If you feel like you’re trapped on an endless hamster wheel of busy work and urgent, important things to do and don’t seem to be making any meaningful progress, today’s episode is absolutely for you.

You’ve navigated overwhelm. You’ve silenced self-doubt. You’ve resisted the will-o-wisps. But now you’re facing a different kind of monster—one that multiplies every time you try to defeat it. Your to-do list is never-ending. For every item you check off, multiple new ones appear. You look around and all you see are things that need doing, problems that need solving, fires that need putting out.

Welcome to the Hydra. And welcome to understanding why you keep creating more work for yourself—and how to finally break the cycle.

Prefer to listen? Catch the full conversation here:

The Cliff’s Notes

Core Themes:

• The Hydra represents the endless multiplication of tasks and problems—when you solve one, two more appear
• People-pleasing wounds cause us to take on responsibilities that aren’t ours and set unrealistic expectations
• A dysregulated nervous system makes everything feel urgent and important, keeping us reactive rather than focused
• We often solve problems with solutions that create more problems, especially when disconnected from discernment
• Simplicity is elegance—not all problems require solutions, and some problems are self-created

Key Takeaways:

1. Identify the people-pleasing pattern: If you grew up as an emotional caregiver, you may be defaulting to doing more than you’re supposed to for others, creating work that was never yours to begin with.
2. Recognize nervous system dysregulation: When operating from fight-or-flight, everything feels threatening. Your inbox feels urgent. Every notification demands immediate attention. You can’t stay focused on what actually matters.
3. Question whether problems need solving: Not every problem requires a solution. Some need boundaries. Some need prevention. Some are simply distractions from the real work.
4. Avoid creating problems with your solutions: Automations, project management systems, and complex tech solutions often create more work than they solve. Simple is better.
5. Connect to your vision: Remember what you’re actually working toward—the feelings, not just the achievements. Your current approach may be preventing you from experiencing what you claim to want.

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Want a personalized Mythic Map of your own hero’s journey? That’s why I created Mythic Journey.

Your Gene Keys profile reimagined as a literal map that will reveal your most challenging internal obstacles to overcome, protective patterns to disrupt, and the gifts that are waiting for you on the other side. Over the course of 75+ minutes (in a pre-recorded video you can watch over and over again), I’ll operate as your very own guide as we weave the new narrative for what you’re being called to and how to step into your full potential.

Intrigued and want to know more? Click here for all the deets!

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Meet the Hydra: When Problems Multiply

The monster we’re encountering today is one that can leave people trembling in fear and feeling completely overwhelmed because on the surface, at first glance, it can look really darn scary.

The monster is the Hydra.

If you’ve heard of the Hydra, it’s this mythical kind of dragon creature that lives in the water and has lots of heads. And the myth goes that when you chop off one of its heads, more grow in its place—two more, to be exact.

For it to be beaten, what actually has to happen is you have to chop the head off and quickly cauterize the wound before it’s able to grow more heads in that place.

Why This Matters for Your Journey

The reason we’re talking about this today is because another thing that can keep us trapped in the forest is this one—and this is really where that whole “unable to see the forest for the trees” thing applies.

Because this monster keeps us very fixated on all of these little details. What can feel like lots of problems that need solving, where everything feels urgent and important, and it keeps us on this hamster wheel of busy work because we’ve really lost sight of what is truly essential to move us forward and what is actually just getting in the way.

One of the biggest challenges that we can find ourselves facing when we either run our own business or we’re in a leadership role in particular—but this can also show up if we’re trying to launch some sort of creative project—is that once we’re in it, we look around and all we see are things that need doing.

Our to-do list feels never-ending. And it’s like for every time we check something off the list, multiple things get put in its place and it can be very overwhelming and exhausting.

And it really can keep us in the dark forest for far longer than necessary. In fact, we can get trapped here permanently because we’re so busy doing the busy work that we forget completely about what we’re even working towards.

So it’s really important to understand the patterns here so that we can put them back in their place, nip them in the bud, and start to replace them.

Pattern One: The People-Pleasing Wound

This particular challenge is one that can happen a lot when you have people-pleasing tendencies. And often the people-pleasing tendencies come from a place of us at some point in our lives needing to be some sort of caregiver.

And when saying that, this doesn’t mean literally a caregiver where maybe you were given responsibility for looking after someone in a formal sense. But often people pleasers have grown up where at least someone in your family wasn’t equipped emotionally to handle what they were going through in life, and you became the person who was constantly trying to look after them to make sure their needs were met, to calm them down.

