I’m going to share a couple examples of how I’ve done this in my life and share some tools and tips that may help you as you go about planning for the recovery in your own life. Before we dive into today’s show, let’s start with a quick pause for a poem.

Segment: Pause for a Poem

For my Daughter, by Grace Paley

I wanted to bring her a chalice

or maybe a cup of love or cool water.

I wanted to sit beside her as

she rested after the long day.

I wanted to adjure,

commend, admonish, saying,

don’t do that. Of course.

Wonderful. Try.

I wanted to help her grow old.

I wanted to say last words,

the words famous for final

enlightenment.

I wanted to say them now in case

 I am in calm sleep when the

last sleep strikes or aged into disorder.

I wanted to bring her a cup of

cool water, I wanted to explain,

 tiredness is expected. It is even appropriate

at the end of the day.

Beautiful lines. I love the end of that poem: “Tiredness is expected at the end of a long day.” Do you sometimes forget about the effects of the events and emotions of our lives? I think that we spend a lot of time preparing for managing trying to avoid and navigate stressful situations, exciting situations, overwhelming situations, and sometimes we fail to plan for the recovery from such events.

One example from my own life is how I’ve planned workshops and retreats over the last 10 years. When I started hosting in person creative workshops over 10 years ago in Washington, D. C., and then in Austin, Texas, and one year I even traveled around the United States to four different cities, Hosting workshops.

I had so much positive energy going into those events. I thought this is going to be such smooth sailing because I just feel excited and enthusiastic. I loved the logistics. I loved getting into the weeds and having a spreadsheet and navigating all the different pieces of hosting and doing the emails leading up to the events and planning the details of the supplies and the hosting and the venues and the travel.

I love a spreadsheet. I felt like I am living in my element and using all these different skills that felt natural to me. Because everything felt so positive, I failed to understand that even positive events and exciting things happening in our lives come with a level of stress.

Stress can be Positive and Negative

Positive stress is the way that our brain works and focuses. It’s how we’re able to navigate the details. It’s how we turn on the gas for showing up with enthusiasm when we’re hosting or when we’re planning or even when we’re attending an event at which we need to have some level of competence.

Whether that’s social competence and we’re attending as a guest and we want to be able to interact in a meaningful way, or whether it’s hosting competence and we want to be prepared to present, or inform, or teach, or host in the best way possible.

Even when those things are highly positive, they are stressful. Most of our understanding of stress comes with a negative connotation. We often think of how to avoid stress, or how to diminish or lower the amount of stress that we experience. In her new book, Rewire, Neuroscientist Nicole Vignola explains alert stress in this way.

She says, “Contrary to popular belief, stress is a requirement for heightened performance and focus. On many occasions, you need some level of alertness to perform at work, during exercise, and in daily activities, such as walking your dog and doing chores. What this means is that there are hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, as well as neurochemicals, such as norepinephrine, circulating through our body to prepare us for these events.

These chemicals are responsible for enhancing alertness and even improving reaction times. A moderate level of stress is often associated with optimal performance as it motivates us to meet deadlines and tackle problems head on to achieve our goals. Have you ever thought about stress that way? That even positive events, having a birthday party for your child, or inviting a friend to lunch, or going to your favorite fitness class, that those things are accompanied by a natural level of positive stress.”

Stress, meaning that the neurochemicals that are functioning in your body and heightened at that time enable your highest performance. I know that I don’t often think about stress this way. I think about stress more often as something that I’m trying to control, manage, or avoid. Of course, I’m not. There can be maladaptive stress as well, and this is what we’re usually thinking about when we think about stress.

A typical definition of stress may include something like the demands placed on us exceeding our ability to cope effectively when we’re mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted and unable to meet those demands. Of course, with maladaptive stress, our ability to maintain our well-being is affected.

is compromised and can start to contribute to a large range of physical and mental health disorders.

Recovery is Key

Whether we’re talking about positive or negative stress, the recovery is the key. Whether we’re experiencing stress because of needing to focus on something great in our lives, or something challenging that we’re excited about, where we’re building our emotional resilience, and where we’re stepping into a role that feels wonderful to us.

If that stress is caused by things that we’re ruminating on that are outside of our control that are heightening our emotions and spiking those cortisol levels in a negative way, whether what is causing our stress is positive or negative, chronic stress can cause brain changes which contribute to stress, to depression, anxiety, and other problems.

