Hey friend, welcome back. So glad to be here with you. And if this is the first time to the show, welcome. Whoo, we march has been a month, so much. So I had to take off last week from the podcast because it was bananas for me energetically, totally topsy turvy. And I needed to step away, and I stepped away from a few things actually, to cocoon myself and care for myself. Don't get me wrong, my friend, I still had shit I needed to show up to. And too much on my plate with my kids and my husband stuff along with, you know, things going on with life like daylight savings, the clocks jumped ahead and we lost one hour of glory asleep in order to gain one blessing day of or hour of daylight. Don't get me wrong. I love all the daylight. But I've got lots of feelings about this whole clocks changing thing. But I'll keep them to myself. Because if you are not new around here, then you know, I can get lost real quick on a real deep tangent. So if Daylight Savings wasn't enough of a disruption, we were also last week in our second week of the glitch. And that's the two week period between the end of one season and the start of another. All of that leading up to the incredible new moon we have last week today's episode is dropping on Wednesday. And the new moon was the day before on Tuesday. So there was just so much energy in the atmosphere. And for me, cocooning was needed. And I have to tell you, I was and am really proud of myself for doing that. Because two years ago, Steph would have just pushed through and cried and screamed all the way through it. And then been totally wasted afterward. And probably after that, I would have taken some time to sit in the crash and burn and try to pull myself together, quote unquote, by my bootstraps, as they say and barely pull myself together just to quote unquote, function again. And do that damn cycle over and over and over again. And do you know what that cycle is? I'm wondering if we're coming to the same answer. Besides bullshit. And lots of other things. It is an endless cycle of burnout. Do you ever find yourself there, like in this endless cycle of burnout, where you're just barely getting by, and maybe go into complete and utter depletion, and then you get the stores back up just a little bit just to do it again. Here's the thing. This is what I know. We are trying to find ease in our work. And everyday life while also navigating the shit show that is capitalism. But if we're being real honest, the only solutions that are offered for us to reach our goals are pushing us to join the rat race that we don't want to be part of, or bypass our actual experiences. And we don't want to do that either. But the thing is like this, for sure is an endless cycle that leads only one to one place, which is burnout. And then burnout can be an endless cycle, too. I mean, we've talked about this before the intensity, the pace, the expectations of dominant culture is absurd. We absolutely cannot hit the ground running on January 1 as fast as possible, pushing forward as hard as possible and sustain that until the last week of December when capitalism and white supremacy culture say it's okay to slow down if you're privileged enough to do so that is, and even with again, if you are privileged enough to have access to some sick days or vacation days, or to use, you know them throughout the year or maybe even take a vacation at some point in the year. Even with those things if you are privileged enough to have them. It's still not sustainable amidst the climate. That is our society. Because friend, I know you know this, the year is 365 days. It's a marathon of all marathons and you simply cannot sprint a marathon you cannot run full speed for 365 days, no matter how hard you try. And what happens is the harder you try, the worse the cycle of burnout is because what happens is, in order to quote unquote keep up with society's intensity, pace and expectations. and you're on the go all the time, always doing and thinking focused on what's next problem solving, anticipating, reacting, doing damage control. And that's in your work life and in your home life. And all of that requires energy, that you most likely don't have time to refuel on a regular basis. And the act of trying to keep up with dominant culture, it doesn't allow you the time to meet yourself where you are, and give yourself the support you need. So you don't have any choice but to bypass yourself and bypass the energy of the seasons as they change. Especially bypassing the goodness that each season is giving us throughout the year. There's no ease in any of that. And so what it forces you to do is put self care on the backburner or piece it together and snippets and kind of hang on until the next opportunity comes. Now, if you're in my circle, right, if you're hearing this, then I know that you want to balance yourself, care your work and life with the changes of the season and do things that you enjoy while you manage all of it. But what I also know is that most likely you find yourself in the same cycle over and over year after year, repeating the same practices and cycles, even though they're not working. And there's no judgment in that, right. I'm just naming what is. And here's why it is dominant culture tells us that wellbeing and self care look one way or these specific ways. But the problem is we each are individuals and wellbeing and self care practices are not one size fits all or one size fits most. One thing will not work for everyone in every situation, and it cannot be forced into working with all out intensity or blind faith consistency, period.
And another thing I know is that you want to tune into what your body needs, given the season. But most likely you find yourself getting caught up in what it quote unquote, may feel like you need based on cultural conditioning. Because can can move the cultural conditioning like as in Western culture conditioning, and if I'm being specific for myself, and for many of you, listeners, American culture conditioning, but even possibly your familial cultural conditioning, or whatever country some of you do actually live in other countries that listen to this show things you know, from from your own country as well, that cultural conditioning. And sometimes we are kind of at intersections of cultural conditioning to right, multiple conditioning, it all runs deep, and is very prevalent. And the funny thing is, I know that you are pushing against oppressive systems in so many areas of your life on behalf of so many people who are being marginalized and harmed. But what I also know and I've come to realize this through my own journey, and this is the funny part, not haha, funny but like, absurd funny is that these systems, the oppressive systems are also governing our relationship with our self care, but it's in this place of self care, that we're less likely to be aware of it, how the systems are showing up. And we're less likely to to dismantle them. And it's not because you don't want to it's just because while shit when you use all your energy for pushing against and disrupting, and dismantling all of the systems in like the outside world, especially when it comes to the well being the life and the well being of others. There's not enough energy for you to do that for yourself, right. And but another very big and likely scenario that you may be well aware of is the fact that these toxic systems are playing out in your self care. But just as you get pulled downstream fast by the current of society and other areas of your life, the same thing happens with your self care, particularly with the perception of what you think you need. So there's sometimes these these moments where we're not we don't even realize how dominant culture is showing up in our self care. And there are other times where we're very, very, very clear in that but we're so mired in the shitshow that we can't do anything different. Right? And dominant culture, wield so much power telling us what's right and wrong, what's good and bad, and most importantly, what success looks like. And so even if we know better, right, even if we are getting feedback from our body, that it needs this we might do. that other thing instead because that's what dominant culture tells us is good, right? And successful, right. So like, for instance, we may be our body may be calling out for rest or slowing down or quiet or deep connection with somebody or, you know, something, some type of food or some type of experience. But if that doesn't align with what society says is good or right or successful or on the path to success, we bypass it, we bypass that feeling, we bypass that knowing, we may say to ourselves, why do I Why am I you know, feeling like I want to have rest? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? I need to be pushing forward, I need to go and do this, this needs to be done, these people are relying on me. Right? We do what we think we need to do based on cultural conditioning. But thing is bypassing leads to burnout. constantly pushing forward leads to burnout. Ignoring our needs, especially with the season leads to burnout. Because the energy of the of nature changes with each season, which can be supportive of our own inner energy, or it can be aggravated, my apologies for my alarms going off. And our needs will change and may not align with what society says we should need or want. For instance, in the winter, we talked a lot about resting, reflecting, rejuvenating, regenerating, revitalizing. And we talked about doing that for a whole three months from December, through January, into February and part of March, three full months. But that conversation really only happens in December, because then January comes and it's like okay, let's go. It's time to New Year New you meet, right. But that's not aligning with what nature is asking us to do. And it's not aligning with what we're seeing nature do right we see nature go dormant in the winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, we see the quiet, we see the darkness, we see how really nothing's growing in the winter time. Every the soil is dormant and doing its own recycling and regeneration and, and preparing. And it does that for the entire season. But we might do that for a couple of weeks, maybe only one week at the end of the December. Right. So it doesn't make sense. And we are a part of nature. So it makes sense that our body aligns with what's happening in nature, or takes invitations from nature, just the same way as the Sun and Moon go through cycles, it's the same thing. But despite your best efforts to resist that cultural conditioning, right, despite your efforts to get caught up, you know, like resisting getting caught up in society's clutches of doing the same thing over and over, even if it's not working. What happens is we find ourselves doing it anyway, we find ourselves showing up with intensity and doing the same thing over and over, even if it's not working simply for consistency sake. And these things are huge contributors to burnout. But given this, I know you have a deep desire to care for yourself. However, the reality is, you probably have extremely limited bandwidth, capacity, time, resources, or support for you to take care of yourself the way that you want to. So I have a question for you. How do you want to take care of yourself? And given your current access to resources, how much time capacity and bandwidth you have given all of these things? How might you begin to show up in the tiniest of ways. Now you may have some answers coming to you and you may not. So I want to encourage you to offer yourself grace in this process of considering these questions, and grace, and all the moments after this, whether that's minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, for coming up with these answers, you may not know. And the reality is, you may come up with some answers, and they may seem inaccessible to you. So I'd like you to meet yourself there without any judgment. And also try not to push anything away. Because they may seem like they're too much or something. And remember think small. Right? Consider what you have access to right now. And just meet yourself there. I also know this about you that you want to do better for yourself. But you probably have a hard time breaking the cycle of caring for others and disrupting first and then caring for yourself second. So my question to you here is, what would happen if you cared for yourself first and then cared for others and disrupted on their behalf? Second? Would the support you provide to others to your community to this world be less impactful? If you switch the order and cared for yourself first? Would the support you have to provide be more if you first tend to yourself? And then the big question here is what if you built up your energy stores little by little, and eventually began to pour onto everyone from your overflow? Now, you might say to yourself all that sounds well and good stuff, but not possible. I'm going to beg to differ with you friend. And I'll leave it there.