You were basically overcompensating. Bending over backwards to make sure they were okay. Because if they weren’t okay, then you knew that you wouldn’t be okay. Eventually they were gonna blow up or something and you would end up copping the brunt of that, and you knew your life was going to be more difficult.

How This Shows Up in Your Work

A lot of people who had this happen to them at some point in their lives, who identify now as people pleasers, people who struggle to say no, who are often just defaulting to yes, who are constantly taking on other people’s responsibilities, trying to be extra helpful, often overachievers—maybe there’s a bit of Type A in there also, wanting to control what’s going on around you—we can find ourselves in positions of leadership. If we’re self-employed, we can often find ourselves being some sort of service provider or identifying as a healer, a coach, a guide, someone who’s here trying to help other people.

Which is absolutely beautiful.

And when we haven’t actually faced some of the wounding that caused us to develop these people-pleasing tendencies, what happens is we then default to doing more than we’re supposed to be doing for other people.

Speaking from lived experience of spending so much of self-employed life bending over backwards and trying to over-deliver because of just feeling like carrying this weight of responsibility for other people and their well-being.

The Unrealistic Expectations Trap

Often being in this people-pleasing place means we can set unrealistic expectations for others. We are so quick to try and jump in and put other people out of their pain and discomfort.

And this can show up in every single industry. Seen with real estate agents, with coaches. Even when working as a copywriter, it was so difficult to draw the line between the actual scope of work, which was just writing copy for someone, and realizing they had all these other challenges related to their brand and business development that wasn’t the job to solve.

But knowing that not solving those things was then making life more difficult. Plus, there was just wanting that person to succeed and not wanting the copy to go to waste. Suddenly there was going above and beyond to try and give them all this extra stuff that was not promised and wasn’t actually even invited.

And then before you know it, you’re drowning and every single client is draining you, taking up so much more time and energy than you had accounted for.

The Question to Ask Yourself

So one of the ways that we create more work—the reason that the Hydra’s head keeps growing back and doubling and we end up with so much more on our plate—is if there is a people-pleasing wound, you are potentially offering more than you need to in order to avoid some other form of discomfort.

For you, maybe it feels really uncomfortable to see other people struggle, to see them not knowing what they’re doing, to see them making mistakes and having to learn things the hard way.

You could be adding things to your plate that—on one hand, it’s beautiful that you want to help other people, but are you actually slowing their own growth because you are not letting them learn their own lessons?

You tell me. This is for your own contemplation.

Pattern Two: Nervous System Dysregulation

The other thing that can make the Hydra’s head keep replicating itself is when we are operating from a place of dysregulation.

So when our nervous systems are dysregulated—and by that, in an oversimplified way of looking at it, we’re sort of operating from fight-and-flight mode, fight or flight, or freeze or fawn. There are many ways that this can show up for us.

But basically, if we’re in some sort of survival mode and we feel like we’re in danger right now—as in our bodies, our lizard brains think that there is a potential threat, like we could be eaten by a lion—then when we look around, everything seems threatening.

How This Looks in Real Life

For instance, a notification from your email goes off and you’re like, “Ah!” And you overreact. Your body kind of freaks out because, “Oh no, what’s on the other side of this?”

And you could be bracing yourself for terrible feedback from a client, or an angry message from your boss, or finding out that you didn’t get something or that you’re in trouble, whatever that may be.

And so suddenly, our inbox looks really threatening, and therefore it’s really important that we drop everything and attend to what’s going on there, because it feels really big and really important.

Meanwhile, there was a much more important thing you’d originally committed to for that day—for instance, creating some content to market your business.

But you dropped that because your nervous system has told you, “No, the inbox is a bigger threat right now. The inbox is literally threatening our safety. So we need to attend to that.”

The Reactive Cycle

And this is where then every single phone call feels important and we can become very overreactive. We hear about anything going wrong and we go, “Oh my God, it’s important, it’s important, it’s important.”

And then your entire day gets taken over with this reactive behavior that constantly looks for—every time something comes up in front of your face, you just deal with that head-on. You’re unable to just set that aside and keep doing what you were doing because the story is, “Well, if I don’t deal with that, I’m not safe. So therefore I can’t be calm, I can’t stay in flow.”

