A different kind of January...
TL;DR
It's all too easy to become so consumed with your work that you lose track of yourself.
By committing to setting boundaries with your work hours and focusing on small changes, you can create deep-reaching and long-lasting results that will bring YOU back into focus.
It wasn’t until Jan 1st, 2024 arrived that I realized how different this holiday season has been from the last three for me.
Jan 2021: I was designing/rewriting my entire 10-week course to turn into videos ✍️. Overworked and with a new baby in a pandemic. Good times.
Jan 2022: I was filming and editing what is now 50+ videos of me teaching my course 🎥. Holy crap, this was SOOO much more work than I ever imagined! But it turned out beautifully thanks to MCM (where we shot it), Ari Shapiro (our editor magician), and the rest of my amazing team.
Jan 2023: I was knee-deep in creating and executing the marketing and sales plans for this whole new product, and our team was preparing for our official first launch (and I came down with Covid, of course, because why not?) 🤧.
My point is: I had been going so non-stop for the last three years that when I was describing all of this to a friend recently, I actually turned my experience into its own verb — I was “work-a-holic-ing,” as I put it, for waaaay too long.
It’s incredible how much we can justify to ourselves all in the name of WORK.
Don’t get me wrong — I am beyond proud of what we have built with The Creative Path and our amazing online community Path&Co..
I wouldn’t take any of it back.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t lose some part of myself in it all.
You know that phrase, “Burning the midnight oil?” I’m over it. We are breaking up. It is no longer serving me.
What’s been nice about THIS January is that this last holiday was the first one where I was intentionally NOT working at all. I took the week off. And — wow! — did it make a world of difference.
Instead of juggling work and family, I was able to be all in with family. And begin to find my way to who I am when I’m not overworking.
Plus, I started reading for pleasure again! I forgot how much I love getting lost in a great book.
I don’t know if it’s because my youngest daughter just turned four and time finally feels like it’s slowly-but-surely starting to come back to me, but I’m committed to setting some serious boundaries with my work hours, and ready to focus on small changes that can create long-lasting results.
Here are some of the changes I’ve made to psychologically detach from work:
Meditation daily. It still amazes me that when I commit to 20 minutes of meditation when I’m tired, I come out the other side just as energized (maybe even more) than if I had used that time to take a nap. Seriously. I can’t say enough about how much my meditation practice has created more space for me in my day. Every time. I do TM, but there are so many ways into it — find whatever works for you.
Reading 20 min/day. OMG. I didn’t realize that I was reading less because I felt like I needed to set aside more time to really commit. That’s crazy! I have been taking breaks in my work day to read for 5-10 min and it truly feels like a treat. And get ready for this: we now have FART Time (Family All Reads Together Time — thanks to Alison Bennett for sharing this fab acronym, which she got from a friend). This really gets my girls on the couch reading with us. It’s one of my favorite things to do all together.
Writing down the good things. I shared this last week in my New Year post on IG. It takes just a moment to write something nice down that made my day better and add it to our family’s Happiness Jar. There’s so much science out there that tells us that focusing on the small wins actually sets us up for the possibility of more in the future.
Checking in with my Values. These are the heart and soul of WHY I do what I do. Spending a moment or two reflecting on how I’m showing up in my day: am I feeling aligned with my values or not? This simple checkin can redirect my energy in a way that makes ALL the difference in how I feel. If you haven’t signed up already, I highly encourage you to do so HERE for our upcoming Values Workshop — it’s only 2 hours and it’s this coming Saturday, January 20th. There's still some room, so grab your spot today!
Now to be clear, I don’t do any of this perfectly.
But I’m doing it. Imperfectly.
And the results I feel in my daily life are enough to keep me showing up to build these habits.
Okay, your turn. When it comes to detaching from your work, what's worked for you? And what are you willing to try?
Let’s do what serves us more as we move through 2024 😀