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Gather At The Well: Re-Entry Without the Burnout: Return from Rest with Rhythm, Not Rush - Lindsey Fuller
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I'm Lindsay and it's time to gather at the well. We're on a mission to microdose wellness, create human centered systems, and retain our greatest asset, our people. We believe it's time for podcasts that teach moving beyond thought leadership and towards change leadership. Join us and our friends at We Are For Good as we model the way with concrete examples from the field and gain tangible tools because it's possible to build adult work cultures we don't need to heal from let's get into it hey yo. Glad you're back. Today we're talking Re Entry. How to come back from time away without the Sunday Scaries When I say the Sunday Scaries, I'm talking about how that low hum of dread hits you before Monday. The body's way of saying, I'm not ready to rush. It's not a flow, it's it's feedback. And at the teaching well, we don't pathologize that feeling. Educators everywhere know what's up. We listen to it. The Sunday Scaries are simply data from your nervous system reminding you to design a re entry that honors your rest instead of undoing it. Today's conversation brings a few ideas to the surface, whether you're planning a vacation, sabbatical, or simply trying to not stress the hell out at 5pm each Sunday. Foreign let's take just a little bit of a breath break. Maybe three deep breaths here, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Two more just like that, unclenching your jaw, dropping your shoulders and exhaling longer than your inhale. If you've been tuning into this season, you know our theme. Recovery As a Design Principle, episode one gave us the why. The three Rs of recovery, rest, restoration and right sizing the mental load. Today is more of the how. What it means to return intentionally, to step back into the current of work without losing the rhythm of your rest. Because here's the truth. Re entry isn't a date on your calendar. It's a designed process. Say it with me. We have to design to return with intention. When you build the bridge back, your body can finally trust into the crossing. So in this episode we will reflect on concrete return examples. I'm going to lift the veil a little bit on how I came back so that you can think about your own return, protecting your peace instead of your old pace. And that's really critical for me. I didn't want to fall back into my old patterns. You'll also explore five key elements of re entry rituals. Learning how to anchor Your days with practices that sustain calm and don't feed the chaos. And finally, we'll consider an orientation to work life integration, composting the rigid mindset of work life balance and finding more ease and flow upon your return. Let's talk about what made this return for me feel different after an eight week micro sabbatical. I think a part of the magic was that my re entry was designed before I even went out. Here's literally what it looked like my first week back into work. And then this isn't always possible. So let me say that for those of you that are listening, like, yeah, I'm down to love Monday mornings again or I'm coming back after the holidays. I understand this example is more of a macro intervention, but bear with me because maybe there's a piece of it that applies to you. I only worked partial hours, so I intend to do this again and not just wait for a micro sabbatical, but the next time I have a holiday that's two weeks plus I want to actually have a couple of part time days. Like put more PTO in the first week back. Imagine how luxurious, right? But it allowed me to ease into engagement. I also really focused on daily somatic support. So let me tell all myself. I was bougie that first week back to work. I was. And that's my business. And now it's also public. I did not only a float and a massage, which if you know me, I do both of those things monthly. Shout out to the teaching. Well, who pays for those services? As a part of my wellness stipend, but I also did a hot yoga class. No, I'm not a yogi, but bless the detox and being barked at to calm down. And then I did a therapy session. Do I usually do four appointments in a week? Absolutely not. I have three kids. That takes shmoney. But I did allocate those funds with intention to make that first week back feel like something I could look forward to. Not just because I was hyped to reunite with colleagues and clients, but actually excited for me. Like, okay, first week back, this is looking good. All right, what else? I only took strategic meetings. I did not jump back into every meeting. And no, we don't have meetings. That could be emails at the teaching wall. But I do love a good meeting. And I could have rushed in and plugged myself all the way in. Instead I met with four people and four people only. I met with Marisol, our interim Ed, to kind of get the lay down. What happened? What's going well, did anything pop off? What would you like to bring forward? How are you? Thanks for holding me down. I met with Trey, our board president. Hey boss, I'm back to work. What's up? What you thinking about? I met with Brooke, my personal coach to be like, okay, well how do I get my life in this new season and way of being? And then Emily, my phenomenal ea, she just runs my whole life. So I was like, what have you already planned and legit? She had planned out everything. She's like, I've got you already booked up at a sustainable pace. Like, she heard me. So you don't need to overfill your schedule. In fact, the spaciousness between meetings to integrate, reflect and reorient, even to tidy and reclaim my office because lord knows I hadn't been in it for eight weeks, was critical. Finally, in terms of the relational realm, I had one client offering that brought me joy. It was a keynote with a client I love and I put my family first. My littlest started preschool and I made every single drop off and pickup was non negotiable. And none of this was indulgence. It was design. Each choice told my nervous system, we are returning, not rushing. Say that with me. We are returning, not rushing. I did not and do not consent to returning to burnout. It doesn't mean I won't visit burnout in the future. But so much of my adult life has been purpose driven and career committed that this macro intervention of a micro sabbatical. The first time in my professional life I was given that much time off and wasn't because I had birthed a whole human. It was a high dose of recovery and I was not willing to let go of it just because it officially ended. So let's stamp those re entry rituals key five practices. I narrated