Busy But Not Burned Out: Why Overwhelm Is Optional

Do you ever feel like you’re running on empty?
 Like life is just go, go, go — and you’re burning out?

In this episode, Ben shares how he went from stressed and overwhelmed to calm and confident. You’ll learn why overwhelm is a choice, and how to stop wearing busyness like a badge of honor.

Get ready for simple tips that will help you slow down, be present, and enjoy your life — even when it’s full.

🎧 Listen now and start feeling less stressed today.

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Discover the hidden patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free.

Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen.
Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.

https://benpughcoaching.com/parenttrapquiz

Transcript

Ben: 0:00

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.

ben_1_08-13-2025_100026: 0:32

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to a podcast about parenting and really putting in some work and working towards being the parent of your dreams. Today we are going to talk about a serious. Trend that I'm seeing lately that I feel like together we can reverse this trend and it will seriously help you as a parent. And this trend that I'm talking about is this busy and burned out and overwhelmed trend where. We have a lot of people that they have a lot on their plate and they feel like they can't do it, and they're getting burned out and they constantly feel overwhelmed and stressed and. If you are like me and if you're like most of the parents that I know, you also have a lot on your plate. And from time to time you feel like the only option you have is to be stressed and overwhelmed. And I wanna talk to you today about this trend that I see where people. Wear their stress and their overwhelm as like this badge of honor. Like, oh man, look how busy I am, and I'm gonna help you understand how you can go from busy, stressed, burned out, overwhelmed, whatever you experiencing, you can go from that to calm, peaceful, and confident. I'm gonna share with you some of the things that I have going on in my life. I'm not doing this to brag or be like, man, look at all the things that I can do. I'm doing this to help you see, like, we're very similar. We both have the same 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week, and it's up to. Use that time to the best of our ability and to be okay with the limitations that come with only having 24 hours a day or only having 168 hours a week. So right now I am in a weird season of my life, I. I've done life coaching. I love life coaching. I have built that up to the point where for a while I was really busy. I felt established, and then things kinda slowed down the economy and a bunch of factors. Got into play. Plus I wanted to grow and expand. So now like my life coaching business is getting busy again. I am filling up, like just yesterday I had three one-on-one sessions and it took a lot of my day, which was awesome, but I didn't have as much time to spend on the other things that I'm doing. So I have my life coaching business. I. Have a solar sales business, which guys, if you live in Utah and you want solar, especially before the 30% tax credit goes away, shoot me an email. Ben@BenPughcoaching.com, we'll talk about how much it would be. I can probably help you save a significant amount of money. Over the next several years by simply going to solar. Anyways, I've got my life coaching business. I've got solar sales. I am the head freshman football coach. And on top of all of that, like I'm on the governing board for our local credit union. I'm a husband. I'm trying to be the dad of my dreams. And there was a point where I felt overwhelmed and I felt super stressed and super busy, and thankfully I have a lot of these tools in my life where I was able to sit down and apply what I teach and practice what I preach, and I was able to. Do some discovery and understanding what's going on, and I realized that this stressed out busy. Overwhelmed mentality was a choice. And I was choosing that choice because that is kind of the social norm. We have this idea that busy equals being overwhelmed or busy means you have to be stressed out. And we live in this culture where we glorify being crazy busy and we wear this. Busyness and we wear our stress and our overwhelm, like it's this badge of honor. And I was falling into that same trap. I was like, oh my goodness. Like look how busy I am. I go to, like last week we had two Aday for football. I'd go to football in the morning. I'd do my life coaching stuff in the morning after football. I'd go do solar sales in the afternoon, and then in the evening I'd come back and I'd coach football again. I was getting stressed, I was getting overwhelmed, and I realized I'm falling into the trap of wearing this around like a badge of honor, and I need to do a better job of intentionally being the man that I want to be. Now, fortunately, the stress and the overwhelm happened, man, like a month ago. I was just in the thick of it. I was really struggling and. I had like when look at solar, I've got people that want me to sell more solar. They're like, come on Ben, we gotta get more deals out there in the, in a basin. Come on. Go knock more doors. And I had to come to terms with the fact that, no, they're not my boss. I'm my boss. This