And living like this for many, many years—being so deeply affected by anything going on in the outside world. If something had happened around that was less than ideal, there was a story that was like, “Well, now I can’t do the thing that I’m supposed to be doing. Now I just have to react to that. And I can’t move forward with the plan.”

This is a really dangerous place to be. It keeps us being reactive to life. It means that basically life is able to provoke us off the path. It means that we do not have the staying power and that everyone else has more power than we do.

So it’s a very dangerous place to operate from, and it’s also very, very stressful. It can leave you feeling very powerless and like, “Oh, well, basically, unless all the conditions are perfect and people can just let me hide out for a day or a week or a month, I’m never gonna get anything meaningful done.”

And that is—it’s not true. But while we’re in this state of dysregulation, it feels very true.

If This Is You

So if you know that you are often operating from this state—you feel quite jumpy and people can easily pull you out of your focus and you feel stressed out knowing there are people waiting on you, there are emails to reply to, and there’s this and there’s that, and you’re just struggling to follow through with that initial plan that you’ve made for your day—this is definitely an episode to pay attention to.

Pause. Grab your notebook. Take some notes. Get honest with yourself because it is time to face this once and for all.

Pattern Three: Solving Problems That Create More Problems

And then another way that we create this issue for ourselves is when we try and solve one problem with a solution that creates more problems.

So when we are disconnected from our internal guidance system, and we do not have access to our highest level of discernment, and we are in this kind of reactive state—we see a problem and we’re like, “Okay, I just need to fix it”—we often solve the thing with the most obvious or the thing that’s been put right in front of your face.

The Automation Trap

Like everyone says, “Oh, well, if you’re doing too much admin, you need to automate things.”

And you’re like, “Right, I’m going to go automate it.”

And so then you sign up for Zapier and then you’re trying to build these complex systems and, “Oh, hang on, now I need to sign up for this Airtable or Notion course, because apparently this is the platform that I need.”

And before you know it, you’ve created an entirely new, massive project for yourself, complete with a learning curve and maybe new software subscription costs—all sorts of things. All in order to try and solve this one problem in the first place.

And yes, occasionally there is a solution that requires a bit of work. Maybe in your case, coming up with some automations is a great idea based on where you’re at in the process. There is something that’s very repetitive that’s happening that would be solved most simply with an automation.

But for so many of us, the automation creates far more work than the initial issue.

The Question We Skip

And what we’re often skipping over is our ability to sit down and really question whether this problem even requires solving.

Is this actually something that requires a solution? Or could it go away some other way?

As in, is there just a lack of boundaries here? Do emails like this even need replying to? Do we even need to run people through this whole process? Or could there be something else in place that is so much quicker and easier?

Maybe it’s a matter of just having more information on your sales page or your services page. Or is it recording one simple video that would naturally filter people out?

Thinking in terms of a sales process—therefore you don’t actually need this really intricate software solution with lots of back-and-forth and multiple choice options and if-this-then-that automations.

Saying all of this, you might be like, “What are you even talking about? What are you ranting about right now?”

But there’ll be others of you who know exactly what this is about. Because this has been done. There’s been absolute guilt of overcomplicating things.

Sometimes it is related to the previous episode—it was shiny object syndrome, and it felt more fun and exciting to try and solve this problem or create a problem that needed solving with this solution than to just keep plodding ahead and creating content, which was the real issue in the first place.

Developing Discernment

So we need to develop a level of discernment here to look at things that we believe are problems and go:

• Is this truly a problem?
• Does it feel like a problem simply because I have set unrealistic expectations for myself and what I’m trying to offer people?
• Is there another way this thing could be solved?
• And also, how urgent and important is it?

Because maybe that’s something we put in the ideas holding cell. Maybe that’s something that would be great in three to six months’ time, once you’ve found your groove with what you’re working on.

But it’s actually not going to make a big difference now. The week or two that you spend trying to build out this new solution is far more time than would be required if you were to just reply manually to these emails every two weeks when they come in.

Overall, you’re saving maybe three to six hours, but instead it’s going to take you at least thirty hours to create the solution.

So we also really need to weigh this up.

Simplicity Is Elegance

One idea to leave you with: simplicity is elegance.

Often earlier on in our journeys, we look for the most complicated high-tech bells-and-whistles solutions. It feels good to see all the work that went into this. You feel proud of this project where there’s all these steps to this automation and then the if-this-and-then-that.

Until you’re having to maintain a solution like that and you realize you’re regularly tearing your hair out when it stops working and causes you issues or doesn’t work the way you thought it was going to.

