What If Hard Work Finally Felt Like Enough?

What if hard work finally felt like enough?

You've given everything to your week. And yet Friday arrives and your mind is already cataloguing what didn't get done, what went wrong, what still needs doing.

That's not a productivity problem. That's your brain doing exactly what it's designed to do — and it's stealing your satisfaction.

Woohoo Friday is a one minute practice to retrain your mind to notice the good, feel it in your body and end your week feeling like it was genuinely worthwhile.

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

Welcome And Friday Focus

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. This is the second in a two-part mini series of how to up level your working week. The first episode is Kick Ass Mondays, and this one is Woohoo Fridays. And although I described the Woohoo Friday technique because it's part of Kick Ass Mondays, I really want to give you this episode to purposely listen to for a Friday. So on a Friday, well, how does your Friday start? And to find that out, I invite you on a Friday to start your day with the one minute mark. I don't have time. Yes, you do. It's one minute, literally, one minute, one really powerful effective minute, which if you use regularly will literally change your life. So get hold of your copy, the links in the show notes, go to my website, Heidi Mark the One Minute Mark with an E, because that's my name, Heidi Mark with an E, and use it. It works, it's powerful, it's the foundation of everything I do. It gets you practicing something I call neutral noticing. So I'm not going to go into that now. There are loads of episodes about that. What I want to do is get you up leveling your Friday, which will also have the knock-on effect of making Kick Ass Monday easier and faster to use and even more powerful. How cool would that be? Because what we want is focus and satisfaction at work and the ability to switch off, laugh easily and be present at home. So let's do this. So invite you to start your Friday, and when I say start, some people will wake up and that's when they will do it. And some people will do it on their commute, and some people will do it when they get to their desk, and some people won't remember to do it until about 10 o'clock. Or if you don't remember to the end of the day, I don't care. Don't give up on yourself, just do it. Do it, do it, do it. So ideally, you'd start your day with this because that would be helpful, as you'll see. But I'm just gonna say when I say start your day with, don't get judgmental about yourself. So starting your day with woo-hoo, the woo-hoo Friday technique, this is what you would do. You would look back and think about your week without judgment, which is why you start by doing the one-minute mark, because it gets you into that ability to be the neutral observer, and this is very powerful and very important. So you start with the one-minute mark, and then you get to the end of the one-minute mark, and you're in that neutral state, and you just accept this is where I am. You're not trying to change anything, and then you glance back over your week really quickly, you scan your week, and you can get a rough idea of how your week went, and then you're looking at and what am I trying to do today? Because often what happens on Friday is all the curveballs have resulted in you not doing some of the really important things, and then Friday can get at once pressured, you know, the deadline thing, and also like kind of slightly disconnected because it's don't want to be in deadline mode. I'm ready for my weekend, and then there can be this dread of I'm gonna have to take some work home, and I don't know about you, but it can be really easy to actually be less effective on a Friday because the focus goes because you're withdrawing, and also you're tired because you've just done four days, and things don't go to plan, do they? So the day you thought the week you thought you were gonna have, maybe you didn't have. I mean, how often do we have the week we think we're gonna have, right? So there's a there can be a lot of mixed energy on a Friday, I find. So what we're trying to do here, what we are doing, is up leveling your Friday. So the idea of Kick Ass Monday is that when you get to Friday, you do this practice and you're you're going to end up with your arms in the air, even if it's sort of metaphorical arms in the air, because you're in a board meeting or you know, in front of patients or something, and that wouldn't be appropriate, not for your not the best thing for your professional respect, or if you're on your own, you can literally do it. And that feeling of woo-hoo is very, very personal to you. It's whatever it means to you. So it could be thank god the week's over, or thank god that thing's shifted, that deadline's done. So it can be a letting go of something, it could be excitement because there's new stuff happening that you have been wanting to happen for a long time. So that's a welcoming in of the new, it's probably a mixture of both. It could be that you just had a really nice week, that you've noticed that your focus is up-leveling, and therefore you have increased satisfaction because the way you're working has changed. So it could be that nothing's actually really shifted externally, but you can feel this internal shift where you just feel more like yourself, you feel more grounded, you feel more resilient, but in a really gentle, quiet way. You've tapped into your gently rebellious spirit and you can see, you can feel that things are changing. So, whatever it is for you, I invite you to notice it because we get more of what we focus on. So, noticing the changes you wish to bring in is really important because then you increase them. We have to acknowledge when things shift and change, or they can get kind of slippery, you know. Oh, I've forgotten, I'd forgotten that I'd already