is my business. I can do solar sales to fit my schedule. I'm going to be more intentional about how I use my time with football. I had the best of intentions. I wanted to know every play and every position, and I just wanted to know everything and be this great coach. Well, with everything that I'm. Trying to accomplish right now. That just wasn't realistic. I was going to call the defense. I was gonna be the defensive guy and we have a younger coach who's been taking really good notes and he understands our defense better than I do. And I realized, you know, I don't need to be. The the guy that knows everything. I want to be kind of more like the Ted lasso. I don't know everything. I like to empower people around me. And so I let this young man start calling the defense and it was so, I. Relieving, like, I was like, oh, like I still want to educate myself. I still want to know the plays. I want to be a good coach, but I don't have to be the expert. And by turning that over mentally, I quit stressing about it. And I've actually spent more time understanding the defense and doing things that are new to me. But it's been good because I've been able to define, no, this is my role. I want to be the leader that stays calm. Cool, collected, and I want to empower the coaches around me, and I learned this powerful lesson between solar and between football. I was trying to do it according to what I thought. Other people's expectations were of me. And when I sat down, I was like, no. Here are my expectations for myself. Here's who I want to be. It made my job easier, and I realized I don't have to be perfect. I just need to be present. In my role, I need to intentionally be the coach that I want to be. Or you know what? I don't have as many hours to go do solar sales as I did before football started. That's okay. I just need to be present when I'm doing solar sales and be the best that I can be at that. So during this time, like I told you, I've got my life coaching business. I've got my solar sales business. I've got. Football coaching. I am a dad. I am a husband to my best friend of all time. My beautiful wife and I do have a lot going on, but there are some little tricks that have really helped me let go of the stress and the overwhelm. And to intentionally show up in the present moment as the man that I want to be. So I wanna share a few self-care little practices or little hacks that I've been using that help me show up as the man that I want to be. One of these is sounds silly. I would invite you to find something. Of something that's similar that would work in your own life. But for me, going on walks with Deb, my wife, and my dog, that is amazing. We don't do it as often as I, I would like, some days it just gets too hot, too early and we don't do it. But just this morning we went on a walk and I was very intentional. I wanted to pay attention, like how does this benefit me? And it helps me slow down. It helps me reconnect, especially reconnect with my wife. It helps me think clearly and put things into perspective. And these little walks that are usually about half an hour, it is amazing how beneficial they are to me. And I would invite you if you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and you feel like you're just super busy, make time. For you if you can go on a walk, get out in nature, breathe some fresh air, it's super empowering. Okay, the second thing I wanna talk to you about that I have found has really helped me. And we talked about it a little bit a second ago, but trusting that you are good enough. I feel like there's this trap in the world where we're like, no, I gotta get better. I gotta improve, I gotta get better. I gotta grow, I gotta improve. And I fall into that same trap. I'm a self-improvement guru. The thing is. When you can trust that you are good enough, you can start letting go of unrealistic expectations. Like there's a point, I was like, man, if I could just knock 40 doors a day, I'll get all these deals and it'll be perfect. Well, guess what? Now that football is going. I don't have time to knock 40 doors a day during a good portion of the day. Like I could go knock doors in the middle of the day and nobody would get home, and I'd get through my 40 doors real quick, but it wouldn't create the outcomes that I want. So when I realized, no, that's just an unrealistic expectation. I can knock 10 sometimes. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes I just get referrals. I'm going to be doing some. Advertising in my local community, I'm gonna let go of the unrealistic expectations and I'm just going to explore, well, how can I just show up and be my best With football, I don't have time to spend hours and hours in the playbook. I don't. I'm not in a place in my life where I can be the expert at all things, offense and defense. I'm gonna trust that I'm good enough. I'm going to just be present and do my best to be the coach that I want to be while I'm there at football practice and with my life coaching business. Thankfully, I have clients that are still coming in and they're like, Hey, can I do a free consultation with you? And I'm like, yeah, let's go. I haven't been doing as much social media posting or marketing, or I even. In the past month, I forgot to send out my regular Friday email twice. I'm sorry guys, but the truth is I'm good enough just as I am