examples, but let's make it real clear re entry is about realignment. So here are the practices I recommend you prioritize in weeks one and two after a major pause. Get you a self sync. That's the first one. That's a meeting with yourself. Just like you meet with your team. You need to capture what your body, your heart and mind learned while away before your calendar fills with other people's priorities. Right? What did you reflect on while you were away? How are you feeling? What's no longer working for you? How could you reimagine things? Number two is phased hours. Resist the urge to dive back in to a packed schedule that you know you don't like. Start with partial days or blocked focus periods that protected Work time. You need to rebuild your capacity around a rhythm that feels looks more sustainable. Right? It should be observable in your calendar. I often tell my clients, if you were to share a screen or if you were to open up your planner while I'm sitting right next to you and take a look, is it observable the sustainable pace you've created? Are there lunch breaks? Do you have adequate work time? Are there five minutes between your meetings at least for you to take a bio break? Number three is realigning with key players. Don't meet with everybody. Trust me, everybody wants to meet with you when you come back from a break. But it's about reconnecting with the people who anchor your leadership ecosystem. It's your strategic mirrors and your truth tellers. It's the folks that are gonna be like, glad you're back. And also, let's not do this again. Not you taking a break, but like, you know, the marathon meetings. Number four is leveraging reflection into structural pivots. That's a lot of words. Let me say that more simply. It's about trying to codify your new clarity. What are the small, bold changes to stop what drains you, to sustain what centers you, and to start what aligns and finally protect the new priorities? Be firm in the boundaries that preserve your growth. No, and not yet. And yes, but are all important parts of your communication and signs of leadership maturity. Each of these practices transforms reentry from a task into more of a ritual. You could make a checklist. If you're like me and you love a to do's. Okay, you know what? We're going to do that for you. I'm like the Oprah of checklists. So hopefully a tool that we'll build that can be downloaded on our website@theteachingwell.org will help one of you that's looking to design a ritual of re entry. I want to talk a little bit more about that parasympathetic system. Right. That we talked about in the last episode. It's the part of your brain and your body that allows us to decelerate. It's the brakes. And if we tune into it, we're able to realize that safety can exist in motion. I think this is one of the things I really had to dispel coming out of my own micro sabbatical and generally from vacations. It's one of the things that I really have had to work to re pattern in my relationship with work is that I don't have to be completely out of work. To seek rest or recovery. I don't have to be at home in bed. As the only way to repair my fatigue, I can rest in motion. I can be safe in motion. So it's something I invite you to think about. Right. Do you have a binary thinking or a fixed mindset around what it means to rest? Yes. I encourage being still at points. And also we have busy lives. So how do we microdose wellness throughout them? Let's try a little micro practice right now. In fact, I want you to notice where the hurry lives. Where does rushing show up in your body? Where does the move faster manifest somatically? Is it your jaw? Your chest, your stomach? I'm a knee bouncer, probably also a part of my adhd, but I. My hands are busy and my leg shakes when I am building anticipatory energy, when I feel somatically overwhelmed, when I'm clear that I have too much going on. So where does hurry live in your body right now? Inhale through your nose for a four count. Exhale through your mouth for six. Whisper to your system, that nervous system. We are returning, not rushing. I can move and still be safe. I want to encourage you to try this practice on in moments where you feel like you're running out of time, when you're constantly checking the clock, when you're rechecking your calendar repeatedly even though you know you're exactly where you're supposed to be, when you keep looking at that watch when you. When you feel like you need to do more, notice the hurry in your body. Inhale, then exhale and tell yourself a little positive self talk. We are returning, not rushing. All right. So I am always trying to figure out how to talk to the leaders in the space. Leadership is presence. When you're a principal, we have such long lists of expectations in our roles and. And yet one of the most common requests from teachers is that principals are more visible around campus, in classrooms, and on the schoolyard. I have to remember that also as a nonprofit leader. Now my calendar's full. I'm with donors, I'm with funders, I'm with clients, I'm with networking folks. And I need to also sustain a level of presence with my own internal team. It's critical. They deserve access and I need the pulse of how they're doing because they are the heartbeat of the mission. So when my littlest started preschool and I made those drop off and pick up moments as my non negotiables as a part of rhythm, the metric wasn't zero inbox. It was how can I show up and be present when I'm readjusting to work? And also, the season of life in my home life is really popping. So when we talk about work life integration at the teaching well, we're not chasing a perfect 5050 balance between our professional and personal selves. I'm really over work life balance. Work life integration is the active process of balancing multiple parts of our identities. That's how we define it at our organization. It's the part of you that's maybe an educator or a nonprofit staffer, the leader, the caregiver, the friend and the sel. And no, the self is not there on the end by design. It's just how it came through my brain. It's not about dividing who we are. It's about designing flexibility and flow that honor the whole ecosystem of our lives. I'm really into an ecosystem phase. Amen. Like More Integration Integration asks how can my professional and personal world support each other instead of competing for airtime? Mm, sometimes that looks like taking a midday break to pick up your kid from school and circling back later with a clearer head. Other times, for teachers or school administrators, it might look like spending lunch in the staff lounge, connecting with colleagues rather than grading papers or choosing restoration over