Latest / RHYTHMS OF REST℠ Leadership Podcast / Episode 5: What to Do When You're Doing Everything Right and Still Drowning
Transcript
- Kent Murawski: You don't need balance. You need the right rhythms, much like a heart where all four chambers work together. Real success depends on four key rhythms working together in harmony, relational, emotional, spiritual, and tangible rhythms. I'm your host Kent Morosky and welcome to the rhythms of rest leadership podcast where we build the rhythms for sustainable success. The kind that doesn't cost you your soul. Before we dive in today, if you're achieving by every metric that matters, and you still feel like something's off, try the rhythms of rest assessment. It will show you exactly where your rhythms are breaking down and where you are on the burnout scale. In less than five minutes, you'll have some real clarity. Just go to KentMoroski.com forward slash assessment. Let's go. Well, can I just say that I'm so excited to be here today. I've got my cup of coffee and I just really enjoy doing this podcast. Honestly, it's one of the highlights of my week and I hope you're enjoying it and I hope you find it helpful for your leadership. I haven't asked this of you yet, but if you've been getting something out of this podcast, ⁓ the best gift you can give me and give to someone else is just think of one person in your life who's running on empty and send them this episode. or an episode from this podcast. And if you've got 30 seconds, a review on iTunes will really help other leaders stumble onto this when they most need it. I really appreciate you. Thanks for listening today. Well, I have a confession to make. Lately, I've been feeling sad, angry and overwhelmed. And I know some of the reasons, but I'm also not 100 % sure why. So last week, It all sort of came to a head on Wednesday. And I had gone to a movie the night before with my two oldest kids. It was a long movie. It was that new ⁓ movie with Ryan Gosling, Hail Mary. And ⁓ it was okay, by the way, I won't do a spoiler for you, but didn't love the ending. Anyway, I didn't get in bed till around 11 o'clock that night, which doesn't work so well for me when I get up at 430. I'll explain that later. So I got up late later than I normally do intentionally because I just couldn't get up at that time. And I missed one of my rhythms, one of my anchor rhythms of the day, my spiritual rhythm that happens early in the morning. Now, well, that's not the end of the world. ⁓ but because I was already feeling overwhelmed, ⁓ missing that rhythm, that anchor rhythm really made things worse. And so was a combination. The things that were kind of contributing to the sadness, anger, overwhelm. It's been a combination of deadlines. You know, I missed a book deadline earlier, earlier this month, a book that I'm writing, it's my own self-imposed deadline, but deadlines are helpful. ⁓ I missed a deadline to get the book to my beta readers because it's not done. I'm giving a really important talk for me at the end of the month that I've been overthinking and just putting an enormous amount of pressure on myself that that just had to slay it. And, you know, then there's some been some momentous events in the life of my kids, you know, ⁓ renewing my son in a school that that's been a really hard, difficult experience for him, but feeling like we had no other great options, you know, preparing for his coming of age. This is the transition from boyhood to manhood. He's starting that we do that when my did that for my other boy when he turned 13 and we're And then we're trying to help my new, my daughter get her first car. And so there's just been a bunch of, and then other financial decisions and taxes and reorganizing my budget because, ⁓ you know, I'm offloading one of my, ⁓ one of my largest clients after a year and there's no one to take his place. So I just felt a lot of pressure, right? And there's just all these life things ⁓ happening. And so part of it. Of that overwhelm and anger and sadness is, is also that I just value space and margin. That's when I create best. That's when I have my best ideas. And, and some of my other, those creative rhythms that come from margin were getting squeezed out and it just all kind of piled up and hit me on that day. And it was one of those moments where you just want to go silent. You want to cancel everything and just say, screw this. What's, what's the point? You ever felt like that before? I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only person who's felt like that. And so You know, the funny part was, I'm the rhythm, here's the rhythms guy, but the things that normally work for me, the rhythms that normally work just haven't been working. So when I think of that, you know, have a question comes to mind. You know, what do you do when your go-to strategies, your go-to rhythms just stop working? I don't necessarily have a formula for that, but I do have three things that I've kept coming back to since feeling this way a couple weeks ago, and things that I think are going to help you today. If you're feeling that way, or if you, you, uh, you're some of your rhythms are breaking down or you're just feeling overwhelmed in life or, or you felt that way before you're going to get something out of today's episode. So three things I kept coming back to, um, when I felt like that and when when it seems like none of the stuff that you normally