and it's okay to be imperfect. And when I started trusting, no, I'm good enough, it helped me really get present in the moment rather than regretting that I didn't work harder or study longer. I'm like, okay, I'm here. This is where I'm supposed to be. This is who I'm supposed to be. Let's get to work. It really helped me let go of kind of some of the shame and guilt that's connected to overwhelm and stress and worry. Now, the third thing that I feel has really helped me, and if you are going through a season where you feel super busy and you are overwhelmed, this is something that I'm not great at. I'm getting better, but what little I've done with this, it has. Greatly improved my ability to do everything that I want to do. Be the man that I want to be, and that is setting aside focused time blocks. When it's solar time, like I'm either out knocking doors, I'm building proposals, I'm signing deals, I'm brainstorming like, Hey, how are we gonna do a marketing campaign that will help bring in more solar clients without me having to knock doors? When it's solar time, I'm focused. I'm doing solar. I'm not watching football in the background. I'm not trying to split my attention and build my life coaching business while doing solar. No, I'm just focused on solar and when it's not solar time, I let go of solar. So when it's coaching time, like I mentioned earlier, I had three clients yesterday. It was so much fun. Like when I coach people at the end of the session, I ask, Hey, what was your most beneficial thing that we talked about today? And then I'll ask, on a scale of one to 10, one being this is the worst, dumbest coaching session you've ever had, is a complete waste of time. And 10 being, no, this is helpful. It impacted my life, and I will definitely use something that I learned on today's coaching call. I had three coaching sessions the other day. Every single one of'em, they're like, oh my goodness, this coaching session was exactly what I needed. This is the most beneficial thing that just changed how I view things. And they're like, man, this is a 10 outta 10 or a nine outta 10. When I let go of the other things and I be present in the moment. I can trust now, I'm good enough as a life coach, just as I am. I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna be me. I'm gonna do what I do, and I'm gonna trust that that's good enough. And with football time, it's a little different. I have to plan time, like I gotta study film. I gotta write out the practice plan, which I have not yet done today. Here's some time outside of football that I'm assigning two football so I can be the coach that I want to be. And in having those focused time blocks, like I told you, I'm not great at this. I, Brooke Castillo from the Life Coach School, she taught a system called Monday Hour one. I have other coaches that I really like in the past. Shane and Jocelyn, they're from Flip Your Lifestyle. They teach this concept of 168 hours and put every hour to work. None of those alone work for me, but I've been able to come up with a hybrid that I'm like, oh, well this works if I just know what I'm doing and when I'm doing it, I'm just gonna focus on that. And when it's time to move to the next one of my superpowers, I can move from one task to another and then back and then to another. It doesn't really unhinging me, it doesn't make me. I, I don't lose my mind. That's probably why I was a good principal. I could do one task and then all hell could break loose in the school. I could go manage that, then go to another. Anyways, focus time blocks. I'm not perfect. What I've done has greatly helped me. That's something that you might try if in a season where you feel super busy and super overwhelmed. Now, this one is subtly different. But this is probably the most powerful thing that I've been working on lately that has really helped me with everything that I'm doing, and that is appreciating each role in the moment. So life coaching yesterday was a fantastic day for me to be a life coach. I had three sessions that I just loved. I had some conversations that I just loved. I had kind of the inspiration for this podcast, and I realized I am super grateful for the opportunity for me to be in this role. I love talking with people about things that they're struggling with. I help. Then put it in a new perspective. I help them change, like identify the old thought patterns and start developing some new ones, and they walk away feeling inspired and hopeful. I love that when it comes to solar. It is not always fun going out knocking doors and having people yell at you and people being like, why are you bugging me right now? But man, when I find the people that they're like, oh my goodness, my electric bill is so high. Let's look at solar. Then we put the numbers together and they're like, are you kidding me? Like I can save this much money. And there's a tax credit if I like. I love serving people, I love meeting new people. Is solar stressful sometimes? Sure. But when I just appreciate my role in that moment, that empowers me and it helps me show up as the best version of me the other day at football. The moon was coming up here in Utah, there's a lot of fires going on. So between the moon coming up and then the sunset a few minutes later, it was just beautiful. And there's this point, like I'm talking to my football players and I'm