Overwhelmed And Over It With Christine Arylo

 

Women face so much more pressure than men, no matter where they are—be it in how they look, what they achieve, or just by being who they are. And this has manifested into the way women see themselves, causing them to work extra hard and fall faster into burnout, overwhelm, and self-sacrifice. Christine Arylo, a transformational leadership advisor, three-time bestselling author, and host of the popular Feminine Power Time podcast, joins Corin Grillo to talk about how we can overcome this and become the best and loved version of ourselves. Bringing her book, Overwhelmed and Over It, she highlights the underlying causes of some of the extreme overwhelm and breakdown moments women most likely get into. She then offers great solutions that we can practice to help us unhook from the systems, access that deeper wisdom, and embrace our power. Follow along to this conversation and discover how you can have a fierce feminine heart free from overwhelm.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Overwhelmed And Over It With Christine Arylo

If you are struggling, you’ll want to check out this episode. I sit down with Christine Arylo, MBA. She’s the author of one of my favorite book titles, especially after all the things we’ve been going through. Her book is titled Overwhelmed and Over It. Are you over it? Christine is a transformational leadership advisor, three-time best-selling author, and a host of the Feminine Power Time Podcast.

She’s recognized worldwide for her work helping women to make shifts happen in the lives they lead, in the work that they do, and in the world they wish to create. She would be a great resource right about now as so many of you are transforming, dreaming, and trying not to get taken down with all the external madness going on. I do hope that you listen in and enjoy this conversation.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or frazzled, tune in to know how to navigate the system built for burn out, which our system is built for burning out, and how to stop over-giving and the number one thing you should be doing everyday to feel happy and sustained. I loved my conversation with her. I hope you do, too.

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How about I pull your card before we fully get started here? Go ahead and breathe with me. These cards are simple. I love them because they’re little bird cards and then I get to learn about the pleasures of the birdies. The osprey, this has come up in one of my shows. Do you know what an osprey is?

I do because I live in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t know if I’ve seen one. I might have seen one. I mostly see eagles out my front door. I see eagles, herons, ducks, geese, and crows. It’s like an estuary. I do know what an osprey is.

That’s great. It says, “Your success is now at hand. Allow the abundance to flow to you effortlessly.” How does that strike you and how it relates to your life now?

I’ve been a bread achiever, a go-getter, and a hustler. You have to make it happen. I have been reforming that and getting that into balance and harmony ever since I realized that I didn’t have the feminine. I had the masculine tone well. This was 2006. I heard my inner wisdom say, “You need the feminine.” I said, “Yes, I do. I don’t know what that is.” That began my journey. That began the solution that is in this book. I feel like the world is finally ready for it. I’ve been teaching this for a long time, well over a decade. The world wasn’t ready. Some people were ready for it but the masses weren’t ready.

The times are changing. It’s interesting because that was around a similar time period. Maybe it’s a couple of years later that I started having encounters with the feminine and started being called more to discover more and more of what that is. It seems like a delicate balance. We’ll talk about that a little bit more. This book of yours, I love the title, Overwhelmed and Over It: Embrace Your Power to Stay Centered and Sustained in a Chaotic World. Do you remember what I said? You’re a visionary. That title couldn’t be more appropriate than where we stand now.

It’s true. I have been researching and living this for over a decade. I’ve been writing the book for three years. I wanted to write a different book first because I have these other two books that come after this one. This time I wrote a trilogy once. I didn’t know I was going to write a trilogy. This time, the universe is like, “These are the three books. This is the order.” I’m like, “No. I want to write this other book first.” It was like, “No. You write this book first.”

As a visionary, you’re not meant to play by the rules.

I am constantly arguing with my angels about that. It’s like, “Are you sure?”

I was writing for the future to be in the now.

To be present. Tell me, what was your inspiration for writing this book besides they made you?

I have to go all the way back to when I first published my first book in 2009. My background is MBA. I was an MBA corporate executive. I did that whole thing until I realized that I wasn’t free. I had a hard time fitting into the system and playing by all the rules. As a visionary, I’m not meant to play by the rules. There wasn’t enough flexibility. I decided to leave that and do my own thing and that included writing this first book.

That book, like many of us, whenever we’re doing something for the first time, took a lot of energy. I was working two jobs. I was consulting. Also, I was paying for the book tour and all of that and paying my bills. I was building and creating my transformational leadership work. I had been out on the road for four months traveling and being on TV and all of that, which looks glamorous. I have to tell you, in retrospect, it is not glamorous to be flying around and spend three minutes talking about celebrity breakups. My first book is on self-love and relationship. It was a hot August, a tar-melting day in Dallas, Texas. I finished some three-minute interviews about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.

I was going to ask you, who’s the hot couple back then?

That was a hot couple.

What was your formal take on that breakup?

Can we talk about something else that matters?

I’m here to haunt you. I’m The Ghost of Christmas Past.

This is what we’re talking about as women. Let’s get into the heart of why many women end up with Narcissus in their lives. There are so many other things to talk about. What had happened was I was spending all this time and energy and no matter how much I worked, there was never enough time and money. I was making an impact.

