For my empaths, highly sensitive friends, and people who are feeling the fatigue of this year, a reminder to take care to fill up your own bucket and create boundaries to protect you as a person.
You—an emotion-full, psychologically strong, capable and necessary person—must take actions to keep yourself well throughout this season.
Here are a few things I recommend:
Take three breaks each day.
Take three breaks a day according to this strategy. The breaks are physical, social, and spiritual(ish). Give yourself one short break to move your body; another one to get social with a person outside of family or work, and a third to reconnect to your own spiritual or personal beliefs and needs.
Get off of Facebook, even if only for a 48-hour reset.
Facebook is designed to play your emotions, over and over again. Doomscrolling is now a thing, and many of us are so sucked into our devices that we’re afraid to look at how much time we’re spending on these social networks.
Want encouragement? Watch the documentary The Social Dilemma (on Hulu) if you need any convincing.
You don’t have to Leave Facebook Forever. You can also take routine short “deactivation” periods from Facebook to reset and recalibrate.
Throughout the upcoming election season, I’ll be taking routine 3 day “deactivation” days from Facebook so I don’t swim in the soup of emotions designed to prey on our psyche and make us feel terrible. My first one started last Thursday and I was so thankful not to be swimming in social media noise when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. I can mourn, journal, and text friends, but not let the entire weekend consume me. I can mourn RBG and get back to work. She would likely prefer that.
Find something to look forward to.
Find something small to look forward to on a daily or weekly basis. A weekly friend call, a Voxer check-in, a yoga class, a group call. Listen to this podcast I recorded all about how having something within your control—and something to look forward to—can help change your perspective.
Move your emotions through and out.
When the emotions come up, which they will, take time to move and process them through and out of your body. You can take a few minutes to actually shake your body, you can dance along to a five-minute song, you can talk it out with a friend, you can write it all down. The most important thing is getting it out, which helps restore your baseline as a human so you can keep going.
That’s what matters. We all gotta keep going.
NEWSLETTER
Join more than 10,000 other people who have signed up for my newsletter about personal development, psychology, and leadership. You'll get weekly essays, community threads, and my favorite books. If you're curious, like new ideas, and are open to rethinking how we build lives, businesses, and families, then come join us as we re-imagine what life can be. Use this link or the form below to sign up.
About my readers:
I am grateful to have a diverse, interesting, and wise group of readers who enjoy my newsletters. This blog started as a column about making the transition to the professional world, figuring stuff out, and finding out what's important for you and your career. It has evolved into a blog on business, generating ideas, entrepreneurship, management, design, and teaching writing workshops. Other times, it's just an exploration into life, living and being.
Members of this community include CEOs, entrepreneurs, Y-combinator startup founders, Google Software engineers, elite athletes, PhD scientists, authors, and so many more. I am delighted to be in conversation with you.