achieved that, I'd forgotten I'd already become calmer. It's easy to not notice when you get better at being yourself because the mind is automatically pulled to alert you to anything wrong. So this is a very deliberate intentional rewiring of the brain to notice the good stuff that's happening around you. And I invite you when you do start noticing how good things are becoming in all the tiny ways to embody that. And what I mean by that is not just to acknowledge with your mind, which is very important and very powerful, but also to notice the feeling in your body, where it is, what it feels like. Now, if you're not used to doing this, it can be pretty weird. I do have people who say, but like I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if I feel that in my body, but there will be a feeling somewhere because we are physical beings. It's just that in this century we've we've pretty much become very disconnected from our physical bodies. It's very, very easy, particularly in a city, I think, to not really be aware of the natural sense of being, so not feeling the wind on your face because you're in buildings all the time, not ever really seeing the earth because it's concrete, or particularly as we spend a lot of time online, literally being disembodied, right? So it's it's really important to just invite a curious inward um observation. So moving your attention out of your head, particularly moving your attention out of the internet and into your body, and feel your feet on the ground, allow your belly to soften, maybe allow the shoulders to move away from the ears if they want to, and notice any physical sensations in your body. Now, this is what the one-minute mark does. So get your copy, put it on your desktop, put it on your phone, use it regularly. It's one minute, you do have time, you have one minute. And if you don't, I don't know what to do with you because you definitely have one minute. So inviting that connection, allowing the attention to move from the mind, which is easily overwhelmed, notices everything that's wrong to keep you safe, but doesn't necessarily help you find joy, satisfaction, good focus. It's certainly how we lose the ability to switch off and laugh easily very quickly when we're in that super driven mode. So inviting that and practicing that often is life-changing. So I invite you to start with the one-minute mark as soon as possible, as soon as it works for you on a Friday, and then quick glance back at the week. How did you move through the week? Particularly noticing the highlights of the week. And then if you did kick ass Monday, you can link it to that. How did I want to feel today? And how close to that feeling do I have? And that in and of itself can be celebrated. So there's an additional woo-hoo here. There's the more meta, so there's the woo-hoo of what you intentionally wanted to create. Who am I being? What am I focusing on? How am I focusing? But there's also the oh, I'm using these techniques and it's working. So there's the celebration of yourself, of your commitment to gently rebelling against the status quo, which is survival mode. Push on through, pretend that you're super happy, and sometimes that works, right? We can we can change our emotional states intentionally, but I'm inviting a deeper shift here where you are doing it by noticing how you feel and then choosing to notice and celebrate the good around you and within you. So once you start to get a sense of a woo-hoo Friday, I then invite you to look at your Friday and notice what's going on. So noticing all of it as useful information. So if there's stuff you're dreading, there's stuff you think's not going to get done, you're gonna have to take home. Then to treat that not as this massive problem and crisis, but as useful information. Because if you're upset about taking work home, there's a reason that you're upset that needs to be honoured. So, in that case, because that's a horrible place to be, and I remember that a lot, I would invite you to acknowledge that the heaviness, the resentment, the frustration, the anger, even, and feel it in your body. Where can you feel that feeling? What does it feel like? Get curious about it. Does it move when you focused on it? Does it change when you focus on it, or does it stay the same? But acknowledging that for yourself is very powerful because you can only start from where you are, and if your Friday doesn't feel like you want it to, then that matters because pretending that it does, well, how's that working out for you? So you're noticing a week, you're deliberately finding any wahoo-ness in it, but then you're also acknowledging the resistance to that, the stuff that's not allowing that feeling, and in doing so, you find usually find some relief and freedom because what happens is when we acknowledge our own feelings, we give space to ourselves. That's very much like when we do that for others. So you know what it's like when somebody just listens? Have you ever had that experience? I really truly hope you have. When somebody really listens without judgment, it's so powerful, and you can do that for yourself. And the easiest way I know to do that is to physically identify the feeling, so just but to do it neutrally, so just notice. I've got a sinking feeling in my gut that I'm gonna have to take work home again. Notice it, acknowledge it. Don't try to change it, don't try to solve it, don't get into catastrophe about how it's always gonna be like that, it's always like this, and it's so and so's fault and it's terrible. And tell yourself this story that you're gonna be doing this until you're 90. Which reminds me of a hilarious conversation I have with my partner over the weekend when I said, Do you think we'll still be renovating and and paying off the mortgage in our 80s or something? And he went, I hope so, which was funny, because that that lightened it all up, didn't it? Because of course we