Living A Full Life

Taming Modern Life Overload

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 4 • Episode 6

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Feeling like life keeps pressing the gas even when you’re trying to slow down? Dr. Enrico Dolcecore unpacks why our brains struggle in a world of constant notifications, compressed attention spans, and zero recovery time—then lays out a simple path to regain calm, clarity, and control. We start with a quick tour of the autonomic nervous system to explain why chronic fight-or-flight shows up as restless sleep, irritability, and a racing mind. From there, we dig into six overload traps: digital dopamine loops, invisible emotional stressors, overcommitment culture, environmental clutter and noise, nervous system burnout, and the missing art of true recovery.

You’ll hear practical fixes you can use today: digital boundaries that actually stick, micro-journaling to name and release emotions, the Rule of Three to stop schedule sprawl, and a 10-minute nightly reset to quiet visual chaos. We get hands-on with nervous system regulation—simple breath work patterns, grounding, cold exposure, and vagus nerve activation—to shift your body from survival to safety. We also share how to build rest you can count on: a morning calm window with sunlight and hydration, single-input focus blocks to end multitasking, analog hobbies that restore attention, and an evening routine that signals your brain to power down.

To make it doable, we wrap with a 24-hour overload reset you can start tomorrow: no phone on waking, one screen-free task at midday, and a digital sunset with a brief home reset before bed. If you’re a busy parent, a stretched professional, or anyone feeling the constant pull of modern life, this conversation offers a clear, compassionate blueprint to feel grounded again. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the one habit you’ll start this week—we’ll cheer you on and answer your questions in a future episode.