I was in his hotel room feeling defeated and burned out and having what I call my first superwoman sob moment. I don’t know if you’ve ever had one of these or not or anyone reading has had these. That can be superman sob, superbeing sob. It’s where the pressure is so much the tears start to flow. Have you had one? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Yes. It’s the story of my life.

What I didn’t know back then was that those are signs that something’s out of alignment. There’s something that’s out of whack. If your spine was out of whack, it would hurt and then you would cry because it was like, “Ouchy.” When there’s something in your life that is out of whack, you have these superwoman sob moments.

We’ve become resilient as women that we’ve become over tolerant. We take a breath and we quit our jobs. We think, “Maybe I can quit my life. Should I move to Italy or someplace?” We think about these things but we end up back in the same cycle. We’ve been doing this for decades. You can trace it back to the early ‘60s and ‘70s. We’ve been trying to fix this burnout, overwhelm, self-sacrifice stuff for years since women have entered the workforce, and/or become able to be entrepreneurs. We’re more burned out and overwhelmed than ever. We’ve been stretching to make it all work.

I hit this moment after the superwoman sob moment, realizing that I had constructed a life that was unsustainable and wasn’t even giving me what I wanted. I came home, restructured my business, and started to look around and be like, “We are accepting this way of working that isn’t working. Why do we feel so much pressure to always do more but yet we never feel like we’re doing enough?” That led me to some pretty deep research to get to the root underneath the overwhelm, burnout, and self-sacrifice versus trying more self-care strategies.

I’m a therapist and I talk to a lot of people. At the beginning of my private practice, I talked to a lot of women. One of the things I noticed right away is that everyone thought that their failure was personal in a way. It was them that are struggling with whatever it is they’re struggling with. A lot of times, it was mothers with young children who are completely overwhelmed because they’re doing the volunteer, working, mothering and doing all this stuff.

What became clear to me over those years was that almost right away is that this is not a personal problem. This is a deeper problem. It’s not a personality flaw that you feel overwhelmed. I love what you say in your book. From your perspective, what is underlying some of this extreme overwhelm, the breakdown moments, and all of that?

In the last seven years of researching this, I found at least seven root reasons. At the beginning of Overwhelm and Over It, it’s the foundational part to understand that there are what I call systemically generated roots. That has caused us to not be able to solve this with work-life balance and by productivity myself. I got my time management. There are also self-generated imprints that drive us to strive, drive, grind, over-caretake, overdue, and over-promise. Which one do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about the systemically generated ones, or do you want to talk about the self-generated imprints that we have?

Let’s talk about the system first because I feel like we’re in a period of time where all systems are being unpacked, deconstructed, looked at, and we can see the mechanics behind it. That’s an important starting place because it’s foundational.

When I was writing the book, this was when the pandemic started in the US. I wouldn’t wish a pandemic on anyone, for sure. I was like, “Maybe now people will believe me and will listen to me.” The systems are jacked up. The best analogy I have is we become a fish in a fishbowl who don’t know that we’re in a fishbowl because we’re swimming around trying to survive and keep our heads above the water.

What I say to every woman I talk to you and everyone reading right now, it’s not your fault. The systems that create our society, all the systems, government, healthcare, education, business, corporate, law, religion, all of it have a consciousness based on when they were created. Most of the ways we operate as a society were created in the early 1700s and mid-1700s to fuel the Industrial Revolution, which then fueled the age of information, which then fueled and jumpstart at the age of technology.

At the core of all of those, that consciousness is accumulation, consumption, and domination. How do we grow bigger, faster, and be number one? I don’t know that if we could have gotten to where we are right now in humanity a different way. What I know is the consciousness that got us here can’t take us to where we’re going.

This is what we’re seeing with the fires that are happening. It’s greed. This grows faster mentality and always be doing more, that’s at the center of everything. Look at the stock market. This is like a linchpin. Stocks and companies are valued based on how much they grow year after year. If you are not growing bigger and faster, then you get dinged on Wall Street for this.

This is why I left Corporate America because I’m like, “This whole system is jacked up right now.” We can’t be a $15 billion company who does good for our people. You have to keep making more. We’re all connected. We’re all sucked into that. Our education system was created to create little workers to go into the factories to make stuff or to manage the people who make stuff or to figure out how to make more money.

I have my MBA. I was trained in all of this. I would sit in my MBA class and be like, “What are we talking about?” It’s more important for us to see this. We’ve been entranced, even those who are entrepreneurs. Some of my best friends who are entrepreneurs run what I call the beast model. In that beast model, you got to keep working and feeding the beast, making more, being out there, and being seen.

This is why no matter how hard you try, no matter how much work-life balance or self-care you do, you can’t seem to create a sustainable reality. What’s happening right now is the pressure is becoming so much, especially if you think about working mothers. We keep piling stuff on our plates because that’s what we do as women and there’s no more room. There wasn’t any more room. It’s getting to a breaking point. Women in the world can stand up and from their fierce feminine hearts say, “No more.”

I’m going to say ditto on everything you said. I am fully passionate about the way that we’ve been hypnotized into perceiving our personal value. Somehow, our value is attached to a dollar sign or how “productive” we are. When you look at the roots of humanity and where we started, it’s unnatural what we’re doing right now.

