Overworked and Overwhelmed

Have you ever felt like you're sprinting through life—emails, meetings, family commitments—all while wondering if you’re getting anywhere meaningful? In Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative, executive coach Scott Eblin offers a powerful yet practical antidote to the relentless pace of modern work and life. He argues that the defining condition of today’s professionals is chronic overcommitment—a nonstop loop of doing more, driven by ever-rising expectations and constant connectivity. The solution, Eblin contends, isn’t to work harder or search for balance, but to work differently through mindfulness: a state of awareness and intention that allows you to show up as your best self in every sphere of life.

Eblin’s core claim is deceptively simple: mindfulness isn’t limited to meditation or spiritual retreat—it’s an accessible discipline of attention you can practice right where you are. The heart of his book teaches you how to move from being “overworked and overwhelmed” to living what he calls the mindfulness alternative, a mode of life built around your ability to be conscious of what’s going on inside and outside, make deliberate choices, and live with intention. Drawing from leadership coaching, neuroscience, psychology, and his own life—including coping with multiple sclerosis—Eblin offers a step-by-step model for transformation anchored in what he calls the Life GPS: a map that helps you navigate toward clarity, productivity, and peace by focusing on how you are at your best, the routines that sustain it, and the outcomes that matter most.

Why Life Feels Crazier Than Ever

Eblin starts by diagnosing the modern dilemma. The 24/7 smartphone era and post-recession restructuring have flattened organizations and expanded individual workloads. Executives, managers, and professionals now operate in environments with perpetual urgency, blurred boundaries, and impossible expectations. The myth of “work-life balance,” he says, is dead. We live in what Admiral Thad Allen called the “tyranny of the present,” where everything demands attention right now, and rest, rhythm, and reflection are luxuries few grant themselves. Surveys and psychology research confirm it: stress-related illnesses have skyrocketed, and chronic multitasking is degrading both health and cognitive performance. Most people have no space to think clearly or recharge—so they get trapped on a mental treadmill, mistaking motion for progress.

Mindfulness as Practical Rebellion

Against that backdrop, mindfulness emerges not as a luxury but as a necessity—a tactical skill that enables high performers to reclaim control of their minds and schedules. Eblin reframes mindfulness from its usual soft or spiritual packaging into a leadership tool. Mindfulness, he defines, is “awareness plus intention.” It’s noticing what’s actually happening—both externally and internally—and choosing how to respond rather than react. When people act mindlessly, they succumb to what Eblin calls chronic fight-or-flight mode: a physiological state in which stress hormones flood the body and distort decision-making. Mindfulness activates the opposite—what science calls the rest-and-digest response—restoring clarity and emotional regulation. In that calm, you can act with focus instead of frenzy.

This approach isn’t theoretical. Eblin illustrates it through stories of leaders who embody calm awareness under pressure—from Admiral Thad Allen’s poised leadership during Hurricane Katrina to business executives who carve out moments for reflection despite constant demands. These people aren’t slowing down to stop achieving; they’re slowing down to achieve sustainably.

Building Your Mindfulness System: The Life GPS

The Life GPS model gives readers a blueprint for translating mindfulness into daily life. It revolves around three questions: (1) How are you at your best? (2) What routines enable you to show up at your best? (3) What difference does that make in your life at home, work, and community? By answering these and keeping them visible—literally on paper or screen—you create a roadmap aligning actions with intention. Eblin uses examples like Elaine, a chronically stressed professional who reclaimed energy and focus through a simple morning swimming routine, illustrating how even small shifts can ripple across wellbeing and performance.

Each part of the book deepens this model: Part One defines the problem and the science behind stress; Part Two explains how to clarify your best self; Part Three presents actionable routines across physical, mental, relational, and spiritual domains; and Part Four shows how to sustain progress and measure meaningful outcomes. Instead of uncertain advice about “balance,” Eblin emphasizes rhythm and routine—manageable habits that build resilience precisely because they’re small and repeatable. (This parallels concepts from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.)

A Coach’s Perspective: Excellence as Habit

Eblin’s coaching stories—like Crystal Cooper’s transformation through yoga and meditation, or Doug’s shift from negativity to mindful leadership—illustrate Aristotle’s timeless insight: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” The book’s recurring theme is consistency through simplicity. People don’t need radical overhauls; they need routines that are easy to do and likely to make a difference. Those routines, whether physical exercise or breathing, crowd out harmful patterns through repetition. Over time, small improvements compound into lasting change.