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Do you ever feel like your life is running you instead of the other way around? Like, no matter how hard you try to stay calm, the chaos of modern life keeps pulling you into stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. Today we're breaking down why modern life overload is real, why your body wasn't designed for this level of constant stimulation, and exactly how to build stress-proof habits to help you stay grounded even in a chaotic world. Welcome to Living a Full Life Podcast. I'm Dr. Enrico Dolchkori. Thanks for joining us again this week as we go deeper, not looking at chemicals or foods, but more emotional and environmental load we face every single day. The stuff that drains you mentally before you even start your morning. It's a chaotic world out there. And I thought this time of the year, as we wind down the year here into the holidays, we feel it more than any other time during the year. And it's because of that rush society that we're in. So modern life overload is that our brains were not designed for all of this. They were evolved for survival, small communities, and predictable environments, habitual environments. Today we live with constant interruptions, information overload, high expectations, digital pressure, fast-paced everything, and zero recovery time. We're chronically in fight or flight baseline, which puts us into sympathetic overdrive. Our nervous system, our automatic nervous system, is how I teach a lot of the kids when I go to schools about uh chiropractic and the nervous system and the spine and the brain. It's called the autonomic nervous system. I tell them it's automatic. It's a part that you don't have to think about. It's divided into two categories: sympathetic and parasympathetic. It pretty much sums up how everything functions in the body. If the body has to constrict, if the brain has to constrict blood vessels to increase blood pressure, it also has to dilate blood vessels to decrease blood pressure, sympathetic versus parasympathetic. So that's how our nervous system is built. Symptoms that end up happening from this over chaotic world are restless sleep, is number one. This is where it all starts. It can start in young people, teenagers into their 20s. This can start becoming restless. And it's because of being wired all the time. Feeling exhausted, brain fog, a short temper or mood, feeling behind all the time, never fully relaxed, and feeling guilty when you do rest because of our chaotic world. It's almost this negative feedback loop that we can't break out of. And what I've done is I've taken the modern life overloads and put them into six relatable categories that we're going to tackle together today. And I hope it helps you, if you fit into any one of the categories, find some methods to de-stress and re-regulate your nervous system. That's the point of the podcast. How do we help people take a moment of mindfulness? Because that's what these podcasts are, or reading a book or a documentary, watching a documentary, or putting on your favorite podcast and listening to a speaker, is a moment of just centralizing yourself and focusing on one topic. So the digital overstimulation is number one. Let's start with that one, that bucket. We're in this world. It's 2025, almost 2026. It's what we do all the time. We're in digital mayhem. We get endless notifications. We get endless scrolling. You open up any one of the apps. Yeah, I'm guilty. You end up scrolling and you look at your watch, you're like, 20 minutes just went by. I'm like, why did I do that? News cycles. You may get into the news rabbit holes and the comparison culture that comes from many of these Instagram and TikTok type platforms. And how these affect the brain is they give us a dopamine spike. You can get into these endless scrolling of cats or golf hacks or bloopers. I do it all the time. The golf bloopers get me all the time, and I end up watching 20 of these things in a row. And I laugh and it causes a dopamine spike. Gives us a little bit of a happy hormone release. What it does though is it shortens our attention span and it's getting worse at hyper speed right now because these videos are getting smaller and shorter and shorter each time. They can be two seconds, three seconds. So we're getting these hits really quick. There's no longer the 30-second, you know, wait till the end funny. They need to catch your attention within three seconds. So the funny thing starts or the hook starts right away. And then within the next few seconds, you've got your laugh or whatever happens in the video. That's that dopamine release. That's the shortened attention spans that we're seeing it both in kids and adults. Uh, and then our nervous systems act activated in a negative way as well. The fix to this, and for you, your kids, and your family is digital boundaries. We just have to create time restrictions, uh, device restrictions, um, keeping them out of the bedroom, whatever fits your family, whatever fits your life, you have to deregulate the digital world in one way or another. And setting time limits is great. Setting reminders on your phone to turn your phone off or to not look at it. Work, not breaks, but just focusing on work. Notification detoxes, turn off all the notifications. If you really need to go find something, go into the app and find it. But to constantly be getting all the news from X and Facebook and uh CNN and everything all the time, it's overload. And just have intentional screen time. I remember just a couple of years ago of having uh intentional downtime, just times where you turn off this stuff. But now we're consuming it at such a high pace, it may be wiser to create intentional screen times where you do spend some time on your phone, and that is it for the day. That may or social media, we're limited to something, it will decrease your amount of screen time on that. It is the number one issue right now. I think everyone can agree with me, is the digital world we're in. Number two is the invisible emotional stresses that we're under, worrying about finances that just subconsciously are always there, keeping up with the schedules. If you have kids, put your hand up, those schedules get overlapped. And you know, you know, my wife and I always say, How do the single parents do this? Like, how are they how do they do this? I can't even wrap my head around it. Uh, parenting pressure, relationship strain, high expectations, always driving the high expectations. The fix to this one, it's a little bit more complicated, is the daily emotional check-in. You can have a partner for this. I recommend another person, but for most people, believe it or not, it's difficult to find time for even that. And it takes emotional intelligence of two people and energy from two people as well to do this. So it in the world we live in, it's tough to ask another person