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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode, and leave a review to help other listeners discover our show.
Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
[00:00:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Welcome back to the Business is Human podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we're here to bring you episodes that blend a meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the Age of Humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work. We can transform the way that we live.
[00:00:28] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: As always, my friendly request, if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. All right, let's get into it, shall we?
[00:00:43] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Welcome back to The Business is Human Podcast. Today we're gonna talk about some practical, tactical. Stuff around your calendar and the feeling of overwhelm with some practical technical tips, and also what's happening behind the scenes from a nervous system, neuroscience perspective, where they just feel like.
[00:01:07] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: There's just too much. I'll never get it all done, so I'm just gonna curl up on the couch and ignore it for a little while until I feel better. Just me doubtful, because all of the clients that I work with have these moments from time to time. And in fact, this episode was inspired by the fact that I've had these conversations with clients multiple times this week because they came to me and said, oh my gosh.
[00:01:33] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I'm losing it. It's the end of the year. There's so much to be done. And so I recorded an episode a couple of weeks ago about the holiday hot potato and how not to do that. And there is also the reality of, there's still a lot of things on my list that I gotta get done. So that surge that you feel about, oh my gosh, I have so much to do, how will I ever get it all done?
[00:02:01] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: when your brain starts spinning and you actually feel it in your body, like your chest gets tight, your shoulders start to go up around your ears your thoughts are just bouncing back and forth. That is your nervous system reacting to what it feels like is a threat. And the threat is, do I have enough time?
[00:02:21] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I feel like I don't have enough time, and so I'm failing, and it's. Your nervous system saying, red alert. Red alert. We're feeling overwhelmed, we're feeling overwhelmed. And that's not wrong. That's your nervous system doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It's working perfectly. So let's celebrate that you have a actively working nervous system.
[00:02:45] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yay. Okay, so here's, here's what we need to do though. When we time block, this is what we're gonna talk about today. It's not just a productivity hack, it's not just a skill. It's a way to regulate your nervous system, to regulate your body, quiet your mind, and honestly, it's a spiritual practice.
[00:03:07] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We'll get into a little bit as well to order your days with more clarity and more peace. So when that overwhelm feeling hits, your nervous system is basically scanning for danger. That's what it's designed to do. It's doing it perfectly and it's interpreting. So once we feel the overwhelm, then your brain kicks in and gives the feeling a story.
[00:03:35] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It gives it meaning. And so if we're giving the meaning of. I'm afraid I'm gonna fail. I'm afraid I'm gonna disappoint someone. Then our nervous system says, oh, if that's the story, then we should really be afraid. And so then what happens is your prefrontal cortex, that's, you need to make great decisions and get this work done, goes offline.
[00:04:02] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It's like, I gotta preserve your energy to survive this attack. And so the thing you need the very most stops working effectively to give you more energy to fight this feeling, this attack of overwhelm. And so we've gotta give the story a different meaning. So when you feel the overwhelm, then you're gonna say, oh, this is when I need to pause.
[00:04:31] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Put what I'm about to share with you into practice, because we're not under attack. We just need to be really intentional about how we address what we're feeling, because then when you follow the steps I'm about to share with you, your prefrontal cortex to make great decisions says, okay, I'll stay.
[00:04:49] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We got this figured out. So once we feel the overwhelm, we're afraid we're gonna fail. We're afraid we're going to not get it all done.
[00:04:58] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: First, just acknowledge anytime you can name the state that you're in, the nervous system state, it says to your body and your brain, oh, they know I don't have to keep screaming This feeling at them. They know and that. Goes from uncertainty to certainty. So you can say to yourself, I'm feeling really overwhelmed right now.
[00:05:25] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I need to take a pause figure this thing out. And that in and of itself, we'll just say to your nervous system, okay, good. let's do that. And so that way you don't stay in the fog and the spin. Of the emotions of it, and you actually can decide what to do next. So celebrate your nervous system for being so smart and so tuned up.
[00:05:52] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And so the way God created us is perfect. Now, what happens when you start writing the list? So you're gonna sit down and you're gonna write the list of everything that you're feeling overwhelmed about. And you may fight that 'cause you may feel like, why don't I just get to work on it? Nope. I want you to write the list first because when you write the list and take the time to do that, it's not gonna take you as much time as you think.
[00:06:14] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Your brain's just in spin mode, and it doesn't understand time well, when you sit down to write it out, you externalize the threat. The threat is no longer in you spinning in your mind. Now we're going to. Put it onto paper so your brain stops trying to hold it all into your memory.
[00:06:36] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: the memory center, your hippocampus says, oh good, we don't have to remember everything right now. We can just write it down. We're gonna get some relief. Great. So that already starts to give relief then. As you start to write it down and you start to put them outta your mind, onto the paper, it's like you've been carrying a backpack of rocks around and every time you write something onto the page, it's like you take a rock outta your backpack and you start to feel, physically feel the relief.
[00:07:10] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Your body starts to feel safer, and the safety doesn't come from the list being done. The safety comes from your brain believing, because it can now see it that it's manageable. And that's why, you know, after people write the list, they'll say, oh, I feel better already. And whether it's more than you thought or less than you thought, that's not the point.
[00:07:36] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It's just that you wrote it down, even though nothing has happened yet. You're gonna write how much time conservatively each of these things will take and be real about it. Lying to yourself is not gonna help. So be conservative. Just how many hours is it gonna take, per minutes, whatever.
[00:07:56] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: That way you stop creating a catastrophe out of it and get real about it. Before you were saying, this is gonna take forever, I just don't have enough time. What am I gonna do? And now you start to quantify it. Oh, this is gonna take me two hours. Oh, this is gonna take me 40 minutes. And then you're staying into that prefrontal cortex.
