EP 144: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #8

Show links:

• Join my book club on Fable!
• Burnout On-demand book club

More episodes in this series:

• EP 143: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #7
• EP 142: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #6
• EP 141: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #5
• EP 140: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #4
• EP 139: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #3
• EP 138: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #2
• EP 137: 2022 Summer Quickie Series - Burnout Tip #1

Transcript:

Friends, we're in the midst of summer. And that means it's time for more summer quickies. The summer quickies that I'm mentioning here are all about short, actionable self-care exercises that you can do this summer to change how you feel so that you can feel better now.

And later on, it's all about completing the stress cycle. So what does that mean? Reminder two parts of the stress cycle. According to the book Burnout, the secret to unlocking the stress cycle by the Nagoski sisters.

And that is there is an event or a person or a thing that makes you freak the fuck out on the inside.

And even when that stressor, that thing that caused the stress is gone, there's still all the residual gunk, all the stress juice as the sisters call it, the oogly boogley hanging out inside. I like to think of it as my inner ancestor, going back to old school, thinking that every danger is something that will kill me.

So the idea is even though you're out of immediate danger, you still have to deal with your body freaking out. So the most efficient as we talked about in episode one of the summer quickie series, the most efficient way to process stress is to exercise vigorously 20 to 60 minutes.

And since we're all working on the stress debt, Of having a lifetime of unresolved stress and uncompleted stress cycles, we probably should move our bodies.

You can use meditation, you can use progressive relaxation, these things help your calm, your nervous system, so that your body's oh, I am safe. You can have positive social interactions.

It's actually one of my favorites. You can cry until you laugh or laugh until you cry. You can hug and kiss your people.

And today's episode is all about creative expression. So what the hell is creative expression? It's all those things that you do when you forget to look at your phone or when you forget to take pictures. So it's things that you do with your hands and your mind, and you get in that sort of flow state.
Some things that come to mind are singing or gardening, or I don't know. Making up a song or sewing a quilt or playing a board game or making up a board game or creating a new recipe or cooking your way through a cookbook.

Anything you can get you into that creative space, where you're using different parts of your brain because here's the thing.

I have two points. One is this is about process, not product. So maybe RA, because I know a bunch of you just went, oh, cool. I'm gonna go to the art store right now. And I'm gonna buy like tons of art supplies, and then you're gonna still scroll on Instagram and you're not gonna use them.

And then you're gonna feel bad about having bought the art supplies and all that jazz. So you can skip over that part. What I mean is use what you have right now creatively.

So maybe you make a collage of the magazines that you have and then you send it to me on Instagram, because that would be amazing. Maybe you, I don't know, make a dress for your cat with your sewing machine or you crochet a dog leash.

I don't know but the point is this, we're looking for the process over the product. So you don't wanna worry about what it looks like. You wanna worry about. How can I spend some time with my hands and my mind occupied on something that isn't doom scrolling?

It isn't feeling bad about myself because everyone's on vacation, but me and they're all posting their pictures on Instagram.

How can I get out of my head and into my body and into a way that feels like I'm creating something for myself, for the enjoyment. I feel like this is next level ready for the enjoyment of actually doing it not.

So you can point at it, take a picture and be like, look what I did. And by the way, you can do that.

But the purpose of this is not the pretty picture at the end. The purpose is to dig into the different places in your brain. So we've already had the freak out, right? We had the stressor and we can't use our creative brain.

When we are under attack. So again, what we're doing when we are completing the stress cycle is we are counteracting that we're overriding that feeling of, "oh my God, everything's about to end, oh my God. I'm an eminent danger", by doing something that you could not do if you were in eminent danger, because you can't paint a portrait when you're under attack.

At least not comfortably. So this week, I would love to know what you're doing. To get into a creative mindset.

What kinds of materials are you using? Are you using watercolor? Are you using Sharpie? Are you using a glue stick in a magazine? What's your medium for creative expression and. What sort of process are you doing?

One of the things that I have on my 22 for 22 list, which reminder is my goal list. I always have a number of goals for the number of years.

And one of my goals this summer is to learn how to embroider. I have never done it. Oh, excuse me. I did do part of a project one time, and then I put it down. I still have the project, so maybe I should pick that back up, but a friend. Knows that I want to be more of a maker and create more things with my hands.

And she is a handcraft gal, love her. She taught my kid how to sew and how to crochet. And now she's gonna teach me how to embroider. So that's one of my projects.

This summer is to make something with my hands. And so I'm gonna be working on that. I also, I'm gonna make a skirt. Because again, I don't have a history of being a maker.

I'm more of a writer or in this case, a talker; I'm more of a communicator. So I'm challenging myself to make things this summer. So I would be curious again, find me on Instagram, come on over and see send me a DM or leave me a comment about the kinds of things that you're doing.