[00:00:00] Welcome to Your Creative Chord podcast, where host Jenny Leigh Hodgins, author and educator, shares unique insights dedicated to empowering your creative flow and inspired living. Through solo reflections and dialogues with creators and wellness experts, Jenny Leigh shares holistic wisdom influenced by her Buddhist practice, alongside poetic insights and practical strategies for living authentically.  This podcast helps you overcome challenges and unlock your full creative potential.

Welcome to Your Creative Chord Podcast. I'm Jenny Leigh Hodgins, your host, and this is episode 92, Small Shifts that Rewire Overwhelm, Part One. Today and next month, I will share ideas about the importance of and ways for healing our nervous system, especially related to recovery from stress or burnout and with overcoming creative block.

There's a common denominator of burnout and stress recovery and the ebb and flow of the creative process that often gets overlooked. If you're in recovery from burnout or struggling with creative block or dealing with any kind of stress or small T trauma, this is not just about reducing pressure, though that's helpful, too.

It's more about learning how to build a real lasting transformation through making small, gentle shifts in a life that still has demands, uncertainty, and may also still have old patterns running in the background. I often listen to other burnout and creative books and podcasts to fuel my research and confirm what I practice and coach is aligned with science and actual proof.

And recently, I heard a Fried podcast episode with guest Dr. Rachel Goldman, clinical psychologist at NYU, cognitive behavior therapist and behavior change specialist and author of When Life Happens. What stood out was how Dr. Goldman reframes change in a way that directly challenges how many of us have been conditioned to approach it.

Instead of thinking about change as something black and white or all or nothing, she emphasized making change with small, manageable shifts that don't overwhelm an already taxed nervous system. That all or nothing black and white extreme thinking is part of what actually keeps us stuck. The idea that if you can't do it at 110% perfectly or completely, it doesn't count.

And I think this tendency is especially relevant for women who tend to do more than required rather than enough But I've learned the hard way that that mindset doesn't create positive change. It instead actually reinforces overdrive or eventual shutdown with overload, leading to burnout and block. The smaller shifts, those gentle shifts that Dr.

Goldman described, is actually what I've already built into my creative empowerment framework and continually practice myself, especially my RESET and Keys to Nurture Creativity, or KTNC pillars that I've built into my program. These are not just as concepts, but as lived, repeatable nervous system practices.

One, reduce load through prioritizing essentials only. That first E in RESET, essentials only Two, regulate through regular rest and stillness. And three, rebuild capacity in ways that are actually sustainable and self-nourishing, which is where my Keys to Nurture Creativity, or KTNC, really brings support.

And this is also where something relevant in my own work comes in and why I structure my coaching in an asynchronous way. Because I know that real change doesn't happen in one scheduled conversation or according to someone else's rhythm. It happens in the space between personal awareness and integration, between insight and that actual Tuesday afternoon where your old pattern shows up again.

Asynchronous coaching support allows that gap to exist without any pressure, without performance, without forcing transformation to happen on demand. It actually matches your own rhythm and the reality of how change actually consolidates in a nervous system that's been running in depletion or over-functioning for a long time.

And that matters because for a long time, [00:05:00] my baseline wasn't balance or enough. It was over-functioning, not as an idea. It became my identity. And part of that started in my early 20s when I was managing multiple roles at once: college, a relationship, and shared childcare support for a family member alongside my mother.

And at that time, I really didn't have language for it. It just felt like a really heavy responsibility I was not ready for. But looking at it now, I can see what was actually happening. I was functioning in a role that was actually not even mine before I had fully formed my own identity. So I learned to be useful before I was fully myself.

And usefulness can quietly become identity or conditioned habit. Hello, my hypervigilance. When being useful becomes identity, rest starts to feel unsafe. Not doing feels like danger because of a learned hypervigilant system. Stillness feels like something is missing or wrong or off. And over time, the nervous system starts interpreting pause as risk instead of recovery.

And that learned pattern of overextension didn't stay in one chapter of my life either. It carried forward into teaching environments, leadership roles, caregiving, community responsibility, places where competence naturally resulted in more being asked of me. And often I didn't even wait to be asked. I just overextended as a norm And that builds a very specific internal equation.

