Unknown (12:06)

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Kendra Adachi (13:06)

This episode is sponsored by Quince. I love a little luxury, but I don't always love the price. Until I found Quince. I have this lightweight cashmere throw from Quince that I sleep with every night. Y'all. It's like. It's like I'm a child and it's my personal blankie. I love this thing. Cozy, soft but super lightweight. Plus it costs far less than cashmere blankets that you would buy in a store. Quint cuts out the middleman so their high quality pieces like washable silk, organic cotton and 14 karat gold jewelry are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Plus they only partner with factories using safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. Give yourself the luxury you deserve with quince. Go to quince.com Genius for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C-E.com Genius to get free shipping and 365 day returns. 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Get 25 off your first month at ritual.com lazygenius that's ritual.com lazygenius I think we live with this invisible expectation that somehow we're just supposed to do it all and be perfectly fine putting out the kind of energy every day that we do without any input back in or what's unfortunate is the things that have been scientifically proven to be necessary for our stress management and our mental health. They have been distorted into forms that make us feel bad when we do them. Like working out. Working out is pound for pound the most impactful and efficient way to get your stress out. And it has also been co opted by diet culture and a lot of folks, especially women of a certain age, myself included, we have such a hard time doing any sort of exercise without feeling like we're giving into this message of diet culture that we've been trying to extricate ourselves from for years, right? So it kind of makes that stress reliever stressful. I think the same can be said of sleep. Sleep is so important for our bodies to reset and metabolize stress. When we don't get the sleep our bodies need, especially on a day when we have not metabolized our stress in any other way, we don't comprehensively get back to zero stress. When we wake up the next morning and now we have even fewer reserves to deal with that next day's stress. And it just piles on. It just piles on day after day. But somehow, whether you get enough sleep by going to bed early or by getting up early, or if you don't get enough sleep because you would like to spend time with your spouse, or you wanna stay up late reading because you haven't done anything fun for yourself today, or whatever, you feel like it's wrong. Either way. Whatever choice you make around sleep sometimes feels wrong. Like, famous doctors are telling women that they need 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night minimum, and that it shouldn't be hard to get, which is hilarious. But we're also told that we can sleep when we're dead because there's so much to hustle after. Like, it doesn't matter what we do. It's. It just feels wrong. Sleep is steeped in weird messages for a lot of folks, which makes it complicated to prioritize because you might have to filter out kind of unhealthy feelings you have about it that you didn't even know you might have had. I think creative expression can also feel loaded. Why are you spending time and money on something like art or dance or restoring furniture or making music or tending a flower garden when there's not much to show for it? If it's not your job, why are you wasting resources investing in it? That's why everything gets turned into a side hustle so fast. Because we're not allowed to just do something because we enjoy it. If it's just for your mental health, that does not feel like a reasonable trade off. I know there's someone in your life who might say that to you or think that about you. I spend money on paint and watercolor pads, and I spend hours and hours of my time using both of them up. And then the pads, they just end up in a stack. Like, buy my art cabinet with my paint. I don't mind the stack now. I actually love my stack and I hope it keeps growing. But I had to get over the guilt that I felt by using our family's dollars and my own time for things that were only for me and my own personal enjoyment and mental health. I felt guilty because it seemed like a waste. It seemed selfish. Listen to me right now. Doing things that feed your soul and tend to your body and that release and relieve the stress that you are experiencing, they are essential for being a person. They are not selfish. They're not selfish. But I will say it's easy to feel like they are. And I am guilty of perpetuating this feeling. There have been many times at the gym around like 5ish, you know, I'm on the treadmill and I see guys come in to the gym in their office clothes and then they have like their duffel bag with their workout clothes. And do you know what I think? I think, dude, go home and like relieve your wife of being with your children. But he's just working out his stress. Like I want everyone to. I think it's just maybe that men have an easier time and path making this happen in their lives. Or maybe they just don't feel any guilt about it. You know, they're not doing anything wrong. They're actually doing something beautifully. Right? But they don't feel guilt about it. And when you don't feel guilt about doing something for yourself, you must be selfish. What an unfortunate paradigm to perpetuate and what a horrible burden to live under to