Fierce Encouragement

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• Mark Walker • Season 3 • Episode 68

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Ever feel like your days are powered by “shoulds” instead of spark? Mark invites us to trade struggle for steady effort, bring back childlike play, and rebuild energy from the ground up... starting with sleep. We look at why joy isn’t fluff, it’s fuel: the mindset that turns work from a grind into an experiment, the simple prompts that make any task more fun, and the recovery habits that keep your best ideas alive.

From there, we talk leadership. Culture is set by what leaders model and reward, not by what they post. If we glorify late-night emails and weekend hustle, the team will copy it until burnout looks normal. Mark shares concrete ways to reset norms—clear sign-off times, meeting-light focus blocks, and praise for sustainable wins—so people can do deep work without sacrificing health. We also confront a tough truth: the opposite of play isn’t work, it’s depression. Joy is not the enemy of results; it’s the path to better ones.

Belonging ties it all together. Rather than contorting ourselves to fit in, we can build teams where vulnerability is safe and idiosyncratic strengths are welcome. That shift unlocks creativity, resilience, and honest collaboration. Expect practical takeaways on sleep hygiene, using naps as a reset, setting joyful targets, and catching yourself when metrics eclipse meaning. You’ll walk away with small, repeatable steps that lighten the load, sharpen focus, and make room for your real self to show up.

If this conversation lands with you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs permission to rest, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Tell us: what boundary will you model this week?

