Category: Health and Wellness

Suffering from Burnout? How to Know When to Rest or Push

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Earlier, I wrote about the 20 Mile March. Today I want to expand on that idea. There is one small hiccup in that analogy that usually trips people up: how do you know when you should push, and when you’re in burnout and deeply in need of a break?

Does your life plan account for enough rest?

Rest is important. Rest is actually what we spend MOST of our time doing, believe it or not.

Even for endurance athletes and for extreme sports, they spend more of their time resting than pushing. Even if you’re an extreme athlete, working out and training for 6 to 10 hours a day, you’re not in training mode the remainder of the day, anywhere from 14 to 18 hours.

We think, at times, that a 20 Mile March means we have to be hustling and pushing and “always on.”

We don’t always spend as much time thinking about all that other time that is equally important. (Even if you’re walking 20 miles a day, at 3 miles per hour, you’re only walking 6.5 hours per day.)

The problem lies in how we think about rest and recovery.

Without adequate rest, we’re headed towards burnout.

Rest is not waste. Rest is actually quite active.

In the times we aren’t walking, marching, or making our work happen, what are we doing? Here’s some of what a well-rested life includes:

Sleep

Sleep is not a thing that you can successfully skip. You might be able to push through a certain number of years in your younger life, but most people pay the price for this decision.

Sleep is a time when we recover, when our cells map out what happened during the day. There are massive amounts of brain activity that happen when we close our eyes. We provide the foundation for insight and work when we get enough sleep — not the reverse.

Yet so often we think about sleep as something that will happen after we reach a certain point. What if it’s the reverse? What if enough sleep will lead to better breakthroughs?

(For more on this, read this extensive and useful article by Scientific American on why our brains need downtime.)

Active rest

In sports, there’s a concept called “active rest” and it’s the space between pushing on a repetition and completely collapsing on the couch underneath a pile of nachos. This is: Stepping away from your computer for a brain break during the day. Listening to music or closing your eyes for a 5-minute rest to recharge. Saying no and carving out space for recovery and rest. Taking a walking meeting.

(Hint: catching up on all the blogs and news or reading email might not be active rest.)

Active recovery

Recovery isn’t something that happens by chance. We are always preparing ourselves and our bodies for the next round of work, and recovering from the past round of work. How we sleep, how we eat, how we hydrate, how we limber up, and how we pay attention all matters for our next round of work. This means: choosing activities that refresh and refuel us. Noticing what drains us or what activities are correlated with “off” days.

Preparing ourselves and our bodies

We are constantly preparing and readying ourselves for the next moment. Elite athletes and star performers have strategies and plans that work for them, for a reason. This means: How much time do you spend linking what you do in your down time to how you perform during your on time?

Should you keep going? How to decide your next actions:

So what about today, right now? How do you know what to do next? How can you discern if you’ve put in your 20 miles, and you need to rest, or if you really need to put in more effort?

Let’s first assume that you’re not burned out, but you need a plan of action. Then, what you’ll do is take the next 20 Miles and break them into pieces.

1. Ask yourself: what’s the next step?

How can you build in a small amount of forward momentum without going too big?

On the days when you’re feeling foggy or slow, when you’re wondering if you should be pushing harder, or you’re not sure what to do—this is the time to steady the pace. Find a rhythm and a march that works. Plot out a course that is even. Line up activities that are small wins that don’t take a pile of energy.

2. Make the pieces smaller, but still take steps

For me, as one example, the idea of “writing a book” can be a terrifying construct. In order to keep putting a foot forward, I have to break things into microscopic bits. Then, when I’m having one of those days where the idea of writing a book is too overwhelming to think about, I’ll open up the queue and just do the next few tasks:

  • Research the next 5 people to interview
  • Edit and revise 3 pages
  • Read through the notes from my editor
  • Write a free-flow of a few paragraphs to get the ideas loose for the next chapter.

20 Miles doesn’t have to feel arduous and complicated. 20 Miles can be done by walking a leisurely pace in the morning for three hours, taking a significant portion of the day to rest, and doing an afternoon walk for 2 hours, followed by an evening walk for an hour.

Bonus tip: At the last startup where I worked, we used a tag called @easy and @10m in our project management software for any tasks that were easy to complete and quick. Then, on days when you need to slow down or stay steady, we’d just hit that pile of work.

3. Focus on Active Rest

Find the sweet spot where you don’t stop completely, but you ALSO don’t burn out by trying to caffeinate, push, and get into “beast mode” just to make it through the day. A clue is: if you’re going for an extra coffee, you might actually need to slow it down a bit and leave work early, instead.

But, there’s one other thing to consider. And this is when the above isn’t working, or a succession of days starts to feel sloggy with no end in sight. If that’s true, there are two possibilities:

4. You might need to adjust your goals.

If you’re feeling perpetually sloggy and burned, perhaps you’ve accidentally constructed a “60 Mile March” or a “100 Mile March” and the pace you’ve set doesn’t provide enough space for rest or recovery.

