Guess what? I have a new book!
Dear friends,
After a LOT of hard work behind the scenes for the past several months, I'm so excited to finally announce that I have a new book coming out! Connecting with Loneliness: A Guided Journal is for anyone who has struggled with loneliness. This past year, that may be many of us! The book is full of self-reflection exercises and activities designed to help you feel more connected and fulfilled.
My favorite part of writing this book was knowing how many might benefit from being able to do something to feel better after being lonely or isolated. I know you’re going to love it.
Learn more about the book and pre-order a copy here!
Stress and the Window of Tolerance
We’re all under a higher baseline amount of stress lately, due to COVID, isolation, winter and seasonal depression, world tensions, and ongoing transitions in work and family life. When we have higher levels of stress, our “window of tolerance” becomes very narrow. That means that our stress hormones are overacting, and we can be easily pushed into unhelpful coping strategies like anxiety or agitation, or numbing/dissociation.
Window of Tolerance
Here are some ways to widen your window of tolerance and stay in the more optimal part of your stress response, where you feel present, grounded, and able to regulate or tolerate your emotions:
1) Practice mindfulness – Even doing a quick, 2-minute grounding exercise where you check in with your five senses and pick out:
5 things you can see
4 things you can touch
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste
. . . brings you out of your overactive anxious thinking and back to the present moment. Staying present as much as possible makes it easier to notice and allow for whatever you’re feeling, rather than scrambling to do something about it or try not to think about it – which only makes it feel worse.
2) Up your self-care – Use mindfulness and awareness of your senses to build in extra care when stress is higher. Take a break. Walk outside (even if it’s cold). Have a candle lit or music playing. Stroke a pet. Give yourself small gifts of time and pleasure and allow yourself to really feel relaxed and happy – on purpose – throughout your day.
3) Write yourself a compassionate message – When you’re stressed, you might not be the kindest to yourself. Think about what words make you feel better about yourself, and write them somewhere you will see when you need that reminder. You’re doing your best. You’re dealing with a lot. You’re going to be okay.
4) Set a boundary around your stress – give yourself real, practical time away from stressors like work, school, parenting, etc. This might mean not checking your phone or email during a certain time. Taking a drive by yourself once in a while. Journaling about what you’re grateful for before bed instead of working right up until you fall asleep. Giving yourself time when the stress from each of your different roles/demands isn’t running the show.
Read the words in the “Window of Tolerance” box and think about what makes you feel that way. Consider how you can give yourself more of those feelings and experiences to widen your window and feel better about how you’re coping with stress.
Pandemic Motivation
Self-Motivation might be the only thing we have these days, as this pandemic rages into its second calendar year and many of us have been self-isolating for ten+ months. Maybe you’re like me, and viewed the first few months of the pandemic as an exhilarating challenge – Let’s see how this goes to teach two kids and work from home! Look at all the artists doing fun craft-from-home videos! A short-lived period where my second-grader made a lesson plan for my preschooler was a big win!
Now we’re more than over it.
So let’s talk about how to keep your motivation up when there aren’t a lot of external rewards for doing the things.
1) Make your list: Write down a reasonable amount of things you want/need to get done just today. Reasonable is the key! For me, about 8 things is reasonable – and that includes the zoom meetings, errands, even small tasks like “figure out how to renew a driver’s license in a pandemic.” It also includes the small steps in what might be a big task, like a work project. Write down the pieces that you absolutely think you can accomplish in the one day.
2) Set yourself a reward: Our brains don’t want to work for nothing – that reward pathway is there for a reason! Make sure you have something to look forward to after you finish those tasks. It could be a fun activity, a walk, a meal or dessert, or a phone call with a friend. If there are some big or dreaded tasks on your list, make sure you plan a small reward after you complete that – maybe just a break to stretch your legs, a snack, or some music or movement.
3) Give yourself credit: At the end of the day, whether you got everything done or not, recap to yourself and feel some gratitude for what you were able to get done. Focus on what you did well. Think ahead to tomorrow and how you might adjust your expectations of yourself. Practice some self-compassion around anything that didn’t go well – you did your best. You’ll try again tomorrow.