If you’re tired of doing this work alone, I offer a free conversation to help you get clear on your next steps. Apply Here when you’re ready.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey there, everybody. This is Mark, and this is the podcast called Fierce Encouragement. I want to thank you for spending some time with me today. If you're new here, Fierce Encouragement was created by myself to really combat that sour self-image that we kind of have on default mode. If things go wrong, if life pushes us around, or if we feel down and out, it's really easy to berate and hate ourselves and maybe even lash out at those around us. So this podcast is really around an idea of how we can fiercely encourage ourselves instead of hate the game or hate the players in the game, but come back to that heart of courage and really cultivate it from the inside out. A lot of times, most times, there's not people around us that are encouraging us. So this is about sharing tools, sharing a point of view that helps you show up with a fierce, balanced, and um positive mindset that can help you encourage and approach your days. So I hope you get that out of this uh podcast. But most importantly, I hope wherever you're at, that you can just slow down and know that you're doing a really good job by listening to podcasts like this, but also absorbing wisdom and finding ways through the jungle of life. Today I wanted to talk about something that's I've been noticing in conversations I've had this past week or two, and even noticing in myself. It kind of surrounds this idea of a lack of play, a lack of joy and play, and approaching our lives with a sense of freedom and excitement versus the heaviness and the shoulds that we feel like we need to do every day. Of course, this doesn't mean that we don't need to give effort and we just become lazy or lethargic, but it does mean that we give up that struggle a little more often. In fact, those are the two things that I've been words that I've been using is this idea of effort versus this idea of struggle. And so many people are struggling, and so many people put that heaviness on themselves and their work and feel that weight of the organization in their own lives and in their own projects. We have a pandemic of heaviness and overwhelm that comes from our work at corporations and in our own entrepreneurial endeavors. And it's pretty darn consistent. People aren't playing, people aren't approaching their work with a joy that maybe they could or want to. And maybe even just recognizing that. How could I bring more joy and fun and a sense of play to my work instead of that heaviness that I feel? And again, of course, it doesn't mean we don't give effort or that we just pretend, but it does mean that we try to let go of the struggle and see how we can approach our work with more play. Great scientists talk about this uh in the sense of connecting with that childlike mindset that we used to have. Remember when we would build forts or run and play in the woods, or just be with our friends and not have uh a structure and a goal. The goal was to play and have fun and hang out with our friends. One thing or two things, actually, that I think we need to focus on when we do want to bring more play into our lives is this inner feeling of an unbridled joy. Sometimes in my own entrepreneurial journey, in coaching and creating workshops and connecting with people and businesses, is I can get really heavy. It can feel like another effortful overwhelm and a struggle. And again, I've seen this reflect back in the conversations I have. So it's really good for me in the sense of wow, yeah, I'm struggling with those same things that I'm seeing showing up in my clients and in the conversations I have. But when we want to bring more playfulness into our work, of course we set up a target or a place that we want to arrive at. Maybe the target is just to be more joyful in our work. Or maybe the target is a specific project. But asking ourselves, how could I approach this with more joy, with a childlike mindset, and bring that energy into this project, into this effort, into our families and just that environment we're in? It's really easy to get caught up in metrics and um results and even the masks and roles that we might wear or enact ourselves in or put ourselves in. So, where could you approach your projects with that sense of joy and that childlike view of the world? The second thing here isn't necessarily around a mindset, but it's around a habit, sleep. When we don't have good sleep habits or sleep hygiene, as I like to call it sometimes, it is easy to have the rest of our day slip away. So great scientists, great coaches have said this again and again to me in my sessions with them, and even just reading books like Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep. Sleep is not just a pillar of our health and our life, but it's the very foundation. When our sleep suffers consistently, we can actually adapt or kind of get tolerant to a lack of sleep. And so then we think uh uh good energy is on a day when we might be just about 5, 10% below where we could be with our sleep and our rest. So the two points cultivating that childlike, joyful mind and moving towards our sleep or treating our sleep as a rejuvenation of our energy and that sense of play. So, where could you dial in your sleep habits a little bit more? And if your sleep suffers, that's okay. Not to be, not to make this another goal or target, but maybe to have a little playfulness and joy around the fact that you do get to invest in your sleep. So often I connect with leaders who have these big targets and big goals in our work. And it comes back to how many hours are you sleeping at night? How are you committing yourself or scheduling that meeting or sleep with yourself? Sometimes that habit alone can shift your energy and change your work and change your relationships. So see a playfulness around your sleep schedule and make that investment and supplement it with little naps. Napping is a superpower, and I think that's one thing that kids or that childlike enthusiasm can show us as we come back to examining our life and encouraging ourselves and embodying that child in us with a nap or some good rest. One other thing that I've struggled with, and I remember from my corporate days, is this reflection of the leader. What do I mean by that? Well, there's so many leaders and corporate cultures, and we can kind of get overwhelmed, almost like stepping into the ocean. Those waves can overtake us, and you know, maybe a riptide pulls us out into the ocean. And then we start to swim against the current or against the energy that's pushing us. As leaders, if you are lucky enough to be a leader of people at work or at home or even amongst your friends and family, I think leaders need to model positive habits and positive behaviors. There's this toxic culture that's almost celebrated in the West or in so many areas. And it's that we work so hard or we work on the weekends, we work late into the night, and then we expect our coworkers or the people that work under us to reflect that same kind of manic tendency towards the work. So if you are a leader, we can bring more joy and playfulness into our teams by setting good examples, by being that reflection of what we want to have or that energy we want our teams to have. So it involves logging off your computer and your email and your messaging at an appropriate time. Check yourself, are you working too late or working on the weekends when that time could be spent learning some new uh book or some new course, or just relaxing or investing in yourself with some exercise and movement? It's really easy to let that slip because we see other leaders around us doing going above and beyond. Now, again, that doesn't mean emergencies are ignored, but it does mean that we create a culture of respect and balance instead of hyper-productive, hyper push, and almost a toxic um grinding yourself down and burning the candle at both ends. If we want to have more playfulness and joy in our teams and create that culture, we need to log off at appropriate times and make that a consistent habit. And the other thing is, is to not celebrate our team or others who work on the weekends or who push themselves too hard. It's understandable