Instead of asking for the bare minimum when you're burned out, imagine the most generous thing someone could do for you. Speaker B suggests requesting a full day of childcare so you can handle appointments and errands, or even just a few hours. Reframing your needs this way, she says, actually helps you recover.
Chapters
Why can't I do these things? I see other people and they can do these things. But reality is, I mean, maybe they can't either. They just look like they're doing it better, right?
Yeah. One thing I'd like to share that really helped me on my burnout recovery is I heard this concept called— I don't remember how it was called, maybe radical self-kindness or something like that, or radical self-love or something like that. It's just that notion of imagine what would be the most radical kind thing that you can do to yourself right now. So for example, if you have a small child and you need to go to the dentist, you can ask somebody like, oh, can you just watch them for just 1 hour? I just pop to the dentist. But actually the most radical thing would be like, can you watch them for the whole day so I can also maybe do some shopping and get a massage? And we are so scared to do these things, but then you do it and then they'll say, you know what, I can't do the whole day, but I can do half a day and it's still going to be like such a great thing for you. So I was just starting. I started thinking in those terms and that really helped me in the recovery and afterwards in prevention to, to really think what is the best thing that I don't even dare to dream of. But actually when you ask or when you look for ways, you still find ways or even half ways that are still much better than what you first start with. So I'd like to invite people to practice this more.