Personally, I’ve tried many times to set out on a 60-Mile March pace and realized that 14-hour days of writing is not sustainable.

The solution: adjust your plan to create a true 20-Mile March. One that doesn’t take more than 6 hours per day, maximum (and if you hustled on a great day, you could be done in 4 hours). A plan that allows for a very slow day that still accomplishes those 20 miles. Ask yourself:

On the worst day of the last few months, would I still be able to accomplish 20 miles?

That’s your pace.

But there’s one more thought to consider:

5. You might need more deep rest

Sometimes, especially in this culture, people are burned out.

You’ll know that you’re more than just sloggy if you’re feeling like you: (1) can’t hardly make it out of bed in the morning, (2) you’re getting sick, (3) you’re angry or mad or some other pent-up emotion, or (4) you can’t find a way to make yourself care anymore.

These are red-flag signals of burnout — and that you need a break, more than anything else.

There have been entire seasons in my life where the focus of the quarter is getting the minimum done, sleeping a ton, and saying no to things. Life is full of stretches when we need to rest and recover.

True rest, however, lets our brains and our minds and bodies melt down and reboot. This might mean that you take a day to binge-watch television _OR_ it might mean that you need to make some more active steps in your rest and recover:

  • Journaling
  • Taking time away from your job or work
  • Booking a massage or bodywork
  • Taking a bath, going for a soak, trying a float
  • Going away for a weekend
  • Spending quality time with friends
  • Letting the calendar or the agenda go to the wayside
  • Saying no when we’d regularly say yes (or vice versa)

It feels uncomfortable to do things differently than we’ve done them before. Things might come up that chase us back to our bad habits. Things might come up.

Where are you in your journey?

As you contemplate your journey and your 20 Mile March that you’re on, remember that this is about the long game: you’re setting up systems for health, for purpose, for your life.

You’re designing a life that takes you where you want to go, that’s steady, that’s consistent, that has purpose, that has direction.

Along the way, you’re cutting back and trimming out anything that doesn’t work for you. You’re experimenting and iterating.

And, you’ll learn when to push and when to rest.

Use the metaphor of the 20-Mile March to find a way to move forward every day.

Some 20 mile days might be a lot of uphill hiking, and some days might be filled with glorious views and vistas. Others might feel easy and light. And some days might feel sloggy and slow. We don’t stop just because one day feels off.

And other days you might get up and do the walking you need to do, slow and steady, and when you’re done walking in the early afternoon, you’ll rest, sleep, recover, and enjoy the rest of the day, because you’re not pushing further or faster or harder—you’re making progress, bit by bit.

How Do You Feel Before, During, and After?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Today I want to share with you about a way to connect inwardly, with yourself. 

But first, a quick story.

I work with coaches. A lot of coaches. I’ve worked with college coaches, swim coaches, book coaches, life coaches… you name it, I like doing it. 

One of my most recent coaches has worked with me on deep, sticky, messy problems, and he consistently challenges me to level up in terms of how I grow. And how I even think about growth in the first place.

Suffice it to say, before our sessions, I start to get really anxious.

I don’t want to meet with him today.

I get a little panicky. I get frustrated. I yell (sometimes). 

“Maybe I’ll just quit coaching,” I tell my husband in a panic. brings a lot of stuff up for me about how I learn, grow 

He laughs at me. Kindly, though. Because I do this every single time.

Right before our sessions together, I start to get frustrated and nervous. I don’t always want to dig into the stuff that needs work.brings a lot of stuff up for me about how I learn, grow 

And then we meet. And we dissect, analyze, and talk through the puzzles that are presenting themselves in my life at the moment. Sometimes I cry.brings a lot of stuff up for me about how I learn, grow 

And afterwards? brings a lot of stuff up for me about how I learn, grow 

Afterwards feels amazing. brings a lot of stuff up for me about how I learn, grow 

Afterwards I am so grateful, and so thankful. brings a lot of stuff up for me about how I learn, grow 

We unpack the stories, the narratives, the ideas, the messiness of mind, and we think about how it all layers together. And there’s relief, and freedom, and … joy. Joy in being human, in being alive, in being messy, in being like a playful little kid, experimenting, growing, and trying things out.

And my husband, he reminds me to remember that how I feel before is not the same as how I feel during, which is not the same as how I feel after.

When you’re feeling sticky or icky, or if you’re in a moment of decision-making, consider all of the layers of the feelings.

  • How do you feel before?
  • How do you feel during? 
  • How do you feel afterwards?

What you feel matters. It’s important to notice all of the feelings, not just some of them.

 

Send a Friend a Love Letter

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I have the bad habit of hiding and holing myself away for a while. It’s when I’m deep in writing, processing, or thinking. I get a bit estranged from the connectivity of it all.

