38. When It’s All Too Much

What do you do when it’s just too much? What do you do when the world is just too much? And you’re feeling yourself heavy, confused, wondering how you can help. There’s so many things that we can do out in the world. The list is long. Contributing your time, your money, your ideas, your business.

Here what I want to talk about is the idea that one of the things that you can do is reflect on your own resilience. You know, the airlines might have it right around putting your own mask on first, when the world is in disarray, it doesn’t need you to be all hairy, scary, low window of tolerance, non resilient, aggressive, mean. It needs your kindness and your compassion.

And we get those things when we have a space of resilience. And so one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is what does it mean to cultivate resilient leadership? What does that look like for you? What does it look like for me? Especially for me at this time, anyways, I don’t know about you when I’m feeling a lot of anger and fear and sadness and disappointment and loss and at a loss.

So, three things come to mind, thought I’d share them with you. An invitation for you to play with what works for you. My three thoughts are around FFTs, modalities and practice. Those are my three things right now. So what does that mean? FFTs, I first heard this term from Brene Brown. I recorded a podcast on it. We’ll put the link in the resources and she’s got a whole bunch of resources I’m sure around frigging first times, FFTs.

But here’s the idea is that right now for me, I’m naming this as a first time. Okay. Well, what are you talking about Saralyn? I don’t know about you, but I have never tried to figure out how to reintegrate into society after experiencing two years of a global pandemic and trying to bring my family back out into life.

When for two years I’ve been training our family, my emotions, my DNA to zip up, protect. So now I’ve got to reintegrate. God, what does that mean while there’s hate politics happening in the U.S. of don’t say gay to a war happening in Europe. And the list goes on around inequities and systems of oppression that we can see, that many of us experience.

And there’s just so much all at once, not just in the world, but we literally see it on social media. On the news. We are seeing it, experiencing and seeing these global, I don’t even have the word. This is a first time for me. So I’m trying to develop perspective, normalize that it’s a first time that there’s discomfort here.

There’s emotion here and it’s not all for me to solve. And it’s heavy. Developing some perspective around some of this. And then in these friggin first times, reality check my expectations. You know what all I need more rest. I need to sometimes just be, sometimes I can’t give it my all

I’m not, my energy is not where I want it to be. And it might not be for awhile, especially, you know, I want to be able to put my feet in the grass. I can’t right now we’re at a time, when it’s all snow here. So I just, I need to reality check some of my own expectations of myself and then share some of those expectations with my family, my colleagues, whatever that looks like.

Great place to practice boundaries all. And then with friggin first times, of course, Brene Brown has shared, you know, you build an RNR cause you get tired and you gotta center in self-respect and sleep is a form of self-respect rest is a form of self-respect. And then of course, trying to stay, she had offered a term stay in, uh, what was it?

Stay in fit FFT condition, I think is the way she put it. Which, what does that look like for you? What does it look like for you? That when you’re going through a friggin first time, you’re trying to keep perspective, manage your expectations, get rest where you need, what do you need to stay in condition at that time?

Right? Do you need alone time? Do you need to connect with others? Do you need to give, do you need to receive? And what does that mean for you? So this whole first kit and caboodle around resilient leadership for me at this time means just naming and developing some perspective of this frigging first time that I find myself in.

The second thing is modalities. What modalities work for me, for me to build my resilient leadership. For me, what I’ve learned is meditation really works for me. And getting on the Peloton, getting on the bike really works for me. Getting in a pool really works for me, acupuncture.

Committing to being outside every day, every day to connect with nature. And outsideness right. Some of these modalities are habits that I’ve built, small things like making sure I have a liter of water beside my bed at night so that when I wake up, I drink the whole liter of water before I even get out of bed.

Um, some of that habit stacking has really helped for me to build some of my habits and then trying to connect with different modalities that just work for me. Journaling works for me. Then the other part and it relates, right. Is how does that turn into, or what does this mean for the practices that I hold?

Right. So I have a practice of moving my body and what that looks like through these different modalities, great. I have a practice of connecting into my inner self and I’ve already shared what that looks like from different modalities, but also a gratitude practice. This is a big one.

When, when I’m tapping in consciously to the anger that I have or the fear or the deep sadness, holding a space to be able to say, hold on. What do I have gratitude for? Where are my blessings? And then how do I come into places of forgiveness, forgiveness of myself, forgiveness of humanity.

Forgiveness however that looks like to be able to bring some of that energy out into the world. By sitting for me, I, I do it in sitting in meditation, but I also do some gratitude journaling of just in the morning. What am I grateful? What’s going to be great today. What am I looking forward to? And then in the evening, what are some amazing things that happened today?

I’m also holding conversations with my kids around kindness and gratitude daily right now. I’m really trying to tap into that sage self inner talk versus some of the more saboteuring, fear-based negativity, heaviness that I find, especially if I’m on social media a lot.

I find I get there real quick. So really trying to be aware of my inner talk. And my inner team who’s driving the bus. Right. And also, sitting with the different emotions that I have, the opposing emotions. Right. I have such joy when I see how proud my oldest is in trying his hardest at math.

And I’m really fearful for the world. So it’s trying to use, you know, bringing back that emotion wheel. I had Abby VanMuijen on the, podcast series. You can go back and listen to that one. We’ll put that in the resources, um, who talked about using a wheel of emotion or emotion wheel to tap into where am I at and seeing the variety of emotions that you hold at one time and just sitting with versus solving versus solving.

Lastly. And I think you kind of hear it right throughout. What I’ve shared is that I just try to reduce the noise.. Reduce the social media reduce the number of decisions I need to make in a day. Some of these things help me stay away from some of the negativity, whatever that looks like for you. I’m not listening to the news right now. It doesn’t work for me right now. I try and know enough to hear what’s going on. But for me, it’s, it’s not serving.

It doesn’t help with my resilience if I stay connected to it and death scroll on Tik ToK or Twitter about what’s going on, that just doesn’t work for me. So I’m just trying to reduce the noise in lots of different places for myself. Okay. So. Seeing this as a frigging first time, knowing the modalities that work for me and then getting into practices that help build my resilient leadership.

That is one thing that I have control over that I have power over that I can play with in a way where then I can show up conscious of how I lead when the world is in disarray. I can be resilient. Keep up the practice all.