WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

79. Overwhelm, Perfectionism, Envy: The Real Wellness Tea + 5 Ways to Deal

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 79

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We explore the three major barriers that derail wellness journeys and how to navigate through them for sustainable health. Overwhelm, perfectionism, and envy create mental roadblocks that prevent consistent progress and satisfaction with our wellness efforts.

• Situations often lead to overwhelm when we take on more than our emotional and mental capacity can handle
• Perfectionism is "petty AF" - focusing on nitpicky details instead of the bigger wellness goal
• When we can't execute perfectly, we often abandon our efforts entirely rather than adapting
• Comparing ourselves to others (envy) makes us miss our own progress and opportunities
• Others' wellness results usually represent years of consistent effort we don't see
• Breaking down overwhelming tasks into manageable steps matches your current capacity
• Allow yourself to feel silly or awkward when trying something new - it's part of the process
• Work with what you have rather than waiting for perfect conditions
• Real wellness is "boring as hell" - the exciting part is the freedom it gives you in life
• The same energy used for complaining could be redirected to execution

I have six spots open for three months of one-on-one food and hormone health coaching until June 30th. Book a free consultation call to learn more about working together to transform your wellness journey with the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hello friends, welcome back to Wealthy Generation. That's W-E-L-L-W-E-L-T-H-Y. So recently there has been real life experiences with either loved ones, clients, myself Like there has just been so many situations happening or examples of that, like little light bulb in my head of why sometimes wellness feels so hard or what gets in our way. And I'm going to talk about three things today that I see that gets in people's ways, and it did for me as well. It's a situation that gets in the way it's yourself or it's others, and I'm going to dive deeper into each one of those things and then I'm going to give you about five tips to help you start working on these three different things that might be holding you back in your wellness and you might not even realize how much is getting in your way. And I actually have an example I'm going to share a little bit of how I came up with these three. I guess it's like emotion or feeling that gets in the way of wellness, when it was in relation to something else, more or less of what was going on in real life for people who I care deeply about. So let's just jump right into it. The first one that I was like light bulb moment of stuff that gets in the way of wellness, right is a situation, so the situation, or like an outside circumstance almost that gets in the way and that leads to I'm going to tie it to one thing or like one emotion overwhelm, right, like whatever situations happening around you leads to you getting overwhelmed, and then you give up and like, think about being overwhelmed. It freaking sucks to feel that way and you either slow down or you throw in the towel or you lose motivation all of that. So I'll give you an example.

Speaker 1:

There was a loved one who received a workout plan from a trainer and the way when they looked at it, the trainer provided four months, they provided four months of routines, they provided a warmup, they provided homework, they provided instructions as to like the sets and you know how to check off what you're doing and all these things. For me, I've seen these plans often enough that I was like, okay, well, the formatting Can get like you need to dig through it a little bit, but I kind of understand it and I kind of know how to sift through it. So it didn't overwhelm me that much and my eyes knew where to focus. But for my loved one who, this was the first time that they were working with a workout plan. They were working with a workout plan. They were like, oh my God, I am not going to use this, I'm just going to take the L, I'm going to pay for it and I'm not going to use it because it's too much. And I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like we're going from zero to a hundred. I can tell you're very overwhelmed by how this looks and I can help you and I'm going into the tips. Right, I'm going to go into the tips later. I'll just share the story. But I was like I can help you.

Speaker 1:

I took the workout plan that the trainer gave and I just reformatted it and I broke it up into easier to read sections and I divided up the months to be on their own so that way you didn't have to look at all of it at one time. You could just look at sections of it and I changed the font and I like bolded some parts, and so it was just a lot more digestible. And that's where I want you to see where sometimes we are taking on way too much when it comes to wellness, like you might be, like I am working out for an hour. I'm working out seven days a week. I am only going to eat clean, whatever that means to you. I am cutting out sugar. I'm cutting out carbohydrates Like you are biting more often. You can chew, no pun intended, right.