Why This Matters

At its heart, Overworked and Overwhelmed is a manifesto for reclaiming agency—not by escaping work, but by transforming how you engage with it. Eblin’s mindfulness alternative isn’t about perfection or balance; it’s about rhythm, awareness, and compassion—for yourself and others. It’s the art of showing up repeatedly at your best in a world filled with distraction and demand. For leaders, parents, and professionals alike, it’s a reminder that high performance and peace of mind aren’t opposites—they’re interconnected outcomes of living intentionally. And if you can spend just a few mindful minutes a day strengthening that connection, Eblin promises, you’ll work less frantically, think more clearly, and create a life that feels fulfilling rather than overwhelming.

Mindfulness, for Eblin, isn’t esoteric—it’s operational. He breaks it down into two complementary forces: awareness and intention. Awareness means noticing what’s happening both inside you and around you. Intention means choosing deliberate action in response to that awareness. When combined, these create what Viktor Frankl described as the space between stimulus and response—the power to choose how you’ll react, which ultimately determines your growth and freedom.

From Disaster to Composure

Eblin illustrates this concept through U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen’s leadership after Hurricane Katrina. Facing chaos, destruction, and paralysis among agencies, Allen’s first step was awareness—understanding the real nature of the crisis, not just reacting to surface confusion. Then he set an intention: to establish clear accountability and communicate transparency to the public. His mindful clarity transformed the government’s response. It demonstrated that awareness anchors you in reality, and intention turns insight into purposeful action.

The Science of Mindfulness

Eblin builds on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose in the present moment, nonjudgmentally.” He adds that mindfulness isn’t about calm surrender—it’s about conscious effectiveness. Coaches like Teddy Tannenbaum remind leaders that mindfulness leads not to passivity, but to better decisions and sharper performance. It clears the interference—mental chatter, distractions, and biases—that dull your focus. (Tim Gallwey’s formula for performance, P = p − i, echoes this: your performance equals potential minus interference.)

Barriers: Mental Chatter and the Stories You Tell

The opposite of mindfulness is being lost in the chatter of your mind—what ancient Hindus called vritti or “monkey mind.” Eblin quotes author Susan Piver, who humorously demonstrates how one distracting thought can spiral into dozens unrelated ones. This internal noise—along with constant external distractions like emails and smartphones—keeps people reactive instead of reflective. Moreover, he warns of “living someone else’s story”: pursuing success by borrowed definitions, not your own values. Whether it’s the executive answering emails on vacation or the family striving for “competitive parenting,” unexamined stories sustain the overworked state.

The Moment of Truth

True mindfulness often begins after hitting a wall. Arianna Huffington’s collapse from exhaustion, Jeri Finard’s breakdown in an airport, and countless leaders’ crises serve as wake-up calls. These “moments of truth” force awareness and ignite intention—the desire to reshape life around clarity rather than chaos. Instead of waiting for collapse, Eblin encourages using small reflections daily to stay grounded: a few deep breaths, honest questioning, and recognition of what’s really driving you. The takeaway is clear: mindfulness isn’t an escape—it’s engagement with reality at its most intentional level.

You might think your stress is “all in your head,” but Eblin explains that your body is equally responsible—and responsive. In one captivating story, he recounts how federal agent Henry Lescault defused a life-threatening drug bust simply by managing his breathing. That controlled breath activated his body’s parasympathetic nervous system—the brakes that calmed his fear—allowing him to think and survive. The lesson: you can’t access mindfulness without mastering your physiological system.

Fight or Flight vs. Rest and Digest

The human operating system is built around two complementary responses. The sympathetic nervous system triggers fight or flight—your accelerator for danger. The parasympathetic system activates rest and digest—your brakes for recovery and reflection. Chronic stress leaves too many people’s accelerators jammed on high. Adrenaline and cortisol flood the bloodstream, impairing judgment, raising blood pressure, and damaging brain regions that govern memory and emotional control. Science shows that prolonged fight-or-flight response literally shrinks the prefrontal cortex—the logic center—and enlarges the amygdala, the fear center. You can’t think clearly when your physiology is screaming panic.

Returning to Balance

Eblin references researchers like Herbert Benson and Rick Hanson, who liken the nervous system to a car with gas and brakes. Mindfulness, breathing, yoga, and meditation strengthen the brakes. Activating rest-and-digest restores homeostasis—the balanced state where you perform at your best. Mindful breathing even changes your brain’s structure: studies at UCLA show regular meditation thickens gray matter in the cerebral cortex and shrinks the amygdala. At a cellular level, meditation increases telomerase activity—the enzyme that slows aging. “Why wouldn’t you breathe intentionally every day,” Eblin asks, “if it could literally extend your life?”

Small Steps Make Big Differences

Eblin’s mantra is “easy to do and likely to make a difference.” You don’t need hours of yoga to reverse chronic stress. Even three deep breaths activate rest-and-digest chemistry. Repeated small actions compound—5% less stress each week becomes 60% less stress in three months. Consistency matters more than intensity. As coach John Wooden said, “Seek the small improvement one day at a time.” In essence, the physiology of calm can be trained, just as you’d train a muscle—through repetition, awareness, and intention.

