Latest / Loose Threads & Stitches: A Quilting Podcast / Episode 37: How to Keep Quilting When You're Completely Running on Empty

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Episode 37: How to Keep Quilting When You're Completely Running on Empty · Loose Threads & Stitches: A Quilting Podcast

• 0:07
  I want to know.
• 0:09
  Have you ever had a day where everything feels heavier than it should?
• 0:14
  Simple decisions feel complicated to you.
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  All of the emails that are in your inbox that feel louder and small tasks
• 0:23
  just feel enormously out of proportion.
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  And somewhere, somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice
• 0:31
  whispers, what is wrong with me?
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  I want to gently ask a different question today.
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  What if absolutely nothing is wrong with you?
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  What if you're just carrying too much right now?
• 0:47
  Hey there.
• 0:48
  Welcome back to Loose Threads and Stitches podcast.
• 0:50
  This episode continues The Enough Chapter, which is our limited series exploring
• 0:55
  growth, identity and the quiet hum of more in the modern life this is episode four.
• 1:01
  If you've missed the other episodes,
• 1:02
  make sure you go back and catch up on those.
• 1:04
  There's some good stuff dropped in those episodes.
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  So far, we've talked about how enough
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  can feel like a moving target, and why we're wired to lean towards it.
• 1:14
  Okay, today we're going to step into something
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  many of us feel, but we don't always name.
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  And, that is capacity.
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  Okay.
• 1:25
  If you've been following along with this series, thank you so much.
• 1:29
  It means the world to me.
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  And if something here has resonated with you, sharing it
• 1:33
  with somebody else who might need to hear it is always appreciated.
• 1:38
  All right, let's talk about what happens when capacity feels stretched.
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  The human nervous system evolved for rhythm.
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  We talked a bit about that last time, about why we are wired to chase more,
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  But our actual nervous system has evolved for rhythm, for cycles,
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  for movement, for rest, for limited information.
• 2:03
  Okay. For smaller circles.
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  Now we live in a time of constant input.
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  Okay?
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  Any moment in time you can get whatever information that you need.
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  You get notifications, you have to make decisions,
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  you get updates on things that may or may not even apply to you.
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  Okay.
• 2:22
  There are expectations that are set that you are supposed to be able
• 2:26
  to keep up with this.
• 2:27
  There are constant opportunities
• 2:29
  being thrown into your way that are once in a lifetime,
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  but those once in a lifetime decisions and opportunities don't like.
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  Are they really once in a lifetime?
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  Maybe in some cases.
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  But, and I want to say that none of this is inherently bad, okay.
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  Because, it's a lot, right?
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  But none of it is bad.
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  There are good things that have come through all of this
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  involvement in our society, and our nervous systems don't
• 2:58
  always distinguish between what is really, really urgent right now
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  and what is simply just present, what's just out there, what's available.
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  Right.
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  Everything feels like something you have to process,
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  and most of the time it's something you have to process right now, right.
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  Capacity.
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  It's not character capacity fluctuates.
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  It changes with sleep, with stress, with life transitions,
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  with emotional load, with decision volume.
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  Okay.
• 3:30
  And right now, oh, decision volume is high.
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  Okay.
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  Even small things in everyday life require choices.
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  Okay.
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  What to cook, what to answer, what to click, what to respond to.
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  These choices just accumulate on top of one another,
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  and the accumulation can feel like fatigue.
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  I mean, I want you to like, raise your hand where you are right now
• 3:58
  if you understand decision fatigue, like you just feel like
• 4:03
  you've hit your limits some days and it's not even 11 a.m.
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  because you have made so many decisions that your brain just can't
• 4:10
  handle it anymore. Okay?
• 4:12
  When we lift something physically heavy, our muscles shake, okay?
• 4:17
  We don't shame our arms for not being strong enough to lift that
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  box right there. Right.
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  We understand weight, okay.
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  But when cognitive or emotional load
• 4:28
  feels heavy, we often tend to.
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  I have noticed we tend to shame ourselves like I used to be able
• 4:35
  to handle so much more, or I should be better at this.
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  Other people seem to be able
• 4:40
  to handle all of these decisions, and all of these things.
• 4:45
  And they seem fine, right?
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  But I want to tell you that
• 4:50
  capacity is dynamic.
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  Okay?
• 4:54
  It moves just like the targets we've been talking about.
• 4:58
  And sometimes what feels like personal failure is simply saturation.
• 5:04
  I've I've noticed this in my own life.
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  There are seasons where small things feel so much louder.
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  It's not because I've become less capable of handling them,
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  but because I am carrying so much more on top of all the decision
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  making, more decisions to make, more of transitions, to do more input.
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  And my instinct is usually to tighten up,
• 5:28
  to optimize, to find a better system,
• 5:31
  to pull out my calendar pages and start time blocking.
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  Okay.