Another thing I know is that you feel guilty saying no, or enforcing boundaries, because you deeply care for your work. And for uplifting others. So you're always connected doing and probably over committing. So the question here is what would happen if you disconnected sometimes, not waiting until you have no other choice? Right, not waiting until you've hit the wall? Or gotten sick? But what if you actively chose to disconnect sometimes? What if you slow down? What if you said no?
Could you create clear lines of protection for yourself between different areas of your life. And I don't mean protection as in from something dangerous, I mean, boundaries, as in protection, as in so you can protect your energy. Even though you're giving your energy to things that you care about things that you consciously choose to engage in. But even those things, you need to protect your energy there so that you don't always just give it away. What have you created boundaries in order to protect your energy because you so deeply care for your work and uplifting others? With the way you show up, change, then for the better.
And then another thing. The last thing that I know is that you struggle with slowing down and learning how to rest and rejuvenate because the world is on fire. The world's on fire. Let's be real. Let me ask you. What would happen if you slowed down? Would the intensity of the fire burning the world increase if you slowed down? Would you lose traction in all of your efforts? Because right society tells us to maintain traction, we've got to maintain intensity and speed right. And maybe that's true for machines. But is it true for human behavior? If you put your critical thinker hat on, if you looked through an objective lens
What would it take from you and your effort to make your dent in extinguishing the fire? Because you're you are impactful, your work is impactful and your fierceness is impactful. But what if you stopped burning yourself out? In order to slow the fire burning the world? Like what if you stopped lighting yourself on fire to slow the fire that is burning the world? What have you amplified slowing down and resting to fuel your fire in dismantling systems of oppression and helping others impacted by the various atrocities happening in the world?
In reality for you right now. What does slowing down even mean? Because if right now you're moving at 90 miles an hour, maybe that looks like taking your foot off the gas just a little bit and taking it down to 80 miles an hour. I want to be clear, slowing down does not mean moving at a turtle's pace. I mean, it absolutely can. And let me tell you moving at a turtle Speight pace, amazing. And this is coming from a whole lot of time spent trying to undo my gogogo nature. Because I think that that's like where our thoughts naturally go, right. It's like when we think of slowing down, we think of turtles, we think of sloths. So I encourage you to consider right now, like in this phase of your life in this chapter. What would slowing down look like for you? And there's no wrong answer. And it's okay, if it looks different from someone else. And it looks looks, it's okay. If it looks different from what it looked like for you last week or last month or last year. That's all okay. And then if you step back and think about rest, what does that word mean to you? Is it one thing like sleep or laying down to watch TV? Or maybe doing pranayama? Or meditation when you can open the space for it? Is the definition of rest layered for you? Or like a variety of things maybe? And something I need you to consider? Is it possible for rest to be a valuable tool, maybe even a secret weapon that would support you in your work and showing up in the world in a resource manner? In interrupting the cycle of burnout? Uh huh. I know so many things to consider, right? And I know I've dropped a lot of questions on you today. And I may be leaving you with even more questions than answers. But remember, back to our practice a couple of weeks ago, have a paragraph AHA and non attachment, we can practice non attachment to having all the answers right now. So as we say, prepare to say goodbye to each other for now, remember this, you can't sprint a marathon. And the truth about burnout is that society's messaging and cultural practices are hugely to blame. And we also must get really curious about the way we're upholding these systems ourselves, especially in our self care. And we must take a critical lens to how we can begin to create space for ourselves to do things differently. And consider how we might answer the invitation of the current season, which for spring, by the way, is gentle renewal and initial planting. From an energetic standpoint, this is the perfect time to begin preventing the end of the year burnout. And if you happen to be listening to to this month after this airs, know that it's not too late to start, something we're going to be talking about more and more in the weeks to come is the yoga philosophy and ethical practice of Brahmacharya which is energy management. And so what I want you to consider as I leave you is how can you open space for tender inquiry about doing things differently? After you listen to this episode. And I'm so excited to tell you that in April, I'm hosting the spring sanctuary, the first ever virtual retreat on Saturday, April 22, to interrupt the cycle of burnout to interrupt the cycle of going and doing as fast as possible and as hard as possible, no matter what interrupting all that to help you prevent the end of the year burnout from now. So head to Steff gallante.com/spring for all the information and to register. Please tell your friends about it. And stay tuned because next week we're going to talk about Why despite your amazingness and best efforts, your coping mechanisms for doing life with as little burnout as possible, aren't working. Friend. Until next time, please be kind and gentle to yourself just as you would those who are most precious to you, whether that's a human and animal, baby or a plant. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the questions and inquiry and support and guidance I provided in this episode. So please feel free to reach out and share and if you've been loving the show, please please please share it with everyone you know, and leave a rating or a review. I am so grateful for you. Take good care and stay connected. You are a badass and you are enough. Be well