But then the longer that you’re in business, or leadership, or anything—just the longer you’re on this planet, potentially—the more you can appreciate simple solutions.

Because you realize that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you need to do something. If the thing is solved with this almost deceptively simple thing, great. Move on. We do not need to get that dopamine hit of coming up with something really fancy.

Plug the Hole

But also, not all problems actually require solutions in the way that you think. Sometimes we need to plug the hole as opposed to continuing to pour more water in the bucket.

And so this is the idea of with the Hydra, when you chop off a head, you need to cauterize it.

Is this—does this problem exist because you have not set those boundaries that need to be in place? Have you made yourself more available than you actually should be?

Can we take a few steps back and go: Is there a place that we can prevent this happening in the first place? Rather than putting the bandaid on the wound?

The Root Issue: Unprocessed Trauma

And to circle back to one of the things said earlier, because this really needs to be drilled in: our own nervous system dysregulation and trauma, any sort of trauma that is living in our body from anything that’s potentially happened in our lives, big or small—because remember, how our body perceives it is what’s important—can distort our view on what is urgent and important, and also what is your problem to solve.

If you have not done any of that work, if there is still a people-pleasing wound in you, or this fear that if you don’t deliver on something, you’re going to be attacked—someone is going to get upset at you and you’re trying to avoid that by just going above and beyond—or you really just can’t stand to see someone in their own discomfort, and therefore you’re taking on all of these other roles and responsibilities that weren’t yours to begin with—then we need to do the work on this first.

We have to clear some of this distortion before we’re going to be able to get out of the dark forest, because otherwise you’re going to keep seeing things as yours to solve when they are not actually yours to solve.

Two Books to Help You Break the Pattern

The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham

For anyone who is in leadership or has their own business, this book is highly recommended. It’s a lot of tough love, but it’s said with love because the author has made all of the mistakes himself. So he’s never doing this from a place of judgment.

It’s really about bringing back common sense into our decision-making and taking time every single week to ask the right questions.

Because when we ask high-quality questions, this is when we get so much more clarity on what actually needs to happen. But when we skip over some of these questions, that is when we can go down these rabbit holes or end up with all these Hydra heads popping up because we have created problems where there were actually none.

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

One other book to recommend to anyone who has this obsession with needing to check everything off the to-do list, who needs everything to be organized, and who is regularly setting what you know are unrealistic expectations for yourself—and yet you can’t let yourself off the hook because you’re like, “There has to be a way for me to do this. I am just failing in some way, and I am going to eventually crack the code on how to be more productive and achieve more.”

You need to read Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.

It is the most loving slap-in-the-face wake-up call that you could ever imagine. Written so beautifully. It was the easiest read. It’s like nectar. It’s so wonderful. It’s such a beautiful reminder of the fact that we are all limited as humans.

We will never achieve as much as we think we are going to achieve. And yet it doesn’t matter for us to live a meaningful, fulfilling life. We do not have to do it all.

So much of us are kind of almost waiting for Inbox Zero, waiting to have it all together and all figured out and systematized and processed and all of that before we can finally do the thing that we’ve been wanting to do.

And the point is: life is for the living. If you want to do the thing, you need to be doing it now. And we need to embrace the mess and imperfection of being a human while we do it.

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Want a personalized Mythic Map of your own hero’s journey? That’s why I created Mythic Journey.

Your Gene Keys profile reimagined as a literal map that will reveal your most challenging internal obstacles to overcome, protective patterns to disrupt, and the gifts that are waiting for you on the other side. Over the course of 75+ minutes (in a pre-recorded video you can watch over and over again), I’ll operate as your very own guide as we weave the new narrative for what you’re being called to and how to step into your full potential.

Intrigued and want to know more? Click here for all the deets!

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Activation & Contemplation

Your Archetype to Activate: The Mystic

The archetype that we want to activate in order to help us beat the Hydra—because the temptation is going to be to just get the warrior out, draw your sword, and start running at the Hydra, just angry—and what’s going to happen, though, is you’re going to exhaust yourself. You’ll be chopping off heads. They’ll be growing back. And before you know it, you’re exhausted and you’ve lost.

There’s a quote—paraphrasing it—from Einstein that says that problems cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that they were created.

