Your Friday Five: When Life Gets Loud, Choose You First

This week’s Friday Five comes with a first in six years: I missed a podcast release.
Not because I didn’t care… but because my life got full in a way even I couldn’t out-organize or out-hustle.

Between conferences, continuing medical education (because apparently everything happens at the end of the year), and launching another program supporting women physicians, the perfect storm hit. And for the first time ever, an episode simply didn’t go out.

And honestly? It needed to happen.

This week’s short episode is a gentle, honest reminder of what becomes crystal clear when life is overloaded:
 your health must come first—before work, before deadlines, before dishes, before being everything to everyone.

Inside this Friday Five, I share:

1. Why I chose to skip the episode instead of skipping my health habits
2. The signs my body gives me when I’ve pushed too far
3. Why “being busy” isn’t a badge of honor—it's a warning sign
4. How to look at your calendar and see what you’re really prioritizing
5. A grounded reminder that saying “no” is not selfish—it’s survival

If you're moving through a season where life feels especially heavy or holiday-busy, this episode is your permission slip to pause, reevaluate, and protect what matters most.

Your wellbeing is not optional. And the organizations you serve will never experience the consequences of your burnout—only you will.

Take care of you first.
 I'll see you Monday.

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. For the first time ever in five, six years of having a podcast, I did not get an episode out when it would've gone out. However, many months ago here, started to also do this Friday short segment in addition to the Monday episode and. To be honest, it just slipped my mind. If you might've seen last Friday, no episode went up typically this never happens, but it was the perfect storm where I had a lot of conferences. I myself, usually toward the end of the year, there's just a lot of continuing medical education that you're doing. I don't know why. It's just people offer a lot of stuff this time of year. I think it's because some people are not doing. The continuing medical education all year. There was another program that I had started with someone where we're helping, uh, women physicians. So everything was at the same time. And I was having some weeks where I've just never been that busy. The thing that I realized out of this is that I was sensing that things were getting way too busy, and when you are in those scenarios, you have to pick health first. When this was all going on, sometimes the dishes would be piling up. Sometimes different things would be happening, but I was not willing to sacrifice during that time, me getting the nutrition that I needed, me doing the walk in the morning, me hydrating. You need to pick your own health first. So yes, something like an episode on the podcast didn't go out, but that was a necessary consequence of what my schedule was looking like. But I had to pick health first. So I wanna encourage all of you, if you're going through a really busy season, I feel like as we're in the holiday time, things like that, people are just pulled in 900 directions. That's fine, but at some point you reach capacity and when that point is reached, you have to decide what your priorities are. And for me. I am always gonna put at the top of the list my health and family. That's just always what it's gonna get back to. For you, when you're noticing I am overworking, overdoing it, over giving to all these people, at what point is it a sacrifice to your own detriment and at what. Point, do you need to take back some of that control and do things differently? For me, the trip wire is always, I'm gonna be honest, it's when I overwork, I'll get like sciatica or back pain or something physical will happen. My body at this point is just so well attuned to you overdid it and here's your consequence. I've really learned over time how I need to take care of myself and sometimes I can't prevent it. When I had that week of just. My days, were going till 10:00 PM I can't prevent how long I need to sit in the chair and I could, I'm looking into getting a standing desk and there's always something else that you can do. And granted in a year or two I will have one week like that ever, right? That's not the norm. But the point being that when life gets busy, you need to look at what your calendar is doing.'cause that's what your priorities are. That is what you're valuing. That is what you're choosing to either still do or not say no to. This is the time. If you are overwhelmed, if you are overbooked, if you're feeling stressed, that is optional. You can always say no to things. Nothing is mandatory. You can change how you do things. You have to pick you first. Many of my patients are ambitious women and they are just doing a lot for the organizations that they work for. And while I think that's incredible and that's amazing. I'm always there to tell them, but we need to care about you first. And so in the midst of how these days look, we still need to find opportunities for you to nurture your body. Otherwise you end up passing away early. You end up being the one that gets a heart attack. You end up being the one that suffers the consequences. That organization does not, right? They're not a living, breathing entity. They are not a human. So we have to take care of you first. Alright, I think that's enough preaching this. I hope that you guys have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday.