For When You Can’t Catch a Break
Ask
Check in with yourself. Are you at high capacity—I feel able to juggle everything on my plate—or low capacity—I don’t have the energy to do it all today? Given today’s reality, is there anything you can take yourself off the hook for, ask for help completing, or punt to another day? Or, if you are feeling high capacity, is there something you could take off someone else’s plate to help them out?
Listen
The obligations never stop, do they? How do we get off the achievement train and build a beautiful life within constraints? Writer Shauna Niequist was on the fast track to burnout when she received advice that changed the pace of her life entirely. Listen to Kate and Shauna talk about the productivity myths we believe and how to embrace a slower, smaller life marked by delight. What do you notice about the cues that made Shauna aware that burnout was at hand?
Pray
God, I see it, the truth that you made me in love, for love, so I’m letting you into all the places within me. The glad places, the needy places, the sad places, the overwhelmed places, and the awful places. Come there too, and rearrange any furniture you like. Clean up any messiness. I see now that I really want that, because the transformation is what will unfold more of what I am meant to be, your child—no matter how old I get—looking more like you every day. Amen.