S3 E20: Embrace Doing Less During the Darker Season

December 11, 2020 Rebecca Hass

For many of us, the winter (and holiday) season comes with lower energy but higher expectations, and the dissonance of that can be really challenging. In this episode I invite you to question your assumptions about how much you have to get done, how many priorities you need to have, and how you treat yourself around that. Listen in to learn some tangible ways to do less that don’t involve throwing everything out, and are easy to try!

What does doing less look like for you in this season? What’s nourishing you? Tag me on Instagram @rebecca_hass and we can share ideas!

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TRANSCRIPT

Hey, everyone, welcome to Episode 20 of Being A Whole Person! How's your December going so far? I hope it's going reasonably well. I'm recording this in the past. So I don't know how I feel in December yet. But I'm thinking positively.

Today I'm going to talk about embracing doing less during the darker season, meaning literally the darker season, the winter in the Northern Hemisphere, which is where I am. If you're not in the Northern Hemisphere, maybe save this one for when your winter comes. And then, of course, in the darker season, in terms of what's going on with COVID. Both of those things are going to require extra care, and extra replenishing of energy.

I just did a workshop a couple of weeks ago, called Build Your Seasonal Self Care Survival Kit. It was recorded, so that if you didn't find out about it back then, you can still get the recording. And it's all about making your own personal self care menu, so that you have something ready to go for whatever situation you're in. But especially thinking about this winter, where we might be more isolated, it's a darker time of year, you might be feeling more overwhelmed or depleted.

We go through the seven types of rest and come up with self care practices, using that as a framework. And then you'll get a big master list of everything that sounds good, and then pare it down into your menu so that when you're overwhelmed, and you don't quite know what to do, you'll have this list ready to go, and you don't have to think too hard about it. Because I don't know about you when I'm really overwhelmed. I can't necessarily think that stuff through very well. So this workshop in order to make it as accessible as possible is on a sliding scale from five to $30, and I'll put the link to buy it in the show notes. And hopefully that's supportive for you.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I talked about staying connected and feeding your creativity during the winter season, and I kind of alluded to the subject of this podcast, which is doing less. These things are kind of interrelated.

But I know that a lot of us kind of dread winter, because of this lower energy. It makes us more lethargic, and some of us struggle with seasonal depression. If that's not you right now, awesome. But you still might find some useful stuff here, even if you're feeling great.

I know that some of you do like to sort of hole up and make things in the winter. And that feels really nourishing to produce more during the winter, but I also want to make space for the idea that generally when it's darker and colder, a lot of us have less energy.

So, if your hibernation instinct seems to be taking over, that is completely normal, and as much as I don't like seasonal affective disorder, it does make sense that this darkness, and having less energy is a signal to our bodies to slow down and rest more. Our animal instincts are kicking in. We're just like bears or any other hibernating animal, it's telling us to go into low power mode and depression goes with low power mode.

This is part of what makes the holiday season tough - because it expects us to have a lot of energy, all the events going on. I know this year is not like any other, and there aren't as many things going on, unless you're doing a lot of things on zoom. I don't know exactly what's up in your part of the country or in your life. So maybe you are feeling extra busy this year. But I know that some of us aren't, so I want to acknowledge that too. It might feel like an absence without some of these events.

I thought last year that, my first winter in California, that the extra six degrees of latitude south would really help with seasonal affective disorder. But it was very cloudy and rainy last December and I definitely did feel the seasonal depression, so I was really happy that I held on to my light, my SAD light that is intended to be therapeutic for these darker times of year. That's been super, super helpful. I wasn't sure how much I would use it living here. And when it's been sunny, it's been better. Since I'm recording this ahead of time, I don't know yet what December is like for me, but whether it's sunnier, and I have more energy, or whether it's cloudier, and I'm more lethargic, I am prepared either way, and it will be what it will be.

So, in that episode, two weeks ago, I went into this a bit more, but you can kind of look at the seasons of the year, as phases of the creative process. You might be in a winter phase, while it's actually winter, or you might be in a winter phase during the summer or any other part of the year, depending on where you are with feeling dormant, or having more energy to start things.

How this looks in real life depends on the amount of energy that you have, and that's going to vary from day to day, it is even going to vary through different parts of the same day. So, if you are feeling the winter energy, the dormancy, the going inward, the death and rebirth cycle, you might need to do less.

But, if you are like me, and you tend to be kind of Type A, kind of ambitious overachiever-y, or recovering from that, you might find it hard to do less. Productivity culture does make that seem kind of unacceptable, because productivity culture wants us to think that our worth is completely tied to our work and how much we can produce. And if we're not doing anything, then what are we even doing? Of course, I find that pretty frustrating.

I talk about reframing beliefs like this in some previous episodes about compassionate productivity. (S3E8 + S3E9) So definitely go back and check those out.

It also just might be hard to do less, because you just have a desire to do things you're interested in, and there might be a lot of things you're interested in. And on the flip side, maybe you're finding that your interests and things you used to love have waned, and you're like, “Why? Why don't I like doing that anymore? Why don't I ever feel motivated to do that anymore? Why don't I ever feel motivated to paint, etc.”, and you're just feeling kind of blah. That does not mean there's anything wrong with you, or your motivation - it might just be a signal of low level depression or burnout through this very overwhelming time, that you need extra care and you need to be extra nice to yourself.

