Written by: Heather Madden, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
You are doing everything right, from healthy lifestyle choices to meditation to healing rituals, yet you still feel burnt out and struggling to cope. Even with a successful career or business, you cannot resolve the daily struggle of your emotions to release anxiety, overthinking and overwhelm.
This form of Groundhog Day, like being a hamster in the wheel running endlessly unable to stop, is common and often strikes at the peak of performance success. It is a pivotal moment: we are confronted with the sensation of going backward, which can rapidly spiral into despair.
This human performance limit necessitates transition to emotional core wellness. Emotions are tools for learning, acceptance, and choice, especially in times of universal uncertainty.
Uncertainty starkly highlights the limitations of fact, and in the absence of linear variables or parameters, choices define our future-focused personal growth.
So, what does it take to break through the wall into a limitless mindset for choices and flow?
1. Stop over-functioning.
Humans are conditioned to over-function, breeding stress addiction and dependence on performance-based thinking. Good stress, the kind of stress that supports us to deliver outcomes, drives a form of coping built on the mantra ‘keep going’, which spreads far more deeply into a way of handling all stressors. We don’t just leave the belief in good stress at work, in fact, we keep tolerating more and more stress in our family, relationship, health, education, and parenting life bubbles. It is staggering to take stock of the stressors we are absorbing every day and consider what we are dealing with and, unfortunately, this coping modality has built up destructive mental narratives. These narratives take a huge effort to sustain over-functioning and, eventually, they will cease to work. It is not uncommon to wake up one day and be unable to get out of bed or get mentally in the room with your partner or family. These are huge signs of burnout and should be a wake-up call to urgently stop over-functioning.
2. Intentionally slow down the pace.
You have lived through an era in your lifetime. Change has become so fast and relentless, that uncertainty is not only relevant to a situation it is part of the evolutionary demographic. Reclaiming small doses of time, just for you in the moment, to reset as often as possible during the day regains perspective and reduces anxiety. From taking a walk at lunchtime, or stepping outside after each meeting, your brain will eventually recognise the cue to refill your mental cup in the moment with thoughts that allow for belief and alignment. These actions serve to interrupt stress and build a calmer, emotionally safe core.
3. Do your emotional homework.
Emotional homework is the work of silence and thin air, meaning that you get down on the living floor and just do it. This simple exercise means you self-identify your dominant emotion/s each day and link their relevance to an event or past trigger, challenging yourself to find the lesson for personal growth. Typically, triggers link to past events and by learning why you feel a particular way, tension is released. If your chest is feeling tight and you’ve hit the wall, a walk or run won’t cut it and it is time to focus on emotional homework. As you build your emotional narrative, you accept your emotions as right for the moment and learn more deeply about your specific anxieties and personal anchors for emotional safety. This form of flow and personal mastery releases fear and overwhelm and is a priceless form of inner resilience.
4. Focus on a mindset for choices.
Outcomes are constantly evolving; change is the name of the game. Change is the opportunity of your personal growth and fulfilment: human connection and emotional engagement are the levers for making change happen. Humans have been educated brilliantly well in problem-solving and analytical reasoning, less so in emotional resilience and intuition. The urgent need to break through the wall is to ensure that a mindset for choices leads your life in forward focus, with incremental choices made simply and listening to the intuitive knowledge you already own. You are already limitless; it’s a sad function of performance-based thinking that we lose ourselves in a busy race that no longer makes sense. Who you are and what you can be is all wrapped up in ability to utilise your whole mindset – the yin and yang of logic and emotion - and accept feelings-based needs and intentional action as a valid choice, not a position of weakness.
5. Sit with your story.
As you slow down the pace and learn more about yourself, the light and dark of your life story becomes clear. Everyone’s story is unique, it is a tale of survival and getting up stronger, which drives hope, belief, and passion to make a difference. Mindset development should inspire your dream and instil a call to action. But many have become so lost and confused by too much change lost inside too-high expectations, and no longer know who they really are. Learning to live with and accept your story relaxes your mind into an ongoing core of healing, which truly allows you to move on and let go.
If you have hit the wall of your mindset transformation, transition your effort into intuitive skills development and emotional core wellness. This will support your other lifestyle choices and provide a tool for lifelong stress management. The urgency of this journey is real: life is short, and simplification of lifestyle is one of the urgencies to address human evolution and survival. Living a limitless life is a constant pursuit, a daily work of incremental progress, and provides the ability to become all we are destined to be and choose a path to positive mental elevation. Live Life Limitless.
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Heather Madden, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Heather Madden is a leader in mindset transformation and personal development. By challenging coping modality and building a lifelong commitment to managing stress, Heather helps others to break through barriers and achieve limitless life transformation, emotional core wellness, and values alignment. Heather founded the Live Life Limitless movement following her self-managed recovery from burnout and breakdown, triggered as a result of stress addiction, over-functioning, and multiple health setbacks including a chronic, sight-threatening eye disease and life-changing preventative surgeries following diagnosis of the BRCA1 genetic mutation. She hosts "The Interrupt Series: Stress, Overwhelm and Emotional Wellbeing", Interrupt Stress for Life live events, and regular Limitless Leaders and Live Life Limitless meetups. Her mission: Live Life Limitless: Choose, positive, make the choice. Mental Health is Number One.