It is not human. We operate more like machines than we do as human beings.

 

We’re already acting like cyborgs. I want our readers to know that it’s not their fault. We are all caught up in this momentum that was designed years ago, at least during the Industrial Revolution.

It depends on who you ask.

There are a lot of people that I know that feel like failures because they have not met the conditions for what a valuable person would be. Whether it’s your body type, income or career, we’re not meeting up. It’s an impossible standard to meet up with. The system is an important aspect of that. Maybe the first step is to acknowledge you’re not sick. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your overwhelm is a sign of your sanity, not your insanity.

It’s an indicator to wake up. Instead of sucking it up, I would like everyone for us to wake up. I can say this because I’ve had many moments. I call them our no more moments when it’s like, “I can no longer operate this way.” Instead of waiting until you get cancer, you get sick, you get a divorce, or you go into bankruptcy. For anyone that’s had that happened, it’s not your fault. It’s not about fault, you are doing the best you could in a system that has been built for burnout and to suck as many human resources.

We’ve become resilient as women that we’ve become over tolerant.

The planet is possible to fuel this ridiculous growth and make a small handful of people wealthy, in control, and in power. This is why the subtitle is called Embrace Your Power to Stay Centered and Sustained. Why I wrote Overwhelmed and Over It the first in this leadership series is because you can’t even get to the place of like, “How do we create a new world? How do we create a different way?”
If humans made the systems, this is the saving grace. We’ve made every system that existed. Humans made up the market systems. Humans created the education system. You can change it but you can’t do that if you’re barely surviving, burned out, overwhelmed, or if you’re trying to make it day by day.

I know what you teach, Corin, what I teach, and what many of you have already embraced. My hope with Overwhelmed and Over It and the wisdom that’s in this book is that we have to get stabilized and centered in here. Unhook the ways that we can from the system so that we can access that deeper wisdom for how do we create a society based on wellness, wholeness, interconnectedness, and sustainability. That starts with the small and significant choices we make in how we design our own lives and our own families first.

You also mentioned something about a fierce feminine heart. I talk a lot also about having a fierce heart from the work that I’ve done. Instead of a fearful heart, fear converts into fierceness with the right kind of love, energy, passion, and courage. What do you mean by a fierce feminine heart?

I have a story and a metaphor. The best metaphor I have is a mother lion who protects her cub. She’s fierce. It’s like, “Do not F with my cubs.” We have that inside of ourselves, that great mother inside of us. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or woman, everyone has this in them. It’s this great mother who’s like, “Not on my watch. No more. We’re not doing it this way.” It comes up from what I would call fierce love.

I remembered years ago, I was doing a talk in the Bay Area for a group of real estate professionals. I was talking to them about how it’s not their fault that they feel stressed out, overwhelmed, how the system’s been built for burnout, and how we’ve been told to do more. I paused and I said, “What do you all think about that?” Corin, it was amazing. This little petite 5’2” woman jumps up out of the crowd and her belly is full. She’s 8 and a half months pregnant. She speaks for all of us from that fierce feminine heart. She goes, “That’s bullshit.” Everyone started clapping. It’s like, “Yes.” I’m like, “That’s the fierce feminine.”

She was pregnant and carrying the next generation and that she was embodying the mother. If all women woke up and access that fierce feminine heart, this world would shift so fast. We would be like, “It’s not happening this way. We’re going to do it differently. We don’t know how yet but this is where we’re going.” Human nature is desired to sustain life. You talked about this unnatural thing. We’ve been imprinted in all these ways to act unnaturally to what it is to be humankind.

Can you capitalize that humankind, the kind part?

One of the things I love about the work that you do in our conversation here is that there are powers in our hearts and it gets discounted a lot and gets woo-wooed a lot. Everything’s about mindfulness, mental, logical, and rational. If you and I and everyone were connected to their heart and understood how to access their deeper wisdom, there’s no way you’d be asleep. You would be like, “I’m not going to do that.” Your inner wisdom would be like, “Let’s go this way.” What fuels revolution and possibility is our heart and then the mind helps figure it out not the other way.

It gets the logistics in.

It’s the logistical manager but it is not the place to make decisions from.

It should not be the only authority in the house there. It’s the same with your heart. Without any logic or rational thinking, things can go awry as well. Both of these little beasts in coordination can solve a lot of problems. When you were talking, I feel the same way you feel. There’s something about the activation of the woman, the fierceness, the fierce heart, the protectiveness, the nurturer but not nurturer like, “Have some mother’s milk.” It’s like, “I will also slay you if I need to, if it’s causing injustice and whatever.”

I have this vision. However, I had come into a few different encounters where I was in a way disheartened. Not that I expect everyone to be able to embody their full self, especially at a time like this. There’s this woman that posted a meme. Do you know that seventeen-year-old that carried an AR-15 into the protest and shot a few people? It was then glorified by the President. This is a woman that I knew as a child when I lived in Texas for about seven years and close to the family.