It's okay to make the choice to stop doing something for a while, even if it's something you like. And even if that might be hard, it's not forever. I'm not saying you have to stop doing something. But maybe just consider, if you're feeling really wiped out, it might be a good choice to stop doing this thing until the end of the year, until spring, you can reassess anytime you want to, and change your mind anytime you want to. But it's okay to take breaks, even more extended ones.

If the thing you want to stop doing is something that depletes your energy, that might be a good reason to either cut back or stop doing it. But even if it isn't something that depletes your energy, it might just be that it takes away energy from whatever you've deemed the most important stuff right now.

How many things can be on your main priorities list? Well, you get to decide. But sometimes those decisions have to be made, like, “I just don't have energy for all three of these things right now.” And so you can view this as this is the season for one of them, and the other will have its season soon, and that's just kind of how it goes.

A quick note about the word priority: it used to never be plural. “Priorities” was not a thing until the 1940s or so, even though the word priority has been around in the English language since the 1400s, because people just did not view it as you could have multiple priorities. It was: This is most important. This is number one. I read that in the book Essentialism. And I thought it was super interesting.

I still, as much as I would like to pare down and have fewer priorities, I’m kind of always wanting to do too many things. I understand where that is coming from. Oftentimes we convince ourselves that we have to be doing too many things at once and that might not be true.

So, tangible advice for doing this in your daily life: you can look at your to do list and see if it's super, super long, and see if you are actually completing the length of the list that you make for each day. If you're not, that is not a personal failing, that just might mean your expectations for yourself do not match your energy level right now, which is okay. You might just pick three things to put on your list.

If you're like, “Only three things, oh my God, I'll never get everything done,” what if you got the same amount done? And instead of just having a long list that you never really get to the end of and you feel bad about? What if you had a shorter list, and you completed it, and you felt awesome about it, and like you had a little bit more control over your life, which things feel kind of out of control right now. And I could have a whole conversation about whether we're ever really in control, but I will not do that right now.

So, picking fewer things to put on your to do list might be good. But also, specifically planning and scheduling fun things and rest into your day so that it absolutely has a place, so it is on the schedule, and it can't be taken away - that is a really good idea, too.

And if you have projects that maybe you had too aggressive of a timeline, and you thought you could finish before Christmas, or whatever it may be, maybe you can adjust that timeline and stretch it out a little bit. Maybe you can give less effort to some things in your life. I know, to everyone who's an overachiever, perfectionist, recovering perfectionist like me, that might sound like, “What, you're asking me not to do my best at everything, that's horrible.” I know.

You don't have to give 100% to everything. You can choose what you give 100% to. Giving less than 100% to some things might be what gives you the energy to give 100% to the really important stuff. And if you are typically an overachiever, I'm going to say that your 80%, or even maybe less than that, is probably better than a lot of people's 100%. Because you're so used to going above and beyond. So it's probably going to be okay.

If you're usually an over-thinker about projects or decisions, too, try entertaining the thought that maybe you're already complete with it, maybe it's already good enough, and you don't have to research like six more ways to do something - maybe your knowledge is good enough already. That can save so much time and energy.

For those of you whose schedule and work don't allow for a quieter December, like I'm advocating for, I hope that you can find that where you can, and if you don't like how busy you are in December, maybe you can plan for next year being different.

If you're a musician with gigs, I know that this is the time of year when you might make a lot of income that sustains you for longer periods of time, and maybe that's a trade off that you want to make, that's awesome.

If you run a product based business and you do all your sales during this season, maybe that's something that you have to gear up for, and then maybe you can plan for rest in January instead. I decided last December, well, kind of decided, but it kind of just happened, to embrace doing less. I usually had busier Decembers with lots of gigs, and last year, I just had a couple because I was new to the area and not a lot had happened in that area yet. I offered some extra self care one-off coaching sessions, but I wasn't crazy busy, and that felt like the right thing to do. So, this year, I didn't have to plan for a less busy December because COVID kind of did it for me.

But I hope that if you do have a really busy December that you can at least plan some pockets of time around your stressful days or stressful weeks, and then definitely some recovery time afterwards. Because I get that we can't always control and have a sustainable pace because sometimes you’re in mega-go-project mode, and that's fine.

So, I'm trying my best to live seasonally and not to fight against winter. I always used to really hate winter because I didn't like the darkness, and when I lived in Minnesota, and I know many of you are in northern climates and winter is really long, and it can be hard to have to deal with snow and cold weather for that long and to deal with not having color when you look outside, like, the lack of green is a real thing, too. I know, I'm not in it anymore, but I completely empathize with you still, because I know all about it.

I hope that we can all observe our low energy, and hopefully not spend so much energy resisting having low energy, and that we can nourish ourselves accordingly. To fit what we need in this season. It'd be interesting to see how that changes with a lot of us being at home more. I know it's easy to just create a lot of projects for yourself and overwork anyway. But if that's not the right thing, that's not the right thing.

Are you feeling a lot of inward energy lately, too? Do you have seasonal affective disorder or depression as something you deal with regularly? If you do, I see you, I'm with you. Winter can be tough, but we're in it together. And we can always share strategies and support each other.

With that, I hope you have a great week. This is going to be the last new episode of December, and the next two to three weeks. I haven't decided yet, are going to be replays of old episodes, old interview episodes from earlier in the podcast before it became all about creative wellness. So I hope you enjoy those, and I hope you have a good holiday season. I hope you have a great December in any case, and I'll be back with new episodes in January. Take care!

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