for their energy, even your spouse. So doing this on your own can be an affirmation check, a gratitude check, micro-journaling, just quickly gying down a couple sentences. Um, and then just naming emotions to release them, reviewing the emotions that you had today, maybe at the end of the day, recap, or in the morning going over yesterday's emotions, being like, why did I get grumpy? Why did I get agitated? Why was I laughing? Why did I feel angry for a moment? And just pinpointing those things and being conscious about them. As fast as we go, we don't even take time to think about ourselves. So the exercise is just to give you a moment to think about yourself. But we named it emotional intelligence in that, but it's just common sense to take some time and digest how you feel. Number three, overcommitment culture. You're asked to do a thousand things every day. And if you're like me, the yes man, my wife hates it, and it's to my own demise, and you say yes to a lot of things, your schedule fills up very quickly. And then you end up realizing you double booked. I do that almost every day. The overcommitment culture is being busy does not equal a badge of honor. I'm still waiting for mine in the mail, or does it come from the president? I'm not sure where this badge of honor comes from for being busy, but I yet to receive mine, and I'm gonna break the news to you. You're not gonna get yours either. So it doesn't come with a badge. Saying yes too often just over overbooks you. And feeling guilty when you say no, I'm guilty of both of those. When I say no, I'm like, oh, I let them down. I want to be there for them. But you can't be there for 27 different people. It just doesn't work that way. So the fix to this is the rule of three priorities. You just live by these rules, the three priorities that you live on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. And daily is easier. You just set your three priorities for the day, the top three things that need to get done. No one can offer you or tell you anything to interfere with those three top priorities. For me, with three kids and a family and a wife, they usually fit into my top three priorities. So it's always them first, nothing interferes with them. Sometimes work sneaks in there too. These things need to get done for work, and nothing can interfere with those times as well. So, but the rule of three can be a game changer for many of you. And then saying no without an apology, you can say no and not be sorry. And reducing decision fatigue. This is just a great way of just being able, and it's by the answer to that is by saying no. Learning to say no reduces your decision fatigue because you don't have to say yes. And it really uh downplays how much of an option you really have to many, many things. So try those things. I find many people guilty of the overcommitment culture. It's just the way we are. And if you're not, good on you. I think that's a life skill that you should be you should teach other people on how to be able to do that. Number four, environmental noise and chaos, the the hidden things that we'd maybe not live by. With three kids, our house is cluttery. There's always clutter. My office has clutter, everywhere has clutter. It's stressful to live in a clutter. Constant noise. We got digital screens, we got music playing in the car, we got music playing in the elevator, we got music playing in the office, we got music playing because our kids are playing it on the speaker at home, we got music playing from the TV that's on in the background, all this damn music. If it was great, I'd be like, great, we're listening to great music. Well, there is no more great music. Sinatra's dead, everyone else is dead. There is no more good music. So, why is it everywhere? This is digital noise and it's constant noise. Even in living in a city, the ambulances, the fire trucks, the constant noise. It's there. We got to find time for some peace. Messy spaces and just visual overload. Again, it comes from the digital overload as well. Just too much visual overload everywhere. This is how it affects the brain. The brain processes clutter as an unfinished task. Got to think about that. If we have clutter and messiness everywhere, like I just described, a messy car, a messy bedroom, a messy house, a messy office, a messy backpack, a messy everything, messy garage. And you live in that space all the time, the brain processes it as unfinished tasks, which goes back to always needing something to do or always feeling like you never have time to get it all done. So trying to keep organized is a great skill. But here's some fixes. The 10-minute nightly reset. Every night, you take 10 minutes to organize either tomorrow's day on what you need to get done, or organize one thing. What I do at night, I come downstairs and I didn't even know I was doing this. I put away the dry dishes that we washed from dinner, maybe the steak knives, the pans, whatever we cooked, and now they're finally dry. I just go ahead and put them away for the night. I put them back in their shelves. I was just putting them away. Why? Because in the morning I make breakfast. And for me, my personality is like, I need to know where everything is to be efficient. So that I didn't even know I was doing it. But that was my 10-minute nightly reset where I came downstairs and I did, and it was probably less than 10 minutes, put away some things. That's it. The house still messy, it still messes everywhere else. But I did the one thing that calmed my brain for the morning. So it was a win-win, not only in that moment of doing it, but in the morning, I know where the frying pan is, I know where the spatula is, I know where the butter knives are, I just know where they are for the kids in the morning to make breakfasts. The quiet morning routine. I luckily get this as well. I beat the kids downstairs every day for at least 10 minutes. And it's kind of quiet. Let the dog out, it's peaceful until they start yelling and screaming about where they can't find their uniforms. And then simplifying your space. Less is more. We live in a world with too much stuff. You have too much stuff. And once you start organizing, you're like, why do we have seven of these things? So I think we only need one. And you'll realize when you start to simplify and minimize your space, you're actually a lot calmer and you feel better. Easier said than done, right? Number five, the nervous system burnout. When your brain feels unsafe, even if there's no real danger, your body stays in survival mode. We have to think about this. If you've done any anthropology, I had a minor in it, learned about human evolution since the beginning of the theory. And if we want to talk about danger, I don't think we have that anymore in the history of the human race. We live in the most comfortable time in humanity, and yet we are so panicked about all the possibilities