Hello Friends!
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(And I hope you enjoy the moment when my 50-pound dog tried to get on my lap during the recording.)
I am back from my December hiatus. I am so grateful to have had that time, and thrilled to be home and back with you! There have been lots of questions about what happened during my break. Here’s a video sampling:
And the Portugal trip got its own Insta Reel:
Here’s What I Learned During my Break
Burnout is real
We’re hearing a lot about burnout lately, especially in the “helping” professions, but it’s easy to think it’s just being tired or whatever.
I thought I was just tired or whatever.
But when I took the time to step back, I realized it was legit burnout and it was brutal. When I reflect on some of the things I was thinking, feeling, and doing, it’s like — oh shit. Not good.
I was stuck in this feeling that everything I was doing wasn’t enough. I wasn’t working enough, helping enough, creating enough. I felt like I was constantly lacking, constantly letting everyone down, constantly failing. Since I started working as an actor when I was four years old, it’s not really a shocker that my answer to everything is: just work more. But I’ll be honest, this was wrecking me. I do this present-moment awareness stuff for a living, and even I couldn’t see it clearly in the moment, because we live in a culture obsessed with the #hussle.
It is easy for many of us to slip into the mode of just powering through things. That’s what I did on film sets when I was 15 and had the flu, but had to go to work anyway because the show must go on. And sometimes that IS what needs to happen. We have a crisis or a deadline and there are no other options. But we can’t live this way long term. Long-term = burnout.
So, my new mantra is — This is Enough.
If it’s not enough for some people, they can go find their enough elsewhere. Which brings me to:
Some people are going to be disappointed
I got my fair share of eye rolls and “must be nice” from many people about my month-long hiatus. Not going to lie, that felt shitty. It made my face burn and put me on the defensive, telling everyone that I started two businesses in ten months and I talked and explained and justified endlessly. No one was impressed.
But then I took a deep breath and realized that there are SO MANY things about me that people find disappointing. I quit acting! I am a vegetarian! I don’t drink alcohol! I don’t have children! I don’t return emails on the weekends! I thought Ted Lasso was only okay! Not to mention all the opinions people have about how and when I teach my classes and what I write about. There are endless ways that people find me to be lacking, and they are not afraid to tell me directly.
There are a few different ways we can deal with this kind of painful truth. Many of them include crawling under something and hating ourselves. But for me, my goal in 2023 is to be cool with disappointing people.
Glennon Doyle has a quote that I need to get tattooed somewhere.
“Every time you're given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else.”
Find your joy and let it guide your life
It was good to remember who I was without my work. I love plants and the two weeks I have them before I murder them. I love reading three books at a time and then promptly forgetting what they are about. I love rewatching The Good Place. (Again.) I love working out which has little to do with my body and everything to do with my mind. I love travel even when it makes me so airsick I want to fling myself out of the plane at 30,000 feet. I love being in a place where I don’t speak the language and I’m sitting in a cafe eating Pasteis de Nata and watching people whose culture is different from mine.
I have a sticky note on my desk now that reads “What would be fun?”
This feels like frivolous bullshit.
But it’s not.
Fun is the fuel that gets us through a world such as this. This is a world in which it is January 6th, and many of us have deep feelings about that. This is a world that often feels painful and unfair, but asks us to show up and wash dishes and pay taxes anyway. This is a world in which everything is uncertain — other than those dishes and taxes.
Let’s find the joy and let it guide our life. It’s the rebellious, logical, badass, revolutionary way to deal with such a tragic and serious dumpster fire of a world.
Oh! You know what else I think is fun? Writing to you. I’m glad to be back here.
One quick piece of Blue Mala news - our Yoga for Anxiety class on Mondays is now 30 minutes! I’ve been getting lots of requests for shorter classes, so I hope you can join us live or on-demand by becoming a pay-what-you-can member of Blue Mala. For non-members, I will also be dropping a new 30-minute class on Blue Mala and YouTube every week.
Much love and all the good wishes for a healthy and fun 2023,
~Lisa