You Can Leave Work At Work Today

You give everything to your work. But you get home and can't hear the people you love because your head is still full of emails, decisions and unfinished conversations.

In this episode I share Let Go Of Your Day - a simple mind body practice to leave work at work, reclaim your evenings and be present at home.

The podcast for high earning, big-hearted, driven professionals  and business owners who want to break free from overwhelm and experience more clarity, ease and joy.

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Transcript

A Third Part And The Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Overwhelm is Optional, the podcast for big-hearted, highly driven professionals who are ready to turn overwhelm into clarity, ease, and joy. I'm Heidi Mark, the Gentle Rebel Coach, and in each episode I share insights, stories, and practical tools to help you gently rebel against the pressure to push on through. Because you matter. How you are in the world matters. Hello, hello, hello! I don't know how to start this episode now because I think in the previous one I said something like this is the second part of a two-part series, and now I've added a third, so I could call it a bonus episode. Oh, it's so funny. I listen to people in podcast episodes and on YouTube, and they're so organised with their this is a three-part series, and I get too excited and go off at tangents. And when I've tried to structure it all sensibly and strategically, I kind of lose my energy with it, so I don't care. Anyway, this is the third in a now, and who knows what will happen next, three-part series of how to up level your week so that you can have more focus, intentional focus at work, so that you feel more satisfied by your work, and also gently rebelliously or highly rebelliously, have the ability to switch off and laugh easily and be present at home. Haha. Because the current norm is you can't have both. And I'm not having that, I'm on a mission. You can have both, you can have it all. Why shouldn't you? In fact, you should have, except that we don't do shoulds here. Okay, this technique is called let go of your week. So you could use kick ass Monday to kick ass start your day and your week intentionally, you can do it every day as well, and you can back end it with woohoo Fridays, brilliant, but you don't have to use everything, and this is really important. If you try and use everything at once, man, are you just adding to your pressure there? No, don't do that. So just pick whatever resonates with you and take it seriously as a practice, and take it not seriously because it's just a practice and there is no perfection here. Okay, let go of your week is a mind-body technique to literally, quite literally, get your allow the work, the energy of work, to leave your mind, body, and heart so that you can switch off, laugh easily, and be present at home. I'm going to describe it in terms of let go of your week. You can also use it for let go of your day, and I do do them separately. Haha. Episode four of the two-part series. Right, I don't know. Should we do it that way? What's most convenient for you? I'm trying to make it convenient for you. It's that it's pretty much the same, it obviously it's the same technique, but it builds. Should I do I'm gonna do both at once in this episode, but I'm gonna start with let go of your day so that you can build up to let go of your week. So if you're doing let go of your day, so you get to the end of your working day, and to prevent what I call work-life leakage, or to reduce it, we'll start with just reducing it. So you know when you get home and you can't hear your partner speak because your head is so noisy, so full of work. So, what we want to be able to do is be present at home because it's really rubbish that the people we love most in the world get the worst of us because we're so busy working and we're so driven that we don't know how to give them the best of us. So it's not intentional, it's accidental, but let's do something about it, guys, because it's really sad. So, to let go of your working day, I invite you to use all the transitions between work and home as like doorways where you're letting go of the energy of work. So we're gonna start, and this applies to whether you commute to a different building or whether you're at home. It's equally applicable, and there's no excuses for saying yes, but my work's in my house. Your work may be in your house, but you can lock the energy of your work down so it doesn't infiltrate your home. But it's intentional. So all of this is intentional, so you have to commit to it, you have to decide. I am done with work-life leakage. I want my evenings back, I want my weekends back, I want to be able to switch off and laugh easily and feel like myself again. I want to be present with those I love, I want to be present in my home, I want to be present. I don't want to have to exercise really hard or um drink in order to switch. I want it to just, I want to just be able to switch. And then if you want to go and drink and exercise hard, then you can do that with joy. Okay, so imagine it like this. So you're really, really focused on your work, and while you're focusing on your work, you think it's all in