I saw that she posted a meme that Kyle was a hero. I was sad because she’s a mother with a teenage son. I was trying to appeal to her human-to-human. I’m like, “You’re a mother, too. When are we untrained children with guns?” It made me sad. For me, that’s not a political issue. That’s like, “I’m a mom. You best believe I’d be upset if my kids thought it was a good idea to go in with a gun.” It’s like, “God, if not the mothers, then who?” If not, the mothers can be the voice of reason and to stand for, how about let’s not fucking kill each other? To me, that’s basic. It does make me sad.

I know that we’re in the churning right now. We’re in the middle of the transformation. It’s important for us to see the ideologies, the conditioning, and the hypnosis that we’re under. As painful as it is, there’s no other way. If we’re still like, “Pie in the sky. Everyone must feel like I feel.” The other side is not bad people, no matter what side you’re on when you stop dehumanizing people and you allow yourself to see them. I allowed myself to see her because I knew her. Because I knew her, I could not be like, “What a dump.” I couldn’t go there. I thought that was important and cathartic for me. It’s not what I was hoping for. She was not willing to deal with the cognitive dissonance of being a mother of a teenager and then also supporting that action.

There’s a lot we could unpack there. I’m going to pull a thread. I’m going to pull a piece of the vine. We’re both podcasters. That’s why I love being on podcasts. It’s such a great format. We can have some meaningful dialogue. When I started my podcast, Feminine Power Time, one of the reasons I started it was because I realized a couple of things. One is that women and men, all beings, have a fundamental misunderstanding about what power is. We don’t understand power and what it is because it’s distorted. Two, women and men are trying to play a game. That is not the game we want to play.

It’s not our game.

It’s a bad game to play. Because people are invested in that game, they’re blind to what’s happening. They will protect that game no matter what. We got to start having some different conversations here and get into the heart. When that heart does open to humankind, it’s a different thing. The piece that is important for us in terms of the conversation we’re having is that it’s about power.

When I was writing Overwhelm and Over It, I was like, “I will only write this book if it gives people a path out of overwhelm, burnout and self-sacrifice. I do not want to write a book that’s another seven steps to stress management. Nobody needs that book. We all know what to do. I want to help people liberate themselves out of the system and also out of the imprints that cause them to act in unconscious ways.” What you’re talking about with this woman, she has unconscious imprints in her. She can’t see. You could talk to her until you’re blue in the face and have seven eyeballs and jump up and down and she’s still not going to listen to you.

She represents in a different way. All of us have all been imprinted and programmed. We’re talking about becoming unnatural in certain ways.

We all have this inside of us. It’s not about size. That’s part of the whole thing. This whole Republican, Democrat, Black, White, good, bad, work, life, it’s what’s called the duality reality. When you’re in a duality reality, which is what the construct of consciousness is on the planet, you will continue.

It’s constructed and not by us.

Rich, poor, profit, nonprofit, the whole thing. You can’t change it. In addition to my MBA, I’ve studied indigenous wisdom, yogic wisdom, and deep feminine wisdom. I combined all of those things to create new possibilities for us. One of the things that they say in indigenous wisdom is that until you take down the hierarchical structures of how the world works, you will never find peace.

When I do organizational consulting and leadership consulting with people, I have them put their teams and also their families into circles instead of into swim lanes or hierarchies so that they can constellate around a common theme. If we were to constellate our lives, this is where it becomes personal. There are two things. One, you can’t change the whole world. This is how we leak our power.

The last section of the book is called Liberate Your Power. One of the key wisdom bites and principles is don’t take it all on and stay focused on your part. Do not take it all on because if you take it all on, it’s going to drain your chi, it’s going to drain you, distract you, and pull you off your center.

 

We need each one of us to do our part. Corin, you do your part. I’ll do my part. Everyone else, do your parts. If we all stand where we’re supposed to be versus being like, “The kids are drowning. The whales are drowning. Politics is crazy pants. I’m on Facebook and I’m trying to make everyone love each other.” Whatever it is, you’re going to be overwhelmed. Part of embracing your power is you got to know what your part is and then you got to stand there fiercely, focus, and believe it’s enough.

Staying in your lane and also taking action. Service and doing your part are important right now but not doing too much. I love how you point out that’s how you get fatigued. I work for me on a micro-scale and then also with my platform. My dyadic conversation with this woman that I was talking about was my part at the moment. It’s presenting and staying loving. I never attacked her. I was curious. I feel like maintaining that curiosity and that openness is a good idea. One of the images that came to me early on about leadership and my part was that, especially women, we want to help every situation. I love animals. I love the planet. I love all the things. I love my people. I love the fam.

Just like stars have their own frequency, brightness, and energy, we don’t see planets colliding because they know their orbit and they stay in their orbit. That’s how there’s this synchronicity. They’re synchronized around the solar system. “You do you with your perfect ellipse and the second you start coming into my lane, that’s when we get into trouble.”

I got a lane. I agree with everything you’re talking about. We have to shift it from lanes because lanes are linear. If you saw this on page 280 in the book, I’m showing her a glyph that says, “Take it all on,” and it has a three-headed woman in it who’s overwhelmed. There are animals and the weather. She’s like, “I got to do something about this.” Next to it is this glyph that says, “Focus on my part.” It’s all these people who are standing on top of the Earth and they have two threads in their hands. One on the left, which is for what I’m here to receive like my curriculum. The other side on the right is what I’m here to give.

