E046 Getting Out the Door: Why Does Leaving Take So Much Work? What Happens Before You Reach the Front Door

Have you ever reached the front door with your keys in hand and felt like you had already done a full day’s work before you had even left the house? You might have packed the bags, found the missing shoes, answered three questions, reminded someone to brush their teeth, fed the animals and still had one eye on the clock.

This episode opens the Getting Out the Door arc by looking at what is already using your energy before you step outside. If those final minutes before leaving are when you feel yourself getting closer to losing it, the free guide 5 Things You Can Do Before You Lose Your Mind gives you five simple nervous system resets you can use when the clock is ticking and everyone still needs something from you.

E046 Getting Out the Door: Why Does Leaving Take So Much Work? What Happens Before You Reach the Front Door

We start with the conversation that sparked this arc, then trace what happened before you reached the doorway. Along the way, we look at the load of getting everyone ready, the reminders, the things you are trying not to forget, the people and pets who need you, and why leaving earlier doesn't always remove what happens in those final minutes. 

📋 What we covered:

• How Getting Out the Door carries the Full Plates idea into another part of daily life
• The conversation with a group of women that sparked this three-part arc
• What load is and how practical, cognitive and relational load can build before you leave
• How cognitive labour shows up through anticipating, identifying, deciding and monitoring
• Why multiple timelines, future jobs and rapid-fire reminders can make the final minutes feel relentless
• How sibling bickering, last-minute questions, pets and unexpected messes add more to the morning
• Why “just leave 10 minutes earlier” does not remove the needs, reminders and interruptions
• What the looking glass can show you about what happened behind you, within you and ahead of you

📘 Free Guide:

5 Things You Can Do Before You Lose Your Mind

Five simple nervous system resets for the moments when the clock is ticking, no one is ready and you can feel yourself getting closer to losing it. 

👉 link coming soon

🌟 Key takeaways:

• By the time you reach the front door, you may have already packed bags, found shoes, answered questions, fed animals and watched the clock
• Load is the doing, remembering, deciding and coordinating that happens before you leave the house
• Rapid-fire reminders, future jobs and last-minute questions can use up your patience before the day has properly started
• Leaving earlier can create more room, but it does not stop the sick dog, missing water bottle or child who needs help choosing clothes
• What you feel at the front door makes sense when you look at the morning behind you, your body in that moment and the day you are already thinking about

🔁 Episodes referenced in this episode:

E042 Full Plates: Why Does “What’s for Dinner?” Take So Much Energy? What Happens Before the Meal Reaches the Table

E043 Full Plates: Why Did I Buy That? What’s Really Influencing Your Food Choices in the Moment

E044 Full Plates: Why Does the Grocery Shop Feel Different Every Week? What’s Shaping Your Choices Before You Reach the Checkout

E045 Full Plates: Why Does the Same Food Decision Feel Easy One Day and Overwhelming the Next?

🎧 Related listening:

E040 Switched On & Stretched: Feeling Pulled in Ten Different Directions? Why Your Nervous System Needs a Clear Next Step

E037 Presence & Perception: How to Feel Like Yourself in a Room Even When You’re Running on Empty

 If your patience is already thin before the day has properly started, this episode will help you see what has been using up your energy before you leave. You’ll start to notice the reminders, future jobs, last-minute questions, pets, people and pressure that can build in those final minutes, so what you feel at the doorway makes more sense. 

📱 Let’s Connect 

• All links, resources and ways to connect are here https://linktr.ee/GAWellness

🔔 If this episode spoke to you, lovely, please:

• Follow the podcast.
• Leave a quick review (it truly helps!)
• Share with a bestie who’s ready to reclaim wellness on her own terms.

 © 2026 GA Wellness with Georgia Ann® . All content is for educational purposes only and is not medical or psychological advice. 