Chronic stress can leave us with an inability to regulate our emotions and lower our tolerance towards common everyday stressors, even like making the decision about what to wear or what to eat or helping your child with their homework. The way that we avoid chronic stress is by focusing on and prioritizing recovery.

You may wonder what I mean when I say recovery. A simple definition of the word recovery is the process of returning to a state of balance, wellness, or functionality after experiencing physical, mental, or emotional stress. In the context of stress or emotional recovery, this involves restoring a sense of calm, control, and well-being after the stressful event.

Recognizing my need for recovery

Now, I was talking about hosting actual in person events years ago. Something that would happen is that I had a lot of positive energy going into the event for months, ahead of the event, I would be focusing on and planning, getting the logistics in place, marketing, getting prepared, and then I would head into the event.

I would host, I would present, I would teach, I would show up and bring all this bubbling over enthusiasm. I was so excited and happy to be there. And these events would be amazing, and I would return home thinking that I could just move into the next thing because it had all been a resounding success and I would crash instead, I would have to cancel plans that I had in the couple days after I returned.

I would usually not only just be tired but sometimes get physically ill after maintaining what I now recognize as a chronic level of depression. positive stress throughout the time in which I was preparing for and carrying out the event. I wasn’t properly allowing time for recovery within the planning phases, and I also wasn’t planning recovery for after the event itself took place.

You won’t believe how many years it took me to recognize this pattern in my own life. I think my real wakeup call came in the summer of 2021, when I hosted my largest event to that point, which was 35 women. I rented out an entire camp, glamping camp, called Maple Grove Hot Springs on the banks of the Bear River in Idaho, and hosted a four-day camp.

Summer camp for adult women. On day two of this event, I started to lose my voice. I started to get sick even before the event was complete. I had put so much energy and effort, all positive again, all good vibes into this event that I wasn’t even able to carry out the entire event before I started to get sick.

Of course, I pushed through. In that event, I bought a little microphone and I started to speak through this little speaker, and I finished out the event, which was a huge success. Everyone who came had beautiful things to say about it. It was a wonderful experience for me included. And yet I went home from that event and was in bed for a week and I lost my voice to the point that I couldn’t speak.

I lost my voice because of the virus that I had. acquired because of the immune deficiency that I was experiencing because of my chronic levels of stress and that virus Paralyzed one of my vocal cords. It was a couple months before I was able to understand what was actually happening by seeing several Doctors and specialists, and then ultimately my voice was restored when I underwent a vocal cord procedure that injected filler into my vocal cord, creating the ability for me to make sound again and also jump starting the nerves to begin reiterating that vocal cord, which, luckily now I’m able to talk again.

Although my voice has never returned to normal, to its former state. Now what would I have done differently knowing what I know now about the importance of recovery?

To avoid chronic levels of stress even during the lead up and carrying out of wonderful positive events.

Ways to Recover

Number one is sleep. I would have prioritized sleep then in the way that I prioritize sleep now. I know that I need eight to nine hours of sleep a night. To have the wherewithal to balance my coping mechanisms, regardless of what’s happening in my everyday life, and that can be when I’m creating a plan and working up to a big event like the one that I hosted then, or even just creating the ability to navigate stressors in my everyday life.

Number two, regular exercise. I’ve always loved regular exercise, and in the last couple years, I’ve noticed how I can feel the stress hormones in my body being burned up as I use my body to exercise and to release some of that high level of cortisol that can build up in our systems as we are experiencing stressful events, positive or negative.

Three, creating some boundaries and guidelines around the types of things that I prepare for myself and allowing some space in between one event and the next. I’m not always great at this because I’m a doer and I like creating plans and I love having things going on and I have learned. That I need space in between one event and the next, even if it’s just a few days for retreats and workshops.

I like to have at least a month or two and recognizing the boundaries that I need to have in what I say yes to and what I say no to.

Number four is making sure that I’m engaging regularly in hobbies that don’t feel stressful. Now, this is going to be different for everyone. A few months ago in Richmond creative club, I was hosting a creative workshop. And one of the girls who was there said, I don’t feel relaxed while I’m doing this project. I feel really stressed out while I’m doing this project because her own ideas about the way that she wanted it to turn out and her perfectionism was coming into play within the project itself. There’s some mindset shifts that can happen there, but overall choose hobbies to de stress that don’t stress you out.