When I emerge, I begin to remember things that I used to do, that I’ve forgotten. A quick sniff of my armpits and I realize that I should probably have showered a bit more frequently; my face is greasy with non-washing and my yoga pants have several days’ worth of food wiped across them.

And I remember that I’ve forgotten to stay in touch. I’ve forgotten to write back to friends. Email has piled up in that unforgiving way, hundreds of messages blinking at me angrily in the ether, waiting and insisting upon an urgent response.

Two weeks is a fast reply, right?

When I disappear into it all, I fail to stay in touch with my friends. Sometimes the guilt seeps in — I missed it! I should have paid more attention! — but deep down, I also know that the way into deep work is to stave off the notifications and the messages for a while.

And as a way back in, I like to write. Write to my friends, write to my family.

The worst habit I have, which I’m a bit remiss to confess here, is one in which I emerge, and then stiffly and frustratingly wonder why people aren’t reaching out to me.

Why don’t I have a new message today?

Hmph.

(As though my friends should be patiently waiting for my return and then instantly messaging me.)

Nope.

It’s on me.

And so I write.

I write my friends a letter. A note.

These are a few of the ways I like to reconnect:

> By text message

Hi! I’ve missed you. Sorry for the delays, I’ve been inside and under a writing rock lately. Let me know how you’ve been and if you want to catch up!

> By audio message

I’m still a bit wary of the actual telephone, so I love to record audio messages for my friends and drop them off.

> By postcard

Postcards cost 34 cents to mail, and about 50 cents to purchase. Isn’t that absolutely incredible? I keep a stash inside the front pocket of my kindle to write when I’m out and about, or when I’m in line, or when I’m traveling on a plane.

> By friend update

I write a monthly friend update — a personal letter of sorts. It’s a small list of people I want to keep in touch with, which goes out, not monthly, but in the months I remember to send it. (Critical distinction, eh?). I forgive myself in advance for the months I forget and pick up during the months I remember. Some quarters just aren’t that externally facing, and that’s part of the seasonality of life.

I tell them a bit about my work and my current thought process, the research projects I’m engaged in, and any struggles that are presenting themselves.

I ask them to write back. I get a dozen or so responses, and we re-engage.

> By email love letter

This is perhaps my favorite of all time. I like to ask people how to show up better for them in their lives, to learn what they like, to hear about what would be helpful for them.

When I find my people in this world, I try to keep them around. People that are on a similar wavelength of curiosity and experimentation, of kindness and depth. And one way to do this is by writing a letter of admiration and connection to them.

To tell them the joy of being acquainted with them, and how much you’re looking forward to getting to know them, however it transpires.

And the question I want to share with the blog today, a nascent question in my journey into better-connected friendships, is a question I find poignant, raw, and mind exploding.

How can I better show up as a friend for you?

I found myself craving a friendship with two people I’d fallen in (friend) love with, and we lived far apart, each equally busy in our world of work and life pursuits. We weren’t going to happen to run into each other very often.

I wrote them an email, titled, simply:

<3

And the email said:

I have a question for you, which might seem strange, but here goes:

How can I show up as a better friend for you?

I’ve got a really strong intuition and feeling that I want to be in your life, that we will stay in touch.

So, for you: what would it look like to have amazing friend support? What makes your life better? How can we show up for you?

Especially in the age of “too busy” and tons of work, what might this look like? Text messages? Random 5 minute chats?

A thought and a question to start a conversation.

xo

How are you reaching out to your friends?

One of my practices in friendship and connection is working to pro-actively initiate more of the types of friendships I want to have in my life. I believe in the rule of 50 people, and the need for vastly better structures of community in our lives. I want my little one to have dozens of “Aunts” and “Uncles” he can turn to when his mom isn’t the right person to go to, and I want the same for myself.

I dream of being surrounded by wonderful men and women, in community, going deeper in ideas, in sharing, in storytelling, and in supporting each other.

It is my belief that telling our stories helps us heal, helps us connect, and helps us feel less alone amidst the existential loneliness of it all (we’re all just floating in space, really, right?).

And so we must reach out, to each other.

What are your favorite practices for reaching out and staying connected with friends? How do you want to show up in the lives of other people, and how do you want people to show up in your lives? Leave a note in the comments!

Eliminate the Thinking

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

One of my goals is to find a way to minimize the amount of thinking I have to do about any particular subject. My brain is really addicted to thinking. It’s one of its favorite things to do.

But there’s a certain amount of useless thinking that happens about things that don’t need as much brain time on them. For example, thinking every single day about when I’m going to exercise and what type of exercise I’m going to do takes away brain space from thinking about other things.

If I wake up in the morning and I avoid a workout, then I’ve just added that to-do into the docket of things for my brain to ruminate about:

I ask myself at 11am: will you workout now? Okay, there’s a class at 12-noon. But wait — you have a call at 1pm. So later? Yeah, maybe 3pm? Oh, but I just ate. So let’s go at 5pm? Oof, yeah, I’m tired. Damnit. I missed today. Maybe tomorrow.