Speaker 1:

And it becomes very overwhelming to start doing this new thing where it's not just taking action right Like you need to. It's not even like, it's not about the workout, it's more of like the mindset and the understanding and getting yourself there to do these things. So the process is a lot more than just the execution, which I think confuses a lot of people. It's not just about the cooking, about the exercising, about deciding to cut something out, and I think that this is a reason why a lot of people are unsuccessful in the wellness journey because they do not realize, or you do not realize, that there is this whole emotional and mental component to whatever action you want to go and take, and most of the time, the action that you decide that you want to take is so large for your emotional to take, is so large for your emotional capacity. So there's a disconnect there and then if you want to, a lot of times, pare back on the action, then you shame yourself for not being capable at the moment of executing the way you want to.

Speaker 1:

I hope this is making sense and it's hitting, it's slapping. Whatever the kids say these days, I always have to have my eight-year-old translate whatever it is that he's telling me, because I'd be lost with this. Whatever generation gen, alpha gen, whatever they're in, okay, so I hope this makes sense. Like the situation usually is the overwhelm that happens when you're just taking on too much and this is going to lead to the second point that I'm going to make where one is the situation and then it becomes you yourself holding yourself back. Why? Because you have this expectation of the execution to look perfect, perfectionism, all right. Now you're beating yourself up, most likely like, exactly like my loved one, I'm going to take the L. I'm not going to do this. This isn't for me. La la, la, la, la, la, la la Goes on.

Speaker 1:

Because you had this idea of what the execution was going to be like and because you don't have the mental and emotional capacity and you're learning something new. You're not cutting yourself grace, you're not doing this in a loving way, and then you don't do it at all most of the time, and then you're really missing the point of the goal. I love to say now one of my new brand spanking new terms is that perfectionism is petty. It's petty AF, because you want to nitpick at things. You want to nitpick on whatever's available to you, what the resources are, the way that you are able to do things in reality, versus the fantasy that you have in your brain as to how it's going to look like. That does not take into consideration your emotional capacity, your mental state or the circumstances around you that might cause overwhelm, mental state or the circumstances around you that might cause overwhelm. So you want to force yourself to execute in a certain way and because you're not able to do that, for whatever reason, then you don't do it at all, or you give up, and then you're missing the point. Or you give up and then you're missing the point. Right, because you're focusing on these little things in between instead of what the actual end goal is. And how are you going to add drops to the bucket, add coins to the jar to get there, whether it looks like how you want to or not, whether it looks like this perfect execution or not, some days it might, other days it won't.

Speaker 1:

100%, and this is why I teach all of my clients how to have a toolbox of skills, a toolbox of habits and how to pivot, because life is going to life and a lot of times, things that are out of your control is going to get in the way of however you want to execute things. So, for example, if your plan was to make a home cooked meal and you can't, for whatever reason and the reason might be you're tired AF from a really long day, or you had to run an extra errand, or your kid got sick, or lots of reasons why and you have the opportunity to order out there can be a middle ground there. It doesn't have to be like, ah fuck, it Hands up in the air, feet up in the air, like I couldn't make a from scratch meal at home. So now I'm going to order deep fried chicken with waffle fries, which is completely unaligned with your goal. Okay, I'm not talking about bad food, good, good food. I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about what's going to allow you to continue to feel good and what's going to move you closer to your goal.

Speaker 1:

And if making a home cooked meal at the moment is not accessible emotionally, mentally, physically, because you have other stuff going on and it's just going to be a major stressor. You're probably going to resent cooking or making a meal from scratch and hate every moment of it and maybe not even enjoy your meal. What the fuck is the point of that Like? In all seriousness, it's just adding more stress. So it's looking for that middle ground of well, what can I order to make my life easier? And it is aligned more aligned with what my goals are.

