#103: How to Stay Busy without Burning Out

What does it feel like in your body to be truly busy?

Are you able to surrender to it and still take excellent care of yourself or do you find yourself feeling anxious and stressed and prone to burnout?

In this episode, I talk about how you can find a space where you can feel busy and supported at the same time.

I share:

• A breakdown of how the Nervous System actually works
• Common Signs and Symptoms of being "too" Busy
• My 3 phase approach to Navigate your Busiest Season with Ease, and
• A powerful Embodiment Practice for making peace with structure

If you are afraid of slowing down, but know that you have to find a way to achieve better balance if you are going to sustain your lifestyle, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

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But what we don't factor in is that if those 20 minutes are restorative and they help you become more calm, as a result, make better decisions, as a result be more available, you're gonna make fewer mistakes, you're going to be more effective with the time that you do have. And so that 20 minutes might be saving you hours. And so we have to really flip the script and we have to play a little game with ourselves. And we have to think: okay, am I gonna be more effective if I do these practices? Or am I gonna be more effective with my work if I go to sleep now? Or if I try to work now when I'm really, really tired. This is the Embodied Way Podcast, where creative people come to reconnect with their soul purpose, identify and release their blocks, heal old wounds, and manifest the life they've always dreamed of. Hi, I'm Natalie Neckyfarow, and welcome to the Embodied Way Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be talking a lot about what it means to be busy and the difference between being busy and overextended, and ultimately how we can stay busy and be available for all of the wonderful things that life is offering us in our quest to fulfill our dreams without burning out. We're gonna start by talking a little bit about the energy of the seasons. We're gonna talk about how your nervous system gets acclimated to certain experiences and how you can readjust that. We're gonna talk about the top mistakes that people make when their schedule starts to fill up, how you can make peace with more structure, and finally how you can let yourself rest even when things are busy. So let's get started. Okay. So it is currently May, and in the Northern Hemisphere, that means it is spring, and we are very quickly moving towards summer. Uh we recently passed uh Beltane, which is the halfway mark between the spring equinox and summer. And so this means that energetically outside in nature, things are growing and blossoming. And our bodies are actually naturally conditioned to follow this energy, the energy of the seasons. And so if things were feeling slow and stagnant for you in January and February, and then March started to hit and you were more busy, and then April has been crazy, and then May is also very busy. Now, if you're someone who tends toward overworking and overwhelm, I want you to know that you don't have to stop in order to get out of the overwhelm. Okay, so in my personal life, I had to slow down a lot. So I was used to going at 110 miles per hour, but with my experience in my Hashimoto's disease, which I talked about in last week's episode, I had to go down to about 35. Now, chances are, unless you're dealing with an autoimmune disorder or some other big major life event that really forces you to slow down, you're not gonna have to go that slow in order to start to take better care of yourself and prevent burnout. But it might feel like you are. Because we are comfortable showing up and being the way that we're used to being. So if you're the kind of person who has always been really busy, who has always crammed as much into a day as you absolutely could, then for you, going even 20% slower, carving out a little bit more time for self-care and rest is actually going to feel weird and almost threatening for your nervous system. Conversely, if you went through a period like myself where things were on high alert. So I was, you know, dealing with my autoimmune condition. I really had to slow down in order to take care of my health. So when things start to get busy for me, I start to worry. I start to think, oh my God, what if I can't handle this? What if I get sick again? And so it feels really comfortable for me to keep things slow. But I'm well aware that I live in a world where, you know, if the auditions start to come or the festival acceptances start to come, I want to be able to show up for that because that's what I've been doing work on behind the scenes all of this time. And it's really important that the groundwork that I've laid that I'm able to benefit from it, that I'm not going to step away from it and completely miss the opportunity altogether. So it's important to know are you the kind of person that is more comfortable being really, really busy? Or are you the kind of person that is more comfortable when things are really, really slow? And for both of us, both of those types of people, our job is actually to try to find some kind of middle ground. And that version of middle ground could be super, super subtle. But that super subtle shift is going to allow your nervous system to come back to stasis on a regular basis. And when we come back to stasis on a regular basis, wow, that rhymes, we are going to actually have more capacity to show up for the work that we want to do and need to do. So let's talk about the nervous system and how it works a second. And I'm just gonna front this with the fact that I know this information from my training as a Pilates instructor and personal trainer, um, but I am also not a medical expert. So there are two states for your nervous system. One is parasympathetic, and the other one is sympathetic. And these are a little confusing because they're not necessarily what they sound like. So parasympathetic is actually the state when your body is resting or restorative, calm. And sympathetic is actually the state when your nervous system is highly aroused. So that's when your nervous system, maybe you are um engaged in