• 5:36
  Like if I just organize myself, I can like, I can do this,
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  I can figure out everything that's that's my personal like, crutch.
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  My go to is I just need to organize it. Okay.
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  But sometimes the issue
• 5:51
  is not about inefficiency and the fact that I know this
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  and I still behave the way that I do, I still process things the way that I do.
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  That should tell you that, like, I, I might be really good
• 6:03
  at giving advice, but I'm not always great at taking advice.
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  So that's kind of what like diving into this whole series has been about is like,
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  I don't have everything figured out personally, okay?
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  It may come as a shock,
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  it may come as a shock, but I don't have everything figured out.
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  Not even a little bit.
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  And so diving into this and learning that, like sometimes the issue isn't
• 6:26
  inefficiency, it's just too many things and not enough hours in the day.
• 6:32
  A new planner is not going to fix that situation.
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  Okay?
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  Sometimes what helps the most is just reducing input.
• 6:43
  It's allowing rest before you feel like you've earned it.
• 6:48
  I know that's a hard one, right?
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  This might be part of why creativity feels very regulating.
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  When I sit down to quilt the input of everything in my brain narrows.
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  One fabric, one seam, one rhythm.
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  The pace slows.
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  I can only go as fast as my sewing machine will let me go.
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  Okay, the volume of things coming in that need my attention shrinks.
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  Okay, the decision tree shrinks.
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  All of the things that I have to decide right that.
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  Second.
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  It doesn't apply when I'm sewing one fabric to the other fabric.
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  Okay? Something inside just kind of settles.
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  not because I have everything else solved in my life.
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  Right?
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  But because the load is contained
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  and the containment to our brains
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  feels very safe.
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  So if you've been feeling stretched really thin lately
• 7:47
  before asking what is wrong with me, maybe ask,
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  what else am I carrying right now that is making this too heavy?
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  Okay, is it realistic?
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  Is it sustainable? Is it seasonal?
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  Is it stress that has its own little season and will pass soon?
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  Okay, because overload doesn't automatically mean dysfunction.
• 8:14
  You need to know that
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  overload does not automatically mean dysfunction.
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  Sometimes it simply means the pace has been really high.
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  And when we understand that,
• 8:26
  we soften.
• 8:28
  Okay, it's not a matter of like, I can do these 500 things today.
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  I just need to optimize my calendar.
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  It's a recognition of
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  if every one of these tasks takes an hour,
• 8:44
  these 500 things aren't going to get done in the next 24 hours.
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  It's just not possible.
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  And it's not a lack on my part. Right?
• 8:52
  It's it's it's just the system is is not going to be able to contain it.
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  And I need to figure out how to
• 9:00
  let some of those things go.
• 9:02
  That make sense. Okay.
• 9:03
  Hopefully like this is making sense.
• 9:05
  I know it's not rocket science, but when you hear it and you realize,
• 9:11
  oh shoot, I've been asking like and expecting way
• 9:15
  too much from myself, that is just not even a possibility.
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  Like, I'm expecting myself to fly to the moon and back before dinner time.
• 9:26
  That's not going to happen, by the way.
• 9:28
  You can't do that. Okay.
• 9:29
  Especially without, like, a rocket or any tools or like.
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  Yeah, I don't know, NASA on your side or whatever.
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  Like, it's just not going to happen.
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  Okay. And it's not it's not my fault.
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  It's just I'm expecting too much for myself okay.
• 9:43
  So capacity is not character.
• 9:47
  You are not defective for feeling tired in a fast moving world.
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  You are not broken for needing to rest
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  in a culture that celebrates momentum.
• 10:00
  Did you hear that?
• 10:01
  Did you hear that?
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  Okay, you are allowed to grow at your own pace,
• 10:06
  but you are also allowed to decide when you feel finished.
• 10:10
  I know that that phrase rang true for a lot of people last week,
• 10:15
  and you may hear it a couple more times in this series,
• 10:19
  but you are allowed to decide when you feel finished,
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  okay, not based on somebody else's standards of finish,
• 10:27
  but your standards of finish. All right.
• 10:28
  So next week we're going to talk about the stories that we build around struggle
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  and how meaning can either soften or intensify shame.
• 10:41
  Yeah.
• 10:41
  Until then
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  sit with this.
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  Maybe you're not broken.
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  Maybe you're just carrying a lot.
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  All right, so I love you so much.
• 10:50
  I will see you next time on the Loose Threads and Stitchers
• 10:54
  podcast I'm Christen with ISeeStarsQuilting.com.
• 10:57
  Do me a favor,
• 10:58
  leave a five star review for this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify podcast.
• 11:03
  I really appreciate it and let me know what you think down in the comments.
• 11:08
  I love to hear from you. I love to chat with you.
• 11:11
  Have a wonderful rest of your day.
• 11:12
  I'll see you soon.
• 11:13
  Bye. You.