Raise your hand if you have ever felt overwhelmed and just totally over it?
Stretched beyond capacity, constantly over-committing and sacrificing everything to take care of everyone else? You are not alone (promise, even though it can definitely feel that way) – many women are right alongside of you. It can often feel like a draining, repetitive cycle at times that comes and goes.
How would you feel if I told you there’s a way to break the cycle?
To exchange the feelings of overwhelm and being over it to satisfied, empowered and at peace?
In episode 75 with us on The Red Bra Project our brilliant guest, Christine Arylo shares with us how she is helping women to increase their awareness around the root causes of overwhelm, burn-out, and self-sacrifice that can keep women stuck in this vicious cycle. The best part is that Christine has recently launched an incredible book that takes the reader through every step of breaking this cycle called, Overwhelmed and Over It: Embrace Your Power To Stay Centered and Sustained in a Chaotic World.
Christine Arylo is a Transformational Leadership Advisor and Coach, 3x’s best selling author and recognized worldwide for her work helping women to make “shift” happen. Yasss, we were SO honored to highlight, celebrate and learn from her inner wisdom as she shared her story with us in Episode 75.
“It’s not your fault you feel so stretched and overwhelmed. The systems you work and live in were built for burn-out,” writes Christine. “How you’ve been trained and expected to work, lead and succeed is not the way women – or humans in general – naturally operate and create best. You haven’t been given the wisdom or superpowers you need to thrive in intense and changing times.”
Christine shares with us throughout our conversation many parts of her personal story that have both led her to where she is today and taught her about her own inner guidance that she now teaches others how to lean into.
Starting with “superwoman sob moments” which is such a great way to explain those moments when we are completely overwhelmed and hit our breaking point. It’s at that point that the inner awareness and work begins.
Christine reflects on the first time she had her “superwoman sob.” She was about six months into stepping out into the entrepreneurial world, her first book was almost ready to come out, Christine was working two jobs, her consulting job to pay for her coaching business and book release. She has a vision board, Oprah is on it (of course!), goals are posted and of naturally with her MBA she has all of the spreadsheets posted about her goals and tons of papers galore. Christine remembers sitting in her office and the tears just start to come. The despair. The thoughts. No matter how much she worked or how hard she tried, she felt like there was never enough. Not enough resources, not enough staff, not enough time. She was in it. In her very own superwoman sob moment.
“When those moments happen, those superwoman sob moments happen what you want to do (and I did) is that you slow down and listen. You know the calm right after the storm? On this day, I was smart enough not to hop back on my computer and start working again. I got really quiet and tuned into my intuition and asked, what is going on here? That little voice, well she’s not really little she is our fierce feminine wisdom. She said to me, Christine if you keep working like this you are going to burn – out you are going to get sick and never make your mission. And what you need is the feminine. I was like, huh, that is true but I don’t know what that is! Four months later I met my spiritual mentor and teacher who I call the Yoda of the sacred feminine and it opened up an entire world for me of really remembering a whole different way of working, achieving and succeeding that was actually more normal. It just took me about a decade to unravel the imprint and find that new way, try it out and experiment with it. Now here we are today – and this is what I help other women do,” Christine shared.
“I grew up in the corporate world, have my MBA, climbed the ladder of success in which now I call it the escalator of death and left that world in 2006 when I realized the models for growth were completely unsustainable and that I have become like an achievement junkie. No matter how much I did, how much I succeeded, there was never enough, there was always more. That lead me to get really clear on the way I’ve been educated and trained to be set up to burn out and be overwhelmed. I thought I was going to try my hand at being an entrepreneur,” shared Christine.
This last year has really opened things up in regards to many people thinking more about their choices and if this is what they want to be doing and maybe even listening to that inner voice that just may be encouraging one to go in a different direction, an unconventional path that makes no sense to anyone else aside from yourself.
A big part of Christine’s work is helping woman to make those personal and career transitions based on their inner wisdom – but she does so with supporting and exploring rational choices versus irrational leaps to help create a solid transition.
There are different areas of intuition and it is possible to be stronger in some areas than others. “The thing about intuition is that we are all born with it. In the society I would like to live in and the culture I am creating is one in which grandmothers teach it to mothers and mothers teach it to daughters and it never breaks. A young woman never loses it or mistrusts it. She understands it and celebrates it,” said Christine.