There are things worth spending brain energy on and things not worth spending brain energy on.

Thinking every day (every day!) about when I’m going to work out is not something that I want to dedicate time to.

All it does it take away brain space from thinking about other things. I want—I crave—this time to go deep into writing. To work on the next chapter of my book. To carve away the mental clutter and focus on work that matters.

And if that is what I truly want, then I need to ruthlessly eliminate all of these other, unnecessary, periods of thinking.

So for workouts, as an example, I have a very boring schedule that I stick to (which I’ll write about another time). It’s dreadfully boring for my vata-type, eager-to-think, overworking mind. There’s no excitement in planning and dreaming and scheming about fancy workouts, and this is by design. I need to reel in my analytical mind and give it different puzzles to focus on.

The schedule is what will let me actually succeed.

When I don’t schedule my workouts, I only end up exercising 2-3 times per week.

When I stick to the schedule, I end up going 3-6 times per week. There’s a very clear advantage to the boring routine.

The criteria for the schedule has to be:

  • So easy I don’t have to think about it
  • Incredibly simple to remember
  • Harder to not do than to do
  • Start as small as possible
  • Ideally linked to some behavior or habit I already do.

With exercise, here’s what this looks like as an example:

I drop my kid off at daycare every day. Same time, same place, gotta do it. (Make it linked to an existing behavior).

So I put my sneakers and pants on, and every day after I drop him off, I exercise. (Wednesdays are my break day: I do this weekdays Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.)

It’s easier to get to the park and exercise when I’m already in my clothes and I’ve already left the house. (Make it so easy I don’t have to think about it.)

I do it every day. (Harder to not do than to do.)

When I first started that schedule, I only did it for 15 minutes each time.(Start as small as possible.)

Don’t think, just do.

When I think about exercising, all I’m doing is thinking about exercising.

When I set up a habit and a routine that’s simple enough to do the same way every time, I spend more time exercising than thinking.

Eliminate the thinking wherever you can.

How might this apply to other areas of your life? Leave a note in the comments below.

Focus On What You Can Do

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Being a new mom is suddenly, urgently grounding.

It’s hard to leave the house because, well, there’s a baby right there. He needs me. Unless I get a babysitter, daycare, or my husband is home, I’m here, and it’s me and the baby.

This makes so many things infinitely harder. Leaving the house? That’s pretty difficult to do with a brand new baby. Exercising? Hard to do solo, especially when the kid is too young to hold his head up, so we can’t do a jog together yet. Nevermind the fact that leaving the house to go exercising is far less appealing than, say, eating a pint of ice cream. For breakfast.

(This is a real craving I’ve had, and I just dissected this craving with The Cravings Whisperer Alex Jamieson on her podcast, and she says it’s totally okay as a new mom for me to eat a pint of ice cream daily. I’m going with it.)

But back to the present: there is a real baby in the house, and he’s made it far more challenging to get things done.

There is a temptation to focus on all of the things I can’t do right now.

But instead, I’m trying to figure out everything I can do instead.

When I can’t leave the house to go visit people? I can call them instead. I can text them, send cards, or host hangouts for my favorite people on the interwebs.

When I can’t call someone? I text them instead. I drop them an audio text (a voice memo sent via text, like a voicemail. But better.)

When I can’t run, I can walk instead.

If I can’t get outside to a class to exercise (boy, do I wish!), I can do a Seven Minute Workout in my house instead. My neighbor, who also has a new baby boy, says he does the 7-minute workout twice in the mornings, and that’s all he does for exercise.

I try to do the 7-minute workout twice each week. So there we go.

When you don’t have time for the 7-minute workout, you can practice deep breathing.

Meditate, even just for a moment.

Stretch while you’re waiting in line for something.

If you can’t walk, enjoy the time that you can sit.

When you can’t take a vacation, you can absolutely find a patch of grass to lie down in for ten minutes. A micro-vacation.

Lie down in the sunshine, close your eyes, and feel the late warmth of the summer sunshine. Let the grass tickle your elbows, let a dog lick your feet furiously. Kick off your sandals.

Focus on what you can do.

P.S. I’m opening up applications for my Fall 2016 Mastermind. There is space for 8 to 12 people. I’m looking for the right mix of ambitious, intelligent, quirky, creative people to bring together for accelerated success. We’ll start in September. Sign up for program details here. Applications close Sunday, August 14th.

Are You Chasing Productivity At The Expense of Your Soul?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

pexels-photo-large - coffee

I’m struggling with two competing challenges: being present and mindful, while also chasing the ego-driven aims of “success” and “productivity.” Is there a middle ground?

I reached out to my dear friend Mathias Jakobsen, author and creator of Think Clearly, to dissect this competing pull between these two desires. This is the conversation.

