76. Doing Less Creates More Exhaustion

How exactly can doing less create more exhaustion? I'm sure that you've noticed this in your life and I've noticed it in mine as well. And it came up in Grand Opportunity last night as I got to be on a live session with the Mamalay community as they're doing their October Challenge. If you're not familiar with mamalay, just a quick shout out to them. I love their workouts. The app is ran by Andrea Fawcett. I adore her as a person and within her community. It's such an incredible environment around health and mindset and nutrition and I love being a part of it. So I always jump into their challenges. Right now I'm doing the Build program, loving it and those are the workouts that I do. So quick and wonderful. Plug in there of just a great resource and I'll link it below for you. I've been doing their workouts this whole year, all of all of 2023 is when I started doing the momly workouts. And I love them. So on the live session that I was with them last night, we there was a question brought up about, you know, how do we do more when we're feeling exhausted? Like, how are we supposed to be doing all these more things and continue doing what we're already doing as well? It kind of starts to feel like, where does the time come from? Where does the energy come from? How can I be spread so thin? And your mind starts to create this narrative that there's lack and there's scarcity and then it feeds our scarcity mentality that if you're anything like me, you really want to be able to overcome. Now what's interesting also about this narrative of how could I possibly be doing more and what I really need to do is less in this narrative is have you noticed how strongly it's pushed on mothers that mothers need to be doing less? And in your home, you're doing way too much and you need to be doing less. You need to be doing less in your home. You need to be doing less with your kids. You, you need to be doing less pushing and striving for growth and your personal development and the changes that you want to make and becoming the person that you want to be less in your healing work, Right? Because it's not your fault that you're like this. It's your parents fault and it's this constant. I would argue it's a nagging narrative going on about mothers doing too much. And as we discussed it on the Mamalay call last night, it just kind of dawned on me, like, it's not that we're doing too much. I really wholeheartedly believe that we're not doing enough. We are not doing enough of what creates fulfillment. And that's the problem. We're doing too much of the things that create the exhaustion. And it's interesting if you really think about what's creating exhaustion in your life and you just allow yourself to be tender and vulnerable and honest with yourself. What is creating exhaustion in your life? Is it the things that leave you feeling like, wow, I'm so glad I got that done. Way to go me. High five. Personally, we're rocking it. Or is it the stuff that you're like, oh, gosh, I'm sitting here, I'm scrolling Instagram, and I'm watching these other people live their life and their stories, and I'm reading this caption that somebody else wrote and I'm consuming all of this content. And then in the evening, right, we're staying up a little bit too late, maybe a lot of bit too late. I know a lot of moms that stay up until one in the morning because they have the narrative of, well, this is the only time that I get to myself, so I have to stay up late because it's the only time that I get. And then we feel exhausted in the morning. We feel exhausted after we scroll our phones, we feel exhausted after we watch the reality TV or the movie or we stayed up late. Like, there are a lot of things that we do that create exhaustion. And in this argument that mothers need to be doing less, I would argue that's going to create more exhaustion if you start. If you do less of the things that create fulfillment, like caring for your home, serving your family, serving your community, getting involved and engaged with people, making eye contact and creating relationships off of social media. Social media has so many pros to it and I love, I love them. I love being on social media because I love to create content and I love to serve. I really love to avoid consuming content. And I've realized now that the only time I feel exhausted getting on social media is when I've been consuming content and when I have allowed influences into my. Andrea Fawcett calls it a pond into my pond that are not serving me and I'm the one that put them there. So when I get to this position and point of feeling exhausted, it is not because I went to bed early and prioritized that bedtime, my exhaustion. Those feelings do not come from waking up at 5am and working out with my friend at 5:15. The exact opposite. I feel the exact opposite when I do those things. I feel energized, refreshed, just recharged and ready to go and energetic and enthusiastic about my day to come. Because I woke up early, I made this conscious decision of what time I'm gonna wake up, and I took control of that and I did it, and I feel really proud of that. And then I go and do this workout and I challenge myself and I push myself. And yeah, friends, it feels really freaking hard for me to get out of bed in the morning. Like, my alarm goes off between 4:45 and 5. And when my alarm goes off, oh, baby, would it be easy to stay in bed? And I know from proven experience that if I snooze the alarm and I stay in bed and I cancel the workout and I don't journal this morning and I don't read my scriptures this morning, if I choose not to do those things, I am going to feel exhausted and depleted and defeated and just unfulfilled when I wake up in the morning, because I didn't start my morning with the intention. So it's interesting to me, and this is just what I've noticed, that so many fulfilling, fulfilling opportunities that we have in our everyday life are deemed as the creators of our exhaustion. How insane. How insane and yet how often, really, Be honest. How often do you hear messages on social media that. That say more