So if you have too much on your plate because of the fact that you keep over-committing to things, that you’re not asking the right questions, that you’re just trying to approach your business or your leadership or your creative project with brute force of just forcing yourself to get through all these things—well, then just coming at it with brute force to try and solve this is not going to work.

The archetype that we activate to help us rise above this, to be actually able to see the forest for the trees, is the mystic.

Because the mystic sees beyond the obvious. The mystic is tuned in to their own intuition. They look at things from all different angles. They can feel into something. They can also really tap into the wisdom of the universe and look around and go, “Oh, I see what’s actually going on here.”

The mystic is going to sit in meditation before they take action.

And they’re not an archetype that is known for their strength or their speed and agility. What they’re going to do is make a really mindful move. They’re going to try and use as little energy as possible.

And wherever possible, the mystic is going to find a way to avoid needing to solve a problem altogether because they’re like, “Hang on, poof, I can make this problem disappear. There is—there was never a problem in the first place.”

Really, they can see through problems and realize there was nothing there. It’s all an illusion. It’s distraction. It’s just busy work.

Your Practice

The main way to activate the mystic is to pause and then to rise above and really look at what’s playing out and see if you can look backwards.

How did this begin in the first place? Okay, I see that this pattern is here right now. But why does this thing keep happening? What are the interactions that lead to this? Are there any ways that I could have prevented this?

The mystic also is so good at seeing things from different angles that the mystic will help you tap into the ability to see five potential pathways, at least, to solve this, and for you to then tune into what is the right one for me right now.

Because the mystic never sees just one pathway forward. The mystic is all-seeing.

Your Symbol: The Vision

And then finally, the symbol or the tool or the thing to leave you with is the vision.

So when we are so caught up in this busy work, it’s really easy to forget why we’re doing it in the first place.

The vision reminds us of the why. What are you trying to achieve? And really, what are you trying to experience?

Because so often we’re caught up in the achievement piece, we’re so focused on “I need to earn a certain amount of money in order to live this life,” that we forget that, okay, but the point of the money is to allow us to experience something.

What is that thing that you’re wanting to experience?

A Personal Example

Because what’s been found personally is that the process being used to try and achieve it is the very thing that’s keeping from it.

For instance: wanting more money so there’s more time to spend on creative projects so that there can be waking up each day and doing what’s wanted with that day.

And yet, there was building a business model that didn’t give that option.

And so there was a wake-up call when realizing, “Wait, if I want to eventually live that life, I need to start doing it now. I need to create a business model that already allows me to spend my time how I want, to have more creative freedom, and then allow the money to come from that.”

And then suddenly the money isn’t needed for the same reasons.

Your Questions

So for you, remember that vision is so important not just for where you’re going—because we’ve already talked about this, there’s no fixed destination.

The point is, you’re wanting to go somewhere that allows you to feel a certain way.

Well, what is stopping you from feeling that way now?

What about how you’re approaching your business, your leadership, your creative projects are already conflicting with the very thing that you’re working towards?

And once you’ve connected to what it is you’re actually working towards—and it is about how you feel. Is it freedom? Is it authentic expression? Is it about being able to be more inconsistent and have your energy ebb and flow more?—well, once you know what that is, then you can be running all of your decisions through these filters.

And again, you might realize that there are certain problems that have been created simply because you’re not building towards what you truly want. You’re thinking, “Oh, I’m going to build this thing now so eventually I get to do what I want.”

But Meditations for Mortals talks all about this. We can’t keep working towards this time in the future that will never actually exist if we don’t make any of those changes now.

So it’s important that whatever that future version is of you, that is living the way you want to live, have them be making the decisions today and not being reactive. Not just looking at what’s around you, but looking at what do you actually want to be here now?

And so many problems just dissolve like that.

There were so many problems being tried to solve with the business that stopped being a problem when realizing, “Oh, wait, that wasn’t the goal in the first place.”

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Want a personalized Mythic Map of your own hero’s journey? That’s why I created Mythic Journey.

If that is you, if you’re like, “I really need someone to help provide some of this perspective for me,” then absolutely, maybe have a look at the mythic journey as an entry point, or simply a Magnetic Session can also be really helpful.

There can be help to sort of bridge the gap for you, because it’s about being aware of your needs now, while your desires of the future need to be the North Star. And there is a delicate dance that can be found that allows you to be operating as your future self while attending to your present-day needs.

Intrigued and want to know more? Click here for all the deets!

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With that said, we are wrapping up on the fourth of five monsters. See you on the next one for monster number five.