Two Competing Challenges: Present vs Future

Sarah: I’m struggling with two competing challenges. It seems there are two challenges affront, ahead of me, right here. I tackle them daily, I deal with them on the regular. They are sworn opposites, or at least, I have not figured out how to accompany them both.

On the left we have Present. Present is my desire to be here, to be present, to be grounded. To touch base with myself, to write, to surrender, to meditate. To dwell in the taste of the now and know that even if I were to do nothing for the rest of my life, the sweetness of being where I am and who I am would be treasure enough.

Present is my desire to be here, to be present, to be grounded. I want to pause and taste the riches of the living, and feel what’s happening right now.

Present is the call that masks itself as adventures and oceans and beaches: to escape, not as escape from reality, but to escape the endless thrust and chase of the ‘productive’ world, the ‘ego’ world, and to sink into being. I want to pause and taste the riches of the living, and feel what’s happening right now. Present reminds me of itself in the call to meditate, to practice yoga, to commune with friends, to taste food fully.

Present is the call to transcend the ego, to transcend the mind.

On the right we have Future. We might also call it Ego or Productivity. Productivity wants me to plan, to build, to dream, to DO. I must do to be worthy; I must create more. Productivity is the siren call of success; the ladder of ascendence.

You are never enough, because you are always climbing.

Our companies and corporations and economies are built on Productivity. We must chase the next goal, the next metric, the next objective, the next project. We champion growth above all else.

The humans at the center of this Productivity Machine are exhausted. They are also — although they don’t know it — expendable, just another part to the machine that doesn’t matter in it’s uniqueness. We can find another human to dispose of and use up.

I work and live in a world that idolizes Productivity. Productivity is all about the future: dreaming of what could be, what can be, and what will be. It manifests as if only, and when, and how. The American Dream is built upon this reality: you can have more things, you can have a bigger house, a bigger backyard, a better job. We are slow to realize that the thing being sold is a dream, and what we’re all really doing is running, running, running in place. We have our arms outstretched, unaware that we are on a treadmill. The focus on the future has left us lost of the present.

How do we wake up from the monotonous strum beat of the future, banging it’s dream so loudly in our faces? How do we let the worries and anxieties, most of which are all born by dreaming in the future and worrying about how to change from where we are to where we want to be — how do we let them go? How do we work within them, or embrace them, without them overtaking us? Is that even possible?

 

Mathias: First, let’s look at this idea of present vs future. This one actually seems rather straightforward to me.

I agree with you on the present-stuff — even though it is extremely hard for me to really taste food when trying to entertain my nine-month old Uma, get some extra food for my 27-month old Noah, wipe up something from the floor, and also have a conversation with my wife.

But it’s practice in headwinds and uphill.

As for the future and productivity and ego stuff I also agree with your analysis. We live in a world dominated by this. But the problem is not that it’s dreams and future. The problem is that we implicitly think that only by making these dreams come true can we feel whole and complete and successful and happy.

The problem is that we implicitly think that only by making these dreams come true can we feel whole and complete and successful and happy.

But here’s my hack: dreaming about the future can also be done very consciously in the present. By dreaming very precisely and without bounds it can be immensely pleasurable to imagine the future. The focus then, is on the dream itself and there is no fear of not being able to manifest this future since the maximum pleasure that can be derived from it is already done in fantasy.

The mistake is the implicit belief that these dreams are only valuable when turned it into goals and plans and actualized.

 

Sarah: Mmm, yes. Dreams aren’t invaluable in and of themselves. It’s when you lose sight of the present, and the process, that the dreams can become unwieldy. Relying on the achievement of a dream, only once actualized, to make us happy, is dangerous.

Mathias: Exactly right. That doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t actualize our dreams. I’m hugely proud of some of my big dreams that I have made happen.

But I am not deriving joy from the new reality as much as how I have grown in myself along the way. And even if a different future had materialized then I could still have grown in the pursuit and thus found capacity to enjoy the present.

Goals and plans and dreams. It’s amusement. It’s fun. It’s like LEGO. You don’t build with it to make a house you can keep. But you also don’t just put bricks together at random since that’s not particularly interesting (except as one particular experiment maybe once or twice). You build a house to see if you can build a better house today than when you built yesterday. Maybe today better is a bigger house. Or better is taller. Or better is smaller. Or better is more elegant. And you succeed in your pursuit or you don’t.

But it’s just LEGO and tonight you break it apart and tomorrow you build another one. And when you’re satisfied with your houses you begin building cars or planes or something else. But the cars and the planes and the house don’t matter. They only serve to make the building process more fun by giving direction. But building is always in the present.

 

Sarah: Right, the building is again, about the process and the journey. This makes so much sense to me. We lose sight of the purpose of dreaming about the future when we completely let go of the present. But we do not need to forgo dreams and plans, because they can inform who we are and how we behave in the present.

How do you translate this into the working world? What do you do about organizations that are organized around achievement? How do you address the urgency of achievement, the need for more productivity?