The centerpiece of Eblin’s approach is the Life GPS—a simple yet profound planning tool for aligning daily life with mindfulness. GPS stands for “Goals Planning System,” but metaphorically it means direction for your personal operating system. It revolves around three core questions: How are you at your best? What routines enable you to stay there? What outcomes do those create in your home, work, and community?

Knowing Yourself at Your Best

Self-awareness forms the GPS’s first waypoint. To navigate anywhere meaningful, you need to know who you are at your best—your “true north.” Eblin invites readers to reflect on moments of flow and fulfillment, whether leading teams, playing with kids, or serving the community. In workshops, leaders identify qualities like calm, confident, creative, or supportive. When they map those traits, they uncover patterns that transcend roles. For example, one executive realized she was most energized not by control but by being supportive—transforming how she led her company and family.

Building Routines That Reinforce Strengths

Next, Eblin translates insight into action by selecting routines across four domains: physical (exercise, sleep, nutrition), mental (focus, breathing, reflection), relational (listening, connection), and spiritual (purpose, gratitude). Each routine becomes a micro habit that reinforces your best self. His client Elaine’s daily swim replaced frantic email checking and transformed her energy, focus, and happiness. Her small choice became a cascade of positive outcomes at work and home—proof that mindfulness works best when embodied in routines, not abstract intentions.

Anchoring Outcomes

Finally, the Life GPS aligns effort with outcomes in the arenas that matter: home, work, community. By capturing what success looks like—healthy kids, engaged employees, meaningful contribution—you create a compass for daily decisions. Importantly, Eblin warns against perfectionism. You don’t need a full overhaul; small, consistent actions build momentum. Keep your Life GPS visible—on paper, tablet, or beside your desk—and review it weekly, asking, “What one small adjustment will make a difference?” That question keeps awareness and intention alive, turning reflection into sustained progress.

Integration Over Balance

Unlike traditional productivity tools, the Life GPS isn’t about compartmentalizing life—it’s about integrating it. By answering and updating these three questions yearly (Eblin and his wife do this as an annual retreat ritual), you keep life’s rhythm aligned with purpose. It replaces “time management” with presence. You stop chasing balance and start cultivating harmony—the rhythm that lets you thrive rather than survive.

Eblin argues that routines—simple, repeatable habits—are the infrastructure of mindfulness. “You are what you repeatedly do,” he quotes Aristotle. The right routines automate excellence and crowd out chaos. Each person’s optimal set of routines is unique, but Eblin provides principles to choose wisely and stories to prove they work.

Seven Principles for Choosing Routines

• Strive for rhythm, not balance: Life’s demands shift constantly—work, family, health. Instead of chasing equilibrium, find rhythm: periods of focus followed by rest.
• Start where you are: Comparison kills progress. Tailor routines to your current reality and capacity.
• Feed your sweet spot: Choose habits that optimize—not overstretch—your strengths.
• Choose what’s easy and effective: Pick actions in the “easy and impactful” quadrant—manageable but meaningful.
• Ditch the dogma: Follow best practices, ignore judgmental rigidity.
• Take baby steps: Continuous small improvements—“kaizen”—beat big leaps.
• Remember, less is more: Deeply embed one or two routines before adding more.

Stories of Everyday Mindfulness

Eblin’s anecdotes make these principles tangible. Patricia, for instance, created a simple cue-based routine: plugging her smartphone into a charger in the laundry room after work. The cue (phone cord), routine (disconnecting until kids’ bedtime), and reward (focused family time) turned into a self-sustaining habit. Doug, a project leader, used team feedback to counter his negativity. His colleagues would silently raise three fingers when he drifted into criticism—a playful, mindful cue that helped him reform his behavior, improve morale, and transform meetings into creative collaboration. Both cases prove that awareness plus intention plus cue equals habit—the foundation of sustainable change.

Fake It Until You Make It

Eblin champions small starts with humor and grace. His physician, Dr. Myles Spar, offers advice for the overworked: “Fake it until you make it.” Even imperfect mindfulness routines trigger positive feedback loops. When practiced regularly, they rewire your brain and lifestyle until excellence becomes natural rather than forced. There’s no need for perfection—just practice.

The Life GPS rests on four interconnected domains—physical, mental, relational, and spiritual. Eblin dedicates individual chapters to each, emphasizing that neglecting one weakens all others. Each domain offers practical “Killer Apps” and small “Habit Hacks” that make mindfulness measurable.