Transcript

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Have you ever stood at the front door, keys in hand, and felt like you've already done four days of work before you've even left the house? Your patience's already gone, your legs are already tired, and technically you haven't even left the house yet. By the end of this episode, you'll have a clearer idea of what's eating you up your energy before you've even stepped outside. Welcome to the GA Wellness Podcast. Small Steps, lasting change. I'm your host, Georgia Ran, health coach, solo mum, and a woman who's lived through the chaos, the curveballs, and the craving for something steadier. After 20 years in the fitness industry and my own journey through grief, motherhood, and starting over, I've learned that real wellness isn't about doing more, it's about doing what matters. Each week we cut through the noise and get real. With simple, doable tools to help you feel stronger, calmer, and more like you. This isn't about perfection. It's about steady, soul-led progress. Because you deserve wellness that fits into your whole life. Not just one version of it. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the GA Wellness Podcast. And if this is your first time here, welcome to you too. Okay, be honest with me. How many times this week have you already been out the door before 9 a.m. and thought I literally just ran a marathon? I need to lie down now. Like totally, eh? I've literally walked into work and said, um, is it home time yet? Now getting out of the house demands a lot from you. You could be finding bags, finding missing keys, that's me, all over it, answering questions, reminding someone to brush their teeth, feeding their animals, and trying to remember that one thing you promised yourself you won't forget. Plus, there's my personal favorite, asking my Google home where my phone is. And by the time you finally lock the door, you somehow feel like you've already done a full day's work. Are you feeling me right now? That is literally our lives. And it's also the title of my new three-episode arc, Getting Out the Door. And we're gonna cover all of that. Now, before we formally start, I just want to take a slight detour because we've just finished a substantial series called Full Plates. And I think it's just worth mentioning it here. It was a four-episode series about everything that happens before dinner ends up on the table. We covered a lot of ground in that arc. In particular, we talked about why deciding what to eat can feel so difficult and sometimes overwhelming. We also covered what influences what ends up in your trolley, the bigger systems and costs which determine what you buy. Now, on a positive note, we also did speak about how to make food decisions work a little bit better for you in your life as well. And so it was actually a really useful little mini-series, and I highly recommend you have a listen to that after this one. Now, on some levels, getting out the door isn't all that different if you think about it. It's the same idea, just playing in a different part of your day. On one of them, there's a meal on the table, and on the other one, there's you standing at the front door. And in both cases, what you're seeing in that moment is really just the last visible step of everything that happened before it. And we'll actually revisit a couple of those full place concepts as we go through this arc as well. So keep an ear out for those. Okay, I want to tell you how this arc started because it's a bit different from my usual planning process. So I was chatting with a small group of women I know, and I asked them one question. What happens in your house when you're trying to get out of the door in the morning? Honestly, I thought we'd be laughing about lost keys, running late for school drop-off, and all the usual morning chaos. I mean, we did talk about that and laugh obviously, and then one story became another, someone would share something, someone else would jump in and say, Oh my god, yes, that happens in my house too, and away we'd go again. What got me though was that every one of those women had a completely different household, yet the same thing kept coming up at the end or around every story. And that was that so much had already happened before they even locked the front door. And naturally, they also turned the spotlight onto me. And I found myself thinking about my own mornings a little bit differently as well. By the end of the conversation, I remember sitting there thinking, okay, this is so much bigger than I originally thought, which is where my curiosity started guiding me to follow the white rabbit. Can you see where this is going? So while I was listening to those stories and thinking about my own experience, my brain went straight over to Alice in Wonderland. Now, if you know me, of course it did. I've always loved fantasy, and Alice in Wonderland has always felt really special to me ever since I was little. The idea of stepping into something completely ordinary and finding yourself completely else entirely has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. One minute, Alice is somewhere familiar. The next she's stepping through the looking glass into a world where everything works differently, and she's trying to work out what on earth is going on. I also have a habit of following the white rabbit myself. My curiosity gets the better