That should go without saying, but sometimes we need the reminder that there is no right or wrong hobby. Maybe cross stitching or water coloring feels stressful to you. Maybe you’d rather go on a walk or plant flowers or collect leaves or listen to music as a hobby. The last two episodes of the podcast, episode 299 and 300, recount my most recent Women’s Retreat, where I hosted 14 women on a week-long adventure in Istanbul and Cappadocia, Turkey.

You’ll notice when I talked about that event that one of the things that I intentionally planned for was a few extra days on the tail end of that event that I could intentionally recover from the stress of hosting the event now, I know this can sound silly because you’ll think, you just took a vacation after your vacation because of the nature of hosting and planning and preparing and the logistics involved of being in charge of an event.

It’s so fun. I won’t downplay how much fun I have as I host retreats, as I host events, and my emotions are on a much higher alert, the cortisol in my system, the norepinephrine happening and circulating in my system to engage my focus and my ability to interact in a meaningful way while I’m in charge of these events is stressful.

And I recognize after years of hosting events. That one of the things I needed to plan for was to recover from hosting the event itself to have a couple days. Sometimes it’s a day. Sometimes it’s a couple days to relax and breathe and sleep in and not oversee anything for a little while.

Until I can bring my emotions and my hormones back to baseline, which enables me to re-engage in my everyday life in a healthier way. I’ll share another couple tips after a quick moment from today’s podcast sponsor.

Sponsor: EveryPlate

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A Few More Tips

Just speaking of recovery and stress reduction techniques, something else that I’ve used in the past is making sure that I have a home delivery meal kit on my doorstep when we come back from a family vacation so that I don’t have to meal plan or think about buying groceries immediately for that next upcoming week. Having a ready to go plan and all the ingredients pre proportioned on the doorstep makes the return from vacation easy. That’s one example.

I want to share a couple more. Maybe you’re not planning events. Maybe you don’t have big projects happening at work, but you are a mom and you’re home with your kids and you have the regular stress of just everyday life happening. What is recovery in that sense look like? I just shared one favorite tip, which is, having groceries or a meal kit ready to go when you come back from vacation.

Another thing that I love to do that I used to do regularly, when I had younger kids, when we returned from vacation, I had a cleaner and a babysitter planned for the day after we got home, knowing that I had a day off after a family vacation where I wasn’t in charge of organizing and cleaning the house, where I had groceries or a meal kit delivered, ready to go, that I could spend that afternoon physically, emotionally, mentally recovering, whatever that meant.

Sometimes it meant. Running errands, sometimes it meant spending time unpacking while there was a sitter taking care of my younger kids, having a cleaner available to Ease the transition of coming back home after vacation. Sometimes I would book the cleaner for before we got home, sometimes for the day that we got home.

These are examples of planning for recovery. Everyone knows that it can be hard to come home from a vacation. It’s very silly. All of us would acknowledge that the idea of needing a vacation from our vacation sounds silly, but the reality is most of you listening are women.

Who have families and you are the one carrying the mental and emotional load in general of The family vacation itself, you probably have done most of the planning, you’ve probably organized most of the logistics, you’ve probably been primary caretaker of the kids while you were traveling, if you were all together as a family, even on a couple’s trip, and, I know that I’m a planner, I kind of default to that, and also, I can come home from a trip that I planned that was a relaxing trip with my husband, and also feel like I, could use a day off of being in charge of things.

All our circumstances will be different. It is important to acknowledge though that if you are carrying that load, if you are in the driver’s seat of even positive things like family vacations or family events or birthday parties or things like that, that you know that naturally what’s going to happen when you are performing in that you will feel effects of the stress in your system.

Again, whether it’s positive or negative, your body will experience it the same. Your body doesn’t distinguish between whether the cortisol is high in your system because you’re about to do an incredible wall. Presentation at a job that you love, or because you have just gotten off the phone call, with someone who gave you really bad news like you, your body doesn’t differentiate between the stress, the reason the stress is happening to your system.

And so, we need to learn to not differentiate between the reason we may need to recover. If we are experiencing a stressful event, Positive or negative, we need to plan for the recovery of that event. Now I’ve talked about some specific ways to recover from specific events, but also, if you’ll remember, I shared a small list of simple things that we can do in our regular lives to bring ourselves back down to baseline at the end of every day or day.

Midday, every day, the more aware that we become of the patterns of stress in our lives, the better able we are to counterbalance those moments of increased stress with intentional recovery activities. I recently went through a yoga teacher training, a 200 hour to become a registered yoga teacher. I’ve been doing yoga for 25 years.