some form of fight or flight. It could be super subtle, maybe you're engaged in some state of freeze. Again, it could be super subtle. But sympathetic when it refers to your nervous system basically means that you are more sensitive or sympathetic to the circumstances around you. Okay. And so what helps us stay grounded and be available for all of the myriad stressors in our life, because everything is a possible stressor. So what we want to do is to make sure that our nervous system regularly comes back to a parasympathetic state. And that is where embodiment practices come in. And you likely already have embodiment practices in your life, even if you've never heard the word embodiment before. So little things like do you meditate, an embodiment practice? Uh, do you go to yoga? Again, an embodiment practice. Now there are super subtle ways that things can be more or less embodied, but we're not going to mince words here. Um, you know, eating well, planning your meals, planning your schedule. All of these are ways that help you stay grounded and regulated in your nervous system. And as a result, these are embodiment practices. So here's what I've noticed about myself and a lot of people when things get busy. So we're really good at those daily routines when things are not so busy. You know, we go to bed at a certain time, maybe we read before we go to bed, you know, we turn off the TV an hour before we go to sleep. We wake up in the morning at roughly the same time. You know, we have the same routine. We sit at uh an altar or whatever your version of an altar is, and maybe you say prayers, or maybe you do your meditation, or maybe you go for a run, or maybe you go to a fitness class, or maybe you go work out on your own. So all of us have some of these routines. And then we also have these habits around planning and writing out ahead of time what we're gonna do and what we want to accomplish. So all of these routines are supporting our nervous system and staying grounded and coming back to parasympathetic state. Our body likes routine. But when we get busy, everything starts to feel really urgent. And so when things start to feel really urgent, we get reactive. And so if you think about your embodiment practices or whatever you want to call your daily habits and routines, if you think of those as being proactive instead of reactive, you'll see how the choice to be reactive and just do the thing is actually inhibiting your nervous system and your ability to come back to stasis. So skipping your self-care, not doing your planning, and allowing yourself to just be reactive and go from thing to thing to thing is a commonly held mistake. And what happens is the first day you do it, it's not really that big of a problem. And then the next day you do it, it's still not a huge problem. But as a week goes by or multiple weeks or a month, that cumulative stress of just not finding stasis starts to build up. If we don't clear it, it stays. And so you really want to make sure that you have non-negotiables in your life. You want to know these are the things that I am going to do no matter what. And maybe right now you're thinking, well, Gene Natalie, if I have so many things to do and I can't fit them all in and something has to give, well, of course it's going to be my habits and my practices. And I want you to challenge that idea. So here's the thing: most people think, oh my God, my embodiment practice takes time. So when I work with clients, I encourage them to start with 20 minutes. And if you haven't yet checked out my embodiment starter kit, uh, the practices that I give to you in that starter kit, if you were to do all of them, it would be about 20 minutes of your time. Now, you're thinking, well, I don't have 20 minutes. But what we don't factor in is that if those 20 minutes are restorative and they help you become more calm, as a result, make better decisions, as a result be more available, you're gonna make fewer mistakes, you're going to be more effective with the time that you do have. And so that 20 minutes might be saving you hours. And so we have to really flip the script and we have to play a little game with ourselves. And we have to think, okay, am I gonna be more effective if I do these practices? Or am I gonna be more effective with my work if I go to sleep now, or if I try to work now when I'm really, really tired? And I'm telling you, I've played this game with myself many, many times. And the times that I actually chose to go to bed and to get the sleep, I woke up and sometimes did something that I thought was going to take me hours in minutes. So I want you to recognize the things that are non-negotiable in your life and really hold yourself to it. And then the second piece of this is how do you question what's on your to-do list? So we are talking a little bit about urgency and how when we are busy, everything feels urgent and we're just reacting and we're trying to get everything done on the to-do list. But if we pause and we actually analyze, this is where the planning comes in. If we pause and we actually analyze what is the most important thing on my list, or is there a way I can do this and have it not be perfect, but have it still be good enough? Or is there a way that this could actually be done later and still work? And when we pause to ask ourselves those questions, not only are we letting go of some things, so we feel less pressure because there's less that we feel like we have to do right away, we actually create space. And you might still get everything done on your list, but because you weren't entering your tasks feeling like there was so much more to do, you're able to approach those tasks in a much lighter way. And because you're approaching them in a much lighter way, you're more effective, right? Okay. So there's one more piece I want to talk about when it comes to being busy, and that is structure. Now, I know there are a lot of creative people who are listening to this podcast who are in my audience, and if you don't like structure, I understand. I personally resist structure a lot, and for me, there's a a very specific reason why. When I was growing up, structure was rewarded. I was rewarded for getting good grades, uh, getting straight A's mostly. And I was really rewarded