Mathias: [In my work], I’m not sure what we are building exactly but I find plenty of pockets to just enjoy the building process and I try to let others enjoy it too. Some do. Others keep being frustrated because they feel that others are getting in the way. But I’m not participating in the war on either side.

As for the kids and future, I think I just look further ahead where there is more clarity and less worries about the mid term. I enjoy little goals in the short term — amusement — ego boosting entertainment. Long term I see this time with kids as a time to try and not accomplish that much in the sense of external achievements, but to build up myself and my character and my spine.

That’s also why I don’t get too worried about my job performance and the conflicts and tensions. They affect me, of course, but when Noah throws up in the middle of the night I know that this is the real growth opportunity. When Uma is sick. This is where I need to be. How to deal with this situation with joy. This is where my wife and I can grow together. This is where we have conflict. Conflict and blame and issues. And then we must solve and dissolve and heal and grow stronger.

This is the real deal. Uphill. Headwinds. Training for the soul. Coffee and coca-cola gets me through a lot of things :-)

But I know we are loving more.

It’s a thrill. It’s for real. I love when I can still be fully present and open and loving and giving with Noah or Uma or Pernille in the midst of craziness. And I forgive myself the many times I can’t. It’s life!

I’m more tired and more alive than ever in my life.

That’s all for now.

What about you?

What does this conversation stir up for you ?What are your take-aways? What will you begin doing? Stop doing? Keep doing but perhaps in a different way?

Mathias Jakobsen is a Learning Designer at Hyper Island and the creator of Think Clearly — a newsletter that helps you get unstuck. He loves notebooks, bakes bread and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, son and daughter.

Loving Yourself

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

pexels-photo-large (3)

A friend of mine is having a bit of a rough time right now and I sent her a note to check in.

How’s it going, how are you feeling?

One of the ways we exist for each other is to confirm and mirror experience. When we notice a friend or a colleague struggling, we can say empathetically, “this looks hard.”

Sometimes kindness comes in the noticing.

Sometimes just acknowledging where you are can be enough to let yourself say, “Wait, yes, this is exhausting.”

But what happens when you’re weary, sad, or pushing through something insanely difficult and you need to take care of yourself throughout the process?

What if it feels like you can’t lean on everyone else and you need to muster up energy to support yourself?

My friend wrote back:

What small self-care steps would you recommend for feeling: frazzled, overwhelmed, frustrated with family, anxious about getting work done, sad, tired, homesick, confused and turned around?

Sometimes a few self-care motions can make all the difference in the midst of the yuck.

And as hard as it can be to do, as impossible as it can seem, we need to love ourselves.

Love yourself tenderly in the hard moments, like you would a child.

Now is not always the time to beat yourself up, or scold yourself to work harder or just “suck it up.” Sometimes you are already doing all of that — and we need, instead, to extend ourselves compassion.

We have a responsibility to love ourselves, no matter how much we might long to outsource this responsibility. In fact, if we look a bit deeper, we might find and sense that we are made up of love in our atoms and or cells — although in times of pain that can seem faraway, inaccessible.

So what we do is we care for ourselves, tenderly.

For me, as an INFJ, I need plenty of alone time, time away from stimulation, and time to decompress. Time and space to hear my own thoughts.

Travel is noisy and busy and full of other people’s energies. I am a fairly energetically open and receiving person (INFJ will do that to you) and that makes me exhausted being around other people.

My coping and compensation mechanisms are to find really quiet, really still things. I often have to activate them; it’s not enough to just “go be quiet in a room.”

I have to create environments that calm the buzz and the chatter. Dark, white-noise bars do it. Water and saunas and warm baths do it for me. Swimming helps.

These are a few things that help:

  • Alone time. Even if it’s in a bar, around other people. I take myself out to nice meals by myself and read a book. It’s something that feels really ME. For some reason Sushi and Sake at a small corner table do it for me (although not while I’m pregnant right now!).
  • Get someone to touch you. Hugs are needed, and our consumer culture can facilitate this through…
  • Getting your nails done. Particularly a pedicure. It’s a relief to have someone touch your feet. Soak them in warm water. You might want to cry. There’s a thing about Jesus washing people’s feet and I love that story (regardless of religion) because it’s so humbling and kind. Be kind to yourself.
  • Get a $20-$30 Thai massage. There are usually lots of places where you can pop in and get a massage. Get it. It helps with your body and rhythm and restoration.
  • Yoga class or 5 minutes of yoga. Pay attention to how much you may think you don’t want to go and understand that this might be a form of resistance to letting go, giving in.
  • Take a “dark nap.” I like doing “dark naps” in the middle of the day — shutter the curtains, hide in a closet, put earplugs in and an eye mask and do a sensory deprivation. It’s good for the soul, lets you close down to the sounds and noise around you.
  • Wrap yourself into a ball and give yourself a hug. 
  • Massage your temples, scratch your head.
  • Journal it out.
  • Listen to soothing music. 

