, even when there are as hard things.

And when you do this, finding gratitude literally changes your brain. It changes how you view the world. It changes how your body responds to stress and grief and anxiety and overwhelm and demands at work. And when your kid has a F on the report card or anything else that freaks you out, you just have to remember to put the glasses back on.

In this situation, when we're talking about all the things that are happening in the world and how you can change how you're viewing the holidays or the end of the year, why does this even matter? Why would I choose to do this? Aren't I just lying to myself? No, because we're not denying that things can be difficult. Why bother? Does it really matter if you even see things from the positive side or is that just some like weird hippie theory that doesn't really stand up? I'm here to tell you that a positive mindset and seeing the good absolutely matters and there are health benefits. 

So according to the Mayo Clinic health benefits, I'm just gonna read this off the screen, health benefits that positive thinking might provide include increased lifespan, lower rates of depression, lower levels of stress, greater resistance to the common cold, better psychological and physical well-being, better cardiovascular health, and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease, better coping skills during hardships and times of stress. And for a lot of you, the end of the year means demands at work and maybe some rocky family relationships and awkward family dinners. So gratitude is the key. 

So if it's unclear why you should be doing this, let's talk about it. And if you're like, and I don't know how, my brain is so negative, that's how most people show up when we talk, because they're stuck in the middle of a very negative thought loop. And there's a theory about this and it's that having a positive outlook helps you better cope with these stressful situations, which as you're lowering the stress in your body, it means you're not having that buildup of cortisol. So we can actually bring that down even further, but in order to get to that place, we have to have a strategy on how to do it. So if you can't seem to get yourself into that positive mindset, if you are a human Eeyore, because

You guys, if you've seen Winnie the Pooh and you know he's like, everything's kind of blah, I got great news. So in my coaching, one of the most common complaints that people bring up is their tendency to feel negative, defeated, mopey, or just grouchy about their lives. And these attitudes and these beliefs are keeping them from feeling confident, they're keeping them stressed and anxious, and they're keeping them from being able to reach for what they actually want. So what I can do is help you refocus on what's going well, to collect evidence that you're already being successful and to help you develop a strategy to help you be successful in your career, to be able to have Thanksgiving with Aunt Betty, who's gonna drive you crazy on social media. 

These are all things that we're going to talk about going into November next month. So you're not going to wanna miss those. Be sure that if you haven't subscribed already, whether you're listening on a podcast platform or watching on YouTube, do that now because November is going to help you deal with awkward family relationships stressful conversations about politics, to stop people pleasing, to put down boundaries with so much love so that you don't have to break up with your family and friends so that you don't have to feel stressed every time you go into work. One of the ways that you can get started now is to jump on a call with me to talk about what coaching is like. And I have two different ways to do that. One is just a consultation call. And that's really about talking about, okay, I'm ready to go all in on coaching. I want to know what you do. How do you charge? What it's like to work with you? What are sessions like?

That's a consultation call. can totally do that. Again, the link will be in the show notes, either wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube. The other option is a boundaries balance audit. This one's a little bit deeper and we look at all the different areas of your life. And when I say all, I broke your life up into seven sections. So we're gonna look at each of those sections and we're gonna say, rate it. Tell me what it's going. Like tell me what you're rating this as. And you'll say, okay, it's one, it's a 10, it's awful, it's amazing. And I'm gonna say, yeah, why? Why five?

Why seven? Why six? Why 10? Why zero? Tell me what's going on. I'm going to listen to what you say and I'm going to tell you the reoccurring themes that keep coming up in your life that are causing you to people please, to feel stressed, to feel anxious, to wonder why nothing's working out, to feel confident, or to celebrate with you all of the things that are really going well so that we can build upon those strengths that you've already got going. This is an audit that allows you to have at least one takeaway about,

This is what needs your attention. This is how we can start moving forward. Whether you choose to do coaching or not, that's totally up to you. But the audit is amazing. It's given people such an incredible insight and it's a really fun way for me to get to know you better. You can also find that on my website. Again, it's in the show notes. So next week, we're kicking off November. We're gonna talk about beyond people pleasing. We're gonna dive deep into why it is so hard to say no to the people that you love or the people that you don't really like.

You don't want to miss it and until then, I hope you stay calm and confident and keep putting on those rose colored glasses. If this episode was helpful for you, please be sure again to like or follow this podcast wherever you're listening or watching and maybe tag a friend in the comments so that they can listen to it as well. If I don't talk to you before on a call, I will be back next week. Take care.