The awesome take-a-way here is that while one can lean into their stronger areas of intuition the weaker areas can be strengthened by learning to trust your intuition. Christine shares excellent personal examples of a time in life when she trusted that crazy wisdom and was so glad that she did.
Crazy Wisdom Moments: Christine would like you to pause for a second here and think about that question for yourself: Think of a time in your life when you trusted that crazy wisdom. When there was something inside of you that said “this is your path” and most people were doing something different. Ask yourself, what was true in yourself and around you that allowed you to trust yourself at that exact time when following the crazy wisdom moment?
Christine shares a few tips on how to build up those inner intuition muscles to stretch yourself versus stress yourself which makes all the difference. She talks about what is at the root of what she learned through her research into writing Overwhelmed and Over It and how to recognize them and make different choices to connect to yourself more than ever resulting in powerful and positive life changes to create a world YOU want to live in.
To be clear though, Overwhelmed and Over It is NOT yet another list of “to-do’s or information to figure out what to do with. It is a guide on how to access the deeper wisdom and power that leads to lasting personal and social transformation. It is the self – check(s) we learn how to do that increase awareness around stopping the negative cycle of emotions and how to say “no more” to what is not working any more.
To say this conversation was magical is an understatement. Christine has such an intuitive and beautiful gift she has connected with to show others how to tap into and harness their own personal feminine super powers through intuition.
Christine knew she wanted to go deeper in her research for her book.
She spoke with several women who were at the forefront of the women’s liberation movement of the 60’s and 70’s about why we feel so much pressure now, what has happened? She learned that the systems didn’t change to support a woman working full -time and the dynamic shift when this all happened. Instead, it was do more, take more, keep going. We were not given the memo to make choices and that is OK to make choices that are right for yourself and in personal alignment. Christine had no idea that 2020 was coming. Her inner wisdom knew though and she followed. What a time for such an important message to learn how to do things differently versus putting band – aids on.
One of the most important things to Christine as she was writing this book was to NOT overwhelm the reader, but to take the reader through a guide that naturally flows and can be simply learned and integrated in their own life(s). Christine’s super power is to help others to discover how to identify the overwhelm and take it out in which she highlights several of the key learnings she teaches in her book, Overwhelmed and Over It: Embrace Your Power to Stay Centered and Sustained in a Chaotic World. There’s 13 different kinds of “overdoing” that Christine offers a quiz to help one to identify then supports them with tools to start creating positive change. Remember as Christine shares, awareness is the first step and she is here to help guide the reader from the very first step.
Christine shares a powerful story from her love life that changed her life forever. After 14 years and six months of her relationship she made a choice that she would never settle for less than what her heart and soul desires. She needed one person, one person to tell her there is so much more out there for her and to take the leap — with that and the guide from her inner intuition, she took the leap.
Christine’s Red Bra Moment:
I think for me it is that I continue to open my heart to more love. And more love again and again. Even when things were hard, especially for me once I left “x-person” and I did meet a really wonderful partner who has taught me so much about relationships and love. But I had to open my heart to that. I had some pretty traumatic relationships even with women who were soul sisters to me that blew up on me and it was really challenging. I remember my spiritual mentor saying to me, “will you open your heart to love once more?” There was a part of me that didn’t want to, but it’s that one moment and again and again I choose to open my heart to love.
WOW! What an incredible Red Bra Moment! Saying “yes” to being open to love and the endless possibilities that decision brings that outweigh the risk of pain. So, so great.
Loving what you have read so far? Please share this story with a friend who may need it in their life. 😉
Thank you so much Christine for joining us and sharing such a powerful conversation that sparks inspiration, curiosity and hope. We know it is going to inspire & support many people out there! Keep on rocking it!
Tap play on Episode 75 with us and let us know how you are feeling after listening in!
Here’s where to connect with the brilliant Christine Arylo:
@christinearylo on IG
Feminine Power Time Podcast (turn off the chatter, tune into what matters)
Book: Overwhelmed and Over It: Embrace Your Power to Stay Centered and Sustained in a Chaotic World
Episode 75– Overwhelmed and Over It, How to Move Forward and Leave the Overwhelm Behindwith Christine Arylo on The Red Bra Project YT Channel
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Xx,
The Red Bra Project