Physical: Movement, Sleep, and Nutrition

Movement is the physical domain’s “Killer App.” Rhythmic exercise—walking, yoga, cycling—flushes stress hormones and restores focus. The story of Jane, whose autoimmune illness forced her to rediscover balance, shows that healing begins with intentional self-care. Sleep follows: Eblin dismantles the myth that deprivation signals dedication. Seven hours is minimum medicine for executive clarity. Nutrition completes the triad—transitioning from processed foods to mindful eating rebuilt his own health. As Gandhi and George Harrison echoed in their own ways: practice moderation in all things. Physical care is foundational, not optional.

Mental: Breathing and Focus

The mental domain’s Killer App is breathing. Through his STOP technique—Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed—Eblin turns panic into presence. Research from Wake Forest and Jawaharlal Institute shows deep breathing improves focus tenfold, shrinking stress responses. Breathing is mindfulness in motion: awareness of breath anchors awareness of thought. He pairs this with “playing with presence”—doing everyday tasks, from dishwashing to commuting, with full attention. The practice transforms mundane into meditative, echoing Thich Nhat Hanh’s advice to “wash each dish as if it were the baby Jesus.”

Relational: The Power of Listening

Relationships define outcomes, Eblin insists. His relational Killer App is deep listening—shifting from transactional to transformational. He describes three listening styles: transient (distracted), transactional (goal-oriented), and transformational (empathetic, creative). Practicing the latter builds connection and trust. Real stories—from family breakfasts to leaders learning silence—show how listening changes lives. As Peter Block puts it, “In saying what I have in mind, will I really improve on the silence?”

Spiritual: Reflection and Purpose

Finally, the spiritual domain centers on reflection—defining the “why” behind your actions. Ron Shaich, CEO of Panera Bread, discovered his company’s purpose through an encounter with an elderly customer whose life it saved. Gratitude rituals, journaling, prayer, and meditative silence reconnect you with the deeper meaning beneath success. Whether kneeling in contemplation or simply pausing amid workday noise, reflection sustains perspective. Spiritual mindfulness is less about religion than about remembering: the purpose in your presence and the meaning in your actions.

Even the best routines falter. Eblin dedicates his concluding “Making It Work” section to the reality of imperfection—acknowledging that mindfulness is practice, not perfection. He offers a reassuring motto borrowed from yoga teachers: “It’s just a freaking yoga pose.” Apply that attitude to life. Missing a routine isn’t failure; it’s feedback.

Staying on Track

First, know your natural performance rhythms. If you’re a night owl, don’t promise 5 a.m. workouts. Schedule big rocks—priority routines—first, as Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta does with weekly dinners with his father. Recruit accountability partners—peer coaches who nudge you toward consistency. Review your Life GPS weekly, celebrate wins, and master your inner monologue. When resistance whispers excuses, recognize it as the cue to act anyway—as Indiegogo founder Danae Ringelmann did when conquering stage fright by attending every speech class she dreaded.

Rapid Recovery

When you fall off-track, Eblin advises, “move on to the next play.” Borrowing wisdom from Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, he notes that even champions drop passes—the key is quick recovery. Scale back when overwhelmed, focus on leverage routines that touch multiple domains (like walking, which refreshes body, mind, and relationships). Let go of guilt; it fuels fight-or-flight. The point is progress, not perfection. In mindful living, the next breath is always your reset button.

Eblin’s final chapters challenge you to define success beyond productivity—to ask, “What are you in it for?” Through vivid personal stories and philosophy, he teaches detachment from outcomes and alignment with intention. Drawing on Gandhi’s wisdom, he reminds readers to renounce the fruits of action while still being wholly engaged in doing good work.

Home, Work, and Community Outcomes

At home, mindfulness cultivates love and intimacy. Author Susan Piver calls marriage “the best spiritual practice ever designed”—mirror and teacher. Parents learn, as Bryan Kest notes, that “your children may not listen to you, but they will become you.” At work, Eblin redefines success through transformation rather than transaction. Stories of Anne Bryant, Danae Ringelmann, and John Wetzel show that mindful leadership builds lasting impact by focusing on meaning, not metrics. In community, purpose takes shape through service—Panera’s Ron Shaich feeding the hungry, or Kaye Foster Cheek helping young women find their voice. Participation itself becomes mindfulness: awareness turned outward.

Holding Life Lightly

In concluding reflections, Eblin draws from his own journey with multiple sclerosis. Illness forced his awareness of impermanence and deepened gratitude. The disease became his feedback loop for mindfulness: every symptom reminded him to return to balance. His daily yoga practice and reflection transformed pain into strength. As he says, “Each moment is its own moment. Focus on this one.” His mantra—“Good thing, bad thing, who knows?”—captures the book’s wisdom: suspend judgment, act intentionally, and let outcomes evolve organically. That, Eblin argues, is living at your best—mindful, grounded, and free.