when I finished every assignment. I was really diligent. I got all my work done. I'll tell you in high school, I did not go to bed super early and I did not get enough sleep. But that was actually encouraged. Um, I was like, oh, she's such a hard worker, that's such a good thing, that's so wonderful. Okay. So I associate structure with being good and doing things according to the rules. And generally, it's not in relationship to creativity or personal expression. It's about things that are a little bit more rigid, things that have a defined beginning, middle, and the end. And so my life now is so creative. And there's still need for structure in my life, but most of what I do that I really enjoy, I really want to be living in that state of flow, in that state of creativity most of the time. And so when I get really busy, I can't just wait for my instincts to tell me what to do next. Because if I do, I'm gonna drop some balls. Um, I'm currently working on finishing my short film. I now have a podcast, and I am making some other changes to my business behind the scenes that I'm not chatting about yet, and I am starting some new artistic projects. So as you can hear, there's a lot of things I need to do. Now, the more things are on your plate, the more structure you need. It doesn't mean you can't do them all, and it doesn't mean you can't be creative when you're doing them. But if you don't have strong structures in place, then chances are you are going to end up dropping some balls. And that is not a good feeling. Cause then you start to feel like you've failed or you haven't shown up to your full capacity, and nobody wants to feel that way. So I want to give you a little practice today because I know how difficult it is sometimes to rely on the structure or to take the time to create the structure when you're really busy. So, what I want to invite you to do, and if you're driving, please don't close your eyes and come back and do this practice later. I want you to drop in. We're gonna just very quickly close our eyes here. And I want you to tune into your body, and it's very helpful if you can place both feet on the floor and really be sitting in a chair. And I'm gonna invite you to connect first with the feminine side of your body, which is the left side of the body. And I want you to notice how that feels. How much space it takes up. Is it truly half? It might be more than half. I know mine is today. It's like, oh yeah, we like this. It's like we're hanging out in 60% of my body. Yeah, we're gonna rule this place. Feminine energy is this flow state, this feeling like you're just responding to things as you're getting them. It's like a really creative place where ideas are not linear, they come from all over the place. So, what does that feeling feel like in your body? How much space is it taking up? And then I want you to connect in with the masculine side of your body. A masculine is where we connect with structure and where we are sort of dividing our goals into action steps and taking the action, which is important too. And I just want you to check in with that side of your body and that energy. And I want you to see how that is feeling. Notice how much space it's taking up. And then I'm gonna invite you to let these energies play with each other. So if you could give your feminine energy a color, what would that be? And then if you could give your masculine energy a color, what would that be? And then I want to invite you to let these energies blend with each other, play with each other in this way. There's this give and take. There's this sense that as the energies are being Past back and forth, that the structure is supporting the flow, and the flow is supported by the structure. And just let them dance. Let them play. And see if you can let them really cohabitate your body. So maybe they're still left and right, but maybe that they really truly meet in the middle rather than 60-40 or 70-30 or whatever percentage that you felt. Or maybe there's this flowing of the energy that is so deep that you could start to no longer discern one color from the other. But you know they're both there. And just play with it, let them dance with each other. And when that feels complete, you're gonna open your eyes and come back into your space. Okay. So I hope that you are feeling a little bit more grounded right now. And you know, groundedness is that place where your nervous system is back in that parasympathetic state. And that is a really powerful and beautiful thing. And how interesting that letting our feminine energy, masculine energy play with each other, dance with each other, uh collaborate with each other actually helps us feel more grounded, more secure, more relaxed. So you can play with this exercise if you're feeling overwhelmed, overly busy, and use it as a tool to help you recommit to the structures in your life that are really going to support you to be busier without overwhelm or burnout. And I really hope that you can find a space where self-care is non-negotiable and planning feels just as joyful and playful and expansive and flowy as the creative work itself. So, as always, I would love to know how this conversation landed for you. What did you learn? What feels different from how you've been approaching busyness before? And if there's one thing that you could do differently this week, inspired by this conversation, what would it be? Come chat with me inside my Substack, which is the embodiedway.substack.com. Or you can come over to the podcast blog and leave a comment there. And that's at the embodiedwaycoach.com slash podcast. Thank you so much for listening to the Embodied Way podcast. I'm just getting started, and early listeners like you really make a difference in helping other creatives find my show. Subscribe now to be the first to know when I share new episodes each Friday. And while you're at it, please leave a review. As a little thank you, I'm running a giveaway between now and Wednesday, May 13th. When you subscribe, leave a review or share this podcast with your friends. You are eligible to win one of three one month memberships to the Embodiment Collective. To learn more about this giveaway and how to enter, visit the link in the show notes. Until next Friday, have a restful week.