We operate more like machines than we do as human beings. 

It looks like when you would play the parachute game in grade school where you’d whoosh up the parachute and you can see everybody. I can see you over here and I’m like, “She’s got the golden vine and she’s got the angels. Excellent.” I have the part that I do with feminine power, helping people understand power and what it is, and apply it to their lives. Even though at the center, we’re like, “Yeah, wholeness. Yeah, wellness.”

We do our part and we know our ellipse. We know like, “This is what we’re doing. We’re doing it altogether. It’s orchestrated, but it’s all different.” I love that graphic that you put in your book as well.

I know there’s a lot of lights out there reading this who are doing important work in the world. I want to share this one wisdom byte that’s in the Liberate Your Power that I see that will help us all stay in our orbit and in our frequency. The wisdom byte is when you find yourself in a situation where you can sense that you might be draining or distracting your lifeforce or your energy, or the chaos circus is going on, say to yourself, “I’m not going to waste my chi on that.” That statement came from Ann Richards, who was the former Governor of Texas, a woman in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. You’re from Texas. You might know Ann Richards.

Her daughter-in-law’s a student of mine and also an amazing teacher. One of the things she would say to Ann often is, “How do you deal with all this big boy politics and all of the people who don’t want to listen or hear you?” Ann would say, “I look at that and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to waste my chi on that.’” It sounds so simple, but it’s one of those things that can happen so easily, especially on social media.

One of the things I do with a lot of the women that I support in my leadership circles is we talk a lot about frequency. You have to think as the top three things to be aware of for yourself is, what is keeping your frequency harmonized and what’s tweaking it out and turning it around. This is why in Overwhelmed and Over It, there’s a lot of practices about how to keep your magnetic field clear and how to keep yourself centered in the South.

I’m not sure what you’re seeing in your practice. Even people that I know that have been meditating for 15 years or 20 years have their angels and they’re connected in, but they are getting tweaked out or what I call twizzlered up because it’s so easy to get twizzlered up and their frequency gets hijacked. They can’t be the most powerful light beings and beams that they are and/or they’re getting sick. I don’t know if you’re seeing that in your practice or not. It’s happening. There are real things we need to do to protect our energy fields. Even more practices in the morning and in the evening to keep this field and this frequency clear.

I keep on saying to my communities and wherever I go, “This is no longer a drill.” Those of us who picked up a lot of tools and some nice skills along the way for mental health or connection to spirit and all the things that support us, this is the year where we get to put our interventions to the task. We have to multiply it and do even more. I love how in your book, you talk about letting go of stress daily with intention is important. I would love for you to talk a little bit about different strategies for that if possible or whatever it is you want to say around that.

The old imprint is to manage stress. That’s the old program.

Stress is a given and you just have to manage it.

The yogis do say that it’s a distress that is not a given, which is what most of us put off. Healthy stress is called eustress, which helps you get stuff done, but distress is where most of us are living, then we think it’s normal until we have the super persons up. A lot of people who are awake have a morning practice, but less than 5% of the world has a morning practice they do every day that keeps their field set, protected, and connected.

Let’s assume we’ve got that covered. I’m going to go to the back end. The new imprint is released stress daily and I call it downshifting. The yogic wisdom is this, if you do not release stress from your body, your mind, emotional field, and psychic field eventually, it’s like not taking a shower. Your mind will stink, your emotions will go haywire, your psychic field is going to feel all crowded, and you’re going to be tweaked out like an instrument that’s off.

The practice of downshifting is consciously choosing how you end your day, how you complete your day, and how you release stress in a sustaining healthy way because we’re all releasing stress anyway. We just do it in sabotaging ways. Mine is sugar. Some people numb out to Netflix. Some people fall asleep with their clothes on the couch, and then get up at 1:00 and go to bed. Some people start the second day of work at 8:00. These are all self-sabotaging ways. No fault, no blame, no yours. When they become habitual, that’s when you’re not releasing that stress.

It’s not like, “I should go for a walk because that’s healthy.” You got to get that stuff out of your body. I don’t care what you do. For some people, it’s yoga. I do Kundalini yoga. For some people, it’s Pranayama. For some people, it’s Qigong. For some people, they go swimming. Some people take a hot bath. I go for a walk. My favorite is earthing. I can’t tell you how much benefit I get just by putting my feet or my body onto the Earth and let the Earth take the stress.

There’s a great movie called The Earthing Movie. It’s on YouTube. We all know this. He did all the research on it. I can be completely twizzlered out and within ten minutes of sitting on the ground where my sacrum is touching the ground and my feet are touching the ground without shoes, I come right back into my frequency. That’s part of what’s happening. We’re not grounding because we have cement between us or we have rubber between us.

Mantra is another one. Sound is another. Scent is another. Using essential oils, which we all know, will reset your frequency. Mantra is the same thing because it’s sound. Be mindful of the last hour of your day. What you put into your being emotionally, mentally, physically, and psychically, the last hour goes to bed with you. Do you want to that last hour downshift and only put things that are healthy and sustaining or it’s going to go with you into bedtime?