4) Connect: If you don’t live with others, put some thought into how connected you feel to others. This is a really isolating time, and if you don’t have built-in interactions throughout your day, you might have to plan them out. If a phone call, text exchange, or video chat is not your favorite, put it on your list of tasks and the reward yourself when you do it! While we might be feeling resentful that we’re not able to connect with others spontaneously or the way we would prefer, we will benefit if we push through and do the connecting anyway – ideal or not.
Here are the key pieces to staying motivated during hard times:
- Time-limited – one day at a time, one task at a time so we don’t get overwhelmed.
- Realistic – lower your expectations to what you are capable of doing during a global pandemic, not your usual high standards.
- Reward-oriented – don’t expect yourself to work for little or no rewards! Figure out how you like to celebrate your wins and do it more often for yourself.
- Connected – recognizing we need that social interaction, however we can get it.
I hope you will write your own suggestions for keeping your motivation up in the comments so we can help each other out!
Recovering from Life Burnout
Many of us – I’ll venture to say working mothers in particular – are feeling burnt out in one if not many of the roles we find ourselves switching wildly between these days – parent, worker, teacher, disciplinarian, compassion figure, cook, consumer, partner, housekeeper, functional adult. I will say that I have felt “burnt out” – feeling hopeless and ineffective in dealing with my work and just over it – in every one of these roles over the past week.
We are reaching our limits within these roles more frequently because they used to serve as breaks from one another – while I was at work I didn’t have to worry about what was for dinner, and when I was planning fun and educational activities for my kids I didn’t have to also think about when I was going to fit these into my work day. Breaks (mental or physical) and feelings of purpose or motivation toward a goal are what prevent burnout – and here we are without them, and without an end in sight.
Here’s how we can recover from burnout, if we’re already there:
1) Redefine “effectiveness” – forget about being able to complete one task by a deadline and before moving on to another. If you are living in the reality of multiple overlapping and critical roles, surviving through the day without anyone dying is effective. Avoid setting expectations about all of the things you “should” be able to accomplish in a work day (or a parenting day, or a home-school day), and instead set one small, achievable goal in each of the realms you have to function that day. Plan to get outside. Plan to make it to that one important zoom meeting. Plan to take a few minutes to shower, to read, or to have a dance party in your kitchen – something that brings you joy. Plan to eat a sandwich. If you don’t reach all those small, achievable goals, THAT’S OKAY. There were probably too many of them anyway. Give yourself credit for the things you did, and let the other things go. Finish the day with gratitude about what went well.
2) Build up your Life satisfaction – Identify what things you do in a day that make you feel energized and engaged. Do more of those things. See if there are ways to define your “effectiveness” by how much you do these things, instead of how much work you get done or how much math your kid learns. If you also happen to identify some things that drag down your morale, see if you can either do less of those things or pair them with a reward or something fun like listening to a podcast or music while you file reports, or taking that meeting on your phone outside. We might not be able to quit all the things we don’t want to do, but we can maybe shift our thinking so that we don’t spend so much of our mental energy (which is limited!) on them to the point that it’s all we think about.
3) Talk about Work-Life Integration – if you’re a working parent, this is the time to talk with your manager/supervisor about how to design a more sustainable work-life integration – let’s lose this idea of “work-life balance,” as if they are ever going to be totally separate things again. We need to be able to work within our life, and live as whole humans even in our work. Now is the time, because if your workplace is not willing to be flexible now, when we are ALL needing flexibility, it is not. the. place. for. you. (I offer workplace consultation on specifically fostering the needs of working parents, so a well-placed referral can certainly be made here!) As workplaces are thinking about what productivity looks like long-term, we working parents have to be in the equation. It is also a unique time to take a look at your own work-life integration and think about what you would like it to look like as opposed to what it does look like, and see if some of the changes can be made internally (in your own thinking or prioritization), as well as making some recommendations to your employer.
I’m with you in this, working parents, and cheering you on as we all try to figure out our own balance, roles, and ways of moving forward!
photo: Jayden Brand