Welcome back to Live Free Creative. I’m your host, Miranda Anderson, and you’re listening to Episode 254: Sharpen Your Saw.

I know I’m supposed to be on a break, but I’m popping in. mid break month to air an older episode that I think is applicable to exactly how I’m feeling right now, and the reason that I’m pausing for September to sharpen my saw.

This episode originally aired as a bonus episode as part of my Patreon membership and is a great back to the basics of taking care of yourself as your most important asset. Taking care of yourself as the lead character and the protagonist of your own life.

Sometimes we get caught up in the necessaries of taking care of everyone and everything around us and slowly diminish our capacity to do those things well because we’re not taking the time to refuel, replenish, restore ourselves along the way.

This episode is about prioritizing yourself, systematizing that priority, and making sure that you’re able to check in to find out how you’re doing. and provide for your own needs to help you continue to provide for the needs and take care of the responsibilities that, that matter a lot to you in your life.

Before I turn you over to my past self with this encore episode, I want to share a quick pause for a poem.

Segment: Pause for a Poem

For My Daughter on a Bad Day

by Kate Baer

Life will rough you up. Throw you to the

shore like a wave crashing– sand in your

hair, blood in your teeth. When grief sits

with you, hand dipped with rage, let it

linger. Hold its pulse in your hands. There

is no remedy for a bad haircut or ruined

love like time. Even when death is coming,

even when the filth rises in the back of

your throat—

that is not the worst of it. And if it is?

Listen for the catbird calling. No matter

the wreckage, they still sing for you.

Patience and Anticipation

Oh, I love the visceralness of Kate Baer’s poetry. I can feel it in my bones. This one, to your daughter on a bad day, trying to help explain that time might help, it might heal, but it never feels like it will in the moment.

On that note, I opened my email the other day to a great message from The New Happy, which is a cool Instagram account and email list and daily podcast.

I don’t listen to the podcast. I just like getting the emails. The thought swap was the idea from patience to anticipation. And they write that being patient is hard and it’s frustrating and it’s difficult and it can make you feel helpless. But anticipation is really close to patience.

That waiting feeling is just right over the line from frustration to excitement. And if you can get there, even though you don’t know what’s coming, or you’re waiting for something, if you can get to being excited for when it happens, rather than frustrated that it’s not happening now, you can really feel so much better.

Trying to skip over that line is something that might take work, but ultimately can lie within your control with some thought work and some coaching, even self-coaching to think about. Changing your mind, changing your thoughts to bend that impatience into anticipation. Taking some of those bad days and turning them into fodder for future great days.

Something that I’ve noticed about myself– that’s also backed up by research is that the better prepared we are by building our resilience muscles, The easier it is for us to face adversity, we can have regular practices that build up our emotional skills, our coping skills, our stress relieving practices.

We can do things on a daily, regular basis that help our muscles feel strong so that when we must lift something heavy, even an emotional something heavy, we can. We’ve got it a little bit more easily than if we don’t have those regular practices in place. That is what this episode is about today.

Sharpening your saw, even in times when it feels like it’s sharp, like using it and then sharpening it rather than using it over and repeatedly until it’s dull and then having to take a whole bunch of time to sharpen it, or maybe you must replace it at that point because it’s too far gone.

Women are especially susceptible to this, to essentially burnout. We are very susceptible to taking care of everyone else at our own expense until we no longer can. And then we can’t take care of anyone, including ourselves. If you find yourself in a position where you’re starting to feel tired, overwhelmed, stressed out, exhausted, frustrated, please listen to this episode, and start to build for yourself.

Maybe you need to call in some help. Maybe you need to talk to your partner. your neighbors, your parents, your friends about how to build a support system that enables you to take the rest and the breaks that you need to show up to your life in the way that you want to all the time.

That’s my hope and wish for you as I share this Encore episode, and it’s a good one. This is a good reminder for me, because I’m taking this break from the podcast this month, in part, because of suffering from my own burnout, of trying to do more than my capacity and not taking the time and space that I needed to regenerate energy along the way.