You think me watching my nightly dose of Ancient Aliens?

The last hour on the Ancient Aliens.

I’ll do it the second to the last hour.

That’s okay. You got to give yourself that hour. I get it. I have my own piece. For me, it’s brownies. I told myself, “You can eat the brownie at 4:00. Can I eat the brownie at 9:00 because then your body’s going to have to process all the sugar?” I’m sensitive to what I watch and I’ll be like, “I watched an episode of Outlander.” I wake up and I’m thinking of Jamie. In my head I’m like, “Get out of my psyche. I don’t have space for you.”

When I go to bed, I usually do my exercises of detoxing and talking to angels. I do my little magic. It’s probably twenty minutes worth. Right before that, I was probably watching Ancient Aliens.

It isn’t about doing more. This is game on. Many spiritual traditions talk about this. The signs that we’re seeing that this would let us all know game on, which means it’s about doing more. If you take something out, you got to put something else in that’s giving you what the thing is that is stealing some of your chi. What I would ask you is, what are you receiving from the Ancient Aliens?

I wouldn’t watch it if it didn’t excite me to death. I love it. I’m fascinated by it.

What’s it giving you? Is it stimulating your mind? Is it giving you a break from thinking of other things?

All of that. I spend so much of my time, my mental bandwidth, my creative bandwidth. I do a lot during the day. It’s like, “Ancient Aliens.” Instead of, “Jesus, take the wheel.” For me, it works well. I could see if I was watching violence or maybe some more chaotic shows, but to me, it’s a different version of history. I find it soothing.

If it’s sustaining you, then it’s good. This is the piece you got to be honest about everyone. You’re your own guru. You’re your own agency. We also have to be honest with ourselves. What I know is that last hour, you need to be downshifting. Sometimes you need a little downshifter to downshift. What I hear you saying is, “I need this thing to be able to downshift.” If you downshift a half-hour earlier, what might you be able to put in that half hour that would be nourishing you differently? Try it.

Do you think Real Housewives with that?

Yes.

I’m just kidding about that.

I don’t even know, but not.

I also love reading before. For me, I need two steps of downshifting because I go hard sometimes during the day, not in a negative way. Often, it’s in a creative way.

When I practice downshifting, there are three, you can’t go from 5th gear to 1st gear. The practice of downshifting was a huge practice of getting out of overwhelm and also being able to produce and create at high levels. Not stay at that high level or downshift so hard at the end of the day or the end of a weekend. It’s a practice for sure. I double dog, triple dog dare you. I experiment and see what happens for all of us. There are days that I can tell the difference in how I end my day and how I started the next day.

You make a good point, which is not just the end of day, but for me, the beginning of the day is potent. I have to be conscious of how I wake up and what I do. At the beginning of the day, I’m a little bit less fun, if you will. It’s more like soothing myself into the day, setting intentions, praying, and letting go of whatever Ancient Aliens dream I had.

If it’s sustaining you, then it’s good.

What Ancient Alien were you sleeping with last night?

I was in a spaceship talking to Ra. Maybe that’s why I have to spend so much delicate time in the morning.

Integrate if you’re hanging out with Ra in the stars and spaceships, that might be so.

Why wouldn’t I? The first day, I’ve had to make sure that my phone is not in the same room and things like that.

Simple but significant.

I’ll sit outside and talk to the birds and bring my daughters out there. Sometimes I start to get the teenager out with me but the little one will come. I do my best to set intentions that are full of love and start the day as a humankind.

The wisdom byte is how you start your day determines how you will live your day. I love that you invite your children because I’d get a lot from mothers who were like, “I have kids.” I’m like, “You’re the mother, so that means you’re the matriarch of your family. Embrace your power to teach your children what it’s like to set a rhythm and harmony in your home.” If they don’t want to participate because they’re teenagers, they don’t have to. They can opt-out and they can go to the room. The public spaces are set for harmony and peace. There’s supposed to be like a rise and shine that hit the fricking ground running and go. That’s part of the gift of this pandemic of people working from home.

I watch my neighbor who lives here next to me. He’s a lawyer who works in Seattle. During the pandemic, he was so happy but Glenmore locked down. I never saw the man ever because he gets up at 5:00 AM, leaves the house, and I don’t see him until he comes home at 8:00. I was a commuter once, so I get it. It’s no way to live. We’ve assimilated into it. He was so happy and now he’s back on track. My partner, Noah, saw him. He’s coming home at the dry-cleaning in one hand and the takeout on the other hand, he’s like, “You’re back to the old work pattern.” He’s like, “Yes, this is what it is. Daily grind.”

That’s the part where we started this whole conversation of like, “We can change this.” There’s no reason why people should be traveling two hours to go to work, sitting on public transportation at 6:00 AM, and not having space to hug their children. There’s a different way to live. It exists in our imaginations, our higher intelligence, and our hearts. The power is called harmonic defiance. You don’t have to go out and rage against the machine. You don’t have to even go out and be Joan of Arc. Choose to make choices differently in your life.