your head, and then you wonder later why why you you've got achy, achy pain, stiff neck. It's because you didn't notice at the time. So when we're using our heads, so those of us in cognitively demanding work, we tend to become disconnected from our bodies, and that's okay. I mean, it's a necessary part of serious kick-ass cognitive work, right? That's okay. You can't expect to always feel embodied, particularly when you're working online, because our consciousness goes into the online world and travels through time and space, which is why I can talk to colleagues and friends in America. I mean, it's crazy, right? I mean, look at this podcast. People from all over the world are listening to this podcast, and my voice is going through time and space. It's freaky or it's magical. But in order to counteract that, I need to be able to switch from mind-based back into my body and my heart. I need the skill of that, and it's just a skill, it's just a practice. There's nothing wrong, there's nothing terrible, but it matters. And I think it's starting to me, it feels a bit more urgent now because of AI. Because the weird thing about AI is it's completely disembodied, but it's copying humans who are embodied. But because a lot of people are disembodied from themselves, I don't know, it just feels wrong. It's like the thing about humans is we have amazing brains, amazing minds, but we also have a body and a heart. And when we when we have all of that connected, we are so amazing, we are magical, powerful, joyful beings. And for me, the privilege of reconnecting people to their bodies and their hearts is just awesome because it's so powerful and it's so fun and it's so normal once you do it, it's so natural and it's so exciting, it's just magical. So let's do this. So we start by acknowledging that if we have a cognitively demanding job, which I'm pretty sure that everybody listens to this podcast does, because it's called overwhelm is optional, which means we're spending a lot of time in our heads because the mind gets easily overwhelmed. So if we didn't spend so much time in our heads and didn't think so much, we probably wouldn't be overwhelmed. It's just a different way of being. Might be though, I don't know. Anyway, I know who I'm talking to. So you brilliant, intelligent person who overuses their mind, it's this is for you. So I would start from the place of acknowledgement that during your working day you become disembodied, you become unaware of your body. I'm always doing it, and I've just noticed right now what's going on. So I'm laughing because often when I record podcasts, I do something weird with my leg because I'm so thinking about what I'm recording that I forget about my legs, and my left leg for some reason wraps a bit around the chair leg. And the other day I got up after recording several episodes in a row in great excitement, and I nearly fell over because my left foot, I couldn't feel my left foot, it had gone numb. So that's disembodiment, right? That's just like not aware of my body, it's disappeared. I'm just I'm just in this magical creative thought brain thing. So it happens. So start starting with acknowledging when you become disembodied during the day, just noticing that. Let's just just just where let's start where we are, neutrally notice where we are. Those of us who have cognitively demanding jobs tend to become disembodied. So that's really useful ability to be able to really really focus, really use your mind in lots of magical creative ways, do wonderful things, have satisfying work. Like that ability to focus is very, very magical. However, being able to switch from mind-based to mind, heart, body-based is a brilliant skill to learn, which enables you to have what you want. So being able to deliberately focus on what matters most to you creates more satisfaction at work, but then being able to reconnect with your body and your heart enables you to switch off last easily and be present at home. So this is what we want to do. And ideally, we would reconnect with our bodies at regular points during the day without really thinking about it so that we didn't fall over, like I nearly did when my foot went numb. But what we'd what we want to do here is focus on the end of the working day as a deliberate, very deep practice, because that will, with practice over time, because it will deliberately open up that connection between your mind and your body and your heart, you will naturally start to become less disembodied throughout the day, says she, who nearly fell over with a numb foot. But I also deliberately go outside and feel my feet on the ground and the sunlight on my face, or have a little bounce on my trampoline, or go talk to my plants, or pick up my dogs, or do something. I'm always reconnecting with my body deliberately because I learnt the hard way. I learnt this the hard way. I became disconnected from my body and my heart, and I burnt out. And when I mean burnt out, with hindsight, yeah, I could have kept going. What does burnout mean? You know, I wasn't actually hospitalised, so but it's not a physical thing, is it? It's more than that. But I'd not been paying attention to what mattered most to me, and I had continued to live a life that no longer worked for me until I