do is working. So maybe they're principles, I guess you could say. So principle number one, chop wood and carry water. That particular Wednesday, I really didn't want to work. What I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and watch Netflix, but I had important work to do. So I, I tried the usual fix. ⁓ you know, it was cold, but it was a sunny day. The birds were singing. So I did one of the things that almost always resolves a lot of it helps me untangle a lot of the stuff that's going on in my head. I went for a walk and, you know, normally that works, but this time nothing, the needle did not move. I came back just as anxious and overwhelmed and convoluted in my, in my mental space and my brain. as I was before the walk, which is rare. ⁓ and here's what happened. I finally just had to accept that I'm a professional and I have important work to do. I needed to chop wood and carry water. Anyway, I was working on that important talk that I was telling you about. It wasn't something I could just put off. ⁓ there's a lot of preparation involved. It's a three hour workshop for executives. And so, ⁓ you know, I couldn't put it off and this concept of chop wood carry water, it's actually an old Buddhist saying, ⁓ you know, about embracing the mundane, rather than escaping into something more glamorous or spiritual, or, you know, you know, just trying to get an escape, hit the escape button, transformation actually happens in the ordinary in the mundane. It reminded me also of One of my personal heroes, brother Lawrence, he, was a 17th century French monk who worked as a shoemaker and a cook. And people said, people said about him, he just had this calm devotion. Even when he was in the midst of the busiest hours of the kitchen, he was never moving too slow, never rushing in the kitchen. And that affected everyone who saw him. He, he was said to have this sort of just sweet, peaceful presence about him. And he stayed present. and connected to others and to God, especially even in the mundane things. So it reminded me of that, this chop wood carry water concept of the mundane. Now, after making that decision to chop wood and carry water, I just had to decide, I still felt sad and angry and anxious at the end of the day. But what happened is I made progress and that's what matters. So sometimes the most spiritual, most productive most courageous thing you can do is the next boring thing in front of you. Now I know that's not always the answer, but sometimes we just have to decide we're going to show up, we're going to be professionals and we're going to chop wood and carry water because we've got important things to do and stuff will resolve as we do that. Now there's lots of times when this showing up concept, this chop wood and carry water is relevant. I think back to 11 months ago from today. Actually, yeah, what's 11 months ago today, I ruptured my patella tendon. That's the big tendon on the front of your knee that connects your think I'm getting my my ⁓ anatomy right here your tibia to your quad muscle. It's a big tendon and mine just broke. I was going up for a layup in basketball. Now it's not normally a basketball injury. It's, it takes a lot of pressure to break the patella tendon, like car accidents. But my doctor thought that I had a sharp bone there and probably over time it was just chipping away the tendon. So me and my boy, two boys are playing pig on the basketball court and me and my oldest son are battling it out. And the last words I said before this happened was I looked at my younger son to say, to say that, and I said this, should I end this? And I was referring to my older son and I was going to do this. my special layup where I go under my leg and make the layup. And as soon as I stomped my foot down to put the ball under my leg, ⁓ I fell flat to my back and all I shouted was something broke. And my son broke my back because I just fell straight down, but it was my knee. My knee cap was not where it had belonged. I was in immense pain and that happened 11 months ago. Now, Can I just tell you that it's still not right? knee, I still can't bend it all the way. ⁓ it still hurts. I'm now I'm rebuilding my quad because that atrophied in the process, you know, many people just give up and deal with less range of motion and, just, you know, less mobility. And believe me, I've been tempted, but instead I've decided to just keep showing up one day at a time. doing my exercises, going to the gym, going to PT and chopping wood and carrying water. And you know what? It's paying off. ⁓ you know, thankfully all my clients are virtual in my business, but early on, all I could do, the only thing I could do was show up for coaching calls. And even that was hard because I could barely sit for an hour, but that was enough. It's the same thing in every area of life, isn't it? In your marriage, sometimes you get annoyed with your spouse, or you might be bored in your marriage, ⁓ or you're having trouble, but you just show up anyway. And your parenting, I guarantee if you, you know, if you have kids, you know, you get tired. If you, know, you have to stop another fight between the kids or tell them one of them to clean up their room one more time or do their homework or whatever. But we just, we just have to keep showing up in leadership. You know, I don't want to have another conversation. I want to hire another person. I don't want to fire