What you talked about inviting your daughters to sit with you, that’s a choice of harmonic defiance. “I’m going to invite my daughters to sit.” You’re opening that up as a possibility. You don’t have to tweet about it. You shouldn’t use social media about it. You do it. When you’re inspired to talk about it like we are right now, that’s great. Giving that to yourself and these daughters that you want to enjoy and savor this connection, that’s an important thing to do in the morning because then you go through your whole day and you’re already connected to each other. It doesn’t have to be two hours. Five minutes of sitting together is all it takes. All of a sudden, you got love connecting you and holding you.

Often, we’ll do that, even before her little school days. We sit out and do some lady gossip, talk to the birds and trees, whatever it takes. Especially combined with my career and with my family, and then with all the other things happening in the world, we’re all susceptible. We’re all walking a tightrope. We have to be diligent with the kind of energy we’re surrounding ourselves by, setting the tone. I appreciate that. This book, the title is insanely awesome. There’s one other thing I wanted to have you especially share and talk about, which was your capacity to receive and be able to receive. Can you share a little bit more? You talk about it in the book.

One of the imprints that keep us from having what we need and keeps us caught in bankruptcy is it’s better to give than receive. You’ve all heard this. When people give you a compliment, you’re going to refuse. You’re going to push it away. If people offer to help you, even taking a suitcase down in an airplane, “No, I’ve got it.” I can’t tell you the number of women who have come to my retreats when Noah, my partner, says, “Let me take your bags.” They’re like, “Back off. I’ve got it.” They’re going to beat him up if he tries to help them.

What’s happening for most of us is that we are like banks that give withdrawals all day long. We give to work, others, people, the projects we care about, and we don’t take in enough deposits. Even if we take in the deposits, we don’t retain the deposits. We give it back out again. We’re bankrupting ourselves all the time emotionally, physically, and mentally. We could do a whole podcast on receiving. Most of us have not been taught how to be receivers. We’ve been taught to be strong achievers. We value that in society. I value that. You value that.

 

We have also been taught to be selfless caregivers and we value that in our society. We condone people who were busy, “High five to you. She sacrificed everything for her family.” We venerate that. I’m like, “I don’t want to be a selfless caregiver.” There are moments we make sacrifices, but that as a way of life is not how it’s supposed to be.

It’s about being a generous caregiver and a strong achiever, but also an unapologetic receiver. What is happening across the board, men and women beings are not getting what we need. We just make do. We fill in the holes, compensate, overgive, overpromise, overcaretake, and then we are bankrupt. That’s why you see the uptick in mental illness and in anxiety. That’s why eight-year-olds are coming home and telling their mother, “I need to have anti-anxiety medicine.” That is why college deans are calling incoming freshmen, crispies, because they get to college and they’re so burned out from high school. They can’t function.

That’s why you see the uptick in thyroid disease and hormonal imbalances, which they’ll talk about like, “This is normal.” This is not normal. We are not receiving what we need financially, emotionally, and mentally. Big part of the work of receiving, which is so connected to the feminine, is part of what we’re learning to do with our superpower. It’s also a muscle that most of us have atrophied. Start with this piece of, “Christine is telling me giving and receiving.” There are thirteen kinds of overgiving.

I have a quiz, AmIOvergiving.com. You can take that quiz and it will help you figure it out. Notice where you’re overgiving in your work. Notice where you’re overgiving to your relationships. My challenge to you is to get those into harmony and balance. Redesign the way you’re working and the ways you’re relating that are draining you and are not sustainable or you’re giving more than as needed and valued. This will push on your self-worth, fear, and all kinds of things, which is the point because that’s how you break the imprint and that’s how you come through to a higher level of being worthy of giving and receiving in harmony.

Especially with the receiving part, understanding it like, “A give and a take? Wow.” We’re not raised to understand that. One of the bigger problems that I ran into with my clients over the years is that they’re so far away from themselves that it’s hard to even know what you need if you haven’t been in that query for decades.

It’s in the book and I posted a blog on this, too. This is why every morning, the top three practices that have kept me out of burnout I do a lifeforce reading and receiving check-in. I’ll teach you all. Everyone, close your eyes. Take a breath and let everything that we’ve said settle in and pull all of your energy, all of your focus back into your body. I feel like there’s a centered channel that runs through us. Imagine as if your body itself was a chalice or this centered channel has a charge to it like a battery. On a scale of 0 to 100, asking your inner wisdom and checking in on your body, what’s your lifeforce level at today? With 100 being totally full, the chalice is full or my energy is 100% charged. 0% is like, “I’m dead and I’m drained.” Half is half full or half charged. Let the number emerge. What’s your number, Corin?

Somewhere between 60% and 70%.

Mine is around 71%. Here’s the scale. If you’re at a 50 or below, you’re serving from your reserves, and the law is never served from your reserves because when you serve from your reserves like a battery or a cell phone or whatever, you cost more money and more time to come back up. Many people are serving from the reserves. It’s all about giving and receiving.

