Hello friend.
Today I want to acknowledge anyone reading this who’s feeling exhausted, depleted or just plain tired.
I know that’s not all of you – and for those of you with a pep in your step or for whom your geographic location is currently experiencing minor COVID impacts – skip this section and move down to the links. I don’t want to put a damper on your good, productive vibes, as I know they’re hard to come by these days. 😉
But I also know that many of you are just so very done.
And I don’t know about you, but this can be hard to reconcile when we’re in a season typically associated with getting back to routines, into action and doing what we can to realize those goals we set last January. This is made even harder as we anticipate the long, cold season ahead where things aren’t going quite as we’d hoped they would.
A couple of nights ago at my kiddo’s soccer practice, the moms and I were talking about how tired we were of it all, but more specifically, how tired we were of the endless decision-making.
And unlike common advice around how to navigate decision fatigue, COVID’s ever-changing situation doesn’t allow for a one-and-done approach, which means we’re constantly re-tooling, re-thinking and re-calibrating to match the current reality.
And that’s freaking exhausting. 🥱
I don’t want to use this space here, nor your attention, to wallow in things. While it might be justified (and believe me, I’ve taken many moments lately to feel all the feels), I’d rather leave us with something helpful we can use right now to feel even marginally better about things.
Here are three things I’m thinking about regularly:
1️⃣ It’s going to take longer than I thought to get back to my ‘normal.’
This is a hard one to admit, but it’s just the truth.
After 19 months of life being disrupted, it’s not going to go back to ‘normal’ just because I want it to or because I have one good week. There’ll be ebbs and flows to my own personal capacity and my motivation, and the sooner I make peace with that, the easier it’ll be to navigate what’s ahead.
So, if you’re like me and you’d prefer to just “decide” that you’re going to be done with the languishing and the whole exhausted bit, give yourself a break. It’s probably not going to work like that, despite your best intentions.
Give yourself permission and some breathing room to be where you are, and trust that you’ll find your way back to yourself in due time. And if you’re rolling your eyes at this, I get it. Historically, I’d much rather flip a switch or berate myself into being more productive, but this pandemic experience has taught me to offer myself a little bit of grace and space to be where I am.
I don’t come by that approach naturally and I don’t always love that it’s what I need, but I’m also over buying into old conditioning that conflates my self-worth with my productive output.
If you’re tired, be tired. If you’re operating at 60%, let that 60% be ok. If this season is starting off slowly when you’d hoped it would ramp up quickly, trust that there will be seasons ahead where you can jump in with both feet and full of energy, even if this isn’t the one.
We’ll probably continue to cycle in and out over the months ahead, and I think the greatest gift we can give ourselves is the compassion to let our waxing and waning motivation be what it is, without the judgement of making ourselves wrong or lazy.
Let’s hold it all loosely right now.
2️⃣ Small is where it’s at. And when I say small, I mean REALLY small.
I was talking to a client a few weeks ago who is in a very busy season of her life and work. She’s got a lot of pressing deadlines (that simply cannot be moved) and she was feeling quite overwhelmed with them all. We spent time prioritizing things, talking about what she could drop or delegate, and then deciding how she’d approach the tasks remaining.
Common advice is to eat the frog first. You start with the most important tasks – those three key priorities – and get them done first.
I believe this to be helpful advice, and I’ve certainly given my version of it many times to clients. It works best for people who are struggling with getting the most important things done because they’re often too distracted by the busywork that keeps them from deep focus. Eating the frog so-to-speak can help clarify what’s most important to you, and ensure that it doesn’t fall to the bottom of your to-do list.
But this approach often doesn’t work well when we’re overwhelmed, stressed and struggling with burnout. Because who has it in them to tackle the big important work first when they can barely get motivated to make their kid’s school lunches?
This is when we have to go small, really small.
As my client said to me, “When I’m in overwhelm, I can’t start big, I have to go small first and knock off the easy stuff.”
For anyone who struggles with perfectionism or type A tendencies, this can go against your nature (as can #1). We identify with being productive and competent, and often associate success with working hard (hard being the key feature here). But when our natural energy stores are low and/or our mental health isn’t at its best, getting granular and going for the easy wins is the smartest, most productive move we can make.
Ask yourself: what are the easy things I can do? Where can I get some small wins? What can I complete in less than 10 minutes?