created a crisis. And when I say I, it wasn't intentional, it wasn't mind-based, but it was just that that feeling so disconnected from myself that I was no no longer willing to tolerate the the appalling working conditions of my career. So I know what happens to me when I don't listen to my heart, when I don't acknowledge who I'm becoming and what I really want, what I'm longing for, where I'm really headed. And when I don't acknowledge my body, when I treat it as a problem to be solved, as an inconvenient thing that is kind of, oh, what's gone wrong with it now? Now I need to make an appointment that's really inconvenient. I haven't got time to go to the dentist, I haven't got time to go for a massage, I haven't got time to do exercise. When when that happens, which it no longer does, but it no longer does because I imploded my life through not listening to my body and my heart. So let me be your terrible warning. I invite you to listen to your body and your heart because I have found and was taught by Zen Master that it's a much more skillful way to live. So it's not like one's wrong and one's right. It's just if you want a lot, you're gonna need to do things differently. And that upskill, particularly done with a gently rebellious attitude, which a which is a not a fierce, I'm doing things differently, sod the world, but a uh, yeah, I'm just gonna secretly practice some of this and be really curious and see what happens because I'm done with the traditional way of doing things. So let's look at what would that mean practically for you at the end of a working day. So you get out of your head into your body and you notice how you feel. That's where you start. So you invite that connection to open up more consciously and more strongly, and then I would invite you to you're not probably not going to put your hand on your heart at work because there's people about, maybe it's up to you, but to metaphorically put your hand on your heart and just connect, just feel, and by that I mean just literally get curious in a very neutral, non-judgmental way about any physical sensations in your heart space. So that's the whole of your middle of your chest all the way through to the the back, so the back of your heart, all the way through, that entire space. It's called the heart space in yoga, that's where it's coming from for me. So it's not the it's not just the physical um anatomy of the heart, it's the whole heart space. Now there is interesting research about the anatomy of the heart and the the neurons in there and all sorts of things, but I'm not gonna overload you with stuff I've been reading because you don't need more information, you need to listen to your heart, in my opinion. So this deliberate noticing. So a really easy way to do this would be to end your day by listening to the one-minute mark audio, or once you've done that enough that it's just in your head, you you can do it without the audio, just literally do that so that you're reconnecting because that will reconnect you to your body. It doesn't specifically mention the heart in the one-minute mark because it's just connecting the mind and body, but you can't can from there connect your heart and notice how you feel. So this is one minute, it's no big deal, it's just one minute. So you're pausing at the end of your day, reconnecting the mind, body, and heart and noticing how you feel, and as you notice how you feel, you can notice physical sensations in your body and your heart, and then you can get curious about them. Honestly, this is moments, this does not take a long time, and you can notice if there are bits of your working day which you are carrying. So this could be a feeling of hurt or anger or resentment towards an interaction with another human. It could be an email that has caused you frustration, anxiety, hurt. So it's not trying to change anything. So instead of trying to resolve things before you can sleep well and switch off and laugh easily, we're not trying to change anything. So you notice, you acknowledge oh yeah, there's a tightness, there's a tightness in my stomach, my belly feels has a sinking feeling. I feel coldness on my back, like just noticing. You don't even have to label it, you don't have to use your mind for this, where and by mind I mean you know, the activation of um uh worded representation, so you don't have to describe it, you can just use the attention part of your mind and spot light and get curious about physical sensations in your body and your heart related to your working day. Just notice them and then notice them neutrally, so drop the judgment about them, and then notice if they shift or change as you do this, as you give them space, you're acknowledging. Oh, this is what's going on. That's interesting. That's interesting that after I had an upsetting conversation with someone, I can feel it in my body. That's it, it's that easy, but that's it. No big deal, just notice, acknowledge this is what happens when I have an upsetting conversation, uh, it's in my body, and just feel it, acknowledge it, and then I invite you to intentionally leave it at work. You can leave it at work with the intention to pick it back up again the next day. Now, how you do this is up to you. So you could see it as right, I'm just