The Real Reason You’re Always Tired as a Business Owner

Good morning, good morning, happy Monday. Um, listen, we're going to talk about something important today, and I just want to first, before we get started, I want to kind of take your— a poll in the chat. Do you feel guilty when you're not working? When you get done, or you think you're done for the day, and you go do something and you try to relax Do you feel this pressure, this guilt, can to continue to work on something when you're trying to watch a show or just relax with your family? Do you feel guilty for not working? I want to know in the chat. I want to know where you're at with that. Let me know. We're going to talk about that today because a couple of things I'm going to reference. A couple different things. But last week I got a huge response to an email that I sent out. It was on Wednesday. So if you're on my email list, you got this email on Wednesday. And is my team live? Just, I wanna make sure this got shared into our broadcast channel because I don't see how, I don't see how many normally people we see on this. So, Team, if you're here, please make sure it got shared on the broadcast channel. Last week, if you're not reading our Wednesday emails, you're missing out on things right now. So first of all, let me know who's reading Wednesday emails. We've changed them for more of a personal touch. So we— people are loving my Hot Mess newsletter series on Framed. And we decided that we were going to take that over into Launch Your Box and let you in on a little glimpse personally of what I've got going on, things that are happening in my life and how that relates to running businesses. And so anyway, last week we sent out an email about why we're so tired, like why we're so tired. Let me know. Nikki says, I send— I read everything that you send. Okay. Thank you for that, Nikki. But we were talking about that because I was on vacation. I was coming back from Jamaica and I was exhausted. And I started to realize, you know, I'm exhausted because my bandwidth just doesn't ever stop. I'm making decisions every single day about everything. And women do this. All of you do this. We're, we're making household decisions. I'm deciding what we're eating, where we're going. I'm planning the trip. I'm planning the reservations. I'm planning the excursions. I'm planning where we're going to sit each day and I'm getting up early and go reserving the lounge chairs like we— our brains are not stopping on that. And then we go to work and we have to plan everything for work, everything for home, everything for vacation. And it's no wonder we're exhausted. It's no wonder we're exhausted. And so I saw this article. So if you haven't read that, go find it in your inbox. It's from last Wednesday from Launch Your Box. I want you to read it because I go in depth there and I really, I really want to normalize. This is why we're so tired. Okay. And so then over the weekend, this article popped up. We do need a vacation from our vacation. We need a vacation from making decisions. Like, at some point, I just want someone else to handle things, right? Like, I don't want to make any more decisions. And we get into this decision fatigue. But I saw this article over the weekend, and I thought, I really want to talk about this today. And so I hope you're open to hearing this and walking through this article with me, because it just hit me, and I saved it in my phone. Wasn't sure what I was saving it for, but I saved it, and then This morning I was getting ready and I thought, we need to talk about this. So it's from Inc. magazine and it says, Why Hustle Culture is Failing Founders. And so as I— the title hit me and I thought, I want to read this. And then it said, feeling guilty when you're not working. And I'm constantly feeling guilty when I'm not working. And if you're feeling guilty when you're not working, I want you to just put guilty in the comments. Because we have to acknowledge it first of all before we can recognize that we need to change. And so we're burning ourselves out. We're burning ourselves out. And women do it more than men because women are in charge of our households as well. We're in charge of the children. We're in charge of the doctor's appointments. We're in charge of dinner. We're in, we're in charge of a lot of the household things. And so We are feeling guilty. We are burning ourselves out because we think we're not allowed to rest. I'm going to pull this off the screen and let's talk about it. There is a part of this, and I kind of highlighted it a little bit to share with you. Women have been conditioned since childhood to equate stillness with laziness. And self-care was selfishness. So we push, we work through lunch, we answer emails at 10 PM. Women feel guilty every time they sit down without a task in hand, and this endless cycle produces exhaustion, but in our mind, it's dressed up as productivity. And we have to, one, recognize that in order to stop it. And I have this hair— this— my fan is just— is— excuse me, I'm gonna do the mom lick and stick. Um, this hair is bothering me on camera. We have to stop it. We're doing this day in and day out, and it is burning us out. It is making us exhausted and we're making bad decisions at work. It's affecting our relationships with our family. And we get so in a fog with all these things that we're, we're doing that we can't make good decisions. And it's actually killing our creativity. And most of us run creative businesses. Most of us run businesses that require us to be creative, whether that's designing products, whether that's designing classes, whether that's creating ads, that's creating social media. Like, our jobs are creative. And when we are burnt out, we can't even string a sentence together clearly. Like, when I'm so exhausted, I will say stuff and I will make no sense to my husband. And he knows I'm exhausted. I said, I don't know what I said. I'm just tired. And so we blame it on fatigue. We blame it on perimenopause or menopause. We blame it on all these things, but we're doing it to ourselves. What I want you to hear me say today is that rest is not optional for us. It is part of our infrastructure. And laying on the couch while Netflix is running and you're scrolling Instagram or checking messages is not rest. You're laying down, but you're still working. You're flooding your brain with competing stimulation. And this article was so good because it's— we do this. I'm doom scrolling. How many of you are doom scrolling to relax? We're actually doing our brains more harm because we're still stimulated. I'm seeing ads from competitors. I'm seeing I'm seeing offers from other people. I'm seeing work stuff is in my feed, okay? So I'm still in work mode even though I'm doom scrolling, right? I'm trying to watch Netflix and also relax on my phone. I'm still multitasking. Plus you've got this blue light on your phone telling your nervous system it's still daytime and you end up feeling more depleted than when you sat down. Doom scrolling is not rest. Real rest is restorative. Okay. And there's a, there's a part of this article that talks about taking a nap. But that's beside the point. But here's what not— here's what rest is not. That blue light on your phone is killing our brain. It, it is not allowing us to rest. Multitasking is not allowing us to rest. Okay, so if you're reading a book, a physical book, and this is why I got a Kindle, I have it on my phone. I don't want to read a book on my phone. First of all, that blue light, I need to get away from that dang blue light. I'm on it. I'm on a computer all day long. So I even have a hair appointment today. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go back and get my book. Yes, I can read something, but I want a physical book. And this book isn't about business. This book isn't going to make me think about business, okay? So I'm releasing my business brain by reading something that's completely fictional, that has nothing to do with business. I'm reading a physical book. My phone is elsewhere. Watching a movie is rest with your phone not in the room, with your phone not in your hand. Sitting outside, not on your laptop, not on your phone. Going for a walk without a business podcast in your ear. Okay. Having a conversation with a friend that's not about work. This is what rest looks like. And the problem is we tell ourselves, I'll just get this done. And I'm guilty. I'm so guilty of this. I like to watch a show that doesn't require me to think too much while I'm working. That's not rest. And if you think it is because you're sitting down and watching something while you're working, You're tricking your brain into saying that's rest and you're not actually getting rest. The clearest decisions about our business are going to come from a place of rest. Our creativity— if you've been stifled with your creativity, I guarantee you it's because you're not resting. And so it's hard, right? It's a challenge for us, especially women. Because there's so many things that have to happen in a day for so many people that we are responsible for. I want you this week to think about ways that you can build real rest into your everyday week. Okay. I'm not saying, you know, vacations are great, but they also require a lot of decisions from us. Okay, I'm talking about real rest, no working. And maybe that's an hour. Like, if I take an hour when I get home, this is what I like to do when I get home from work, from the warehouse, from this office. I usually still have more work to do, but I take a break. I grab my book, I go outside on the patio, and I give myself an hour and I just relax. I love the fresh air. I'm reading for an hour. I'll even set a timer on my phone and put it on the counter so that it's not in my chair that I'm reading from. So I'm not distracted by notifications coming in and I will read for an hour and that is my rest in the, in the afternoon. And then if I have more work to do, okay, let's go get the laptop. Let's sit down. Let's get the work done. But you're not getting any rest if you don't plan for it. And some days I can't spend an hour reading a book. Some days I have so much work to do, it's not going to get done. But you know what happens as the time goes on in a day? My brain is so shot from making decisions, I'm not even making good decisions. And so I want you to think about that. Like, I know my best decisions are in the morning before noon. I put all my deepest, hardest work before noon. I have calls and things like that. I put those— I try to put those after lunch. Because I'm at my best right after I've slept, right after I got rest. So all my important things I try to do first thing in the morning before noon. Anything else afternoon. You've got to build rest into your day. You have to build rest into your weeks. And have I worked weekends? I've been working weekends for months, probably since the beginning of this year, because there's so much happening right now with my businesses. And sometimes you have to do that, and it's not bad. Some of you are working a full-time job and have to work weekends on your side hustle. I'm working weekends right now. I worked on Framed most of Saturday. I worked on my salon stuff most of yesterday. I have to right now because my workload requires it, but also I'm taking breaks. I'm getting real rest. I'm not multitasking rest. Okay, that's not rest. You're tricking yourself. You're tricking yourself to say that's rest, but you're being productive. So let's put our phones down, walk away from the blue light, and let's plan some true rest. It could be watching a movie, but not with your phone scrolling in on your hand. Reading a book, listening to a book, going for a walk without listening to business stuff. Tamara says she just drove with silence because her brain couldn't handle anything else. When we're always consumed with business, our brain is not resting, and that's stifling our creativity. And we need creativity to run our businesses. So if you're feeling guilty when you're not working, I want you to give yourself permission to stop feeling guilty. I felt guilty for a long, long time for not working because at the end of the day, I know there's still more things that need to be done. And here I am watching Love is Blind. And there's all these things that need to be done, and I feel guilty for that. But the problem is I was burning myself out. And what that looks like, what burnout actually looks like, is you quitting, is you giving up, is all the work that you put in going downhill. And we don't want that. We can work really hard and we can have really good rest. Self-care is not selfish. It is necessary for you to be a great business owner. So this, this hustle mentality that we've been shoved into our face for years, stop it. This false sense of productivity because I'm working on something while I'm at home, while I'm spending family time, while I'm watching a movie with my kids. Stop it. Give yourself permission to actually rest. You're going to be so much more productive when you actually do work. You're going to get things done so much quicker than trying to multitask. That's my momentum for today. So I want to challenge you today. What does rest look like for you? And how are you going to build that into your daily, weekly, and monthly activities. Vacations are great. I'm all for vacations. Vacations are also exhausting. They require a lot of planning, and we don't get to take those every month. So my question is, how are you going to build rest into your work week this week and next week and every week in between? What does that look like for you? What helps you rest? Rest. Okay, it's a nap, it's a walk, it's a movie, it's a book, lots of different ways, it's silence. Whatever that looks like for you, I want you to recognize it and I want you to build it into your work weeks. All right, that's Monday Momentum. I'll see you guys inside Launch Your Box tomorrow. Have a good day.