[00:08:18] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Like we're planning things out so we're feeling better. Okay. I did this with a client a couple of weeks ago, right before. The day before Thanksgiving. Two days before Thanksgiving, and she's a a controller, so she has tons of year end stuff and she was spinning, and so I was able to say, okay, let's do this together.
[00:08:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And so we did it together. I said, how much time is that gonna take? We just wrote it all down and then I calculated how many working hours she had left between that day and the end of the year. And it was at the time, like 300 and some. And what she realized was the list that she made, I think it was like it was going to take, 20 hours maybe, but then all of a sudden she has this reality of, I do have time.
[00:09:08] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I am gonna get this done. And it just immediately calmed her. Now.
[00:09:14] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: When you make the list, it even helps to say, okay, I don't want to work on this project for four hours straight. I'm going to need some space in between that. So then just say, I need four one hour blocks of time. But sometimes what you have is a project that you need to get into flow. You do need an extended amount of time, because for me, like I'm writing a book right now.
[00:09:40] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It helps me to get into flow and have hours of time blocked for it so that way I don't leave and go do a coaching appointment and then come back and try to figure out, now where was I when I left off? So I'm really intentional about where can I just get in there and do some check off the list task and where do I need some flow time to really get into the space of, thinking about this thing and being in it.
[00:10:06] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: This activity, make the list time allocated, allows you to stop treating everything as urgent and start to get more intentional about. The certainty of it versus the uncertainty of it. Because when you're spinning, that's the uncertainty. And then when you make the list and you put the time associated with it, now you start to get certainty, which calms your nervous system because it's a pattern predictor and it says, oh, we've gotta plan.
[00:10:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We've got a rhythm. We know what's coming. We don't have to spin in our brain about when are we going to do this. 'cause the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna take those time blocks and you're gonna put them in your calendar. And when I do this with clients, we put them in the calendar and then I say, where are you gonna be working on that day?
[00:10:58] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: For example, one of the time blocks that my client needed was a bunch of financial stuff, obviously controller, and she had put it on the day before Thanksgiving. I know she has kids, school age kids. And I said, are your kids home from school? Are you working from mom that day? And she said, yeah. I go, that ain't gonna work.
[00:11:19] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: That ain't gonna work. You think it is because you think your kids are gonna go play and, you know, watch TV or just have a break and they're not, they're gonna be in your office. They're gonna wanna snack, they're gonna be doing all these things. And so that's not gonna work. I said, Can you leave your house and go to a coffee shop for the two hours that you need to do this work?
[00:11:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Is there somebody there that can watch the kids? Are they old enough to be there? Like, don't just put the block on your calendar. Ask yourself, where am I going to be working at that time? And be sure that your environment fits the task. That's so important. There were a couple other projects that she had that I knew she was gonna need to be talking to some people to get it done.
[00:12:02] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I said, that needs to be an office day because rather than, you know, text or try to call, you might be able to just pop in somebody's office and get the information you need quicker. So think about when am I gonna do it and where am I going to be working that day? Because that will ensure that you actually get it done on the day that you've blocked it for now.
[00:12:23] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: You also need to honor the time that you've put. So if you've got a shared calendaring situation in your office, don't let anybody schedule over it. This is a commitment you've made. It's important, and you gotta get it done on that day, at that time. If you lie to yourself and say, oh, I'll go ahead and take that meeting,
[00:12:44] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: you've squashed the plan. Now you can't trust yourself. Don't do that. Don't do that. here's the spiritual aspect of thing. God loves order. Like he gave specific details and measurements and order. He loves order. And so you are designed for order. And so when you feel outta whack, you.
[00:13:09] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Feel spiritually not connected either. And so this is not just good for your calendar and your productivity. This is good for your soul. This is good for your spirit to know that you have a plan. peace is what God wants for us. And the more we can get control of our, calendar and our time, the more that we can enjoy.
[00:13:34] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: The way that he has designed us. And you know what, this is modeled throughout the Bible to take breaks, take time to go off and get away and, and think about things more clearly. And so we don't wanna get into the trap of spin, spin, spin, spin in our head and not actually move anything forward because we haven't taken the time to actually.
[00:14:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Lower our stress, lower our anxiety, create more focus, make better decisions, I think with Michelle and I probably took with her and I working on it together, 10 minutes and then we could look at it clearly and go, okay, and I tell ya.
[00:14:19] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: She messaged me after and said, oh my gosh, I feel better already. Yay. That's exactly what I wanted and knew would happen for her. And then even better the next week when I checked in on her. She had already made such significant headway on that list. She had the momentum and the belief that she was going to complete the rest, and she was motivated to keep those commitments that she had on her calendar for later in December because she knew how good it felt to get those things done that she had marked for herself the week following after we had talked.
[00:14:54] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So when life feels overwhelming, your nervous system. Isn't just saying to you, we're failing. This is awful. You can't do this. It's begging you to take the lead. It's saying, I feel distressed and I want you to lead me through this, and you know how. And you can create that story for yourself. We're not waiting for life to get easier.
[00:15:24] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We're not waiting for less tasks to feel better. We're taking control of our regulation and blocking the time to get the things done. And if you lead people, teach them how to do this too, because then everybody on the team benefits. All right. I'm making this a short and sweet episode today because I know it's the holidays.
[00:15:49] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I know you got a lot going on, and I wanted to give you a little tip, so if you're spinning with a lot of things on your list, there you go. Love you mean it. Until next time, happy holidays.
Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram, Business Is Human, or TikTok, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It's a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. Alright, make it a great day. Love you, mean it!