of me, I start looking into one thing, and then three hours later I've got 17 tabs open and no idea how I got there. And that's pretty much how this art came together. As I was listening to these women talk, the front door started to feel a little bit like the looking glass. The whole morning had happened behind you while the rest of the day is waiting outside. You're standing there in the middle with your keys in hand, someone else's drink bottle in the other hand, and your brain is still trying to work out whether everyone has everything that they need. Now, most morning you kind of have an idea of what's waiting on the other side, but every now and then you open the door and think, OMG, what on earth is going on? I've actually just had one of those mornings myself, and I'll tell you that story next week because honestly, it was insane. Okay, and a little nerd moment. Naturally, I followed the white rabbit and went looking for research. Now, one of those tabs led me to an anthropologist named Arnold von Gennett and his 1909 book, The Rites of Passage. He compared rites of passage across cultures all over the world, and he found doorways and thresholds showing up again and again. Right at the moment someone's life shifted from one stage to the next. The three-part pattern he kept seeing was separation, the limineal stage, and incorporation. Basically, separation is leaving one stage behind. The limineal stage is a weird in-between bit where you're moving from one thing to the next. Incorporation is when you step into that next stage and become part of it. The part I love though is the middle part, limineal, because it's from the Latin word meaning lemon, meaning threshold. Now, how crazy is that? More than a century of academic thinking about thresholds, and there I was sitting in my kitchen thinking, hang on, the front door is a looking glass. Now, officially I'll leave these to the anthropologists, but what an interesting parallel, eh? Okay, so that looking glass idea is gonna keep popping up throughout this arc. So make sure you keep that front of mind. It's the warning behind you the rest of the day outside, and you standing there in the middle of the doorway. Okay, so before we get to the door, we're gonna work backwards and see what happens before you reach the doorway. Can we just get out the door? That's usually me talking to Ellie at some point most mornings. You've probably got your own variation of this. It's literally whatever comes out when you've asked everyone to get ready approximately 500 times and really need to leave. Now, the power of that sentence is that it's trying to make 30 things happen at once or approximately. You're trying to get shoes on, bags packed, teeth brushed, animals fed, and everyone moving in the same direction while the clock keeps ticking. Now, by the time you say it, there's a bit of urgency and panic behind those words. To get to that point where everyone is standing on the footpath, shoes on, bags packed, ready to go, is a fair bit of journey, and we're gonna get into that. There is something that sits underneath that journey, and I've actually kind of already mentioned this on the podcast a few times before, but I haven't really explained it until now. Okay, have you got your journal ready or the notes app on your phone? This is something you'll want to keep coming back to, and it'll make a lot more sense in your own life once you hear this. Okay, so that word is load, and I've said it a few times on the pod, but I've never really properly defined it. So here it is. Load is everything you're doing, remembering, deciding, and coordinating at the same time. In this case, everything needing to happen to get out the door. Now, how that load feels also depends on your capacity that day. That's the energy, attention, and patience you've got to be available to deal with it. So things like bad sleep, feeling unwell, a work deadline, or already having a lot on your plate can make those ordinary morning jobs feel really draining. And we can actually break load down into three parts practical, cognitive, and relational. So practical load is the physical doing. It's the finding the shoes, packing the bags, getting dressed, making breakfast, essentially physically getting everyone ready and yourself. The cognitive part of load is the thinking, remembering what everyone needs, working out what has to happen next, and making the actual decisions like did I switch off the hair straightener? Which is literally me. Please don't tell me I'm not the only one that thinks that. Relational load is reading the room. Who woke up grumpy? Who doesn't want to go? Who's got a last minute question? And managing your own patience while you do it. Meanwhile, part of your brain might already be thinking about drop-off or your first meeting or thinking ahead to whatever else is coming. So all of that is load. The practical, cognitive, and relational side of it is all happening all at the same time. Now, this can also be very fluid and change day by day depending on what everyone has got going on, which is why it can actually be so draining. You literally can have no idea what that morning is gonna throw at you. And I want to stay with the cognitive part of that load for a moment because Alison Domingue's research gives us a useful way to see how much thinking is evolved. So back in episode 42, I introduced sociologist Alison Domingue