It’s felt good to take a couple weeks off. I’m popping in today, sharing this older episode, and thenI’ll be back in October. This break, even though sometimes it’s hard for me to take a break, hard for me to relax. It, already I can feel it like seeping in, how good it feels. I’m going to turn you over to the Encore episode, I hope you enjoy this show about sharpening your saw.

SHARPENING YOUR SAW

I had to laugh the other week, I guess maybe a month or so ago now, I was in the middle of a DIY project. We were converting our backyard shed into a clubhouse for my kids to hang out in. We got all the electrical done and we had done the drywall and it was painted with a prime coat and I decided that I wanted to add a little bit of trim to the bottom half of the wall, like a board and batten situation.

Buying Wood at Home Depot

I was going to wallpaper the top half of the wall. I went off to Home Depot to grab the trim wood that I needed for the bottom. Half of the walls and the trim would in this section of the store comes in. These like 12-foot lengths. They’re massive and you buy trim by the foot by the linear foot, so this is different from a lot of wood shopping.

I don’t know how versed you are in wood shopping. Let me tell you a little bit when you go just to buy regular two by fours or one by one’s regular wood comes usually in a predetermined length. You can get a 6 foot, an 8 foot, a 10 foot, some comes in a 12 foot, not a lot does. Mostly you’re looking at a standard is an 8-foot length.

So, you get a 2x4x8 and you can find those in any regular hardware store. They’ll have that type of wood. When you get back into more of some of the specialty woods, they’re sold by linear foot. So, the price may say, 75 cents. That’s not for the whole 12-foot length. That’s for each foot, and you don’t have to buy the whole 12 feet.

You can buy just one foot, if you want, of trim, or two feet, or two and a half feet, and they just charge you by the foot. This is how they sell fabric, right? By the yard. We were familiar with that. Maybe you didn’t know that sometimes you can buy wood by the foot as well.

Now, in Home Depot, they have these handy cut stations set up, so you can ask someone to, go try to find an employee and ask them to cut your trim boards for you and wait for them to do it on the big circular saw, or they have these rolling stations that are usually just positioned back in the trim area of the store, and they are like a cutting.

Using the Saw

Table, so it’s like a wooden top that has a groove in it, and that’s and it has a measuring tape along the back, like a metal ruler, so you can see how many feet you’re measuring out, and then they have all these saws available for you to use. So rather than trying to find someone, hunt down an employee, and have them cut, maybe you just want to do one quick cut, and it’s like a tiny board, and it’s not going to take very long.

You can just grab the trim, lay it down on the cut table, use one of the saws that Home Depot provides for people to be able to make their own trim cuts. You just cut your little piece off and then you can take it to the front and pay for it.

I was there and I didn’t want to go hunt down someone. I was buying a lot of the wood because I was doing trim for this whole little clubhouse. It was too long to fit in my car though.

A minivan is long. It’s not that long though. I just needed to grab a couple of these boards and cut them directly in half so that I could fit them into my car to drive them home. They weren’t very big or thick. They were, I think, one by twos is what I was getting. So, it was less than an inch thick and about, just less than two inches wide.

Not very massive pieces of wood. This was not a very hard cutting job that I needed to do. So, I laid it down. I grabbed it. saw, and at home I have a lot of electrical saws. I have a circular saw, I have a miter saw, I don’t cut things by hand very often at home.

It was a little surprising as I got started how difficult it was to like, I mean I was putting some elbow grease in there to cut through this. Seemingly small piece of trim board and I cut and I kept shifting it around.

You know how you can cut a little bit on top, and it makes a groove and then you twist it sideways. So, then you’re like cutting a little thinner spot and then I could twist it and around. I was just like doing my best to saw through these pieces of wood and I did one I made it all the way through, and I was like, okay and I like need to take a little bit of a break like a little breather.

I worked up a sweat cutting through this 1×2 and Then I you know got the other, the next board up and started cutting through it and after I had done about three boards, I, just the thought occurred to me, maybe there’s a saw that’s a little bit better.

Maybe there’s a different saw in here. So, I looked through the saws a little bit. I, at first, I just grabbed one at random. I took a second and I looked through the saws and me. I noticed one that seemed a little bit newer and maybe a little sharper than the one that I had been using. And so, I put the next board up and I started cutting and the difference was dramatic.