If I'm not doing, I'm not valuable. Ouch. And that's one of the core roots of burnout There was also a lasting impact from my transition into independence, choosing to leave home, carrying guilt, and experiencing relational rupture whenever I started to step into my own life. I'm not going into any personal detail here, but what it created for me internally was a longstanding imprint around responsibility, loyalty, and belonging that I've had to, and frankly continue to, consciously unlearn through proactive practice.

And this is where change actually begins. What I've learned personally and through years of working with, teaching, and leading others is that over-functioning trains the nervous system to confuse compulsion with care. So I now practice one very small shift that is really simple but very intentional and impactful for my nervous system, my inner healing, and my external results.

I simply pause Before I say yes, before I take something on, before I automatically respond, before I even respond, I give myself a beat Just a moment of interruption in the baseline pattern of doing more means I'm worthy, and I'm- I've got quotation marks around that. Doing more means I'm worthy. That simple, brief pause has changed more than my productivity.

It's changing how I relate to myself, my workflow. It's changing how I move through the world and in connection with others. Part of that healing for me has been relearning presence through very ordinary moments that my old over-functioning patterns would have dismissed as unnecessary or unproductive or unaffordable.

For me, as a solo caregiver and biz owner, I practice presence with small, regular acts of autonomy, like a weekly routine of sitting at Starbucks with my laptop and favorite coffee for a couple of hours, and this gives me mental spaciousness outside of my caregiving responsibilities and my work from home structure.

It's also my quiet morning breakfast before the demands of the day begin, my morning walks in the park, listening to birds, noticing trees, clouds, feeling the sunlight and breeze, allowing my nervous system to settle instead of immediately consuming information or rushing into productivity. And that's another practice.

I don't check my phone for emails or stats or any kind of [00:10:00] messages until my morning routine is complete. It's a practice against my hypervigilant compulsion to check my phone. I literally have to practice. Sometimes I practice presence by doing things that nourish me, like going to a classical or jazz concert or immersing myself in nature or reading poetry and just simply absorbing beauty without needing to produce anything from it.

Or sometimes it's about joining friends on hiking meetups or taking a short local art or nature-related class and intentionally building and expanding friendships and community in this season of my life proactively. And these probably sound like very small things, but for someone recovering from long-term overextension and hypervigilant patterns, these moments of presence are actually deep nervous system repair, and they remind me that life is not meant to only be managed or produced, it's also meant to be experienced, lived.

Because I'm no longer automatically overextending while erasing myself, instead, before just overdoing as a habit or when someone requests my time and effort, I'm asking myself- Is this aligned with my capacity, my health, and my sustainability? Do I have enough energy, capacity to invest in this? Or will this be above and beyond my full load?

Is it outside my lane? Do I have the wholeheartedness to do this? Am I saying no to myself or something I value by saying yes to this? And that distinction changes everything. From there, I return to something I say often in my coaching and speaking. Rest equals productivity. Rest equals creative flow. I wanna pause for a moment and let that land

Because this is where the real shift begins, not in understanding more, but in practicing differently in everyday life In part two, I'll go deeper into what that looks like in real nervous system regulation, boundary practice, and the small shifts that actually start rewiring overwhelm from the inside out.

For now, stay with this idea: rest equals productivity. Rest equals creative flow.

If this conversation is resonating with you, you can go deeper into this work through my Burnout Reset Guide, where I walk you through simple nervous system strategies to help you recognize overload patterns and begin restoring your energy.

And you can also explore my Creative Empowerment Sampler for reflection prompts and practices to reconnect with your creative flow and inspired living.

If you're looking for more personalized support, you can learn about my Creative Empowerment Coaching Program, where we work together on sustainable creative flow, boundaries, and aligned living through an asynchronous coaching approach with weekly personalized support that adapts to your energy, rhythm, and process.

And you'll find all those links in the show notes and at my website, YourCreativeChord.com.

And that's it for today. I'll see you in part two of Small Shifts That Rewire Overwhelm. Meanwhile, I encourage you to practice the pause.

Thank you for listening to Your Creative Chord podcast. If you found inspiration in today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe to the show.

Your support helps spread the message of creativity and inspired living. Stay connected with Jenny Leigh and a vibrant community of creatives and curious minds. Visit YourCreativeChord.com for more resources. Remember, daily life is where your creative flow begins. Embrace the journey