I’ve really loved it. And for a long time, I thought about yoga as exercise. And there were times in my life when I would schedule to go to yoga, and that would be like my exercise for the day. What I’ve recognized Now, recently for myself and the type of yoga that I most prefer, which is a more relaxing recovery style of yoga is the benefit that practice must counterbalance my CrossFit training, which is yoga.

Very intentional, high intensity exercise. So I go to CrossFit, and I work hard, and I’m building muscle, and I’m challenging my endurance level, and I am both stressing my body and de stressing emotionally when I’m there. I also have recognized how Beautiful it is to have a counterbalance for my CrossFit activity in a regular yoga practice, whether I’m doing it at home or going to my local yoga studio and seeing that as intentional recovery from this intentional stress.

Where are areas in your life where you are listening to this podcast and thinking about something that causes stress, positive or negative, in your life? And I want you to consider how are you counterbalancing that stress with recovery. If you’re taking client calls all day, every day, and aren’t giving yourself a full lunch break to go outside and go on a walk and take some deep breaths and get some perspective, you probably have more stress than recovery and you are going to burn out because of that chronic stress.

If you are continually caring for your children, taking care of everything, and carrying the balance of that mental load without counterbalancing that with regular and deep sleep, with time for yourself, with hobbies, with enjoyment, that are things that de stress rather than increase stress, you are likely going to burn out.

You’re putting yourself at risk for the type of chronic stress that leads to chronic dysregulation and an inability to navigate the regular ups and downs of an everyday life. I know that it’s a challenge, particularly for Women in caretaking roles because the system that we live in, if you live in America, is not set up to support all of the unseen labor that we’re doing on a regular basis and studies will back that up will show that parents are Women in particular in caretaking roles are at a high risk for chronic stress, for fatigue, for burnout, for depression, for anxiety.

The U. S. Surgeon General just issued an urgent warning that parental stress is a public health issue because parents are exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind. I’m acknowledging that in this episode and hopefully giving you some ideas of tools that you can start to pick up and make space for and prioritize in your life, not to completely avoid stress because it is unavoidable.

Instead, to intentionally avoid it. And regularly recover from the things that are causing stress in our lives as I’m closing out this episode today. I saw an Instagram post that I thought was interesting and it caused me some reflection and I want to share the gist of it with you. I don’t have it pulled up.

I don’t remember exactly what the resource was, but the idea was that a lot of people, their primary That the primary places that they’re spending their resources are on things that may increase their lifestyle like Clothing or an expensive car or, the type of home that they choose to live in that some of these lifestyle benefits, you may call them benefits or things that aren’t that could be considered luxuries are taking precedent over intentionally choosing to prioritize spending resources of time and energy and money on things that will benefit us.

Mentally and emotionally, like a gym membership, therapy, paying for childcare on a regular basis, taking time to go on vacation occasionally, and I think it was, it was a blanket statement. I didn’t necessarily agree in. That’s where everyone’s priorities are. But it was interesting to take stock of where I am spending most of my resources.

Is it on things that will cause stress, continually increase my cortisol? My fight or flight, my need to keep up with the Joneses, my need to catch up. Am I adding more stress to my plate with my priorities? Or am I counterbalancing some of the naturally occurring stress in my life by prioritizing things that will help me?

Help me with recovery. And I recognized for me, most of my resources at this point in my life are going to things that help me recover from stress. A gym membership, a yoga membership, paying for therapy, paying for a house cleaner a couple times a month, things that Are not considered must haves that increase our ability to recover from the naturally occurring stresses in our lives, and they don’t necessarily help us look like we’re living a luxury life or stay ahead.

I don’t buy expensive clothes. I don’t have an expensive car payment. And yet, I’m prioritizing getting to bed before 10 o’clock every night and getting a full night’s sleep. Thinking about how I’m going to navigate and cope with my seasonal depression that I know is, a rhythm for me that I must manage every year and planning right now to be able to not experience the type of chronic Overwhelmed that I can’t sometimes I’m feeling in the fall and winter.

I’m curious where you find yourself on that spectrum. If you look at the ways that you’re spending your time and money and resources, are you intentionally planning for the recovery that you need in your life? And if not, Maybe consider some ways that you could do that. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

This is episode 301. I hope that you’ve enjoyed listening to some ways that you could intentionally build recovery into your everyday life. And I will talk to you again next time. See you later.