of, you know, it's what we're consuming that's creating exhaustion. We're doing less of the things that fulfill us, and that's creating more exhaustion. How often are we hearing those messages? No, they're telling us to take a load off, ignore the laundry, ignore the dishes in the sink. Let it all pile up. I. I understand that we are all in different seasons and positions and places in our lives, and I think that's beautiful. And I also know that trying to get everyone to agree with the way that you do things can be destructive and damaging. And that's why I always just, like, pass out that reminder of if I'm the influence that you feel triggered by unfollow me, steer clear of my content, don't be here. Find the places that you feel charged up and inspired and encouraged. That's the point. We want to have influences in our life that we just feel. Instill hope in us and inspiration and encouragement. That's what we want. And if they can teach us something along the way, which everybody can, then let's be open for those lessons that they're giving. And if that's not the place that you're in right now when it comes to my content or anyone's content, take the responsibility and just change it for yourself so that you don't have that in your life. Now. I'm just saying that when we're trying to create a message and a narrative for that will help mothers, does it really help us to say that you're serving your family too much? You're trying to care too much about the environment that you live in. You're prioritizing your personal development, your personal progress, your personal strength, your personal growth, your personal relationship with God too much. You're prioritizing all those things too much. What you need to do is give yourself an afternoon to just sit on your phone and scroll. And what you need to do is book this trip away from your kids so that you can just get away from it all. Hmm. Okay. I have not yet seen how that actually helps us. So that's why I'm creating this episode, because I believe that doing less of the things that fulfill you is what creates more exhaustion. And if you were to wake up in the morning and feel exhausted and determine what's the next best thing I can do, that would help me feel inspired, energized, creative, faithful, Christlike, upright. Like, how do you want to feel? Do you want to feel exhausted? No. Okay, then let's decide how we want to feel and then make choices in our daily life that align with creating those feelings. I, I, maybe I'm just speaking for myself here. I don't think I am, because I got to talk to hundreds of women last night and it seemed that we were in a good agreeance there. And I would imagine that my community that we share this message with feels similarly about the way we feel when we sit and scroll our phone. I feel exhausted. I feel like I go down this spiral of comparison. I feel like I am, I just, I start to feel insufficient. And I start to feel just like I'm not enough. And that feeling sucks. And when I took 10 days off social media, I didn't feel that once. I didn't compare myself to one single person. And I was around a lot of excellent people doing excellent things that I aspire to be able to do and learn how to do. And I wanna learn from them. And not once did I compare myself to em. So social media, I just believe, is a different realm. And what I want us to do is to understand that exhaustion is more likely to come from doing too much of the Wrong things than too much service and too much nurturing and being too much in your routine, of your morning routine and your workout and drinking water and a green smoothie. I started having a green smoothie in the morning, right? Making sure that you're getting the nutri into your body. So you have. You've habitually decided, this is the time I wake up. This is the workout that I do. This is the place that I journal. This is the scripture that I'm gonna read. This is the podcast I'm gonna listen to, the music I'm gonna have on the green smoothie. I'm gonna make the protein, I'm gonna drink the vitamins. I'm gonna take the breakfast. I'm gonna make, like, all of that is gonna pour into you. And we. We say, like, oh, social media pours so much into me. I would argue that it takes away a whole lot more than it pours into you. And again, I'm grateful for social media. I'm grateful for what we have access to on social media and our opportunity to connect with one another on it. I just want us all to think about, are we using it for those purposes? Are we using it for the purposes that it fulfills us? Or are we unintentionally programming ourselves to constantly compare to other people so we can just habitually feel behind. Behind and distracted and impatient? And I. I want more than that for you. So I. I want you to just think about this. Is it possible that doing less, this message that mothers are receiving right now, to do less, could create more exhaustion, more anxiety, more fatigue, more irritability, more aggression? In your daily life, do you feel calm and peaceful and productive and intentional and energetic and enthusiastic and nurturing and soft and gentle when you have food left out on the counter from dinner a few nights ago, a sink full of dishes. The floors have just clutter all over them, from toys to shoes and socks and garbage and a broom laying on the floor, like, you know, just. Just the visual overwhelm that we find ourselves in. Well, how do you feel when you look at that? I feel exhausted. Like, I instantly. When my house gets chaotic and it totally does, and there will be tons out of place, and we've. We've slipped on some routines when those things happen. And I'm trying to focus on playing with my kids, and I'm trying to just be present and have a great conversation with my spouse and put everything down that I'm doing, to just make eye contact with him and greet him joyfully the way that I Want to and answer the phone for a friend that's calling and have my assistant come over and we can game plan for 30 solid minutes together. I truly fall short of doing every single one of those things when my environment is not in support