make guilt a prerequisite to doing something for yourself. I know that I tend to do that as a way to communicate to whoever's around me that, you know, I get it. I get that it's a really big deal that I'm doing this thing just for myself on a Tuesday. You know, it's kind of like that. Like I need them to know that I know. But know what? What does our guilt do for our knowing? What does guilt do? I think it simultaneously makes us detached from the importance of self care. You know, it kind of like keeps us like, not fully engaged in it because of our guilt. But then the guilt also elevates whatever we're doing to this incredibly high unreachable status. So it's like, it's unimportant and then deeply important at the same time. That's what guilt does. Whereas if we remove the guilt, if we consider our choices of self care every day is just necessary. They're just as necessary as things like carpools and dinner plans and paying bills. I think if we removed the guilt from those things, they would become more normalized and therefore less steeped in emotional muck. Just do the thing just like you do anything else. Which leads me to the third part of this, which is what the release and relief of stress does to our lives as a whole. You know, how in the plan I say that staying grounded is better than staying on task? And a lot of people don't like that one, which is fair. It's fine. But this is why, this is what I mean. When we are Tending to ourselves and we are focused on staying grounded, it actually enables us to stay on task better. We are able to do the things we need to do, both pleasant things and annoying ones. When we are full, when we are not holding an incomplete stress cycle in our bodies, when we are not forcing ourselves to bend to the demands of life without any fluidity or any compassion, the tending to our bodies and our minds and our stress, while it does take up time, it actually gives us more time. It creates emotional and physical margin. Overall, it is better to stay grounded than to stay on task. Usually what we do is we let the stress build up day after day, causing more overwhelm and a desire to leave everything behind and live in a van. When that happens, when we're not feeling kind and contented because of that built up stress, it does not matter how small the outside force is. A stubbed toe, you could stub your toe, you step on that Lego, you see like a spill of milk on the floor. I don't know, it causes you to like either retreat or explode. So I think the answer here is not for us to like first find better household systems or better time management hacks. Y'all know, I don't think that's the answer in this case. When we are talking about caring for ourselves, the answer is to process our stress, to recover from our stress, to fill ourselves up on a daily basis. Energy spent in that direction, it might feel selfish, but it is not. It is the opposite. So one of the areas of my life that I struggled with for so long was the feeling that I had as I tried to fall asleep. I did that thing that women do where I would just lie awake as my brain spun round and round and round and round, rehashing what I did, what I said, what needs to be done tomorrow. If I was doing my entire life right, I couldn't settle down and go to sleep. It took long, a long time for me to fall asleep, which made me sleep less and then also sleep less soundly. So I'd wake up still feeling like mentally upside down and not at all rested, right? And the cycle just continued night after night. Now for a while, my, my response was to try and do more at night, to like get more done, check more things off, you know, and maybe, maybe I would feel better about what I accomplished. I didn't really rest at at night. I was working all day. And then when I did sit down, it was more to numb than to fill up, right? I would just eat ice cream and get on social media in the short time before bed. And then I would spin out still as I was lying in bed. It didn't matter how much I got done that day. And that was my rhythm for a really long time. Now. I began slowly shifting that rhythm when I started calling my day kind of done at night. Like I would give myself an arbitrary cutoff time to just like, I'm done for the day, you know, because things are never actually done, so I might as well just decide to stop, you know. So I started doing that and it really helped. And then from there, I slowly moved to more life giving things in the evening, usually reading. It helped a lot because reading made me slow down, which I needed. And while I did go to bed, like a little less tightly wound than usual, I still struggled to fall asleep. That's why I took sleep gummies for so long. But do you want to know what really started shifting things for me? It's when I started drawing and painting. Many nights I will call an end to anything productive and responsible. Right? Cutoff time is done, I'm done and I'll draw. Or most likely I'll do what I always do, which is like a continuous line drawing. Like where you don't pick up your pen of a face with a Sharpie. And then I will watercolor it. That's my favorite. I do that almost every night. When that practice became more regular, I started sensing a shift in myself. I was metabolizing my stress on a daily basis at night before bed, and I started sleeping better. I don't even take gummies anymore, y'all. Now that's not the only thing. Obviously. Like, I'm not directly connecting painting to better sleep, but there is is data that says that physical activity, relational connection, and creative expression complete