and the four parts of cognitive labor she identified, which were anticipating, identifying, deciding, and monitoring. Now, if you haven't listened to that one, I recommend going back to it. I talked about it in relation to food choices, but it can definitely be applied here. Especially literally at 7.45 on a school morning. Okay, anticipating can be you've checked the weather app or Google has told you that it's going to rain. So you're anticipating that everyone will need some sort of rain protection on that particular day. Identifying is working out from the night before, earlier, what options you have to work with: raincoats, umbrellas, spare jumpers, what's clean, what still fits, and what you can actually find, especially my household because Ellie doesn't really like jackets. And deciding is choosing the raincoat, jacket, or umbrella, or whatever you know will actually work in your household with your kids and what will make them happy. Then it's the actual physical doing of getting it onto them, which is its own practical task on top of all of that thinking that you're doing. Monitoring is checking the raincoat or jacket has made its way out the door and hasn't somehow ended up at the back of the couch two minutes later. That's what happens at my house. The amount of times I've looked back and seen Ellie hasn't got a jacket on, and we've had to go all the way back home. I've gone back to the couch and seen that's where the jacket is, or we've actually made it to the school grounds, and I have had to be that annoying parent that sits there and waits until she gets into class to see that the jacket has still stayed on. Okay, so that's me. But what I'm trying to show is that this is the whole full circle of what that is, but in this case, it's anticipating what will happen when it will rain and based on the weather. Now, run that same cycle for lunches, medication, sports gear, library books for every other person and possible animal in your household. Now, can you see how literally repeating this within half an hour can take so much energy, especially when you're just trying to get out the door. Okay, so that's the cognitive piece. Now you're doing all of this while also physically doing the jobs, watching the clock, and managing everyone's moods. So one of the women gave me a perfect example of how far ahead this can go. She told me she constantly feels like she's holding every single part of the week in her head at once. OT on Monday, guitar on Tuesday, tennis at 3.30 that afternoon. Her son has a habit of leaving his tennis racket and gear scattered around. So she has to find it and load it in the car on Thursday morning for work because there won't be time to come home and collect it before tennis. So what I thought was really interesting listening to these women that I was talking to was that there are several timelines that are happening at once for multiple people, and some of them start long before the morning. So no wonder why it becomes so draining. And also while I was listening, I kept coming back to one question. When does getting out the door actually begin? Is it when you pick up your keys, when you start packing the bag, when the alarm goes off? Now hold on to that thought. Before we follow the morning backwards, let's take a closer look at those final few minutes. Okay, so let's start right at the point again. Those final few minutes when everyone's meant to be walking out the door. One of the women described it to me exactly like this. Now you have to imagine that coming out like a rapid fire interview because that's how she said it. Okay, I'm gonna try and recreate this. Have you got this? Have you got that? Have you brushed your teeth? Is there fruit in your lunchbox? Have you got your water bottle, your medicine bag, your phone? Have you got your jelly beans? Yay, I think I did it. That was really exhausting for me. But it's relentless, isn't it? Now, plenty of adults are asking the same questions too. Now it's because of this she told me that she's actually reached to a point where she says, Look, I'll remind you, and if you choose not to do it, that's on you. Which I love because this is a firm boundary and she's protecting her nervous system as well. We'll actually come back to this and handling responsibility later in the sarc. Now, what you can hear in that whole exchange is one person holding all those tabs open for everyone until they finally make it out the door. Now that's a lot of tabs. At my house, it's usually Ellie, have you brushed your teeth? Have you got your hair up? And on the other side of the scale, it can actually be Ellie reminding me that we've run out of fruit bread or run out of milk. Now, another side of this is I could be halfway through my early morning gym session at home and suddenly think, oh MG, Ellie has a birthday party coming up and I haven't bought a present. Or competitions will be coming up and my brain will casually remind me that she needs another pair of black pants because she's growing at lightning speed. Meanwhile, the time I set aside to train is now ticking away. Seriously, those thoughts have impeccable timing, don't they? They tend to happen while you're in the middle of something completely unrelated, as though your brain has finally found a spare second to hand you yet another job. Thank you very much. So you know that there's a name for this. It's actually called prospective