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May 9 - June 21, 2024
Yet the cultural expectation remains that in order to make money, we must sacrifice the things that matter most to us—our health, our families, our free time, our sanity.
Yet the cultural expectation remains that in order to make money, we must sacrifice the things that matter most to us—our health, our families, our free time, our sanity.
This made me realize two things: (1) Much of what I’d been doing to keep myself busy prior to getting pregnant was unnecessary. (2) My power and worth go far beyond the list of things I’d accomplished by the end of a workday.
This made me realize two things: (1) Much of what I’d been doing to keep myself busy prior to getting pregnant was unnecessary. (2) My power and worth go far beyond the list of things I’d accomplished by the end of a workday.
I couldn’t sacrifice my body for productivity anymore because I knew that pushing past my profound fatigue would ultimately be harmful for my baby.
I couldn’t sacrifice my body for productivity anymore because I knew that pushing past my profound fatigue would ultimately be harmful for my baby.
dual vocation of being a nurturer and having a career.
Adrienne Maree Brown says in her book Emergent Strategy that ease is sustainable. She reminds us that birds coast when they can.
So many women are leaning out because the old model of putting in more hours and more effort literally makes us sick and less resilient mentally.
As Dr. Travis Bradberry, co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, wrote: “Experiencing stress actually makes it more difficult to deal with future stress because it diminishes your ability to take control of the situation, manage your stress and keep things from getting out of control. A vicious cycle if there ever was one.”
In research reported by the Harvard Business Review, it was stated that very few people could be in a state of high concentration on things that really move the needle forward, like writing about new ideas, for more than four or five hours a day total. This held true even among extremely high performers, including athletes, novelists, and musicians. And, honestly, spending four to five hours a day on high-leverage activities like that is impressive; it’s two hours more a day than average executives and managers devote to building their skills.
The average worker in an office gets interrupted every 3 to 10 minutes, and it could take from 5 to 25 minutes to get refocused on what you were doing before.5
a 40-plus-hour workweek without any evidence of its effectiveness,
people who took regular breaks were wildly more productive than those who kept their butt in their chair for hours on end without pausing to refresh.7 The ideal ratio was approximately one 15-minute break to every hour of work—or, more specifically, 52 minutes of work and an average of 17 minutes of rest.
since staff are happier, there are fewer office conflicts,
the UK, we meet Dr. John Ashton, who has declared that the entire nation should go down to a four-day workweek.
“maldistribution of work” in which some people work way too much and some people are unemployed.
The company also allowed everyone to work on whatever they wanted for the month of June, and Fried reported that it resulted in the biggest burst of creativity that the company has ever seen.10
when our days are filled with caring for ourselves or someone else on a basic level, we suddenly feel like we have nothing to show for our days.
both men and women are cyclical. However, women cycle on a 28-day rotation while men cycle on a 24-hour rotation. Men go through all of the phases in a day, and women go through them in a month. And because we live in a patriarchy that celebrates the masculine over the feminine, our whole world is set up to support a 24-hour cycle, not a 28-day cycle.
We’re supposed to show up at the same time every day and put in as much or more effort and intensity than we put in yesterday.
Bronnie Ware’s book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,
Wishing they’d had the courage to live a life more true to themselves rather than the life others expected of them. Wishing they hadn’t worked so hard. Wishing they’d had the courage to express their feelings. Wishing they’d stayed in touch with their friends. Wishing they’d let themselves be happier.
Albert Einstein: “Nothing happens until something moves.”
happiness comes from the process of progress and growth, not from the result of progress and growth.
running the “race to nowhere,” as described by Dr. Shefali Tsabary,
“What we appreciate appreciates.”
this way of being makes self-care part of our rhythm as opposed to a reward.
Instead of the incessant need to be doing something all the time that’s become normalized in our “crazy busy” culture, the Upward Cycle of Success reminds us that every phase is productive, even if we’re not technically “doing” anything. It reminds us that there’s value in rest, that the pause is fertile, and that taking a break is actually time well spent.
Terri Cole, clinical psychologist and master coach, calls this overfunctioning, and it’s super common with high-achieving women,
Abraham-Hicks says that appreciation has an even more attractive vibration than gratitude because it’s purely about noticing what we like about what’s in front of us instead of gratitude, which is often about liking what’s in front of us as compared to what could be in front of us or what used to be in front of us.
how we spend our days is ultimately how we spend our lives.
Audre Lorde, said it best: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
if you should confront your mother about that thing she keeps doing that’s driving you crazy,
The 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your actions.
The Universe has a divine plan, and it’s organized around the fact that the things that light you up the most are also the things that allow you to have the biggest impact in the world.
On the right side, write down your biggest career wins to date.
What parts of mothering give you 80 percent of the results (a feeling of connection with your kids, a peaceful home environment, a feeling of satisfaction in how you’re showing up as a mother, just as a few examples)?
which parts of mothering are the most draining for you but turn out to not give you that much bang for your buck anyway
Do I love doing this? If so, keep it. Screw results. Enjoyment is everything.
Does this need to be done at all? If not, stop doing that thing. Pure and simple. If so, move on to the next question. Who else could do this? Could you get help from your kids, from your partner, from a friend or family member? Is this something you’re up for hiring someone else to do or perhaps trading another skill set you have that you enjoy for this service? Some obvious examples would be cleaning your house, running errands, and maybe even cooking.
Aim toward spending 80 percent of your time on your vital few over time.
They were telling me that I come off as seeming so together that I have a tendency to hide my vulnerabilities.
Every day, your mantra is “I am allowing this day to be easy” and then you ask yourself the following questions: What can I do to make this day easier? What can I allow in this moment to make this day easier? What can I let go of?
What happened in your family growing up when you asked for a need to be met or you asked for help? What kind of response did you get?
Experiment #11: Streamline Your To-Do List: Does this need to be done? Does this need to be done by me? Does this need to be done right now?
In Experiment #2, we talked about what really matters to us, and now I want to take it even deeper. Let’s dig into the question: How do I actually simplify my life so that I feel more satisfied and less tired?
The Culprits Here are the things I can think of that add the most complexity to my life (or have in the past) and the lives of those around me: Belongings: clothing, furniture, cars, boats, kitchen gadgets, and basically anything and everything that requires maintenance, cleaning, organization, and storage Meetings Trying to make other people happy Overthinking things Multiple residences Travel Feeding yourself and your family Taking on responsibilities beyond your fundamental needs and those of your family Moving Multiple jobs or businesses Activities Relationships Saying yes to too many
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“Do Less Filter,” which everything has to go through. If there’s a way that we could get as good results in a less complex way, in a way that requires fewer steps, or doing less in general, we do it.
I find that I tend to make things more complicated than they need to be when I’m rushing.