won't, and actually, the renovation bit is so close to being finished, it's just the tiny bit, it's just that now we want more, want an extension, because that's life, right? Always want more, it's exciting, while holding the gratitude for the present. Can you hold both at once? Anyway, back to Woohoo Friday. So you you're doing the one-minute mark, so you're in that powerful state of neutrality, and you're giving yourself space, you're listening, you're acknowledging this is where I am, this is how my Friday is feeling to me. Then you're deliberately scanning your week and finding anything in your week that feels like it adds to the feeling of woohoo that you intentionally wanted to create. Now, if you didn't do kick ass Mondays, because this is the first episode you are listening to, that's okay. I invite you to go back and listen to the kick ass Monday so you can set up the woo-hoo Friday feeling and then they connect. But I wanted to do a separate one to go deeper into the woohoo Friday and also to continue it because we haven't finished with it yet. So it it's very difficult when I'm explaining it because all my techniques are short in time but very deep, and that's why they're so effective. So they fit into your day without adding to your pressure and overwhelm and can be done without anybody realizing. So they're private and secret, and they're very effective, but the effectiveness comes from the depth. So we're working with the mind, body, heart connection. So it takes it can be slow to start with because you're going deep. So I would invite you to not try to get to like the best version you can imagine, but instead just be curious. I'll just give it a go. What does it feel like? And just gradually, and it never ends. Like this, these are practices. Practice, you're always practicing, you never master it, always practicing, just practice, no big deal, very important, but no big deal, no big deal. Bypass the amygdala, nothing to see here, but really important, life-changing. Should you choose? And the way you choose is you decide. So I'm going to do kick-ass Mondays and woo-hoo Fridays because I want to I'm deliberately changing how I move through my week so that I can have that beautiful satisfaction at work that comes from being able to focus on what matters most to me, and also being able to leave work at work and go home and switch off and laugh easily and be present, present with those you love, present with yourself, present with your home, present with your dog, whatever it is, present on a walk where you can actually feel the feet under your feel the ground under your feet and notice the trees and the changing seasons rather being stuck in your head with work going round and round in it, or work wakes you up in the middle of the night. So annoying. Isn't it annoying when you work really, really hard and it's finally Friday, and you should feel like, yeah, I've had a good week, I've done enough, I can let go, I want a break, and then you wake up really early on the Saturday morning full of work. So annoying. Don't like it. Gets work gets stuck in our bodies, stuck in our heads, rubbish. It's ineffective. We need a break, need to be able to switch off and laugh easily and be yourself. So part of Wahoo Friday is celebrating the week and yourself regardless. So at its very worst, it would be, thank God it's Friday. I am walking out of this door at some point, even if you're taking work home. And at its very best, it would be, yeah, this was a good week. I noticed that I found it easier to say no to things that are just not for me or not for me yet. I noticed that I was less emotionally reactive with other people. I noticed I in fact I heard myself laugh more often. I noticed that I'm sleeping better, I noticed that I'm less achy, my neck doesn't feel so tight. I noticed, I noticed that I just feel more like myself. Life is good. So that's where we're going. So Woohoo Friday is your compass for the week from Kick Ass Monday. So you start your week with the end in mind, the feeling of having had a really good week, of having focused on the things that matter most to you and done it in a way that is how you want to be in the world. And it is also on the Friday itself, neutrally noticing how you feel, scanning your week, deliberately focusing on all the good stuff, and then if possible, allowing an accumulation of the highlights of your week. So deliberately, maybe even making a list of achievements this week or the ways you handled things, handled things in a in a better way for you. Whatever it is, you know, like I slept well, I exercised, like whatever it is, find the wins. Either write them down, which is very powerful, but you might not have time. We're trying to do things really fast here, feel them in your body. And the good news about this technique is even finding you, only actually have to find one thing, one woohoo Friday thing, and feel it in your body to connect to all of it. So if you find one win, allow it to allow yourself to feel that goodness, that joy, that fun, that like woo-hoo, satisfaction in your body. You can then deliberately stay out of your head so you no longer no longer have to think and get into your body, and you can allow that feeling to spread through your body, and then you are embodying Wahoo Friday just from one thing that went right, and that that is that feels more like mastery, doesn't it? But it's still a practice, it's no big deal, just a practice. Bypass the amygdala, we're not aiming to be a Jedi here, not really. So that's Wahoo Friday for you. Actually, I've realised we could do step three in this series about levelling your week. Yep, I'm gonna do it. So the other technique I have is called let go of your week. So I'm gonna go and record a third episode about that. Woohoo! This is exciting. I'm enjoying this. I hope you are too. See you in the next episode. 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.