Your Next Clear Move
Welcome to Your Next Clear Move™—the podcast for leaders, professionals, and high-capacity humans who are done “getting ready” and ready to move.
I’m Debbie Peterson, Leadership Readiness Expert, and in each episode I deliver grounded insight, clarity-driven mindset strategies, and one actionable step to help you stop the drift and lead yourself forward.
This isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about reconnecting to what matters—and making decisions that align with who you are and how you want to lead next.
Subscribe for weekly clarity drops that fuel your next level—with confidence.
Your Next Clear Move
A Leader’s Path Out of Overwhelm
When the calendar overflows and every ping feels urgent, the real cost isn’t time—it’s clarity. Debbie Peterson breaks down why overwhelm isn’t just too much to do; it’s too many priorities competing for attention, eroding confidence, and disconnecting you from your center. Drawing on hard-won experience and years of studying the patterns that pull leaders off track, we unpack how to spot your personal signals—racing thoughts, shutdown, overreacting—and use a brief pause to choose a different path.
You’ll learn a simple framework Debbie calls the Power of Three: shrink the time horizon, ask what matters most right now, and commit to exactly three actions. Three is doable, clear, and enough to restore momentum without tipping you back into chaos. We put the tool to work with a short guided exercise and explore how finishing three creates traction, energy, and a renewed sense of control.
Leadership doesn’t end at your desk, so we take the conversation to your team. Overwhelm shows up differently for everyone—silence, reactivity, box-checking without engagement—and that’s your cue to check in with real curiosity. Use thoughtful questions to surface what feels heavy, help people define what matters this week, and co-create their own Power of Three. As clarity returns, trust deepens, burnout risk drops, and the why behind the work comes back into focus.
Ready to feel lighter and lead stronger? Try the 48-hour challenge: pick one area that feels heavy, choose your three, and move. If this resonates and you want a deeper reset for your organization, visit debipetersonspeaks.com to explore the Readiness Reset keynote and leadership development experiences. If the episode served you, subscribe, share it with a leader who needs relief from overload, and leave a quick review—what will your three be today?
Hey, hello. Welcome back. I am Debbie Peterson of Getting to Clarity, and this is another episode of the Getting to Clarity Show. This is the place where I help you to find your next clear move in your leadership, in your career, maybe even in your business. And one of the things that I hear a lot when I am talking with leaders, whether it's after a keynote, in one of my professional development, leadership development sessions, and I hear it over and over again, is overwhelm. Maybe you can relate to this feeling of being overwhelmed, especially at certain times during the year.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Getting to Clarity Podcast.
SPEAKER_02:The place where busy leaders discover how to create more success in their leadership journey with less sacrifice in their life.
SPEAKER_01:Here's your host, Debbie Peterson of Getting to Clarity.
SPEAKER_00:Now, overwhelm isn't just being busy. It's not just being stretch, but it is truly being overwhelmed. Like you were holding too much, you were trying to move too fast, and you are still believing that you should somehow be doing more. And if that sounds familiar, I want you to know right up front that you're not alone. I mean, I have been studying this for years, that the patterns that take us off track, and I still find myself in this place. And feeling overwhelmed is not a sign that you are failing, that somehow you've let go of critical things. It's a sign that you are carrying more than a human should carry without support or without clarity. So here is why being aware of overwhelm matters. Because what worries me most about overwhelmed is it doesn't just affect how you work, it also affects how you think, it affects how you feel, and eventually it affects who you believe you are. And I know this because I have lived it. There was a time in my life where I was chasing absolutely everything. I was overwhelmed to the max. And I was pulled so far off of center that I almost didn't recognize myself. Everything felt heavy, everything felt urgent. And the more overwhelmed I became, the more I just doubted myself that I could get ahead, that I could do what I wanted to do, even if I knew what it was that I wanted to do. I was just so focused on everything that I just didn't have that sort of clarity. So overwhelm disconnects you from who you are, and it also disconnects you from others. And that matters so much if you are a leader. Because when you lose yourself, you lose your ability to lead with confidence, to help lead the people that you work with and that work for you, you lose any chance of having clarity and knowing what's really important. And then you're just reacting to everything and you have no sort of intention or purpose. And that's not fun, let me tell you. So let me ask you, how do you know when you are overwhelmed? So just think about that for a moment. How can you tell? What are the signs? What are the triggers that you know that you're overwhelmed? Does it show up in your body? Um, do you feel it? Does your mind start racing a million miles an hour? Do you get really quiet and don't act on anything? Or do you get scattered and act on everything? Everybody has their own signals. So your awareness is the doorway out of overwhelm. You can't move out of that feeling of overwhelm until you can actually figure out that you're in it. So here's the part that most people miss, and I miss it too. Uh, overwhelm isn't just about having too much to do, it is about focusing on too many things at once. You know, when we get in that place where we are chasing everything, um, it is when we are trying to make everything equally important. That is when the chaos starts. So it's when you drift too far from what matters most because you're focused on everything. And that drift, it spreads across every priority. It's just you, you've lost all sight of this is what's important and this is what I really want to focus on. It creates chaos, it steals your clarity. And clarity isn't about adding to who you are, it's not about doing more, it's about uncovering what is distracting you, what