Angela Gargano (00:00)
Hey there and welcome back to another episode of What If It All Goes Right? The podcast where we tackle life's challenges, both physical and mental, and find actionable ways to move forward. I'm your host, Angela Gargano, and today we're talking about something that I know a lot of us deal with, and it's something called mental fatigue. Now, I don't know about you.
But there's been days where my brain feels like it's literally just not working. Like recently I hit one of those walls where I couldn't focus. Everything felt overwhelming and I was stuck in this fog. So I asked myself what do we do when we feel this way? And today I'm going to share with you some of the best actionable steps I found to combat mental fatigue. And we're going to talk about why it happens, how to break through it, and most importantly, how to avoid getting stuck in it. So let's dive in.
So before hopping into this episode, I had a moment last week. So I'm in the middle of launching my pull-up program, which is so much more work on the back end than anyone ever knows. Like, I feel like a lot of you ladies, if you came to my free trainings before, you'd just see it as like, oh cool, she's like doing this free training. There's like so much work that goes on behind the scenes of it. And I was like on fire for like a week and a half. I was like, I got this, I'm like motivated, I'm getting all this stuff done. And then there was a day, I think it was Thursday before I actually did the live workshop where I,
just could not function. I wasn't physically tired, I was mentally, I just couldn't, I was sitting there trying to make content and I literally was just staring at the screen and being like, aw, I did not know what to do. And even walking outside or doing anything, I literally could not get myself, nothing to work. It just was not working. And I started to get really frustrated with myself and I was like, why? Why is this happening? Why? Ugh, so frustrating. So believe it or not.
I asked my friend ChatGPT, I said ChatGPT, this is the way I'm feeling, what do I do? Like what do I do? I have no idea what to do. I feel like literally paralyzed and I can't do anything and I do have work I literally actually need to do. And ChatGPT was like, listen, it's cool. it sounds like you have mental fatigue. And I'm like, you're right. I definitely think I do. So I...
used a lot of the tips that it gave me. And it's a lot of things you already might know, but I think sometimes, I don't know where you're at in your journey, maybe you're a corporate leader or a busy mom, or maybe you have something that you're really just obsessed with. I get obsessed with my work and I literally cannot stop. So sometimes I don't even realize that I'm on my way to mental fatigue until I like open up my eyes and all of a sudden I'm like, wait, I barely drink any water. I was just like running around and I was on my computer for literally a full day, just absorbed in what I was doing. So.
When you do that, obviously there's a point where your brain's just like, girl, like you need to do something. So mental fatigue is that feeling of being literally mentally drained. So like your brain has hit a limit and cannot process one more thing. You might feel a little foggy, irritable, or even physically tired. So why does this happen? So for a few reasons. So one, you're overloaded. You're juggling too many responsibilities or tasks at once. Decision fatigue, you've been making too many choices throughout the day and your brain is
tired of literally deciding. Lack of rest, maybe you just didn't sleep, maybe you didn't have like, maybe it's not just sleep, like maybe it's like you didn't give yourself mental breaks throughout the day and you need to let your brain recharge. That's something that I wind up doing. Like I just stop, can't, when I'm in my focus, maybe it's my ADHD, I'm like in my focus and I get like hyper-focused on it I can't take my mental break. And stress, so chronic stress can wear you down mental reserves, leaving you feel stuck.
The tricky part about muscle fatigue is that often sneaks up on us. So like I said, I was like on fire until I wasn't and we push and push until suddenly we hit a wall. And I think also it was really interesting is my mental fatigue also comes from the fact that. And a lot of my students have done this for their pull up revolution program, or I hear this from a lot of corporate leaders as well, but you're thinking about.
everything at once. So you're like, hey, I want to finish this project, do this, do that. And in the back of your mind, you have all these things playing that you need to do with that. So it's almost like your computer, you have every single tab open and it's running and your computer is like, this is too much, like I can't handle it. And you don't even realize it. And what I realized is that when I have all those tabs open, it's obviously so important to not think about the whole picture and everything, but we just have to think of that first step.
And that's been very hard for me because I'm constantly thinking I'm behind. need to finish this thing. Why didn't I finish that? Instead of being like, Hey, I do need to finish this project or get, I want to get to the certain point, but I needed to focus on step one and celebrate it and to, and to just, just have my brain on that. Like all the other stuff will get done later, but I need to my brain focused on one thing. So maybe you felt the same with your brain and your tabs being open. So when, when I hit that wall, I hit it hard.
And like I said, my brain wasn't working. I had so much on my plate and instead of tackling it, I found myself starting to like, just like starting my to-do list. I felt completely frozen. I looked at the to-do list that I had written out and I was like, I just can't do it. Like, I don't know what it is. can't function. My team's like, Angela, did you get this thing done? I'm like, literally didn't. I don't, I don't know why. can't tell you why. Literally have the time to do it. So like I said, I reached out to chat to BT and I was like, what, like, what do do when you feel like this? And.
I also even asked my community and I asked the people around me and they're like, you're not alone. This happens to way too many of us, especially when we're juggling big goals, careers, families, and everything in between. But what I learned is just like we talked about with the bigger picture of it, you don't need to fix it all at once. And the key is to really break the cycle and take small manageable steps forward. action steps to overcome this mental fatigue when you get there, because we all have been there.
If you're feeling mentally drained, I'm going to tell you exactly what I did and hopefully it's helped me. So maybe I can help you as well. So like we talked about just before, now I'm just going to put it in and break it into steps is stop looking at the whole picture. When you're overwhelmed, the big picture can feel like too much. Instead, I want you to focus on that next small step. So ask yourself, what's one thing I can do right now to move forward? What's one task I can take off my plate and delegate?