of what could go wrong. Abducting our children, school shootings. I mean, there's real reality to this stuff. But there was real dangers before, like a lion coming into your village and taking some of the members of the village. Like there was stuff that was real dangers on a daily basis, every single time, and they were life and death dangers. And it's odd that we've carried that through DNA and our programming for our survival mode. So the signs of this in our modern day life is that a racing mind is usually that danger, fight or flight response. When we can't settle our mind, it's racing all the time because we are in stuck in survival mode. We have a tight chest, we may get tight, palpitations, breathing, even trying to take a deep breath feels like a little bit of work, trouble sleeping, and then feeling on all day. It just feels like you could pop up and get something done all day. The fixes to this is grounding, breath work, cold exposure, vagus nerve activation, grounding techniques where you take time every day, five, 10 minutes, whatever it may be, to help deregulate your nervous system. To regulate your nervous system is what we want to do. Breath work, I've talked about many podcasts because it's the easiest and most universal thing most people can do. We all have to breathe. So just taking a moment to focus on the breathing, which we don't do because it's subconscious, is meditative. It's relaxing, it's grounding, where you breathe in three seconds, breathe out three seconds. And just think about that, that motion in and out. Then being more intentional with your breath work, breathing in, trying to get the oxygen as deep into the lungs as you possibly can, and then blowing out for as long as you can to empty them. Then it becomes more intentional. And when you find yourself doing this, a couple minutes goes by. You just feel better. You get more oxygen flow, your pulse locks goes up. There's just good things that happen with it. And the side effect is that you grounded yourself a little bit. You didn't have to think about anything else in that moment. Number six, and the one that I think everyone forgets about is the lack of true recovery. We just don't have it. People are racing through life and we're under recovered. We sleep, but we don't restore. We have 24-7 access to everything, to our work, our phones, the internet, devices. There's 24-7 gyms. We have access to everything. No mental off switch, no hobbies or rest rituals. We just go through the motions of a busy life. Couple fixes, maybe not so easy, is structuring rest, a non-negotiable bedtime that you follow every single night, seven days a week, non-negotiable. And a bit and a wake-up time. So you get that seven to eight hours. Analog hobbies, stuff you do by yourself, hobbies that you enjoy, finding that time. You say, but I have kids, I've got work, um, business owner, whatever it may be. You got to find those things you do by yourself, whether they're for 10 minutes, one hour, four hours, once a week, twice a month, whatever it may be, got to fit those into your life. And the end-of-day decompression decompression ritual. Just at the end of the day, winding down, turning off your phones, turning off the screens, and giving yourself some time to just unwind that moment of silence and then getting up and getting ready for bed. So the stress-proof method, the habits that we have of building a resilient mind and body. Habit number one that you should walk away with is create a morning calm window. Before you even pick up your phone, you look at sunlight, you hydrate, you do a little bit of breath work and quiet. For me, it's just coming down the stairs to the kitchen. The sun's coming up, I drink some water, it's quiet, and I just focus on my breath or I let the dog out and uh breathe out some fresh air. Habit number two, limit the inputs, increase the presence. One input at a time. Multitasking destroys our nervous system. So when we just focus on one thing and dedicate the five minutes or the 55 minutes, whatever it takes to do the one thing and then moving on to the next, it organizes our chaos. And then we want to build micro recovery moments throughout the day. 60 seconds of breathing, of mindful breathing, grounding, maybe some stretching, or even silence, or all four can all take you just a couple minutes. These reset the stress cycle from day-to-day life. Simplify before you manage. This is a great habit to start building. And habits develop if you do something for 28 days straight, you develop new habits. So pick one or two of these things, start doing them and see how they change. You're going to incorporate these into your life. The less you carry, the less your nervous system has to monitor. Talk, you know, we want to talk about our schedules, our commitments, our environments, and get those all organized. What do we really need to do? What are less on the priority list, and when how does this all work? And then anchor your evenings. So we just kind of work through the day there. Anchor your evenings, have an evening routine that signals the brain to shut down. Lights down, no screens 45 minutes before bed, taking your magnesium at night, being mindful of gratitude, or having some time of reflection for the day, and just some slow breathing. It's a great evening routine that can take a few minutes right before bed. I know many of you fit all. The molds that we talked about today, the busy mom or the professional, the constant overload, the fatigue, the irritability, maybe chronic headaches. I, you know, it's from the digital burden and the lack of recovery, is where we get all this burnout from. So you can have a big shift. And you just need to do this in a 24-hour or hour overload reset that we talked about. All it takes is today or tomorrow, you focus on these things in a morning, afternoon, and evening type ritual, where in the morning you don't look at your phone first, you get some light exposure, you do a little bit of breathing. During the midday, you do one task that's screen free. Maybe eat your lunch. No screen. Try that for once. We're looking at our phones as we eat. Just eat without a distraction. And then in the evening, have your digital sunset where you have 10 minutes of home rest. You take your magnesium, you have an early window to bed. And this just gives you a doable plan that you can start implementing tomorrow. If this resonated with you, DM me in the personal messages online or email us at info at fulllifetampa.com the word reset. And we'll give you a free guide on everything we just said today, all in a nice PDF format. If you enjoyed this, share it, leave a comment, give it to a friend, tell them all about it, or even send us some comments on your own on what you want us to talk about, and we'll dive into that as well. Stay well, stay healthy, and take care.

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host