gonna put all of those troubling feelings in a bag, and I'm just gonna leave them by the door, and I'm gonna pick them up again tomorrow if I choose to. So it's you're not getting rid of anything, you're not having to resolve anything, and you're not processing anything, you are certainly not using your mind to tell stories and analyse it and go through some you know, really long drawn-out counsel self-counselling thing. Just acknowledge, but you choose not to bring that home. You don't want to bring it home because it doesn't need to come home. Work is work, home is home, separate as much as you can. If you're taking work home, then you're gonna need to make sure that the work is in the laptop or the bag so you can contain work. So we're looking for work containers, we're looking for things you can physically use to contain work at work and and home is home. So you need physical separations which you are using intentionally to separate work energy from home. Now, this is skilled and it takes time, which is why I'm not trying to go into too much detail. It's just an idea. I'm inviting you to entertain the idea that it's possible to do this, and that practicing this would be beneficial to you and just see what happens. So it's the end of your working day, you do the one-minute mark, you notice how you feel, and then you explore and notice any physical sensations in the body and the heart to do with your working day. You acknowledge them, you get curious about them, you notice if they shift or your or change as you spotlight them. That's it. Oh, you will except you are gonna also have to notice if you're telling yourself stories about them, if you're trying to resolve them, if you're judging them, and instead, I invite you to neutrally notice them. That's interesting. Be curious. Curiosity is absolutely your superpower here, so powerful. Get curious, acknowledge with curiosity, neutrally notice. It's just the way things are at the moment, everything changes, and then I invite you to leave work at work. So there's several things you can do here. One is empty your mind. So anything that's worrying you that you need to remember, really important, just jot it down, set up your next day. So these are the priorities of the next day, these are things I need to do, and then make sure it's in a safe place where you know you'll see it in the morning, and then your mind can let go of it because the mind doesn't like unclosed loops. So the reason you get woken up in the night with loops and stories is because it's not closed, it's not safe. So your mind's just trying to keep you safe. Don't forget this, don't forget this, don't forget this. And often it's a repetition of something uncomfortable that happened, an unpleasant conversation, and the reason for that is memory is emotional, so it's going to keep popping up to stop it recurring. So noticing the discomfort in the body, acknowledging it. Your mind knows it's been seen, it's okay, I've got it, but then you don't want to bring it home. But the mind, so it's the mind-based activity here, is the writing of the list, shutting things down, so shutting the loop down, it's safely captured, everything's okay. The body and the heart part are I acknowledge these feelings, and I'm going to leave them at work. You leave them at work in any physical way, or I would do multiple. So, for example, you can leave the energy of the discomfortable, the uncomfortable email in the laptop or the computer, you can close the computer down, you can shut the laptop, and as you do so, you do so with the intention to leave that at work inside that machine because the machine can handle it. Your body doesn't like it. You then you get freedom. You deal with that tomorrow. You can also imagine unpacking the And popping them in a bag, and you could pop this pretend bag as metaphorical bag and put it in the bin if you want. I mean, that'd be radical. I would I would invite you to do whatever feels good to you, but you can at least I find it very helpful to do it temporarily first. I mean, if if you're done done, you can put it in the bin, obviously, but it can be really helpful, a bit like when you have a clear out at home, and sometimes later you regret the things that were going for the charity shop. So one way of doing it is to put it in bags and leave it for a bit and then notice how you feel. And then when you're ready to say goodbye to those things, you can it's easy to get rid of them. Whereas sometimes we can get quite emotional, can't we? Get this idea that we're going to declutter and be minimalist because we're feeling really overwhelmed and we chuck so many things out, and it's just it's emotionally draining. So this is why I invite you to pop stuff in a bag, a pretend bag, a metaphorical bag, and just pop it by the door on your way out or under your desk or something. Go, yeah, I'll do I'll just leave that there for now. Just for now, not forever. Because what we're doing here is not creating, we're doing it in a gently rebellious way, being gentle but firm. There's nothing to see here. You're not alerting the amygdala to, you know, you might have forgotten something important or something terrible might happen if you don't hold on to that terrible feeling because that terrible feeling