Close your eyes again. Ask yourself this question, “What do I need to receive today?” You’re going to go out and you’re going to give. You’re going to get from that chalice or your battery’s going to go down because you’re going to give and you’re going to use that charge. What do you need to receive today? Ask your inner wisdom. You might feel something or know something. If you’re having been talking to your body or your inner wisdom, that might not say anything, just ask. Make something up. What would you love to receive? Corin, what comes up for you?

I want to play baseball with my daughters.

That is receiving. You need to play with your daughters.

I’m realizing how much fun I have, especially when they’re chasing me with a ball because I scream loud and I can’t stop screaming. Screaming is good.

It’s a great stress releaser.

I have never made that connection. I scream my ass off and they’re chasing me. It’s so fun. That would empty out some stress.

If you’re on the ground, try it barefoot. If you have grass, you can run, and then you get the double dose, the earthing, and the releasing. You’re probably smiling and then you’re connected. That’s a good stress releaser for you. I got a gentle nourishing bath, so the opposite, but it’s okay, whatever you need. It’s never a seven-day trip to Tahiti. It rarely even cost any money. Here’s the thing, you got to give that to yourself. Watch what happens when you don’t and watch what happens when you do. It’s a grand experiment.

I’ve done that practice every day since 2012, when I wrote my second book, Madly in Love with ME. I had 25 events in four months and I couldn’t do it the other way. I have done that practice every day since. I have never ever burnout since then. There are a couple of other practices why, but because I catch myself, I’ve gotten as low as 40. That week, I cleared my entire schedule and I move. When you get low like that, you start to make changes. You reflow meetings, say no to things, ask for help, and ask for support. It’s a way that to monitor your lifeforce level so that you don’t go into the twenties where disease sets into your body in the 30s. You have to then refill those reserve tanks.

If you do nothing else in the morning, do that practice. You do it with your daughters. I do it with Noah. There’s a story about Rebecca in the book, what she does with her son, Joaquin. She asks and said, “What does your heart need today?” They play it with each other. It’s totally transferable for little people. My partner, Noah, and I, connect every morning. We know what each other needs. If I have a team meeting every week, we ask the team where everyone is and what they need. It’s a great way to be able to support each other and also know where other people are at.

That’s wonderful. That is fun. I’m excited to get to play baseball. It’s an ultra-sloppy version of baseball. It’s a little Wiffle ball.

You have fun. Everyone out there, whatever you said you needed to receive, do it. Give it yourself because if you don’t give it to yourself, no one will.

Is there anything else that you’d like to leave us with before we make our grand parting?

I would leave everyone with this one piece. I’ve been saying this a lot in Feminine Power Time. It’s been coming through to me. It’s as simple as breathe. I feel like what we need to do is breathe through this. We’re in the goo. We’re not going to wake up tomorrow and everything’s going to be normal because we don’t want to go back to normal and there will be a new something. Breathing, I know sounds so simple, but I’m finding like a lot of people aren’t breathing, or even I’m not breathing.

These practices of bookending your days, those are a breath. Wednesday mornings, I have a breath morning where I don’t schedule anything before 11:00. It’s my space morning. Saturdays are my Sabbath. I put breathers into my week as well as my month. The new moon is a breather. I reset so that these breathers put them into your day, the bookends, in the middle of a week, at the beginning of a moon cycle. Even at the end of the year, breathe, slow down in December. That’s what’s supposed to happen. Don’t just push through.

You will find it like giving birth in childbirth. They tell you to breathe and we’re birthing ourselves in a new world. Everybody, as simple as it sounds, breathe and use some of the structures that we’ve talked about to do that and receive what you need so that you can stay full. When you’re even 65 and above, you will show up in the world so much more compassionately, courageously, and calmly, and you’ll make wiser choices. It’s a tool for making wise choices and being able to be a good human in the world.

We could use a lot of that.

That’s what I would say. I’m thankful to be here with you all. Thank you for who you are in the world and for willing to continue to be able to show up. Thank you, Corin, for hosting this show. It’s good to be connected. I look forward to seeing how this all works itself out. If Overwhelmed and Over It can help you, go ahead and get a copy of the book. I invite everyone to connect with me on my podcast at Feminine Power Time. It’s the best way to stay connected to me.

FemininePowerTime.com, and her book is called Overwhelmed and Over It: Embrace Your Power to Stay Centered and Sustained in a Chaotic World. Thank you, Christine, for sharing your wisdom with us. I enjoyed our convo.

Me, too. Blessings, everyone.

Important Links:

• Overwhelmed and Over It
• Feminine Power Time Podcast
• AmIOvergiving.com
• Madly in Love with ME
• http://www.ChristineArylo.com

About Christine Arylo

Christine Arylo, MBA, the author of Overwhelmed and Over It. As a transformational leadership advisor, three-time bestselling author, and host of the popular Feminine Power Time podcast, she is recognized worldwide for her work helping women to make shift happen — in the lives they lead, the work they do, and the world they wish to create.

After years of working in corporate America and stretching herself way beyond her capacity, Christine woke up and realized that she had constructed an unsustainable life for herself.

This led her on a beautiful journey to get to the root of why we as a society feel so much pressure to always be doing more.

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