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Hey designers,

Today, I’m going to give you some action steps that are going to help you alleviate stress and cure overwhelm.

When we talked last time I told you that taking a cruise was the most relaxing vacation I had ever had.

Upon reflection, I realized it was so relaxing because there was a break in my routine. On cruises everything is already prepaid for so that slight financial worry is gone. There’s no friction to buying, no decision to be made.

Similarly, I didn’t have to plan anything. Everything had been pre-planned. Our schedule was predictable:

Wake up
Breakfast
Lay on the deck
Read
Play cards
Shower
Dress for dinner
Cocktails
Dinner
Show

Rinse and Repeat

What happened on the 2nd day of cruising was a godsend. My husband and I were at the high dive show and we sat next to this other couple. Incidentally, the woman sitting next to me was a teacher. She had been on many cruises. This was the standard way of vacationing for her family. In fact, this was her second cruise this year and it was only April. The thing she said to me was this. “The great thing about cruising is you can do everything or nothing at all.” That was my aha moment. From that day forward on the cruise, I gave myself permission to rest and do nothing at all.

It seems like a small thing. Take a break. But if your mind moves like mine. You are always working on something. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy writing, planning, and creating. It fuels my creativity and brings me joy.

But sometimes to stay creative, to stay productive, we need to actively rest. We need to actively tell ourselves that it’s okay to do nothing to have no expectations of our time.

At the moment of this recording, we are about the head into the summer break. I think most of us have summer break down pat. We give ourselves permission to rest in the summer, during breaks, and maybe for a few hours on the weekend.

But…ask yourself this question.

How can I give myself permission to rest each week?
In Brene Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart, she names and explains human emotions. The premise is that if you can name your emotions you have a better chance of understanding them and in turn can live a more connected life with yourself and with others.
The first two emotions she describes are stress and overwhelm. Here’s the definition of stress from page 5. She says,
“We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded.”
So in essence the emotion of stress comes from our thoughts, and our expectations. Lessening our expectation to be doing something all the time can help us to reduce our stress.
On page 6, Brene describes overwhelm as “an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of being unable to function”
Do you know what the cure to overwhelm is?
Permission to rest.
Specifically, she quotes an article by Jon Kabat-Zinn which in essence prescribed “mindful play” or “no agenda” for the cure to overwhelm.
Giving yourself a time out can relieve stress and cure the feeling of overwhelm.
I was so relieved to hear this. Perhaps you are too. My mind is constantly going. I have my work, my passion project, my home, and my family. And there are days when all I want to do is sit in the dark and read or binge watch tv, and I always feel just a little guilty about it.
Now we know that giving ourselves permission to rest is essential for alleviating stress and curing overwhelm.
I like to be proactive and have concrete action steps. I imagine that you do too. Let’s go back to our original question.
Before we do let’s recap, you learned in the last few episodes that the LEADER mindset is about investigating your life.
Asking questions, really listening, experimenting and reflecting.
So our question to investigate this week and this season is
How can I give myself permission to rest each week?
Rest doesn’t have to be sleeping or reading or watching tv. It can be play, whatever play looks like to you.
Maybe you love painting watercolors or even your nails. Maybe you love running or boogie boarding.
Give yourself permission to rest, to play, to have a time out from your expectations.
So if I were using the LEADER process to design a solution to this question. I might do two things.
1. Listen to yourself and determine what feels like play and rest to you.
2. Schedule time for rest. Make an appointment on your calendar until having “no agenda” comes naturally to you.

If you love the investigation that we have been doing around the LEADER mindset, I’m offering an intro course to the LEADER mindset called Project You: Design Thinking for a Better Life. It’s similar to what we have been doing here on the podcast, but it includes a community and feedback and help from me to you personally. I’ve collaborated with Poppd.co to bring you this course. It’s a new platform to explore professional learning for educators by educators.

If you are want to dive deeper and design and execute a larger vision for your life, focusing on your health, relationships, passion projects, creativity, and career, join the waitlist for Life Design Collective. This is a course that takes place over Zoom live with a cohort of creative people like you.

As always, if you have found this podcast helpful, recommend it to a friend either in person or on social media. Also please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m on a mission to help educators design and live a life that they love to wake up to. I sincerely appreciate you. Thank you for helping me spread the word.

Until next designers,