like, all right guys, real quick. This is not football related, but we need to appreciate the moon. That looks amazing, coming up through the red smoke. That's awesome. And then later I'm like, guys, look at that sunset. That is beautiful. I love my role as a football coach. If you've listened to this podcast for a while and you know that Ted Lasso is probably my all time favorite TV show, there are things more important than football. My role as a coach is helping these young men see that, no, you can do football and you can be good at football, and you can also be a good human being. You can be a good dad, you can be a good husband. You can be a good student. You can be. Whatever you want to be, and that's part of my role and I love that I get to be in that role. I am so grateful that for whatever reason, I get to hang out with teenage young men and help them be the best person of themselves. And then lastly. I don't have as much time in this area as I would like, and to be fair, I was just evaluating my life the other day. I have more time freedom than most, and I'm super grateful about that. I would like to find ways to spend a little bit more time in my dad and husband role, but man, the times that I have had, like we went to a waterpark, it was just so much fun hanging out with my kids, their friends, their cousins. When you can take the time to appreciate whatever role you are currently in, and most people listening to this podcast are busy moms. So part of your role might be like chauffeur part of your role later that that day might be like executive chef. Part of your role, like you're just gonna have so many different roles throughout the day, and that's okay. If you can appreciate your role and your reason behind each of those, it will help you feel less stressed out and less overwhelmed. So the bottom line. We live in a world, in a culture, in a society where we keep on piling more on. We're like, oh, you can do this, you can do this. You can work two jobs, you can all the things. And we kind of wear our busyness and our stress and our overwhelm is this badge of honor. Like, look at me guys, look at how much I'm doing. And the bottom line is overwhelm is completely optional. If you're sick of feeling stressed out and if you're tired of being overwhelmed all the time, just realize that's optional and there are ways that you can get beyond the overwhelm. And four as optional as overwhelm is being present in the moment is powerful. If you can really sit down and, well, first I'd ask like, is the thing I'm doing essential? Is it important? Is it something I want to be doing? Like there's a lot of things right now that I'm not doing because. They're not essential and they're not as important as these other things that I'm working on. And that's okay. So when I let go of those, I can now be like, you know what? When I am in the moment, when I'm at solar, I'm all in. I'm gonna be present. This is who I'm gonna be. And when you can do that, you will find peace and joy in what you're doing, and that will replace the old stress and overwhelm that used to drive you. So as you go through life, and don't ask yourself like, well, how much can I do? Or how can I do less? Just explore, how can I be all in where I am in the moment? How can I be the best version of me while I do this? So if you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, it's okay. That's part of life. But realize that that's optional, and start finding ways that you can intentionally be the person that you want to be in each of your individual roles. And as you do that, you're gonna notice the stress, the overwhelm is gonna start melting away. Now, the reason I share this with you as parents, my hope is that. The better you manage your emotional state, the better you show up intentionally as the mom or whatever your role is, that will have a profound impact on your teenagers. We have a lot of teens that are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed and they don't know what to do. And as adults and as parents, we can do a better job of showing them, Hey, overwhelm is optional. Yeah, I've got a lot on my plate, but. I'm going to intentionally be the dad of my dreams. I want to be the best that I can be, so I just told you how busy my season is. I also have a few one-on-one coaching slots available, and if you want help as a parent or if you have a teenager who needs help. Right now I'm coaching parents one-on-one, and I'm coaching teenagers one-on-one. I would love to have a free consultation with you to see if I can help. Oftentimes, we have a breakthrough right there on the very first call, and I'm not a pushy salesman if. We can't make it work for whatever reason. No problem. I'm gonna give you as much help as I can whether you work with me or not. So if you would like a free consultation, they're anywhere from about 30 minutes to 45, maybe an hour. But you can go to benpughcoaching.com/mini and that will get you a free one-on-one coaching call with me. We can talk about all things parenting. We can talk about managing the stress and overwhelm of your life if you've got a teenage athlete who is wanting help in showing up better mentally and emotionally for their sport. That's one of the things that I specialize in. So feel free, go to benpughcoaching.com/mini and book your free consultation today. I'll talk to you guys soon.