Latest / The Growth Project / Growth Spurt: Recovery Routines

Transcript

Growth Spurt: Recovery Routines · The Growth Project

• 0:00
  You.
• 0:03
  Welcome to the Growth Project podcast. I'm doctor Gabby Cavities. And today I'm going to be walking you through our growth spurt episode,
• 0:11
  focused on creating recovery routines.
• 0:14
  So to kind of kick us off here,
• 0:16
  want to start the conversation by thinking about what do you think of when you hear rest?
• 0:22
  Is it something that you earn, something that you avoid because maybe you feel like it equates to laziness or a lack of productivity?
• 0:32
  And just start to ask yourself these questions when you hear the word rest, how does it resonate with you?
• 0:38
  What we see in the literature is that oftentimes high performers treat recovery as optional. It's not a priority.
• 0:45
  It's something that if we have time for it, then we do it.
• 0:49
  So today in our growth spurt, I want to shift the focus on to making rest more of a priority for your performance.
• 0:57
  This lack of recovery that we're seeing and, the world and the business domain in the sports domain, it's really a hidden performance limiter.
• 1:06
  You don't recover when you have time, you recover
• 1:09
  when you make time for it. So just like anything else that's important in your life, you have to make time for it. Otherwise you're going to push it to the side.
• 1:19
  So let's break down why recovery matters. Well,
• 1:24
  you wait to recover until you're feeling burnt out or you have an injury or you're exhausted, it's a little too late. You've already hindered your performance. So what we want to teach you to do is to create and establish a routine of rest where you have a new connotation, with rest, where it's a daily practice, a habit that you engage in regularly to prevent burnout, to prevent injury, to prevent exhaustion.
• 1:52
  And so let's kind of talk through what that routine could look like. If you're taking notes, this is a great time to jot a couple things down. There's really three key things you need to keep in mind when establishing
• 2:05
  your recovery routine. The first is
• 2:09
  naming the load, identifying what the stress you're dealing with is and what you need to recover from.
• 2:16
  There is a variety of different demands. So if we experience physical demands, cognitive demands, emotional demands, and these different stressors need different types of recovery. So the first thing you need to do when establishing your recovery routine is identify what the type of demand is you need to recover from that. Step one.
• 2:38
  Step two is design the routine.
• 2:41
  When are you going to rest? Is it going to be on, weekend? Is it going to be when you get home from work or first thing in the morning when you wake up?
• 2:49
  And where where does it live in your day to day life? Is it something that you do independently, something you do with your spouse, something you do with your kids?
• 2:59
  and what environment are you going to rest in? Is it going to be outdoors? Indoors? Is it going to be, in isolation where you're listening to music, watching a movie?
• 3:10
  Some examples here to think of are your end of day shutdown. This could be, what you do the last hour of your day to detach from the demands,
• 3:21
  of your day, whether that be physical, mental or emotional.
• 3:25
  Do you silence your phone for that last hour, or do you go through, skincare routine?
• 3:30
  Do you just have conversations that are unrelated to to stress?
• 3:36
  something else you could do with a decompression walk. So that's something where the domain has shifted. Now you're outdoors and you're getting some time in nature, and maybe that's how you rest and feel recovered.
• 3:47
  no input. Mornings is another example. So spending the first hour of your day not on your phone, not listening to the news or any stimulus, just really being present and grounded.
• 4:00
  this is really the second step is identifying now what your rest practice will be. And then the third and final piece is to keep it small.
• 4:09
  You want to avoid aspirational recovery. So avoid this notion of needing to spend days recovering. You know a lot of times we hear, gosh, I just need I just need a week off. I just need a week to recover, a week away from work, a week away from from the stress of family or kids or school or whatever it is that you're dealing with.
• 4:32
  And that mentality is not what we're getting at here. What we're getting at is daily practice of rest, sustainable recovery, things that you can do every single day to prevent that need for excessive long term recovery. Right.
• 4:49
  So a practice here would be to set a goal of ten minutes daily versus 90 minutes a month. Right?
• 4:56
  So instead of needing an hour and a half away, you just need ten minutes every morning.
• 5:00
  The key principle here is that consistency is greater than intensity. The more consistent you are with your Rest practices, the more recovered you will feel in the long term.
• 5:12
  So now we've got the three steps. But why is this hard? Why do people struggle with rest? And you know the first the first things we feel guilty, right? We we feel like there's something we should be doing. We have this to do list and there's always the next thing we could be doing.
• 5:27
  And so when we take time for ourselves to, not to not think about our to do list, not stress, and it creates what we call this productivity monster in our mind, where we start to beat on ourselves for not getting things done.
• 5:41
  And then we've got the fear of falling behind if I don't stay on top of things. You know, maybe, Susie at work is going to be working harder and surpass me. Maybe she's working, you know, 50 hours a week, and I. I took an hour off, so I only worked 49. And now I'm worried that, she's going to get the promotion, and I'm not,
• 6:01
  this fear of falling behind, and then our identity being tied to our productivity when we are strictly basing our identities and the need for results.
• 6:13
  This makes rest even more challenging, because when we aren't producing, we feel like a failure. So this is why it's so important to create rest as a goal. It is something that you,
• 6:29
  achieve and that you implement regularly.
• 6:34
  So it kind of close this out here. Recovery does not steal your performance. It does not make you,
• 6:41
  lazy. It does not detract from your work. In fact, it does quite the opposite. It protects. It protects your performance, protects your productivity.
• 6:52
  So this week, if you're listening and thinking, okay, well, what's one thing I can do?
• 6:57
  Ask yourself this question,
• 6:59
  and try to apply it throughout the week here. What's one recovery routine you'll protect this week? Is it going for a walk on your lunch break outside? Is it, you know, listening to to music on the car, drive home and and not hearing your phone pinging?
• 7:18
  Is it spending the first hour in the morning going through your morning routine without any interruptions and allowing yourself that time to to detach?
• 7:27
  Whatever it is, spend some time identifying that and then making it a priority this week and see the the growth that happens from that.
• 7:37
  I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of The Growth Spurt and look forward to the next one.
• 7:43
  Thanks, guys.