someone. I don't want to go to another meeting. I don't want to look at another profit and loss statement from this quarter, but we have to, we just keep showing up. And listen, half the battle in life is just keep showing up, chop wood and carry water. And in the end, it's not just about the result. It's about falling in love with the process and it's about showing up. what matters. So I want to encourage you today, just keep showing up. principle number two that helped me when I was feeling this way and that is ongoingly helping me. lean into your anchors, lean into your anchor rhythms. The second thing I keep coming back to when everything feels off is I lean into my anchors, not new strategies, but the ones that are already there. So I mentioned earlier my spiritual routine, how I missed it that day. And my spiritual routine, though it may sound exhausting to some people, And it doesn't have to be yours, but this is life giving for me. So I'm not sharing this as a prescription. I'm sharing it as an encouragement to find your own rhythm because the spiritual rhythm, call it meditation, call it prayer, call it what you may and, whatever tradition you're coming from. But that's been determined to be a keystone habit. call them keystone rhythms. In other words, it's one of those habits that drives progress in other areas. And that has good effects in other areas. here's 4 30 AM. ⁓ you know, I get up and I have coffee. I don't get up that early because I want to get up that early. I get up that early because I need time before the family routine starts at 7 AM. So the first thing I do, I do my five year journal. just a little blurb about the previous day. And it just helps me look back and see what's been happening over five years. I, it's helpful for me to look back at, the end of the year. I also hope to give it to my kids one day. ⁓ so I do that first. Then I do, ⁓ my daily gratitude journal. just a one page thing, three things that I'm thankful for the three things that need to happen today for today to be a success and some, you know, things, some confessions and things that I speak over myself. ⁓ then from five to 6 a.m., ⁓ right after that I do scripture reading. You know, I'm reading a two year plan from the Book of Common Prayer. ⁓ You know, I do, I do some prayer and then I do just a few minutes of prayer. Then I do 10 minutes from a classical spiritual book. Currently I'm reading the Divine Conspiracy from Dallas Willard. I end that time from five to six AM with 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes of silence prompted by a short reading. in a book, a little booklet called the practice of the presence of God by brother Lawrence, the guy I was telling you about earlier. Then from six to seven a.m. I work on this on my bi weekly newsletter, which then leads to this podcast. So, you know, that Wednesday morning that I missed when I missed that routine, I didn't feel bad because I missed it. I was already feeling bad and missing it made things worse. So had I done it, I'm pretty sure it would have been a better day. But when I miss a day, here's what I do. I don't fret. I just get back in the saddle. think James Clear famously said in Atomic Habits, you know, missing one day is fine, but I don't miss two days, right? When you have a habit, don't and unless life warrants it, you know, when you have a habit, that's an anchor rhythm, anchor habit in your life, you don't want to miss it. So here's the thing about anchor rhythms, though, or about about, you know, these rhythms, they're not magic. They don't necessarily eliminate the pain, but what they do is they hold you steady in it. And when you drift from them, you feel that difference. So what are your anchors? want to ask you today, not your aspirational ones, but the ones that when you skip them, you really feel it. Those are the ones that you have to protect. Um, now just going back for a minute, right before I had my knee injury 11 months ago, That spiritual, you know, that spiritual rhythm by mentioned, ⁓ that was hitting on all cylinders. It was the best it ever, ever had been. So I had just gotten back at that time from a week long silent retreat at the Abbey of Genesee. It's a Trappist monastery in Western New York. And after I got back, one of my friends actually commented when we were taking a walk. said, I've never seen you this at peace before. Apparently I was pretty Zen doubt, but ⁓ things were hitting on all cylinders. It was one of the best spiritual seasons of my life, but less than a month later, and maybe it was in preparation for this. I blew out my knee, as I mentioned earlier, and nearly all my spiritual rhythms and, and my tangible rhythms of eat, sleep, exercise, and work related rhythms. They all went out the window. ⁓ not because I wanted them to, but between the surgeries and the drugs and the pain. I just physically and literally couldn't show up for these things. So what did I do? This is when I leaned heavily into one of the other rhythms in the rhythms of rest framework, the relational rhythm. I leaned heavily into that, into my family, into my friends, some colleagues, ⁓ and all these people, ⁓ you know, stepped up to the plate and my relational rhythms during that time, especially probably the first two that's five months, they overcompensated for the ones that I couldn't do. But if here's the thing, if you haven't taken time to develop all four core