memory. It's your ability to remember something you need to do in the future and bring that thought back when it's time to act on it. Like buy the present before the party, put the tennis racket in the car before work, replace the fruit bread before tomorrow's breakfast, find another pair of pants before the competition. They're all tiny future jobs that someone has to keep track of until they're done. Now, researchers Eric Harrington and Selena Rees Mellicon studied this specifically with parents. The mothers in their study reported having greater prospective membering demands for their children than the fathers did. In other words, the mums said that they were doing more of the remembering and reminding around what the kids needed. Now, a lot of this may not even be written down anywhere. It's just in our brains because we just remember what needs to happen at that moment. So this is also where those four parts of cognitive labor we spoke about earlier come back again, like we were talking about with the weather. Realizing the birthday party or competition is coming up and that Ellie will need something is anticipating. Working out what present to buy or which pants she needs is identifying. Choosing the present or the pants is deciding. Buying them is the practical task that follows. Now the rapid fire questions we were saying before, have you got this, have you got that? That's for monitoring, because you're checking whether everything has actually happened. So all of this can be running through your head during the final few minutes before you leave. You're remembering future jobs while checking that the ones that have actually happened have happened right now. So no wonder why it's so relentless and it just feels so overwhelming. Okay, so now we're gonna add the people part to this. You'll see what I mean. One of the women told me that sibling Bickery is honestly one of the worst parts of her morning. She'll be trying to have a shower, and all you can hear over the water is the two of them going at her in the kitchen. She feels like she has to referee them first thing in the morning. Now, can you imagine that? You're standing there dripping wet, trying to sort out an argument through a closed door before you've even had a chance to get yourself ready. Another woman told me that her partner will ask a last minute question right when she's trying to physically get everyone out into the car. So this is the relational part of the load we're talking about earlier. You're finding the shoes, packing the bags, watching the time, and at the same time, you're managing arguments, answering questions, reading everyone's mood, and trying to manage and control your own reactions on top of it all. Now, none of those are big on their own, are they? But it might really only take a minute or two. But put all that together in the same 15-minute window and your patience is basically being asked to do a full shift before 8 a.m. That final stretch of the morning seems to be when everyone needs something from you at exactly the same time. One of my ladies told me about a morning where all of that came to head at once. What I loved is that everyone involved was literally trying to do their best. So she was trying to get herself and her daughter out the door. Her daughter is a pretty independent kid. She likes choosing her own clothes and having a say in how she looks. That morning in particular, she had a few different skirts and shorts she was going back and forth between, and she just couldn't decide on which one. Meanwhile, my lady could feel her patience getting thinner and thinner. She kept checking the clock, looking at her phone, and doing the maths on working out whether she was going to be late for work. She could feel her heart rate starting to climb. In her words, she was right on the edge of losing her mind. So what she ended up doing was reaching for a couple of strategies from my free guide, five things she can do before you lose your mind, to help herself through those final moments. At the time, she was helping her daughter make a decision, watching the clock, and managing her own rising frustration. Now that's what Lode looked like for her in that moment. Her daughter had a real need. She had a real deadline and they were both having a real response to the moment. But they managed to work through it and the morning kept going. Okay, so we've looked at what happens when several people's needs happen at the same time. Now we need to add every living thing in the house because for some of the women I spoke to, pets are part of the getting out of the door sequence as well. One of the women described her morning as coordinating every living thing before she walks out the door, humans included. She feeds the animals, gives them fresh water, cleans up after them, brings in the food bowls from outside, and measures out the dry food. She also needs the house to be clean and to be tidy before she leaves. The couch has to be sorted, the bed's made, the benches wiped down, and the table cleaned. The whole reset is part of her getting out of the door sequence. Now the pets alone take around 10 minutes most mornings. Right when she's thinking she's got everything covered, someone will turn around and call out, Oh Mum, have you fed the fish? Then off she goes to drop in a few flakes. 