is there to warn you about to prevent something unsafe happening. Can you see? So you just pop it in a metro metaphorical bag, pop it under the desk, pop it by the door on the way out. When I was a teacher, I asked kids to do this, you know, only things bothering you. I explained it at the beginning of the year, this is a technique. Just leave it at the door, your metaphorical bag of woes, leave it at the door. You can pick it up on the way out if you want. Works really well. And then these things next are just to reinforce that, and they're beautiful. So you each you have to think about what you do every time. So you're not adding more things in, you're using what you already do, but you're doing it intentionally as a mind-body practice. So when you close a laptop or you switch off a computer, anything you're doing, you're using intentionally to leave work at work so you can go home, switch off, laugh easily, and be present with those you love. So you're leaving the energy of work inside the machines, close them down, let go, and then each transition. So, for example, maybe you push your chair, you tidy your desk and you push your chair. This isn't a you must tidy your desk. Please be clear on this. Whatever you do already is enough. Just use it intentionally. So if you do something like write a list and put your pen in a particular place, that's a signal that you're now going to use to your mind and your body that you are closing down the connection between work and home. So you're it's safe to do so, you're doing it with intention because you want the freedom to go home without taking work with you in your body. Because it's not actually the taking home of work, it's actual work, it's the taking home of work energetically in your body that's the problem. So each thing, so just look at your routine and and add a little magical intention on your way out. Doorways are really good for this, really good for this. So each doorway you pass through, imagine that the energy of work is getting is brushed off you, it's leaving your body, going into the ground, being left at work. So each doorway a little bit more goes, and the final doorway, that's it, work's done. Leave it at work. And then if you have a drive home or commute home, you can use that to start transitioning yourself. So, how can you do that? Just whatever works for you. Whatever works for you, but commutes are very useful for that, aren't they? To create some separation, and then car doors are good, and then when you finally get to your doorstep, or if you're working from home, your final get is when you are what? So you have to decide. Is it when you walk into the kitchen to make a cup of tea? What is your final? You have to find your final um work home separation destination. So if you're standing on the doorstep, you just check in with yourself, you pause, you feel your feet on the ground, you're one minute marking it again, and then you're you're going, that's it. The intention is to leave work at work and step into your home with the freedom to switch off laugh easily and be able to actually hear the people you love speak. It's an intention, it's a practice. It might go wrong, you might not get it perfect. So forgive yourself and do it again over and over again, and then deliberately notice all the ways it gives you the freedom that you want. Okay, that's that. That is let go of your day. To let go of your week, you'd do it at the end of your week, and you would do it with even bigger intention because you're closing the whole week, so all five days of energy, in the laptop, dumped in a bag at the door, left at work as you travel through doors, whatever works for you, and and you're doing it with the deliberate intention to go into your weekend with joy and freedom. If you're doing it, let go of your day, you're doing it with the deliberate intention to enjoy your evening. So you're reclaiming your evening, you're reclaiming your um weekends, and you're just starting to get to that place where you have focus and satisfaction at work and the ability to switch off, laugh easily, and be present at home. I hope that helped. I'd love to know how you get on. Do drop me an email if you want to, heidi at heidimark.co.uk, or if you're interested in working with me on a one-to-one basis, then do email or book into my link, which is in the show notes and on my website, and let's have a chat about how I can help you get what you want. Alright, I'll see you next time. Thanks for being here, and please do subscribe, share it with somebody who needs to hear this. I'd really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening and for being part of the Overwhelmers Optional podcast. If you want to continue the conversation, please do connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube. Let me know your thoughts. I love hearing from you. And if you found this helpful, taking a moment to share, subscribe, and leave a review would be much appreciated. It helps other people find the podcast. If you're ready to turn overwhelm into joy, you'll find my books, resources, and ways to work with me on my website heidimark.co.uk and on Amazon. All the links are in the show notes. Until next time, keep gently rebelling and making overwhelm optional for you.