Speaker 1:

You see how all of a sudden, it gets out of petty zone and it's like's my end goal and how can I align the action that I need to take at the moment that's within my capacity, to that goal, instead of completely focusing on the nitpicky details of it and not executing at all? That's what I mean with perfectionism is petty. It's something that I just want you to let go of because it does not allow you to think clearly and creatively and pivot, because you're so freaking stuck on how you could not get something done the way you wanted to get it done. Get something done the way you want it to get it done. Make sense. I'll give you one more example. With exercise, it's like you want to go I don't know five days to the gym or whatever it is. You want your workout to look a certain way and, for whatever reason, you can't like. You can't go, or you're tired, or you got your period or whatever. Insert, whatever's happening. But you have another option you can go for a walk, you can move in the house, you can. You can do something else, whether it's your preferred, what you prefer to do. Probably not. But again, we're thinking about the end goal, we're thinking about some sort of consistency, we're thinking about your confidence and what that looks like.

Speaker 1:

I'm actually looking up a text message from a former client. She texted me this morning and she was so freaking proud of herself and she basically was sharing with me that when we were coaching together, something I told her was that she needed to adopt an athlete mentality, because this woman loves to do certain forms of exercise and and she wants to do that. But she was kind of being a perfectionist about it, you know, sometimes petty about it, you know, like there was just different things happening when her mindset was not aligning where what her actual long-term goals were. So she was telling me this story about how she did not have part of her equipment that she needed to go to her class the following day, so she wasn't going to be able to go and all and immediately she was like oh, I can't go to my class, so I'm going to work out at home. Was she super happy about it? No, but what she was super happy about was that she told me in the past she would have not worked out at all because she didn't have the equipment to go to this class. But instead, this time she immediately was like oh, I have this other option. And she was like I remember when you told me that I needed to adapt an athlete mentality and I told her this is what I texted back to her I said, yes, the pivot game is strong, the end goal is top of mind, the commitment has deepened, the confidence is strong, so good.

Speaker 1:

This is a person being out of fucking perfectionist, petty mindset. She has the bigger goal in mind. The little details that get in the way of execution. She's pivoting through that shit. It's not going to stop her. It may slow her down, but it's not going to stop her from executing at a certain level. To add coins to that wellness jar, all right.

Speaker 1:

And this now goes into the last piece of it. The first one was situational right, the situations around you overwhelm you, but then it goes into yourself and you holding yourself back with perfectionism. And the third one is others, others. This goes into envy and jealousy. Okay, now I'm going to tell you a little story that's correlated to this. What I want to tell you is that when you focus on others and what they're doing and you're so obsessed with that, you're missing your own freaking blessings. You're missing your own journey and what you do have and what's in front of you and what you do have access to. And I'll share a story. And I'll share a story.

Speaker 1:

We were, we, my kids wanted to go to a clothing store and one of my kids needs more. The younger one, like needs more decent looking tops than the older one. So my partner, my husband, grabs three shirts for my younger son and my older son grabs one shirt. Now my younger son throws a fit in the store because what he actually wants is this Minecraft shirt. First of all, I've spoken to him about marketing and how they slap on stickers into the same old t-shirt. They mark up the price. La, la, la la. I'm teaching them about marketing. Hella, young, because you need to know how companies are out here to get you, anyway. So he wants these Minecraft shirts and we tell him that he gets to earn a Minecraft shirt, since they are double and triple the price as the other shirts that we're trying to get him. And because we've been working on behavior, we're like, sure, we'll get it for you, but you're going to have to earn these with behavior at school, at home, your grades, blah, blah, blah, right, and in the meantime we're going to get you these ones.

Speaker 1:

Can I tell you the fit that this kid threw in the store because we decided not to get him those Minecraft shirts? And then he starts to say mind you, we got him three shirts and my other kid got one. Then he starts to say that we love his brother more, that we're so much nicer to him and we don't care about him, and all that you know, you know. Going back to petty right, and I told him I'm like, let me tell you something. You are so focused on your brother and what he has that you're totally missing what you have. Your brother got one shirt and you got three, and you're totally missing that. You're totally missing the blessing that you have in front of you and what you do have, because you are so worried about another person and what they have. Okay. And then I thought to myself I am always thinking about wellness, y'all. I thought to myself, oh my gosh, this is exactly what happens in wellness when we don't mind our own damn business and follow our own plan.