rhythms, your relational, your emotional, your spiritual, your tangible. When life, when a huge life event happens or you hit a wall or tragedy hits, you can't lean more heavily on other rhythms if you haven't developed them. So I'm going to encourage you pick one rhythm and And go deep on it. And when you're done, go to the next one. And if you, if you want help on this, just sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter. We talk about this every week or every other week, and it's really going to help you. The third thing that's been the third anchor that's been helping me in this season is treat your emotions like people. Now, what do I mean when I say that? ⁓ And this honestly, maybe it's the most important one. I don't know, but especially for high capacity leaders. been taught that your emotions are a liability. Emotions are how we experience the world. ⁓ Dr. Peter Scazzero, he said this about emotions. called them the language of the soul. Now, in my framework, I talk about emotions. I say it this way. They're the dashboard of the soul. They're not the problem. ⁓ They're, they're not even the source. they're the indicator light telling you that something needs attention in your life. So I find it helpful to treat my emotions like people. Now that might look something like this. So when I was sad, you know, I've been sad, but especially that day, that Wednesday that I was telling you about, I just say, I just sit down for a minute and I say, sadness, I recognize that you're here and it's okay. If there's something you want to tell me, I'm open. If not, that's okay too. Then I just sit with it for a few minutes and I don't try to analyze it. I don't try to figure out why it's there. I just accept it. sometimes something will surface that as to why and sometimes it will just pass on by kind of like a if you're sitting on a river and a boat you know on the bank of a river and a boat goes by and it's in your vision for a little while and then it just passes out of sight. ⁓ Psychologists call this acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT for short. It means accepting what you can't control while committing to what actually matters. So interestingly enough Both Stoicism and Christianity and probably other practices, they share similar philosophies about acceptance, about control, about letting go of things. Now, I don't know if you knew this or not, but according to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, she's a Harvard, Harvard educated doctor, her emotions, she says, lasts for only 90 seconds. If they last longer than that, it's because you're rehearsing the thought. you're re stimulating the emotion and you're triggering the same physical response again and again. So in other words, that you have this emotion, you think about it lasts for 90 seconds at the end of that 90 seconds. You're they call it, people call it rumination. I believe you're thinking about it again and it's triggering the same feeling all over again and the same response. So I've tested this before when I stopped feeding the thought that wave of emotion usually passes or when I just acknowledge the emotion, sometimes emotions They just want to be acknowledged. And sometimes if you don't, they keep coming up over and over again. ⁓ And if they don't resolve, even when you acknowledge them, it may be that there's something deeper happening that you need to give some more time to. But giving your emotions, acknowledging them, giving them time and space to speak, that's often what allows them to resolve. You know, whether it's a short walk, sitting by a lake or simply finding a quiet corner. Silence and solitude, acknowledging those emotions can give you the time and space you need to listen to your life. ⁓ At the beginning of this podcast, I shared how I'd been feeling sad and angry and overwhelmed. And so I did say take some time to sit with it that day. And it didn't didn't pass, it didn't resolve. And that's because it was something that needed I needed to go deeper on ⁓ that didn't just need to be acknowledged, but needed to be resolved or fixed and I couldn't fix all of it, but there were some things that I could. So April is often a month where, well, not often, April was, is a month where everything just converged. I mentioned all those different challenges earlier. I don't need to rehash those and bore you with those, but what I needed was some action. So rather than just pushing through these emotions that kept coming up over and over and weren't resolving, what I had to finally do was I looked through my schedule. And I just started slashing every possible thing on my calendar that was not necessary ⁓ or mandatory. So, you know, though I still felt some of that angst when I was done, it got about 50 % better. I wanted to just push through on the things that mattered and cut out the things that really didn't matter or that I could push off. And most of the things I'm pushing through resolve at the end of April anyway, so there's an end in sight. I don't recommend just keep that you just keep pushing through and pushing through and pushing through forever. There has to be an end in sight. So what I like to say is, you know, many leaders talk about, oh, it's just a busy season. How you doing busy? It's a busy season. But for many of us, it's not a season. It's actually a lifestyle. So here's what I always say, seasons have a beginning and an