The Sharper Saw Makes A Difference

Where before I had really been just like putting in so much effort and hacking through these little pieces of wood, this fresh, sharp, new saw, it was like Maybe six slides. Swoosh, swoosh, back and forth, just went right through, I mean like butter, right through the board, and with six back and forth long motions, with barely any effort on my part, I had succeeded in cutting through the whole board.

I had to stop and laugh for a minute about the real-life application of Stephen Covey’s coined idea of “sharpening the saw”. Now, most of us don’t ever have to use a saw. And so, the idea of what sharpening a saw does might not feel very relatable.

I can tell you now from personal experience that when you sharpen the saw, or when you use a sharpened saw, that the result might be the same as when you use a dull saw, but the effort and the time involved is so much less.

The experience is so much better. I knew I had to record an episode about this because the example was so poignant to me that when we sharpen the saw, even though we might get to the same place, the experience is so much better. Now if you’re unfamiliar with the idea, just the general idea of sharpening the saw, let me introduce it to you.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

In 1989, which is a long time ago now, Stephen R. Covey, a businessman, published the very first edition of the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s a self-help book, a business book. Stephen Covey illustrates these seven principles or ideals that help someone be a highly effective person or achieve their goals in a meaningful way.

It has sold over 25 million copies over the last however many years that is. It’s a fantastic book. I remember reading it maybe in high school. My dad gave it to me or at least early college. I read it when I was in my teens and remember a lot about it and when Dave and I were first married.

Dave worked for the Franklin Covey Corporation, which is now more like a global leadership group where they do all sorts of trainings and, business trainings and marriage trainings and it’s this wide thing. But it all started with this Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

There are all good habits in it. I think that it’s a worthwhile read. Maybe we’ll read it for an upcoming podcast plus book club. The seventh habit in the seven habits is Sharpen the saw. So, you’ve gone through this whole book reading all about these different ways to shift your perspective and to interact with other people and to make sure that you’re aligning with your own values and then Stephen Covey finishes the book by inviting you to consider that you are your most important resource in your life.

The Importance of Self Care

That if you don’t protect you, yourself, that all the other things that you might set out to do will be in vain. I know that in the last few years, the term or the idea of self-care has raised in our awareness and people respond to that in different ways.

A lot of people, I know, roll their eyes when they hear someone talk about self-care because they think, oh, that’s also indulgent. And there’s also been this sort of equivalent of self-care with getting your nails done and taking a bubble bath and eating bonbons on the couch.

Which I think all of those are great self-care. That sounds like fantastic to me, but some people feel like, oh, that’s all just so fluffy. I think it’s so interesting to note that this is not a new concept.

The idea of taking care of you as a valuable resource goes back, thousands of years. But even just in our modern self-development world, even the business world, Stephen Covey talks about You needing to take time to develop yourself as an individual so that you have something to bring to the table in all the other relationships that you have.

One of the quotes that he shares in the book is we must never become so busy sawing that we forget to sharpen the saw.

Sharpening Your Personal Saw

Now think back to the story that I shared about, hacking away at this trim board in Home Depot. We can sometimes get so invested in the thing that we’re doing, in the project that we’re working on, in the role that we’re fulfilling, in the relationship that we’re investing in, that we just think, we think the best thing for us to do is to just keep sawing.

If we just push hard enough and pull hard enough and use more muscle and effort through, we will achieve the result that we hope for. Stephen Covey would say, take a break and go take care of that saw. Sharpen the saw and then when you come back, you don’t abandon the relationship, you don’t abandon the role, you don’t abandon the project completely.

Take Time to Improve Number One

You take the time that you need to improve number one, the resource that makes the relationship in and of itself possible, that makes the project possible. You, as the leading person in your own life, need to be sharp. You need to renew yourself. You need to take care of yourself, not in a fluffy way, but in the literal sense that if you don’t.

Nothing else that matters will be able to happen. Sharpening the saw means preserving and enhancing yourself as your own life’s greatest asset. It means balancing some self-renewal with the actual output that you achieve.

I thought it was so interesting as I was, seeing this difference in sharpening the saw and having, using a dull saw that, like I mentioned a couple times, the outcome might look the same.