the stress cycle. They literally help stress leave your body and they bring tiny levels of healing to your nerves and your organs and your soul. Reading was restful, but it wasn't necessarily restorative. Like I was experiencing someone else's creative expression, which is rad and still helpful. But making my own, it did something in me. This is why every single day, every day I prioritize some type of movement. Even if it's just a couple of minutes, like just dancing around my living room for a few minutes, working up a sweat. It's fun and easy. Doesn't matter. I prioritize that every day. I prioritize a relational connection, usually with someone I do not live with every day. And then either reading, painting, or baking every day. Now reading is more accessible and easier to do. That's why it's on the list. I also love it so much. It's my favorite hobby. So even though it's not the most direct creative expression, it kind of scratches the itch, you know, Especially if I've already combined it with, like, I've moved that day and I've connected with someone that day. But baking and painting are creative expressions for me. They change the way I live. I have seen direct results of that. And guess what? Even though I have a ton of tasks that I still need to do, even though I have a husband to enjoy, I have kids to love on and to drive places, I have groups that I'm part of or in charge of, I have a home to tend, I have a job to do. I have a community I want to invest in. Even though I think I actually have more going on in my life now than I ever have before, like, practically on paper, I am not overwhelmed. I'm not stretched too thin. Part of that is because I live with the goal of contentment and integration instead of greatness, which I talk about in the plan. That takes a lot of the pressure off of how well things get done, how quickly things get done. But it's also in part to my own stress management. I have seen the light, y'all. I have seen the beauty of tending to myself, of not complicating that. Tending with a big old layer of guilt. Either me going to the gym to run on the treadmill for 20 minutes, or getting out my watercolors at the end of the day, or my daily conversations with friends and, like, pretty regular outings with them. They are all things I do not apologize for or feel like I have to over explain to my family or create some sort of, like, quid pro quo situation or have to pay it back. I don't owe my husband because I went out with friends. I don't have to pay him back for that. That's just part of my being a person and caring for myself and managing my stress. Do you see the cycle? Do you see the deception that we live under because of unnecessary guilt? You're not selfish for caring for yourself. I actually think it's not a crazy thing to say that the guilt is causing us more harm. It's creating less margin and opportunity for us to fill our cups so that we can be available to fill the cups of other people. You're not selfish. Self care is not selfish. And when you start to believe that and act like it's true, live like it's true, it really does impact your entire life. And that is the end of today's big sister pep talk. Okay, before we get into the Lazy Genius of the Week to close up our episode, if you would like to submit your idea to possibly get a share on the podcast with your Lazy Genius of the Week, you can email your idea to hello@the lazygeniuscollective.com and if you want to be extra helpful, to Latoya, our director of community, who gets these, put Lazy Genius of the Week in the subject line and that way she can filter them through. We would love to hear from you. All right, now let's celebrate the Lazy Genius of the Week this week. No lie, it is Angela Bassett. Probably not that Angela Bassett, but we're just gonna pretend it is for a hot second. Okay, Angela writes. A few years ago, I found myself always searching for a Sharpie and then the perfect place to put my name on a dish or a serving utensil. When I was heading to a large gathering with friends one day, a random roll of washi tape appeared in my large kitchen utensil drawer. I grabbed it and quickly marked all of my containers, lids and utensils with a strip as I headed out the door. Since that day, that same pattern of washi tape has adorned many a dish and made it easy to pick out my instant pot lid and ladle, among a dozen others. This decide once and storing the washi tape in its place has saved a lot of time and brain space. I'm planning to gift each of my close friends with a roll of unique pattern of unique pattern of washi tape this Christmas to make our group gatherings a little simpler and more personalized. Well, this is a really fun idea and a lot prettier than what my husband does, which he uses Blue Painters tape. But you could also use that also. Listen, Angela, I love that you have so many gatherings that you're going to with your friends that you need washi tape. You all need washi tape for your things. I'm like, can we, can we all get in on that? This is the best energy ever. But it is true. Whenever we take food somewhere cos puts a big old piece of painter's tape on it, it's like, hey. And people know it's ours. They're like, hey, this is yours. Don't forget. It's actually a really solid idea. So thank you for sharing this, Angela, and congratulations on being the Lazy Genius of the Week. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kenzie. The Lazy Genius Podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. Thanks, y'all, for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week.