This shift in focus can break the mental paralysis and give you the momentum that you need. Just one thing. One thing. Okay. It's kind of like when you tell your clients or I would tell my clients with working out, like you're exhausted. You don't want to show up to the workout. It's all right now, but you're just like, I just don't want to do it. I'm like, you know what? Just show up for like three minutes and get the warm up in and that's it. If that's all you can do great. But most of the time when you actually get started and you start that three minutes, you can stay a little longer and finish the rest of it. Take a brain break. Number two.
Your brain needs the rest, just like your body. So step away from the screen, take a walk or do something completely unrelated to your tasks. A pro tip is you set a timer for five to 10 minutes and do something calming like stretching or deep breathing. When you come back, your mind will feel a lot clearer. Funny enough for all of you, I'm taking a brain break right now. I'm obsessed. I love doing my podcast. I'm obsessed with it. And there's other daunting tasks that I really have to do right now for my business that I'm like really dreading doing. And so I said to myself,
I could either jump in and just be irritated about it and allow it to take longer, or my brain just like blah. Or I was like, I can go record these podcasts because I'm so motivated and I love doing this. So that's what I did. I took a little break and I started to do something that I loved, which is this. Or I'll take my dog out because she's adorable. Number three, prioritize sleep and recovery. So mental fatigue is often tied to physical exhaustion. So if you're not getting enough sleep, your brain won't function at its best. So.
trying going to bed 30 minutes earlier tonight or incorporating a wind down routine to improve your sleep quality. I was doing this for a couple of days. I'm gonna say transparently, I didn't do this the past two nights and I should have. If you can, plug your phone in to charge outside of your room so you're not stuck in a doom scrolling cycle and so you can actually get some sleep. For me, I put it, it's not technically in my room, but I have like a little table like right outside my door. Cause I know for some of you like kind of have to your phone like near you at some, like some.
capacity if you need it for if you have children or certain things, right? So I keep it right outside my door. And when I do, I definitely get much better sleep. Another thing that you can do is take some magnesium glycine and make a nice little cute sleepy girl mocktail. If you want me to tell you some recipes on that, we can go through how you could do that. But just really trying to wind down that brain and know it's so hard sometimes. Meditation can really help with that.
I know for me I have like a huge, I have so much trouble turning off my brain. I just wanna keep, my brain is like, ah, all the time. Number four, simplify your to-do list. When your brain is tired, a long to-do list can feel impossible. So simplify by picking just one to three of the priorities for the day. Like you don't need to do the entire list, just pick three things. I'm gonna finish those three things and that's it. And if you get to more, you get to more. But if not, no big deal. So what's the most important thing I need to do and get done today and what can actually wait until tomorrow?
Number five, hydrate and nourish your body. Sometimes the muscle fatigue is your body's way of saying, I need fuel. So make sure you're drinking enough water and eating nutrition, the dense food. So start your day with a meal in high protein and fiber to keep your energy steady. We tell our like ladies this all the time and they're like, I feel like sometimes they, the ladies we coach and I myself too, I felt like this before too. It's like, I want this whole complicated thing or telling my macros or whatever. I'm like, can we just like start with the basics? Like, are you eating a great breakfast with good protein and fiber in it?
Are you drinking water in the morning before you drink your coffee? Like, let's get some of those basic things down. Hydration plays a huge piece in it. So I wake up right away, I have my water pre-filled the night before, I put a little bit of my element packets in there, not sponsored, but maybe one day. I put my element packet in there, some lemon, and I make sure when I wake up, that's the first thing I do, is I drink and I hydrate. I know for me personally, and maybe for a lot of you, if you're a woman on here, I don't know why, I feel like I just have a really hard time drinking water. So I need to make that a priority pretty much like in the beginning of the day.
Number six, celebrate your small wins. So every step forward, no matter how small is progress, so celebrate it, give yourself credit for showing up, even if all you do today was check one thing off your list and ask yourself, what's one thing I accomplished today that I'm proud of? And again, maybe it's just drinking the water. Maybe it's something crazy. That's literally okay. It doesn't need to be anything crazy for you to actually celebrate it. But after I took some time off, I literally took a whole day and I didn't have my phone on me at all.
got off social media, I wasn't scrolling anything, I took some time to sleep, I hung out with my friends, I cleaned the hell out of my apartment and I realized that my baseboards just get so dirty and I don't know why, like what is with that? Like I'm not even a messy person. But I did all those different things and then by Monday my mental fatigue was gone and my brain was working again. So now I'm like, okay, I'm on this repeat cycle of can we not mentally burn out again?
So one of the hardest parts of mental fatigue is that it can make you feel super disconnected from the version of yourself you want to be. But here's the thing, you don't have to have it all figured out to show up. Okay, so start by asking yourself, what is this best version of me do when they feel this way? How can I take one step closer to that version of myself today? And for me, that looked like focusing on movement, hydrating, giving myself permission to just really pause, just take a pause. Everything can be, everyone can wait.
Everyone could wait right now. But mental fatigue is real and it doesn't have to stop you. By taking small intentional steps, you can break through the fog, you can regain your focus, and you can show up as the incredible capable person that you are. if resonated with you, share it with someone who might be feeling stuck or overwhelmed. And as always, I want you to keep asking yourself, what if it all goes right? What if it's already going right?
Until next time, take care of your minds, celebrate your wins, and remember, you have got this.