And for sadness:

  • Sometimes reading really sad things or watching movies that will make me cry (Shawshank Redemption!) actually helps. It’s like you have to move through and with the sadness, not hold it at bay.
  • Crying is therapeutic. It helps clean out our immune systems and re-set our cells (it’s not just a passing idea that it’s useful, it really does do good things for our bodies).

What do you do to take care of yourself?

What practices help you restore, rejuvenate, and work through darker days, sadness, or frustration?

50 Things That Make Me Happy

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

In the free series of writing prompts I put together, one of the prompts is to make a list of 50 things that make you happy. I love lists (they’re one of the things that makes me happy!), and I love using lists as a way to kick-start my writing.

It’s not writing, it’s making a list!

Writing lists appeals so much to my desire for organization, neatness, structure, and order.

Today’s prompt is to make a list of things that make you feel good. If you’d like, scratch out your own list, or enjoy perusing my list, below.

1. When the sky fades from baby blue to yellow in one stunning moment, just before the sky dips into brilliant indigo and deepens to darkness. The hint of a highlight of the last moment of sun over the rooftops, indicating the near-closing of a day.

2. The immensity of oceans, water, and the seaside. Sitting by the sound of swelling waves lapping up at your toes. Where the sky meets the waves meet you.

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3. Swimming, being in water, being immersed in water, being hugged by water.

4. Showers, the tickle of rainfall shower heads, the drizzle of an open-air shower on a hot summer day, opening your mouth to capture part of the rain, closing your eyes, dreaming up the best ideas inside a steady trickle of wet noise.

5. Baths. Luxurious, delicious baths. Bath houses. Steam rooms and cold baths and warm baths and Japanese bath houses and Russian-Turkish baths. The community aspect of bath houses in the winter. The solo aspect of rejuvenating your body.

6. Beaches.Sand in your toes. Sand just warm enough to melt you in it, but not too hot to burn your toes. Playing volleyball in the sand.

7. Forests. Canopies of leaves, overhead roofs, green for days. Multiple colors of green, a rainbow of greens, bright and neon to dark and seductive.

8. Hidden trails and hiking adventures. Leaves, trees, and paths beckoning you to follow them. Wandering in the woods on a mindful adventure.

9. Camping. Spending time outdoors. Un-plugging. Doing things more slowly. Cooking food. Stinking up like campfire smoke.

10. Cabins. Wooden cabins, small cabins, cabins with shared kitchens.

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11. Retreats and adventures with close groups of friends. Sharing a home, a meal, a weekend with people you choose to call family.

12. Shared silence. Conversational silence. Understanding the beauty of a pause as rich as the words just spoken beforehand.

13. Parallel play. Being in the same room as someone and not having your attention commanded by the ego or insecurity of the person across from you. Dwelling in collective, simultaneous absorption in a project or task and relishing in the depth of self-thought.

14. Learning how to sing. Music, of all forms. Wiggling your hips to shake off the day.

15. Afghans and blankets! Particularly tossed up over my head and cuddling me up.

16. Cuddles. Hugs and snuggles and couch cuddles. Pile-ups with family and getting 5 people in a bed just for hugs. Promoting hug parties instead of standing and gabbing when I get tired of extroverted party antics.

17. Really, really good conversations. Conversations that unfold over a period of days, exploring an idea, returning to it, delving into it, pausing, becoming something again.

18. The perfect chair to sit in.

19. Reading good books: books that sweep you up and away inside of their ideas or adventures.

20. Exploring new places as a way of staying present with yourself.

21. Sleep that feels just right and wakes you up feeling refreshed.

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22. Fractal patterns and other patterns in nature. Wondering in the beauty of existing forms, creations, and beings. Sinking into the awe of it all.

23. A black hardcover moleskin.

24. Pens! Pilot pens, V5 thickness. Black ink. Plus back-up roller-ball pens for airplanes, because sadly these favorite pens can explode on airplanes.

25. Cards, notepaper, stationary, letters. A box of unwritten cards beckoning to be written. An enveloped of letters stashed away in my backpack. Writing letters to friends as often as daily.

26. Text messages with friends for no reason.

27. Laughing at inside jokes. Being unable to stop laughing. Uncontrollable giggles. Things that make you giggle with their memory, hours and days later.

28. Monthly friend dates with people far away, people all over the world.

29. Someone who sends the perfect Google calendar invitation, knows their way around online organization tools, and is as geeky as you are about email, scheduling, and notifications. You breathe out. They get it. YES.

30. Making friends on the internet without ever moving past the social connection. Just knowing that you know each other are there. Having that be a joy in itself, and enough, for right now.

31. Writing. Writing in my journal, writing 750 words, writing a blog post, writing an email. Writing out my feelings, my ideas, my worries, my anxieties. Even writing in the middle of the night, when I have to — I still love it.

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32.Writing lists!