Go for those ones first. Knock them off one at a time, starting with the easiest and most basic first. Work your way up to the tricky ones as you can (and don’t be afraid to delegate or get support).
Start small.
3️⃣ Simplify EVERYTHING.
Raise your hand if you tend toward over-complicating things. 🙋♀️
I was joking with my mastermind group this week that when I’m presented the option to keep things simple or to over-complicate things, I’ll always opt for the complicated path. Everyone laughed, while also nodding their heads in recognition of their own tendencies toward making things hard.
Again, these three items are all so connected with our hustle-culture conditioning: productive = good; big = good, complicated = good. But it’s all one big (complicated) trap that keeps us spinning in exhaustion and second-guessing our abilities. It’s time to get off this ride and find other ways to work and live.
One way we can do that is by simplifying our lives, our schedules, our commitments and our work to create the conditions for sustainability vs burnout. Simplifying doesn’t mean compromising or settling, it means being strategic about our capacity and where it’s best directed.
When we’re complicating things, we not only cause ourselves undue stress, but we also impact the projects and people we’re engaged with.
Where do you feel the tension of things feeling chronically hard and complicated? Where can you simplify to create a little ease and light?
- Is your schedule bloated with meetings or extra events that there’s no room to move? Where can you consolidate, reduce, delegate or ditch to open up a bit of margin?
- Are you business offerings so bespoke that you’re constantly re-inventing the wheel for each client? Where can you systematize and streamline to reduce your repeated efforts? And what mindset shift can you make around what it means to be valuable? (e.g. what if you believed that having a repeatable onboarding process that all clients go through on their own isn’t a reduction in your value or service, but an enhanced one?)
- Are you exhausted by the personal tasks in life? Where can you outsource areas or simply decide they aren’t a priority right now? Can you do a food swap with a friend where you take turns making double-batch meals to give you each a night off from cooking? Can you be ok if the bathrooms get cleaned every two weeks instead of each week? What if the kids took a break from badminton lessons this season so that you could free up a few nights per week to do something other than sit in the car?
- Where can you create some new ‘rules’ for communication so that you don’t constantly feel guilty about behind on all the messages coming your way? Can you put an out-of-office message saying you check emails 2x/day and will respond within 72 hours (vs your typical 2 hours)? Can you tell friends that you only check WhatsAPP and Telegram group messages on the weekend? Can you let clients know you’ll be unavailable over text/phone/email between the hours of X and Y so that you can concentrate on your other projects?
- And where can you radically redesign or simplify any pre-pandemic expectations you had for yourself by simply saying, “Those were great then, but they don’t work now. I’m no longer going to hold myself to a standard that doesn’t match the season of life I’m in.” Think, expectations around: appearance, exercise, volunteering, being there for ALL the people, hobbies (I’ve let go of my need to read 100 books this year – it’s SO not happening), and any other standard you’re holding yourself to that just doesn’t work right now.
Wherever you’re at, you’re at.
And if my conversations with clients and friends of late are any indication, your gas tank is running on empty. I know how much it sucks and how much you’d like it to be different, but as I’m finding out the hard way, resisting reality just causes more stress and anguish.
As a dear friend said to me in my Twitter DMs last week, “I know you typically view September as the ‘get down to work’ start of the year time, but cut yourself some slack this year. This month is just going to be a stressful gong show. And you’ll get yourself back into a groove soon, I’m sure of it.”
May I offer the same words to you. If you’re not in the typical September back-to-school seasonal vibe, it’s ok. The great thing about seasons is that they change.
Hang on, be gentle and keep going.
Steph
x
p.s. If you need some extra support this season, I’d love to help. There are a few different ways I can support you, and it starts by booking a complimentary (NO pressure) call with me here. You don’t need to go it alone.
💡 FRESH, HAND-PICKED RESOURCES
Curated links from around the web to help you work well, live well and lead well.
💡 Remember ‘languishing‘ and how it took over our conversations for a few weeks until we all got sick-and-tired of talking about it, because we knew it was true and yet how many times does one need to be reminded that we’re languishing? (Austin’s take was better anyway).
Well, there’s a new term in town, and it’s called, “Pandemic Flux Syndrome” as coined by Amy Cuddy and JillEllyn Riley in the article, “Why this stage of the pandemic makes us so anxious.”
They describe ‘pandemic flux syndrome’ as that point in the pandemic when, after thinking things were getting better only to have Delta say, “Hold my beer,” our emotions have started to feel blunted, with spikes in anxiety and depression, and the urge to basically redesign our entire lives.