Like either way, I got to this long trim board cut in half. So, I was able to do it, but with the dull saw, I wouldn’t have been able to do it for much longer. There would have come a point I wasn’t, it was hard, I was efforting through, I was using a ton of muscle, I was using a ton of energy, and there would have come a point very soon that I would not have been able to continue.

My strength would have been overwhelmed, and I wouldn’t have been able to cut. Using a sharp saw, the effort was so much lower, I could have cut for much longer. Now, eventually that saw also would have dulled. Regardless, at some point that saw needs to be sharpened for it to continue to work. What happens when it doesn’t get sharpened is burnout. Have you ever felt burned out?

Have you ever expressed feelings of overwhelm, stress, frustration, depression, feeling like you are putting so much work into every single day and things still aren’t going the way that you want them to.

A lot of those feelings are expressions of a dull saw. They are the results of not sharpening your own saw of not taking care of yourself the way that you could.

Four Categories for Sharpening Your Saw

In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey breaks down the areas in which we can sharpen our saw into four categories. Physical, social, or emotional, mental, and spiritual.

When I just wrote down for myself, what do I do to sharpen my own saw? What are the activities and the things that I do that renew myself?

I naturally wrote down things from each of these categories. The things that I wrote down were going on a walk outside, getting regular exercise, sleeping. Spending time with friends, and I have, I have Marco Polo-ing with friends. Sitting in the hot tub and soaking, reading, and just quiet, like just some quiet time.

Meditation turning off everything when I’m driving. Sometimes I just need it to all be quiet so that I can just have space for my own thoughts. Those are all things that sharpen my saw. I touched on all these areas.

Physical Renewal

Physical renewal. means eating well, exercising, and resting, taking care of your physical body.

Are there places that you could improve in these areas? How can a small adjustment in your nutrition, your exercise routine, moving your body, and your sleep, how can you create a little bit of an adjustment to sharpen your physical saw?

Social/Emotional Renewal

The second category is social and emotional. Making meaningful connections with others.

It was funny to reflect on the end of 2019 and all the goals and ideas that we had for 2020. I don’t know if you remember I shared this on the main show that my word for 2020 was connection. My idea heading into 2020 was that I wanted to feel more connected to my community, to my family, to my friends, and in some ways, 2020 has made that connection easier because so many things had to stop.

So really, one of the main things that I was able to focus on was connecting with my family, with my kids with my friends, and it all had to be done in a more intentional way because it wasn’t as easy as just getting together. It’s phone calls and texts and Marco Polo messages and emails and I have a pen pal.

All these specific intentional ways to connect. I have also felt lonelier in 2020 than I ever remember feeling because so many of the normal ways that I did used to connect were instantly wiped away. I recognized that I need to renew my connections.

That I need to create space in my life, I need to have some intentional ways that I do connect with people, that I have a book club, I’ve reached out to some old friends that I hadn’t been in close contact with and just said, hey, I love you and I miss you and I would love to just stay in better contact.

And a lot of that has happened on the Marco Polo app. How are you making space for meaningful social connections, familial connections. Would you feel better if you had a little bit more of that? There’s lots of ways to do that and lots of creative ways that have shown up this year especially. Make sure that you are sharpening that social and emotional saw.

Mental Renewal

The third category is mental. This is true self development, like intellectual development through learning and reading and writing and teaching. It’s funny that my deep interest in learning only grew as I left school. I think back now on all the opportunities that I had in high school.

School and in college to just do these incredible deep dives into different topics that now fascinate me that at the time just felt burdensome to add another thing to the list or add another class to my schedule. I love learning and maybe because I am not in a position right now where I am.

Actively learning a specific thing through a classroom all the time, I must intentionally seek out opportunities for learning, reading. I’ve done a ton of reading this year. I usually do, and I’ve, some of it this year has been specific that I am trying to learn about a topic.

I’m trying to dig into something specific to develop my mind. I love the idea of writing to sharpen your mental saw. Every morning with my kids in homeschools, we do what we call morning pages, which is just a writing exercise. And I tell my kids every day, I don’t care what you write. I just want you to be writing.