of me. And by in support of me, I mean the visual. Am I able to look around and feel calm and feel peaceful and that's gonna look different for everybody? Totally. And that's okay. So I just want you to look around in your home and ask yourself, do I feel calm and peaceful? Do I feel clear and focused? Do I feel intentional and productive? However you wanna feel, look at the environment and ask yourself if you feel that way in this environment that you have, this beautiful home that you have. It's not about how many bedrooms, it's not about the square footage, it's not about the appliances that you have or brands in your home or not. It's not about that. It's about the way we care for what we have right now. And I truly just, my whole heart is telling me that doing less for the home we have right now, no matter the square footage, no matter outdated appliances or the top of the line, if you have as many bedrooms as you say you want or not, and if it's in the location that you want or not, if it has the scenery that you want or not, you have something right now to care for, to serve, to nurture, to grow. You have a family right now to do that with. You have a home right now to do that with. Maybe you have like friendships right now to do that with. You have yourself, my goodness, yourself to do that with right now. You have a body. You've been. That was your first God given gift is this body. So we have all these things right now to be caring for. And doing less for them is not the way that we're going to feel more energized, more intentional, productive and fulfilled in our daily life. It's about doing more for them, more intentional things that create fulfillment. And that looks different for you and I. For me, it's protecting that morning routine. It's having my evening routine. It's little cleanups throughout the day. It's playing with my kids and literally sprinting around the street with them and playing the soccer in the front yard, picking flowers with Drewb and just crushing them in our hands. It's making the eye contact with my spouse, putting everything down so I can give him that undivided attention and that love that I want him to feel just through my eyes. That's what I want. And I know it's not gonna come from distracting myself more, from numbing more, avoiding more. We don't need to do more of those things. We need to do less of those things and more of the things that bring fulfillment. So I really hope that this podcast episode is something that you just feel inspired and encouraged to go pursue more labors of love. Labors of love for your home, acts of service for your family, because those will leave you feeling fulfilled. Far more fulfilled than exhausted. When we do these. I mean, sometimes we even do extravagant things for our kids and for our family and for our home. Right? We. We have that day that we just deep clean the whole thing. Do we feel tired by the end of it? Yes. Is it a different tired than sitting on the couch and scrolling your phone, hands down? Absolutely. They're different. They're different. And some tireds, some exhaustions are so good to feel. It's so good at the end of the day to lay in your bed and just feel like, oh, man, I'm about to pass out right now. We've had such a fulfilling day. Rather than, I just feel so exhausted and I can't sleep. I can't sleep. I want you to be able to rest easy at night. I want you to be able to fall asleep quickly. I want you to be able to have faith so strong that, you know, even if one of your kids wakes up 10 minutes after you fall asleep, you're gonna be so glad that you fell asleep quickly. You're just gonna be so grateful that you wake up and you're the person that they call on right now. Because it's not gonna be that way forever. One day they're gonna have somebody else. And yes, you're always gonna be this important person in their life. And I pray that we nurture these relationships because, as you know, with my story, and I'm sure with parts of your story, those relationships weren't protected and nurtured in a way that we may have needed or would like to have them. And that's an. This is an opportunity we have right now to have those relationships in our life with our spouse, with our kids, with our friends. This is. It's an immense opportunity, and I want us to take advantage of it. I want us to take the opportunity. So just take this message to heart. Maybe the feeling of exhaustion is coming from doing things that are composed of low energy, and it's the lack of creating energy in your life that is the reason you feel exhausted, because we're not doing things that create fulfillment. We're doing things that suck our energy out and they're all low energy consuming things rather than things that, yes, require energy from us. And they have great intention, great purpose, great fulfillment within them and they actually give more energy to us than they could ever ask for in return. I love you dearly and I hope you can just feel that with every episode that you listen to here on the podcast. I have exciting updates coming. I know I've been saying that for a solid month now, and they're getting closer and closer and I just feel so excited to be able to bring those to life for for you. The new Mommy Mindset course is coming out so soon. And this course is all about raising your words. Raise your words in your home and family so you can be the one that not only looks for the good, you're also the one that creates it. And that is a gift and you'd be able to apply it to every area of your life. And even though it is called the Mommy Mindset course, I promise you that you would be able to teach the other people in your life a whole lot about language, mindset identity that you the vision that they have and the tools that they need in order to make it come true. It could be your spouse, your kids, your neighbor, your sister. And I'm so excited to bring this to life for you and I'm grateful that you're here. More than anything, I'm just grateful that you're here listening along and you believe in this work as much as I do. And that means a whole bunch. Love you dearly, my friend.