productivity so you return to your classrooms more grounded for your students. And sometimes it's running a quick errand between meetings or blocking time for a therapy session because tending to your well being is tending to your work. Work life integration isn't perfection. It's permission. Permission to blend, to breathe and to design a rhythm that honors both your mission and your humanity. When you design your re entry to honor home and professional status, you sustain what your rest restored. That's work life integration in action. It's rhythm over rush, and it's not compromising on the parts that are critical to knowing who we are, to preserving our passions and the relationships with people that matter the most in our lives. All right, so let's take just a brief moment to reconnect to episode one's framework around the three R's of recovery. Because recovery doesn't end when the out of office turns off. Rest during re entry can look like white space between meetings in your calendar. It looks like silence being a part of your schedule. It looks like carving out protected work time or even not working and laying down during your lunch break. If you had two weeks off and the rhythm of work is putting a charge into your body, restoration could show up as bodywork or therapy or walking laps in the parking lot during your Lunch break. That was one of my favorite things. A walk and talk or a joy? Practice one act each week during standard working hours that reminds your system you're still whole. It's getting out of the habit. And maybe this is just me of eating lunch while I'm scanning that email or playing that webinar. And actually maybe body doubling and enjoying a meal with another real human. Imagine and right. Sizing the mental load might necessitate delegating a recurring task or leveraging the final 30 minutes of your day to close the tabs that hum in the background and then power down. Sometimes we need to build systems in seasons of busyness so that stress doesn't consume us and sustainability can flourish. This isn't about perfection. Again, I think I've said that nine times today. It's about re patterning. Patterning, safety, rhythm and agency back into your days. Don't give away the goodness of your powerful paws. It's the podcast that teaches. So homework, I'm gonna give you a couple of options today. Choose your own adventure. You might open your calendar, maybe block a self sync for this month. If that's a practice that you're unfamiliar with, you can go to previous episodes in Microdosing Wellness or Human Centered Leadership and check out our information about that. But maybe it's the first hour back after a three day weekend or a half day after returning from the holidays. This is just grabbing time in your calendar to meet with yourself and reflect on how you want to relate to the work. So look ahead. Find a time embed a self sync. Try out that micro practice. Your other option today is to identify one non negotiable that keeps your family or your personal flow steady. And it's probably going to be at one of those junctures where you are returning not just after a powerful pause, but maybe returning to home life at the end of your day. Maybe it's returning to work in the morning, maybe it's returning after your lunch break. So it could be dinner together or a device free lunch or the exercise class that grounds you. I want you to journal for five minutes on how to bring this work life integration forward. What do you need to do to feel like you aren't starting one shift at work and then transitioning to the second shift as a parent. What are those coming home rituals or microdosing wellness practices that allow you to say, huh? I can bring my kids to the gym with me and drop them off in the playroom, but the car ride is going to be epic as we sing let's compost a little of our of our guilt here. So practice. Choose your own adventure. Find a way to apply today's content to affirmations. If that's your jam, one is I return with rhythm, not rush. And the second rest doesn't end when work begins. I'm going to journal on that one later. So as we begin our downward descent here, recovery isn't a privilege, it's a practice, one rooted in critical hope, the belief that rest and restoration aren't escapes from work. This is the story I am composting personally, but instead rest and restoration are the blueprints for doing it better. And no, not like productivity, language, capitalism, doing it better, more, greater. I mean doing work better in ways that don't self sacrifice re entry becomes an act of resistance when we choose rhythm over rush, presence over perfectionism. It's my critical hope that you commit to work life integration that you commit to yourself, your family system and a relationship to work that isn't abandonment one where you are filled with resentment or shame or frustration. I promise from a place of resource you'll make an even greater impact. Every pause, every breath and sustainability system that you design and then honor upon your re entry teaches your community that longevity in the work is possible. Staying is possible. And not just staying and groaning, but staying and thriving. So as you return, remember you're not just coming back, you're coming back in alignment with what keeps you whole. Join me next time. I'm so excited for a powerful conversation with Naomi Hadaway of 8th and Home and Alandria Charles of Ayoka Partners, two brilliant leaders who teach us what it means to leave well and rest for real. Specifically, I'm inviting them towards conversations around self study, recognition. If you tuned in to episode three and also the tea, the real juicy conversation of how do we actually know we're in a toxic work environment and it's time to leave. Whether everyone and their mom should actually convert into consultants. Because if you go on LinkedIn, that's the messaging you receive every day and what it takes to build discernment around deciding to stay. Lean towards your colleagues and work culture to build an organization you don't need to heal from. So I hope that you come and join us, steady and sustained. Until then, take care of the rhythm of your rest and enjoy your return. It doesn't have to be dreadful. I'll meet you back at the well soon. All right y', all, thanks for coming to play at Gather at the well, the podcast that teaches if you like this conversation. Come visit us online@theteachingwell.org and hit us up on our socials. We're always looking for supporters to replenish the well. If you want this podcast to stay in the game, you or your company can donate on our website. Remember to visit the podcast page to download a couple of useful tools to get your life and heal up your org.