If they, we set a timer for 15 minutes, I give them an optional prompt so that they don’t have to just come up with something out of thin air. They can choose to use the prompt or not. When they don’t use it and they say, I don’t know what to write about, I say, okay, write that down, right? I don’t know what to write.

I have no ideas in my head. I’m just putting the pen to paper because my mom is sitting here and told me to. And what is so interesting is that as they start writing, ideas come, and they flow. I think a journaling practice is so important, not only Because of posterity. I think I grew up thinking that we write in a journal so that the people, the generations that come after us have some idea about what our lives were like from like a genealogical, or a family history standpoint.

I think that, maybe a benefit or a perk, but I don’t think that’s why we journal. I think one of the huge benefits of journaling is that the practice of writing helps us process. It helps us get out of our own heads. It helps us to develop these skills of thinking about our lives in interesting ways.

Of course, I’ve always loved to write. I’ve, written on a blog for 13 years. I’ve had journals my whole life. I really like it as a personal development hobby. I think that even for people who aren’t really Accustomed to it that there’s something there like just with no expectation and no idea of like you don’t have to read it again No one else has to read it.

You don’t have to save it for your kids or their kids. You can write Just for the moment itself and then throw it away if you want reading and writing and learning These are all ways that we can sharpen our mental saw. This is one reason that I really like my Live Free from Clutter course, and all the different types of online courses that are available right now.

I think having a little bit of structure and framework in an online learning program helps us really get in touch with some of this development in a way that Unstructured and just on our own we might not do. Digging into learning new concepts and doing some homework and practicing them. That is all a real renewal and a real development of our mental state.

Spiritual Renewal

The fourth category here is spiritual. Spiritual is spending time in nature, meditation, expanding your spiritual self through music and art and prayer and service. All these categories, it doesn’t have to be religious spiritual, it can be connecting to your spirit, to what makes your soul sing.

Listening, this morning I was driving to my office to record this podcast, and where I normally listen to podcasts when I’m driving, I decided to just put on a Spotify playlist that was all. This really mood boosting, it felt spiritual to me. It’s been a while since I just listened to random music, and I was feeling so connected to the lyrics and to the style and to the tones, I felt moved.

Like my spirit felt connected to the music. I really miss wandering in art museums. It’s one of my favorite things to do by myself and with my kids. And when we haven’t been in a while because of COVID connecting to art, connecting to. Prayer. Spending time in nature, that’s like my number one way to connect spiritually.

I put on my own list that I like to go on walks. I love to go on walks outside, leave my phone aside, take my dog out, look at the trees, watch the robins hopping around the neighborhood, notice the leaves that right now are all falling to the ground, really feeling apart. of the world that we live in is so connective, it’s so renewing.

How Will You Sharpen Your Saw?

I want you to brainstorm for yourself at this stage of life that you’re in right now, what some ideas you have for your personal, physical, social, mental, and spiritual development are. How are you going to renew yourself regularly in those ways? Stephen Covey says, Renewal is the principle and the process that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement.

Sharpening the saw. sometimes feels indulgent and sometimes it feels like selfish. The truth is that it is the process through which we can continually improve ourselves so that we can show up in our relationships, in our families, in our work roles, in our projects. as the best possible person.

As you renew yourself, as you sharpen your saw in each of these areas, you’re going to create growth and change in your life. This renewal metaphorically sharpens you so that you can more easily. Cut through the obstacles that come into your life, get to the heart of the relationships that you want to form, can navigate whatever circumstances come to you.

You will be more resilient, more able to handle challenges and the unexpected because of the practice that you have of regularly renewing yourself. I think this is so interesting.

Stephen Covey says that, without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the spirit insensitive, and the person selfish.

We think that sharpening the saw, taking time to take ourselves out on a walk-in nature or to take the 30 minutes or hour that we need to exercise a few times a week, hiring a babysitter or leaving the kids with our spouse or partner or our mom, getting out and having a social interaction or spending some time on the computer.

We sometimes think of these things as being selfish, and in fact, the opposite is true. If we do not care for ourselves and renew ourselves in these ways, we become selfish. We become weak. We become insensitive. We become resentful.