end. If they if what you're going through doesn't have a beginning and end. It's not a season, it's a lifestyle. So sometimes you need to evaluate that. I can see a clear end in sight. I know that April had all these things converging and some of them actually, many of them resolved by the end of April. But I just had to slash a bunch of stuff and get, get some stuff off the plate if I was going to make it through this season. you know, this is largely about what we've been talking about today, your emotional and your spiritual rhythms. Most people think the answer to overwhelm feeling overwhelmed is just a better strategy or a better system or a better plan. And sometimes it is, but the truth is the answer is often just showing up and doing the next mundane thing in front of you. Even when it doesn't feel like it's working. You know, the answer is to chop wood and carry water, or the answer is to lean into those anchor rhythms. ⁓ You know, not change a bunch of things, but lean deeper into those rhythms that really anchor you. ⁓ And lastly, treat your emotions like people acknowledge them, ⁓ sit with them, you know, resolve if you if you're able to resolve some of those and give them time and space and attention to speak to you. This episode squarely lives in two chambers of the heart. Primarily, we talk about those four rhythms of rest, relational, emotional, spiritual, tangible, and they work like the four chambers of the heart. have to all work together in harmony. This episode is about your emotional and spiritual rhythms and a little bit about your tangible work rhythms. know, your emotional rhythms are that dashboard trying to tell you that something needs attention. Your spiritual rhythms are the anchor that holds you steady. while you listen. Now, if you ignore what you're feeling and you just push through, your emotions are going to build up and eventually you're not going to be able to ignore them any longer. They're kind of like that unwieldy child that just keeps saying, mom, dad, watch this, mom, dad, I need you. And over and over until you actually turn your head and you look at them and you acknowledge them. ⁓ But if you'll slow down long enough to acknowledge what's happening inside, and lean into some of the anchors that ground you, it's going to give you strength to keep moving forward, even when you don't feel like it. When you know you have to move forward because there's important things that you have to do. Your emotional and spiritual rhythms are going to hold you steady when your mind and your body aren't necessarily cooperating. Okay. ⁓ If any of this sounds familiar, I want you to know there's nothing wrong with you. Okay. You're just paying attention. Your ears have been perked up and you're starting to pay attention and that's what matters. The people who scare me are the ones who feel overwhelmed. and they don't feel anything at all. They just kind of numb, push down or block those emotions. think that's, that's more scary than, people who acknowledge them. ⁓ we can also probably let them rule us. And I don't recommend that either. It's not helpful to let your emotions rule you. The answer is somewhere. there right in the middle, not balance, ⁓ but but it's part of wholeness. It's part of ⁓ living a life that's that's in sync with the people and the things that matter around us. It's acknowledgement, but not letting them rule. And it's also not ignoring them. So this week's rhythms check each week, we we, ⁓ you know, do a rhythms check where we kind of land the plane. and talk about what you can do in response to this. So this week's rhythm is stop ignoring those nagging feelings. Take five minutes. Start with just taking five minutes and sit in silence. Name what you're feeling out loud. Just acknowledge it and then ask this question. Is there something you want to tell me? So you're angry, you're frustrated, you're sad, you're overwhelmed. Whatever the emotion that you put on, acknowledge it. and ask, what are you trying to tell me? And then just write down whatever comes. ⁓ You can also talk to someone about it if you can't quite put a finger on it you just need help. That can be helpful too. So here's the reflection question for this week. What's one emotion you've been avoiding this week and what might it be trying to tell you? One emotion you're avoiding this week, you've been avoiding this week and what might it be trying to tell you? You know, I want to hear from you on this one. When you sit with that emotion and you name it, what showed up for you? You know, leave me a comment on YouTube, DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn, or shoot me an email. If you're on my email list, tell me what emotions surface for you and what it was trying to say to you. I read every single response and I'd love to hear what came up for you. Well, if this resonated with you today, you're going to love my bi-weekly rhythms of rest newsletter every other week. I send out honest and practical insights to help you live and lead from internal rest instead of burnout and overwhelm. There's no fluff, just simple tools from my rhythms of rest framework to help you slow down without losing momentum. Just go to KentMoroski.com forward slash newsletter and sign up now. It's absolutely free and you'll be the first to hear about exclusive offers and get bonus content. I want you to have a great week. I'll see you in a couple of weeks.