Can you relate?
If so, go read the article or catch her conversation on Brené’s podcast, Dare to Lead.
💡 On September 29th, I’ll be the speaker at my friend and client, Kourtney Branagan’s fundraising event, Sips & Leadership. She’s currently running for a councillor position in our upcoming municipal election (she’d work directly with 13 other councillors and the mayor to support our city).
We’re going to have what I know will be a wonderful conversation about leadership, self-care and politics. There are three donation levels available, including the newly added community level for $11.
Even if you’re not in Calgary, join us and support a smart, competent woman running for office.
Kourtney will also be a guest on my podcast next week, so watch for that (yes, the podcast is back!). 🙂
💡 Finally, while it’s no longer consuming our news feeds, my heart continues to be with the people of Afghanistan (particularly the women and girls). Back in my early 20s and during the Taliban’s harshest rule, I was the volunteer communications lead for a then new non-profit Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. I am devastated and scared for the women who’ve known some degree of peace and personal agency over the past 20 years, only to have it all but striped away again.
If you’re wondering what you can do to help, check out their site and learn about specific actions you can take (including writing a letter to your local MP here in Canada).
👀 You’re watching Ted Lasso right? I’m sure you are. At least I hope on everything that is good in the world that you are.
I was a latecomer (not a big TV watcher and I tend toward moving away from what’s ‘trendy’), but it lives up to the hype and then some. It’s like a warm cup of soup on a rainy day or a cozy blanket draped over you by the fireplace when the world gets to be too much.
AND, they’ve just confirmed that season three is a go. We all need more Ted Lasso in our lives – I hope they make 86 seasons (or at least as many as it’ll take to get us to the other side of the pandemic anyway). — It’s worth it even if you don’t want to subscribe to Apple +. Get the free trial, and then binge baby, binge. 🤣
💜 If I was to add a fourth thing I’m thinking about based on the three I listed in the essay above, it would be around finding joy and perspective wherever you can. This week, despite the dumpster fire news in my home province, we also collectively cried and rejoiced in the life of Julie Rohr in Edmonton, Alberta.
Julie had been battling a rare form of cancer since 2015, and passed away just yesterday. While I didn’t know her personally, I’ve followed her journey for a while on Twitter and came to realize just how beloved this woman is.
In an act of true love, her friends used the magic of Twitter (yes, sometimes Twitter IS magic) to connect with Julie’s favourite celebrity people. Within hours, video messages from Dan Levy, Ryan Reynolds, Glennon Doyle & Abby Wombach, Rick Mercer, Peter Mansbridge, Eugene Levy and many more members of Schitt’s Creek (her favourite) came through to Julie as she navigated her final days in hospice.
You can check out more and learn about this incredible human by searching the hashtag #welovejulierohr.
Sometimes we need a perspective shift to remind ourselves that people are good and that one person can create a ripple effect of love, laughter and care. Julie’s story and the effort her friends went to to get these video tributes to her, remind me that even in the shittiest of times, we can find light and give love to those we care about. I endeavour to live my life more like Julie, may she rest in peace.
For the one who is exhausted
~John O’Donohue
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
⭐….Read the rest of this blessing here
🌱 INSIDE LEAD.Well:
You are welcome to jump into LEAD.Well at any time, and enjoy the conversation, content and community of like-minded women exploring and growing in their own leadership.
Here’s what we’re up to in LEAD.Well:
- Tomorrow, we’re thrilled to have Laura Tremaine, author of “Share your stuff. I’ll go first.” join us for our quarterly book club discussion. I CANNOT WAIT.
- On September 24th, we’ll gather over Zoom for a 3-session Leader Retreat where take stock of Q3, celebrate our wins and map out our next 90 days.
- And on October 1st we kick off a new season (quarter) around the theme “Finish Well” (notice I didn’t say, Finish Strong, there’s a difference). We’ll explore this theme through practices, leader roundtables, coaching weeks, community discussions and our upcoming book club pick.
If you love my Leadership Letters, LEAD.Well offers you deeper analysis, behind-the-scenes insights, a private podcast feed, monthly events and a growing Leadership Resource Hub filled with my best tools and recommendations.
Learn more and join us here.
💥THE WEEK IN A GIF
Anyone else feel like this has been the longest week ever? Luckily, we’ve made it to Friday! 🎉
