Hi, this is Katie and thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space podcast. And this is a podcast about feeling the world intensely creating time to evaluate your needs and planning your space and life to fit you. And today I wanted to talk about is it possible that you are pushing your productivity or pushing an idea of what it means for you to be productive?

And this can mean a couple different things. It's when, I mean, when I'm talking about the word pushing, are you pushing yourself to be productive? In any kind of buffer space that you have in your life. And also are you pushing others to possibly follow in your footsteps, but I wanna focus mainly on you when you are like, have these super busy times in your life, are there moments where.

So say you had a really busy weekend and then you're coming and you're starting your Monday and you're like, wow, I don't have much on the schedule today. What does your body do? What is your body saying in that moment? Because sometimes what we kind of automatically do without questioning is maybe you rest some more.

It could be that we. Think we have to do something right away so we pour ourselves into another project. Are you sitting and, and kind of being quiet enough to ask the question? So what I'm really talking about is like when that, that buffer time, that that free time comes up, what is the first thing that you go to?

Does this feel uncomfortable? Does this feel like you need to have a conversation with yourself or take a more pulled back view of how the rest of the week or the month is going? Do you wanna fill it in with a bunch of things going, oh, well, well, this is an opportunity that I can like, get all these little things done that I've really wanted to do.

But if your body is telling you to rest, This may be burnout instead of like, oh, I'm squandering these opportunities. It can be that your body really does need to rest because you've been going at 120%. When I realized I had more. Chronic illness conditions to deal with over time, like I've, I've grown up with P C O S, I have dealt with a lot of things the last few years up until when my son was born and then I was diagnosed with another condition on top of that after he was born and, and just recently, so now I have these multiple things going on, and I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago.

Or 20 years ago. So when I try to think about, not only am I aging, I'm just aging. I'm in my mid forties I have less energy than I did before, and I'm a new person. I'm in a new season. I have a lot of mental things I'm trying to process right now and physical conditions I'm trying to work around. But if there's something where I'm pausing and all of a sudden my body goes, yes, please pause.

Please, please, you know excuse me. It can be a sign that maybe you are 100% that you're giving in your day to day. You know, taking the kids to school taking 'em to after school activities, doing your own work or doing projects around a house, whatever you're filling your day with, which is all entirely val.

Valid and valuable. Could it be that what you used to consider as this capsule of your time saying, this is what my normal energy level is. Could your battery have shrunk? Could it be that your tolerance intolerance also means how you re-energize. It's not about what you're putting up with, it's about how you're re-energizing.

Even when you do stuff that's energizing for yourself. So if you are an introvert, that's spending time with yourself. If you're an extrovert that's spending time with others, you're outside doing things to connect with other people. Is it that your body's saying you need to slow down? You need to rest because you haven't built in rest points within your days.

I don't know your schedule, I don't know what's going on. I love to get to know my clients that way. I love to kind of peek into, you know, what is their daily schedule? What is, what is going on? Where are those highs and lows? Is it that the pendulum is swinging too far one way, therefore causing it to swing back the other way?

And that swing back of it saying, no pause. You need to rest. Is really important to listen to. So, and if we don't, we're burning out our body, we are literally burning out our body. It can lead to burnout, it can lead to a lot of extra stress living within the body. Expectations. I need to do this, but do you have to, can we reframe this to say, This is too much.

So also I've heard like, hey, you know, my 20% for the day is my 100%. If you wanna compare it to other people, I'm giving 20%. You may be giving 80%, but that 20% is my, a hundred percent. I think it was Elise, oh, I forgot her last name. She's on TikTok and everywhere. She was talking about this recently in a real, and I was like, yes, what you can give that day.

Is all you can give. And that can be your a hundred percent. It could be 5%, it could be 1%, it could be 0% because you are flat out in bed cuz your body needs it. So what we need to do though is surrender to that idea. That, that's where we are. And when you know yourself and you accept where you are, it can be very hard.

Like for me, you know, looking at my chronic conditions of going, wait, this won't, this won't let me have this output that I used to have in my twenties and thirties. It just won't, and it's frustrating. And I had to talk to a therapist about, I had to talk to my family about it and I had to talk it out and accept and surrender to this is where I am now.

And when you do surrender, then you start seeing your life as like, wait, I do need to pull back on everything. I do need to not say yes to as many things. I do need to take these. Blank parts, these buffer points in my, in my schedule and rest, I need to self soothe with something. So that could just be, you know, having my favorite foods for breakfast or.

Reading a book or doing like a facial or something like that. Those are more like self soothing to make me feel good. But then there's self care things, which is like going to therapy, talking to others relationships leaning on my community and, you know, looking at more of a, a holistic kind of care for myself.

Scheduling doctor's appointments, all those types of things. To me are self-care. And then there's things on top of that work that I do for rest as well. And you can call 'em all self-care, it's fine. Some people say self-sooth because it kind of is different than, like, I can wear a facial mask, but it's not helping me get to the doctor and tend two things that I really need to take seriously and keep on top of.

So, But if you wanna just all call 'em self-care, that's, that works too. But you have to fit those in. And if you're, you're not in the facials, don't do them. Do something that really works for you. Like what are those recharge points? What are those rest points? Is it just sitting out in the sun for half an hour?

Is it taking a walk through a nature preserve? Is it reading a book? Is it taking a nap? Is it any of those things that really help you rest? That once you start see, seeing that you can mix those into your schedule, that you can romanticize your life, that you can kind of you know, fill in those little parts with things for yourself.

And not that there's this obligation to others. It may be planning for something that's really important for you, but it can be that. Pushing yourself to plan and to do and to take steps in those really important goals for yourself. Like both of these things are for yourself, right? But that may still be too much because you aren't taking time with that within all of the other days of your schedule to rest.

So are you pushing yourself to 120%, 140%, 110%? Is it over what your maximum capacity to do things are? Is there an acceptance of where you are right now? And a lot of society is telling women and even non-binary people like it. There's so much expected for us to go above and beyond that our a hundred percent sometimes doesn't feel enough to other people.

So is it possible that you are hearing other people's expectations and voices in your head saying, you need to do this, this empty space right here. You need to fill it because that's what I would do, or That's what I expect you to do, or that's what we expect you to do as a society and that's not healthy.

Right. It's not coming from you. You can have your, you know, these are my goals, these are my plans, this is what I wanna do, and you can still fit them into a looser schedule, a more flexible schedule that accounts for your capacity, but it's not based on other people's expectations. So looking at that factor and saying, no, wait, wait, wait.

You may have this expectations of me, but my a hundred percent lives over here. This is my a hundred percent. This is how I surrender and accept myself, and this is what I can give to others, which means that my life starts balancing out a bit. And of course, we all have obligations. And that's a whole nother episode.

I have talked a bit about that on past podcasts, so if you wanna listen to those. But I'm talking about you right now. What is your actual battery capacity and your energy, and how do you keep from going over that amount so you don't burn out? Totally. So thank you for joining me and I'll catch you next time on the My Senses, MySpace Podcast.