10 minutes gets swallowed up quickly when there's already six competing things happening at once at the same time in your morning. One of the other women told me that her dog has been unwell overnight and had vomited in the lounge room, so her morning suddenly involved mopping up the floor, checking that the dog was okay, and trying to work out whether it needed something or what she needed to do or if it needed to go to the vet. Meanwhile, all the time she was using that to also trying to get herself ready and that time was just disappearing. A male friend of mine told me his version of this as well. His dog has also been unwell, so he needed to make sure the dog had everything he needed before dropping off to doggy daycare. Now, what I'm getting at is this kind of load shows up whenever something or someone in your house depends on you children, partners, pets, and the house itself. Every one of those needs becomes part of the sequence. Now, as I don't have pets, those stories actually widen the picture for me. They showed me just how many different needs can sit into one departure. One unexpected need, whether it's a sick dog or a vomiting mess on the floor, can actually rearrange an entire morning and just about 90 seconds flat. When you pull all those stories together, getting out the door can require one more woman to meet the immediate needs of every living thing in the house before she's met her own. Okay, now I'm gonna call this out because this is so frustrating when people say this. Just leave 10 minutes early. Earlier, OMG, it is so infuriating because leaving 10 minutes earlier means the sequence leading up to it just moves earlier as well, doesn't it? An earlier alarm can create more room at the beginning, but the reminders, the bickering, the pets, the indecision, and the last minute questions are still part of the journey and they will keep happening. Now there are some things that will help, and we'll get into those at the last episode of this arc, but some of those things that you put in place won't prevent a sick dog, a missing water bottle, a child who needs longer to choose their morning outfit, or a question that gets asked just before you're about to pick up your keys. The departure may look exactly the same from the outside, but the effect it draws from you can change completely from one day to the next. Okay, so far we've been looking at the final few minutes before the pressure becomes obvious. Now for some of us though, that sequence starts much earlier. So now let's follow it backwards. So back to the question I asked earlier. When does this sequence actually begin? So far, we've all worked our way back from the front door to those final 15 minutes. Now let's keep going because for some of us that sequence begins before we've even gotten out of bed. Now one of the women I spoke to told me something that really stuck with me. She told me some mornings before she's even properly awake, the dread is already there. She's laying there, eyes barely open, and she's already running through everything in her head in terms of what the day is gonna ask of her. Some mornings she doesn't even want to get up purely because she knows exactly what's waiting for her on the other side of the door. She's literally already tired and the day hasn't even started yet. Well, you may have experienced that feeling as well. Okay, quick science moment, because you know I can't help myself. Seriously though, there might be something else happening alongside with that anticipation. So most of us have heard of cortisol. Well, for many people, cortisol rises during the first 30 to 45 minutes upon waking, and that is completely normal. Researchers call this the cortisol awaking response. Now, the size of that response can vary between people and from one day to the next. Researcher Leonard Caesar explored this in a small pilot study published in 2024. The study found an association between anticipating more stress than usual and a higher cortisol response the next morning. Now, research is still being done on this. It doesn't exactly tell us why the woman was feeling dread on those mornings. Cortisol is only one part of the much bigger picture. Sleep, health, exhaustion, ongoing stress, and emotional well-being can also contribute to how it felt to wake up and face the day. Still, it's interesting to be mindful of. Before one particular warm woman has put her feet on the floor, her mind is already anticipating what's waiting and her body is moving through its waking response at the same time. So it's possible that sometimes the first threshold is the edge of the bed. Now we've followed the whole sequence backwards from the moment you reach the front door to the moment you're first thinking about getting out of bed. We're seeing that the load can begin long before anyone else can see it. Okay, so what I want to do now is bring everything we've uncovered back to the doorway where we started. So let's bring back the looking glass because I think this explains this really well. So picture this. You're standing at the front door again, keys in hand. Now behind you is everything we've just walked through. The reminders, the bickering, the pets, the fish, the indecision, maybe even the dread before you even got up. Now within you is what you're literally feeling right now. It could be feeling tired, wound up, maybe feeling a little bit flat, already running on empty. Ahead of you on the other side of the door is whatever you've already