Speaker 1:

Because there's been a couple of times where a client tells me oh, but she, but she. But look at her, we're the same age and look at, you know, like how fit she looks and look at how this clothes looks on her and look at how strong she is and look at what she can do and look at how she can move and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, this holds you back because you're so focused on the other person that you are not executing on what you need to do to get to wherever you want to be. That's number one. Two most of the time, you're really missing the context of it.

Speaker 1:

I had a client once who kept telling me about this woman who was the same age as her and she looks so great and she was exercising and all of that, and I was like, okay, let's look like what's happening. And it just so happened. I scrolled to the bottom of this woman's Instagram page and it went back about five years Now this is probably when she started posting, because five years into her page she still looked pretty fit. And I asked my client I was like, have you been working out for five consistent years? She was like no, she was barely just starting. And I was like, okay, so if you were to have been exercising consistently for the last five years, you would most likely resemble something like this at the same age as her.

Speaker 1:

Now you're missing the point, right, because you're so worried and so pity party about yourself when you just need to get to work. You need to put in the work. You cannot expect to be strong AF to fit, to close, to fit you how you want them to fit you and you know like, whatever your goal is in wellness, at whatever age, and be envious and jealous of someone else who has been putting in the fucking work. I am not here to tell you is an easy journey or like rainbows and butterflies all the time, but people who really want it really stick to it and they invest the money and they invest the time and they do whatever it takes within their resources, right Within their capacity to stick to the plan and grow from there. And you know, this client was like oh my God, it's going to take me like five years, 10 years, and I was like it doesn't need to take that long.

Speaker 1:

Why are we also comparing timelines? You don't know this person's life circumstances. You don't know what she's had to navigate to get to where she is right like there's so much that can happen. So to compare our journeys to each other is a terrible idea. You will continuously set yourself up for failure when you are just looking at what someone else has and not what's right in front of you and what you have access to and what you can do, sure you will not get anywhere. And being mad at yourself for not being further along. Baby, just stick to it, you will get there sooner or later. You will get there faster that you know.

Speaker 1:

The body has an ability to change quicker than I say when you have the right perspective on progress that's what I wanted to say. When you have the right perspective on progress, because another thing too is that we place perfectionism on progress, where you're not quote unquote going to let yourself celebrate or be happy until you reach X weight or X size or whatever that is and that is not a fun place to be. Why would you punish yourself in that way? So something I do a lot with my clients is really so something I do a lot with my clients is really check in on what actual progress looks like, because it happens faster than you think. It's just probably not what you want at the moment, but it's definitely part of the journey and it definitely is. Coins in the evidence bank of what you're doing is working. The evidence bank of what you're doing is working. But you cannot expect to work out and eat well for three months and get the results of somebody who's been consistent within their definition. Right, consistency looks different every single day. Let's get that through our brains too.

Speaker 1:

Like someone who's been working out or doing this for five years, six years, seven years, 10 years, where it has been their lifestyle for so long, we can admire them, we can be inspired by them. We can really look and see what it takes, the work that you have to put in to get there. Even the best athletes that you see like. When you see athletes performing and like doing their thing let's say, simone Biles at the Olympics um, all the basketball players right now, the playoffs or whatever is going on right now. You see them at the games. They don't just show up to the court or to the gymnasium and they're amazing like that. They might have some sort of natural talent to hold on to, but they hire the best coaches. They hire and put together the best teams to support them. They don't do this by themselves. It's not one day you show up and you're amazing. It is work when you don't see them. You just see them when they show up on TV or on an endorsement or a press conference. You don't see the day in and the day out that it takes to look that amazing for those few hours on television.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so when you are jealous or envious, I want you to look back on yourself and use that to propel yourself to be as dedicated as those people who you admire. Cool, so now I'm going to give you just a few tips. If you're not, let's say, realizing that you're overwhelmed or that perfectionism is taking over or you're envious or jealous right of others, the first thing is awareness right, start to tap in a little bit more into how you're feeling and so that you can catch yourself and give yourself time to do this. Building self-awareness takes time right, and if you see yourself spinning out and complaining or doing whatever, that's okay. You're having a human experience and hopefully you'll be able to be like, oh, I think I'm overwhelmed, like I'm screaming, I'm yelling, I'm avoiding, I'm being mean to myself or others, like what's happening. And then if you catch yourself being overwhelmed or envious or trying to execute something with perfection, then you're able to do something about it. So maybe you can cut back on whatever it was that you were doing right, like you can break it down more or you can do something to help yourself. You can make a plan for yourself, you can make an investment, you can see what your actual capacity is and do it anyway, even if you are bitter about it or you want to be petty about it. Go ahead, but at least you're still executing on it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, then, like actually I'm talking about tip number two, because it's break it down, or ask for help when you notice that there's stuff in the way of what you want to do. There's a client who really wanted to exercise, but she had a lot of thoughts in between wanting the desire to and the execution, and we broke it down in manageable steps to meet her capacity. We dug into her mindset about it and we broke it down to meet her capacity at the time. And guess what? Now she's actually going to workout classes, which is something that was unimaginable for her to do. And sometimes the thought of breaking it down is so overwhelming that you kind of freeze. So this is where you need to ask for help, so someone else can help you break this down with you so that you can go and do what it is that you want to do.

Speaker 1:

Number three is give yourself time to feel silly. It's not going to feel amazing and great right away. You're doing something new, you're adopting a new lifestyle, you're going to new workout classes or you're cooking for the first time. You're really making a change. I want you to think back. At many a times you probably did new things and it felt kind of weird and it felt off and you might've felt silly or embarrassed or things like that. It's just part of the process. You're just going to have to show up. But again, you don't need to do it at a level where you don't have the capacity to do that and you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to retreat. You can take it bit by bit so that you feel silly a little bit at a time and it's not so overwhelming that you'll never do what you want to do again. All right.

Speaker 1:

Number four is work with what you got. It doesn't have to be the perfect outfit and the perfect gym and the perfect day and the perfect meal and the perfect. No, remember, we're not doing perfect. We're not doing that. You're going to work with what you got and that is in whatever sense of the word. Whatever clothes you got, you're going to show up with that. You're going to show up at whatever exercise you can show up to, whether that's walking or a free class at the park or a community room or a church, whatever. Work with what you got. You got some parts of a meal at home and the other one is takeout. You work with what you got. You need to order out. You work with what you got. What do you have and how do you work around that? And that is one of the main things I help my clients with how to use their wellness creativity to work with what they got, because a lot of times my clients are traveling, my clients are working long days outside their home or inside their home. They're doing a lot of things, and to have the expectation that everything is going to be built perfectly around you is going back to petty perfectionism. Okay, learning how to work with what you got will help support your nervous system, which is essential to overall wellness as well. It will build your confidence and it will keep you moving in your journey instead of retreating.

Speaker 1:

All right, and the last one is freaking work for it. Freaking work for it. Earn your results. They're so much more rewarding. Stop the whining, stop the complaining or I mean, I guess I love to whine and complain, but I get the work done, especially mostly with exercise.

Speaker 1:

When my trainer tells me to do certain things, I'm like ugh, this is gross. I'm going to throw up, but I do it anyway. I do it. I trust the process. I know it's going to be hard. I know that that's not the fun part. I know that's not the exciting part. It's not meant to be. Real wellness is boring as hell. Real wellness is boring. It's not trendy, it's not exciting, it's not going to fill you with joy all the time. But guess what? You have to do that in any sort of journey that you want specific results in. I don't understand why you might think that we bypass that in wellness. I mean, I know, because we've been trained by society and the media, that that's how it happens With diet culture, with new weight loss drugs that just magically have you drop weight, right? If you want to learn more about that, I have an episode on Ozempic, so I recommend you go and listen to that.