One of my favorite recent mindsets shifts or realizations that I had when I was listening to Jody Moore on one of her podcast episodes, she explained that resentment is what happens when we are not fulfilling our own needs.

In other words, resentment comes when we are not sharpening our saw. That resentment that you feel is because you are not taking care of yourself. And sometimes we get resentful thinking that other people aren’t doing a good enough job taking care of us. That is in our power.

We are the ones who must step up and advocate for ourselves, understand what our needs are, and sometimes that’s the hardest part, just knowing what our needs are.

We can just give ourselves some space and follow our curiosity to see what will renew us, and write down for yourself, in pen or pencil, on the paper, write down some ideas of the things that feel good to you. What feels like it might be renewing? What feels like when you get to the end of your rope, and you say all I need is blank.

What I would really, could really use right now is blank. What are those things? Capture them, put them down on paper, and then create a plan, create space, involve your spouse, your partner, your support system to help you. Make time, invest in whatever you need to sharpen your saw. To finish up, I just have a quick personal note, a little side note to mention about sharpening your saw, about taking time to renew yourself.

If you are in a family situation like I am, where you have a spouse and you have kids. And even if you’re not, this is just where I’m coming from. And so, it’s easier for me to explain this way. Think of it for your own scenario in your own situation as well. Sometimes one of the barriers that I face to taking time for myself is that I want to micromanage what happens when I’m gone.

Don’t Micromanage Your Support

I want to say, okay, Dave, I’m going to the office for a couple hours to work on something, or I’m going to go on a walk for an hour and a half. And so, then he’s home with the kids and I want to leave him like a list of how to take care of things or things to do while I’m gone. Sometimes, to take care of ourselves, we must let go of whatever happens while we’re gone.

We must know that maybe the house will be a mess, maybe the kids will eat frozen chicken nuggets instead of, the meal that you would have made. When you go out with your friends, let it all go. Let it all go. Leave it all behind. Trust the people in your life to do the best that they can and to make the best choices that they can, even if those choices are different than the ones that you would have made.

Don’t keep yourself tied to your… You’re home and your family so tightly because you want to micromanage all of it, and you think there’s only one way to do everything. Part of the renewing process is allowing things to happen without you. Knowing that you are not so important that you’re the only one that can do everything.

You have to go take care of yourself and in the space that’s created by you taking care of yourself You’re also able to recognize that There are multiple perspectives at play that there’s lots of right ways for things to happen When you can let that go when you can put it down leave it at the door as you leave to go take care of yourself You will feel so much added relief when you know, they’ve got it I’m going to take care of myself.

I need this. I think one of the barriers that a lot of people, a lot of women, especially a lot of young moms, especially, face is the idea that if they aren’t there, then the world is going to stop. That they can’t take time away to take care of themselves because then everything in their life is just going to stop or change or go crazy.

That is not necessarily true. It might happen a little differently than it would if you were around, orchestrating everything, but your saw is getting dull. The more that you stay and orchestrate and push through and, just oh, pull and push and pull and push and elbow grease your way through and muscle your way through every single day, put it down, take some time, let go.

And know that it’s all going to be okay. I hope that this episode has impacted you. I hope that it will be helpful for you. I know that even if you’re doing a pretty good job of taking care of yourself, there’s always some little place to improve. Something that’s been tugging on your heart that you’ve thought, gosh, I would really like to do this or do that.

Allow yourself the space to do that, knowing that you become better for everyone when your needs are met. Thank you so much for tuning in. Midway through my break for this episode, special episode about taking time that you need. To take care of yourself. I’m going to take that advice for the next couple weeks again, and I will meet you back here in October.

In the meantime, feel free to listen to old episodes, old favorites, or catch up on episodes that you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to. And it’s a great time to remind you if you haven’t left A review or a rating for the show, those mean the world to me. Sometimes it feels a little bit like shouting into the void behind a podcast microphone.

And if you’ve listened to the show, even just a couple of them, or all of them, and you feel like your life has gotten a little bit better, or you enjoy them a little bit, or they give you something to think about, you can express that in a quick couple minute review left on Apple Podcasts on iTunes. I really appreciate it.

I hope you have a wonderful September. I will catch up with you in a couple weeks. Bye for now.