half anticipating about the rest of the day and thinking about it before you've ever stepped through it. Behind you, within you, ahead of you. So remember that three-part pattern I mentioned earlier. Separation, the limineal stage, and incorporation. Now I'm not saying an ordinary Tuesday morning is a formal rite of passage, but if we borrow that anthropology analogy for a moment, this is a bit like the liminal part of the picture. You're standing in that in-between scene where the morning behind you and the next part of the day ahead, and you haven't even fully stepped into it yet. That's the looking glass letting you see everything that happened before you reach the threshold and how it left you feeling. When you can identify what happened behind you, how you feel within you, and what you're expecting ahead of you, you're beginning the connect part of my calm pathway. So I have a few things you might like to ponder if this has intrigued you so far. Alright, so behind you. What happened that particular morning that you didn't really give yourself credit for? Now honestly, how proud are you because of this? So think about it. Whose needs were you meeting and in what order? And then within you, there's something else to think about. What's your body telling you right now at that particular moment? And how much capacity did you have available? Now, what did you have to give up so everyone else could leave on time? Now ahead of you, what were you already anticipating about the rest of your day before you had even had really started it? So these are probably the things you can even think about, which might have happened today, might have happened yesterday, or even the next time you're about to walk through the door. So please email me at georgia at go wellness.com.au as I love to hear what comes up for you. Now, if you've been listening to this thinking, yep, this is my house, I made the five things you can do before you lose your mind for mornings exactly like this, like I mentioned before. It gives you five simple resets to reach for when the clock is ticking, everyone isn't ready, and you can feel yourself getting closer to losing it. So they're the same resets my beautiful lady used when she was helping her daughter trying to work out what she wanted to wear and manage her own rising frustration at the same time. So you can find this in the show notes. Okay, lovely, let's bring this together. Today we spoke about the stretch of time before you leave the house. We spoke about trying to get yourself ready while also remembering the medicine, fighting the tennis racket, answering questions, sorting out an argument, feeding the animals, and keeping one eye on the clock. Some mornings it can all move pretty smoothly, other mornings you slept badly, someone wakes up grumpy or the dog is sick, and one more mum feels like one question too much. We followed the whole sequence backwards too. We started in those final 15 minutes where everyone needs something at once and worked our way back to the moment your eyes first opened and the day has already started running through your mind. By the time you finally reach the front door, you may have had to keep track of a ridiculous amount of things. Now, no wonder you sometimes get tired, irritated, frustrated, or completely over everyone before you've even left the house. What you feel at the front door makes sense when you see everything that happened before you reached it. Now eventually, somehow, everyone's ready. Shoes are on, the bags are packed, the dog's being fed, the fish too, if anyone's actually remembered. You close the door behind you, you get in the car, or you start walking towards the train. And from the outside, it probably looked like the hard part is over. You're out. You made it. You might still feel rushed, annoyed, and like you need five minutes where no one asks you another question. If you're like me, you have that resting person face. I can't say the other word because I want to keep my clean rating. But people know to give you like a few a few minutes when they see that particular face. Next week, we're following you through that door and looking at what happens when that rush crosses the threshold with you. It can follow you into the car, onto the train, and straight into whatever happens next. I'll also finally tell you about that morning I mentioned earlier, when I opened the door and found something I really wasn't expecting. Until then, stay happy, stay curious, and if nothing else today, may your fish actually get fed on time. As always, I am so glad you're here. Thanks for being here, lovely. If today's episode gave you a light bulb moment, helped you feel seen, or sparked a small step, I'd love to hear about it. Tag me over on Instagram at GRWellness and share your wins so I can cheer you on. And if there's a woman in your world that needs this kind of support, send this to her because wellness feels better when we do it together. Make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And check the description for all the resources mentioned today. Plus the link to join my email list, which is where I share exclusive content, early access to offer some freebies, and little love notes that are only sent to my community. If you love this episode, it would mean the world to me if you left a review. Until next time, take a deep breath and take care of you. With love, George Orange.