Speaker 1:

But work for those results. Just stick to the plan, trust the process. Learn what actual progress looks like Head down. Put in the work Okay. A lot of people are not willing to do that. I see a lot of people just complaining. Just complaining oh my God, I need to lose weight before the summertime. Oh my God, how am I going to lose weight if I love to eat so much? Oh my God, this is so hard. Oh my God, it takes so much time. Oh my God, it's so expensive. Oh my God, shut the fuck up. Expensive. Oh my God, shut the fuck up. It's enough. Either you put in the work or you accept your current reality, or you accept your current reality and you also decide that you're going to put in the work, okay.

Speaker 1:

Complaining is not going to get you anywhere. Complaining is not going to get you any magical results. Complaining is not going to make things easier. So you have to make a decision. Work for your damn results that you want, earn that shit, and it's going to feel so much more rewarding. The same energy that it takes to feel down and to complain and to whine and to wonder and to mope and to sulk, and all of that. You can just take the same energy and just execute.

Speaker 1:

And I'll tell you where the fun part comes in. The fun part comes in when you try on clothes and they fit bombfuckingcom on you and you feel sexy as fuck. When you go to a concert and you can twerk and you can be here and you can get down and you not feel like you got hit by a truck the next day. When you're able to run around and play with your kids, with your nieces or nephews, with your grandkids, whoever, and you don't feel like death and you don't need to tell them that mommy needs to slow down, that tia needs to slow down. When you can pick them up and swing them around, when you can go traveling and drag your maleta around and put it up over your head and eat food outside and not feel like you just ran a marathon and you need days to recover on vacation because traveling was so hard on you. That's the fucking fun part. That's the exciting part when you get to live the life that you want to on the spot because you've been training for that shit. You can just go do whatever you want. Where you're invited. You can go dance, you can have fun. You can do whatever fun means to you. You can go do that. That is the fun. It's not when you bumping weights at the gym and when you making meals when you want to is not that. Or when you're saying no, thank you to things that are not aligned with your journey. That's not the fun part. The fun part is when you get to live your best fucking life.

Speaker 1:

Cool, listen, if you want support with this kind of, let's say, thought work mindset into wellness. How to shift because you are in those seasons of I want to take action and I don't know how. I don't even know how to break down the parts that feel so overwhelming. I don't even know how to focus on myself. I want to try that now. Or the things you've tried before in your twenties and your early thirties are just not lining up anymore.

Speaker 1:

If you feel like this is just completely mind blowing and you really want to join this particular group of people including myself where it's like we always keep wellness as part of our priorities at some capacity Again, consistency looks different often. Okay, it doesn't. It's not about being perfect, and if you don't know how to do that, you want to break up with the perfection of it. You want to learn about boring ass wellness that will actually get you exciting results that you can keep up with, then I'm going to invite you for three months of one-on-one food and hormone health coaching with me. I have six spots open for three months of coaching. That means it's 12 calls and I have this offer open until June 30th. So you have about two months to hop in on one of those six spots and in three months you can accomplish so much, all right.

Speaker 1:

So if you feel really seen, if you are looking for a way where wellness feels grounding, with grace and love towards yourself, and you want to work on this from a totally new perspective, while also working on the strategy of food, of exercise, stress management, holistic wellness, when we're looking at the full picture of you and have personalized strategies and feedback for your life, your schedule, your likes and needs, then this is definitely where you want to be, so I invite you to book a free consultation call, absolutely free. We can talk more about it in with the link in the show notes, or go ahead and send me an email or a DM on Instagram. I cannot wait to support you on this journey and help you transform your life. Okay, friends, okay, I will see you next week. Thank you for joining me on this one Bye.