is weighing you down, what is pulling you away from your center. So, you know, this is a pattern we can go through in our lives. And I know that I have been through this pattern many times too. When I notice overwhelm, um the first thing that I do is pause. And I can tell that I'm in overwhelm because I feel disconnected. I feel, I don't feel good in my body. And I know that I'm focusing on too many things. I'm giving too much my attention. But when I take that pause, that brief pause, it gives me the space to choose a different path. And so a tool that helps me that I would love to share with you, um, is something I call the power of three. And this is taking action on three things. That's it. No more, just three. Three is doable. Three is not overwhelming. So, what I do when I take this pause is I ask myself, okay, what matters most right now? Not someday, not eventually, but right now. When I'm in overwhelm right now, what is it that matters most? And when everything gets big and heavy, like the holidays and family responsibilities and career goals and business goals, I'll change the timeline maybe. And I'll ask myself, okay, for the next two weeks, what matters most? Maybe it's for the rest of today what matters most. But I I choose a timeline that is doable, and then I choose three things. That's it. And those are the three things that become my next clear moves. They become my focus. And then when I have taken action on those, then I can bring something else in. But it's always, only, ever three things. And what this does puts me in a feeling where I feel like I'm more back in control, but it brings energy back to me. It grounds me, it gets me moving again instead of spinning in circles. So let's do this together, okay, just for a moment. And maybe you find yourself in an overwhelming space right now. I want you to think about what it is that is overwhelming for you right now. Just one area, one idea, one circumstance, okay? And I want you to ask yourself what matters most in this one area, this circumstance, this situation. That's it. And then I want you to allow just three things to percolate in, okay? Because if everything feels important, then nothing is, but pick your three. Three is doable, three is clear, three is enough. So how can you help your teams with this? So this is something that I want to share with you so that you can navigate it, but guaranteed, if you find yourself in overwhelm, your team does too in different situations. And now this is something that you can help them with because overwhelm isn't just happening to leaders, your team feels it too, but it may show up differently. It and it does for everyone. You know, what feels like chaos to one person can be uh, you know, a challenge to someone else, and that's where they thrive in it. So I want you to notice your people because when people are feeling overwhelmed, things will shift. So maybe some people get quiet, maybe some people get reactive where they haven't been in the past. Maybe some people are just, you know, head down, they are checking off the boxes, but they're not engaging anymore. You know, some people withdraw because they are so overwhelmed they don't know how to engage. So this is an invitation to you. When you notice this, this is an invitation to check in and really check in. Not with a casual, hey, how you doing, but with curiosity. What do you know about this person? And ask them, hey, uh, is anything feeling heavy right now? And then help them work through the process about what matters most this week and how you can help them work through it, move through it. So you're not fixing what they're in, you are helping to guide them through it. And then maybe you share what you've learned about yourself when you're overwhelmed. You know, sometimes people don't know how to work through it because it's never been taught to them. It's they've never seen someone be able to share or do this sort of thing. So you can help them sort through the noise, you know, shrink the timeline, find their own power of three, because it's not about fixing everything for them. It's about helping them to see a way forward so that then they can do it for themselves. And I hope that this has helped you, that this one tool will help lift some of the overwhelm if that's what you're going through. And, you know, that gives me hope for you, for your team. You know, the minute that overwhelm begins to lift, then clarity can return. You know, that the intuition that you have, knowing what is important, and that helps you to be ready for your next clear move. You start moving again, you make decisions again, you reconnect with who you really are, you see possibilities that you couldn't see before. And that is just a wonderful place to be. Now, your team, share this with them, then they get to feel the same thing. Because a culture of overwhelm, it'll definitely lead to burnout eventually, and not because people have too much to do, but because they've lost what's really important. They've lost that meaning. You know, maybe they've lost their why, why they do what they do. So reducing overwhelm restores the sense of meaning and what fuels people engaging with you again, um, building trust, building these relationships and being there with you and having a willingness to step into the next level. So here is your next clear move. I want you to, in the next 48 hours, that's it, um, take one area that is overwhelming in your leadership and apply the power of three. You'll feel a difference when you're focused on only three things and in the moment. And so will the people around you. So if this is something that you want to take further, I would love for you to visit my website at www.debipetersonspeaks.com. If your organization wants leaders who are ready for what's next and leaders who are able to help their teams become ready for their next level as well, well, that's the work that I do. And I would love to have a conversation with you about the readiness reset keynote or other leadership development experiences that I offer to my clients. In the meantime, be good to yourself. And here is wishing you the clarity that you deserve. Take care. Be good to yourself. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Getting to Clarity Podcast with Debbie Peterson.
SPEAKER_02:If you enjoyed this show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes or wherever you enjoy your podcast.
SPEAKER_01:To learn more about how you can bring Debbie and her transformational clarity leadership strategies to your organization, visit Debbie Petersonspeaks.com.