33. The perfect soup-plate bowl. One plate-bowl to rule them all.

34. Family. Sisters. Brothers. Cousins.

35. Alex’s cuddles, his smile, his hands, his kind spirit. Talking to Alex when I’m having a rough day and knowing he’ll let me cry and he’ll rub my back.

36. Bicycles. Summertime air. Being outdoors.

37. Bourbon or a really delicious cocktail from Three Sisters in Brooklyn. (I’m longing for one — sometime, soon enough, we’ll have another one.)

38. Cooking potluck dinners for friends. Stews made in one large Creuset pot, soaking up flavors all day.

39. The view from up above — aerial views from a plane.

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40. Thanksgiving. Gratitude. Christmas with the family.

41. Snow Fall. Winter boots.

42. All of my Ecco shoes (they are the BEST). A good brand that treats you well. Excellent customer service.

43. The sound of rain when you’re inside.

44. Blossoms bursting open on an early day of Spring. The first signs of winter shaking off it’s cool slumber into the explosive greenery that is Spring. The fierce trumpeting of birds, flowers, and forests in a vibrant sense of newness and noise.

45. Volleyball games outside. Soccer games. Pick-up soccer! The Brooklyn Bridge Waterfront park. Ultimate frisbee. Running in cleats. Bicycling home. Breathing hard.

46. Yoga. Breathwork. Connecting to your self, your mind, your spirit, your body. Union. Refreshing realizations.

47. Meditation. Easy music to put you into a peaceful resting. Finding a place of stillness in your seat and relishing in it. A warm cup of tea and gazing out the window. Letting the thoughts untangle, tumble out. Slowing down. Breathing.

48. Lofts and unexpected nooks and crannies inside of houses.

49. Urban patterns. Architecture. Understanding that everything outside is built, made-up, born of someone’s imagination and patterning. Space, time, movement, and human behavior. Small cities and big bustling metropolis’. Rural farms and tiny cabins.

50. Being connected to each other.

Should You Worry Now Or Later?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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There are so many unknowns coming ahead on the horizon:

Will we have a baby that sleeps or a baby that cries non stop?
Will I love being a mom or will it be an immense challenge?
Will I bond with my kid right away or will it take time?
Will breastfeeding be hard or easy?
Should we move to be closer to Alex’s work? Or stay because moving is hard?
Will the birth be difficult or not too bad?
How are we going to function on so little sleep?

None of these things are things I can know in advance. None of these things can I plan for — or even remotely change by worrying about them right now.

In fact, the enormity of some of these questions makes worrying about them seem ridiculous. I can’t know yet. I won’t know. There is peace in not knowing.

Alex has been repeating a mantra lately that has been calming and grounding:

Is there anything we can do about it now?

The answer is often no.

So we release the need to hold on to the fear and worry.

We will deal with it when it arrives.

What transpires is trust:

Can we trust our future selves to be able to figure it out? Will we be able to handle it?

The answer is resoundingly yes. We are (you are!) competent, capable, smart, resilient people. We can figure things out in real time. We can be present, knowing that we will make new discoveries when we need them.

Even if we have the hardest year of our lives. Even if nothing turns out as planned. Even if we have a better year than we can ever imagine (because often worry focuses just on the negative: it can also be far better than we know).

We will live through it. We will do the best we can.

I trust my current self to show up and learn and grow. So, too, do I trust my future self to be able to deal with what comes to me as it comes.

We cannot know in advance. That is part of the joy of living.

The Power of Silence: In Conversation, In Contemplation, In Being

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

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I sometimes think that when I get sick, it’s because I’ve forgotten to listen. I’ve forgotten to listen internally, to my body. I’ve let it get too noisy and not gotten still enough to hear what’s going on. After a cold sets in, I realize that the chatter in my brain has gotten to excessively noisy levels, and my “push” meter is much higher than my “pull back, rest up a bit,” meter. Inside of all of this is a desire for silence: to quiet the noisy chatter, to steady the mind, to harness the body, to pause and take stock of what’s happening.

Sleep is a period of silence for us each day. With friends, the beauty inside of a conversation is in the stillness of the pauses. Silence is a period of reflection and contemplation. It is a place for depth.

And so today, in the thickness of my morning slumber, I begged for silence, and stumbled across this beautiful poem by Gunilla Norris (found via the On Being column by Parker Palmer). As Palmer so eloquently captures, “I find it compelling because it names the importance of both personal and shared silence.” I agree.

Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.

When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.

In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.

The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.

Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.

Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.

We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.

Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.

That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
“Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children’s children.
Let us practice for life’s sake.”

I look to the space in between the words to define the words. I long for shared community gatherings that embrace not just conversation, but connection — and stillness — as modes of being. I cherish the lulls in between songs when sitting outside by a campfire in a circle as the night grows darker. I want to plan more periods of stillness and reflection amidst an organization’s crazy quest for more meetings. Silence gives us enough space to hear what’s actually happening, and act — not react — accordingly.