how we can get caught up in that push and pull. And again, almost like that ocean pulling us and throwing us around. We need to throw an anchor down into the sand and set ourselves. We need to make sure we do not celebrate and promote and encourage those people who work on weekends, who are doing email at midnight and then coming in the next day. This is toxic because it's not sustainable. When we create that standard, when we celebrate people that overdo it, we are literally pulling energy from ourselves and our team. And in the long run, just like the sleep, we can get adapted to that culture, that mindset of overwork and think it's the new norm. It isn't. It's not sustainable and it isn't healthy at all in the long run. This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. So by slowing down, setting that standard, logging off at appropriate times, and not celebrating people who overwork and maybe even calling them out if that is something that is in your team or on in that culture you're in. Now, we don't want to just slam the door and you know lose our jobs because we're going all the way to the other end of the spectrum, but think about micro moments where you can reinvest in yourself, reinvest in your energy, reinvest in that sense of play and joy. Even as little kids, we took naps. Our parents, our caregivers, got us to bed at a reasonable time. Have that same mindset with yourself as a worker and watch that joy and that fun and that enthusiasm burgeon forth. Stuart Brown, who's a great researcher on, I think he created the Institute of Fun or Joy, but he shared this quote, and I wanted to share it with you. He said, the opposite of play isn't work, it is depression. The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression. How many of us are walking through our work days in a passive, low-energy heaviness of depression? Take that time for yourself. Again, log off, create a great culture by celebrating what you're doing and have a little more playfulness, get your rest. And most importantly, don't overdo it and then expect that from your staff. It isn't sustainable. I think the idea of play, uh, playful joy, can bring a new fierce encouragement to ourselves. It can bring a new standard of living that's more connected with an authentic self. And Brene Brown, the great uh behavioral psychologist and um has written a great book. I have it here in front of me, Dare to Lead, one of my favorite books by her. She uh talks about vulnerability a lot in her work. And it's tough to do this. It's tough just to go to 100% vulnerability, maybe by uh creating some good logging off, healthy habits, shutting down at appropriate times, and not celebrating people that overdo it. It takes some courage and vulnerability and some fierce encouragement to take one step towards that, especially if we're in a culture that does celebrate all those things that kind of has the opposite intention. But Brene Brown talks about what is true belonging? What is true belonging at work and at home, but especially at work and in our jobs? I'm so thankful because I get to show up to my job and to my coaching conversations and to this podcast and the things I create and the workshops and talks that I give with an authenticity that I never felt in many of the corporate areas I worked in. There were glimmers of it and some great leaders that encouraged it or modeled it. But true belonging isn't just about fitting in. It isn't about wearing a mask or adapting to yourself to what others think and feel. And that's something that can kind of get lost in the wash when we show up as individuals at big corporations or at jobs. It isn't about having to change ourselves. Great cultures, good leaders, positive, fiercely encouraging cultures want you to bring your full self to work. Be a little bit vulnerable, be open-hearted, and see that in others. Again, there's this constriction and this tightness that we run into so many times when we're out there looking for work or working at companies for long term and long time. And there's this thought of golden handcuffs. Like I can't move, I have to stay here because of my investment in the company, or because of the projects I'm doing, or because it's expected of me. But I think it's really powerful to pause, to create that downtime, that journaling time, that momentum in the morning where you can slow down and ask yourself what you truly want to show up, or who you want to show up as today, for your team, for yourself, for your family and friends. Ask yourself if you're creating that culture, that environment where people do feel like they truly belong, we don't want to sacrifice our authentic, genuine self for trying to fit in and trying to accord to what we're seeing and almost playing that game of mimic mimicry. You know, I'm guilty of it too. When we find a new position or get into a new role in some place that we're excited, unfortunately, our mind goes right to like, how can I fit in? And again, we did this as children. We wanted to be liked. But those really authentic friends, that really inner confidence and that inner encouragement comes from slowing down and asking ourselves what we really want to show up as. And most importantly, making that space, if we are leaders, making that space and that time for others to share, to be open, and to ask them to bring their authentic self to work. I believe that's true power in teams when we ask them to bring their idiosyncratic skills and mindsets to the team, not because we need to fit in or manipulate and constrict ourselves into a mode or a model that they need, but to ask them to approach the work and get the work done in ways that are beautiful and loving and open and compassionate with others and with themselves. Leaders would do themselves and their teams a favor if they chose to honor and celebrate those diverse, very varying viewpoints that others have, and let them bring those skills and those virtues to the team. Not because they need to fit in, but because that's their authentic self, that's their the way they show up and help in their own way. So, where might you be moving away from play and trying to fit in? How can you be more childlike in your enthusiasm and really look at the other people in your team or your company, or even those thoughts and ideas that you have in your head and accept and honor yourself? It's okay to be stressed out, it's okay to be overwhelmed. But with some exercise, with some breath work, by reinvesting in your sleep, there's so much there that can help you shift that mindset from one of overwhelm and constriction and tightness to one where you could show up and have a true unbounded joy and an open heart and feel that true belonging, not just externally, but inwardly. I hope this helps. Remember, fierce encouragement doesn't start out there. It doesn't start with somebody else giving us permission to be who we are. It starts when we slow down. Truly. It starts when we make that space in our day, in our week, and in our mind just to accept ourselves as we are and try to get a little bit better today. We won't be able to get it all done at once, but no matter where you're at in the world and in your life, you do belong here. You're worthy, you're capable, and it's really about seeing that beauty inside of you. Of course, we all have our mistakes and our wounds and the difficulties that we've had in the past. But in a sense, And Brene Brown talks about this. That's part of who you are. And that's part of the openness and the beauty and the creativity you bring to the team, to your family and friends, or to whatever creative project you're doing. You are worthy. You belong here. And I hope you can fiercely encourage yourself today, no matter what you're doing. And truly, I'm glad you spent this time with me. I hope you got something out of this. Let me know if it landed with you. Again, this is Mark Walker. I'm a life coach and certified to help people move through those difficulties. If you're ever interested in connecting and getting a free complimentary strategy session with me, check out the show notes. I would love to hear from you. I help people turn their inner critic into their inner coach. And I hope to hear from you. Otherwise, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time on Fierce Encouragement. Bye bye.