So funny about breathing! I was a theatre major and we did a LOT of breathing in acting classes. It was the biggest struggle for me and I always said if there was a class in breathing I would fail. 😂
Breathing is so amazing! I started doing Buteyko breathing exercises from the free (why? so much value) Oxygen Advantage app, and my heart rate variability shot up to the highest it’s ever been and I felt EPIC!!
And, my nervous system literally wasn’t ready to feel that great, so I quit! Excited for when I feel ready to get back to it. I literally “failed“ at my own breathing success. But that’s okay… breathing will be there for me when I’m ready to get back to it.
Oh my, this has soooo much good advice in it. It gives me LIFE to read about all the ways that your community are sinking into softness and self-compassion rather than the productivity punishment we’ve all been putting ourselves through. I completely agree with all these people who are reclaiming their mornings for themselves.
“Productivity punishment” what a great phrase!! In IFS, that’s manager parts of us cracking down and using self-criticism to motivate.
Many of those critical manager voices in our head are actually very young child parts— as young as four or five or six – and that’s the only method they know to motivate us. Now, as adults, we have access to a more centered voice inside of us – which IFS calls the Self, whose compassion and patience and understanding is so much more sustainable, supportive and enjoyable!
Exactly! I came to appreciate and make peace with that punisher part of me as my immature inner warrior - the shadow of the masculine warrior archetype. And he was running my life for a long time because he was my “protector” when I was a young girl, without parents, trying to stay safe in the world. He has since been matured and given a different role in my life 🔥
Thanks for the shout out, my friend. I love reading people's notes to you.
You have always blazed a path through your integrity and authenticity and your clear priotrity of people over profits which is rare in people with similar reach. I'm really excited you're here and to be part of the community you've created. It might help ease the sting of never having made it to WDS!
Thanks for launching "A Year of Mental Health", Chris. I relate to so many of the things you write about, and reading some of the comments left by other folks today, I was like, "Yeah, that's me."
Nowadays it's all about "productivity" and "habit trackers." Since everyone is talking about habit trackers I decided to start one in one of my notebooks. I started tracking things that I had already been doing for years, like taking my daily lunch-time walks. I was already taking my daily walks because I like to go out and get some sun and fresh air, disconnect from work for a bit. It's something I enjoy doing, so why do I need to start tracking it all of a sudden?
We get so hung up with being "productive" that we think we need to log everything we do. I think about when I was a kid. Sometimes I would watch cartoons on TV, sometimes I would draw, and sometimes I would go out and play with my friends. There were no calendars, To Do lists, or habit trackers. I was just being a kid.
Somewhere along the way we lose that, and we start doing what we think adults should be doing. Like someone here commented, I'll go back to walking just because I want to walk, and I'll exercise when I feel like exercising, not because it's on my habit tracker.
YESSS As a lifelong overachiever, I’ve spent the last year disentangling my identity from achievement. Once I broke that link, all the sudden I stopped caring about productivity. The stuff I care about gets done and the rest...well I earned the right to be lazy at this point.
Exactly. Lately I've been forcing myself to not take my laptop to the dining table before dinner. Before, I felt "productive" if I got on my laptop for a little bit before dinner was ready, to get a few things done, which meant that after dinner the laptop would be nearby, ready to be turned on so I could continue doing whatever "needed to be done."
Now, I'll take a book with me instead, or my Kindle, and I'll leave it somewhere close to the dining table. Once I'm done with dinner I'll linger, especially if there's coffee, and I'll just read. I may spend an hour or two at the table, just reading. Later on I may go upstairs to my home office, turn on my laptop and check my calendar and email. I may take care of a few payments and such, or may respond to a couple emails, but in some cases I find out there was something that I needed to do, but that can easily be done the next day. So the laptop is turned off and I go to bed. I may read a bit more in bed before going to sleep.
I've noticed that following this somewhat relaxed routine slows me down in a good way, and I feel good at the end of the day. And strangely enough I feel like I spent the evening in a productive way. Not in the sense of checking off things in a to do list, but in the sense of having invested more time on things I enjoy doing.
Loving this sense of community and the way people are reclaiming their time, energy, and mental space. Elle’s point about taking back the best part of the day really hit home—why do we feel obligated to give our peak energy to work instead of ourselves? Also, the perspective on productivity from Stella’s Acorn is gold: sometimes the best thing to do is the opposite of what seems productive.
This whole series feels like a collective permission slip to breathe, reflect, and unlearn all the ways we’ve been conditioned to measure our worth. Excited to see where this journey leads!
Chris, I've followed you since your early Side Hustle podcast days and happy to follow your latest project here on Substack.
Thanks for the invitation to share our own Substack newsletter. Mine is "Today's HEARTSPOKEN Note" to support note and letter writers who want to claim this powerful tool (pen and paper and a heartspoken note) to connect, comfort, encourage, and inspire: https://heartspoken.substack.com/about
I really like this "Notes From the Community" feature! Thanks for the mention! It's always remarkable to me when I'm having a tough day or week how quickly everything can change when I stop focusing on whatever is upsetting me and do even a small thing to help someone else.
I wrote my first Substack last week. I’m going to lean into it more and see what evolves. For me it’s sharing my 3 am thoughts that I often overthink later in the day and block myself from sharing. https://substack.com/@wanderingaunt
Hi, everybody. I'm loving everything I'm reading, both in Chris's posts and the comments. So much is resonating with me. I'm on Substack too, and my publication is called Imperfectly, Beautifully Human. ❤️
I have a substack about songs that only have two chords. I started becoming obsessed with two-chord songs looking for materials to use when teaching. At the moment, it's a bit of a repository of said two-chord songs with commentary aimed at fellow music teachers, but I will start to add posts aimed at actually learning music if you want to teach yourself, say, ukulele, and you are starting from scratch. twochords.substack.com
If you would like to know just how hard it can be to breathe, take up a wind instrument. ;)
Love this: "It took me a long time to realize that I didn't owe the most vibrant part of my day to to a job. I took it back as mine." I've done the exact same in the last year and it's been such a game-changer for my energy and focus on my personal priorities (like the novel draft I finished!) ✨
So funny about breathing! I was a theatre major and we did a LOT of breathing in acting classes. It was the biggest struggle for me and I always said if there was a class in breathing I would fail. 😂
Breathing is so amazing! I started doing Buteyko breathing exercises from the free (why? so much value) Oxygen Advantage app, and my heart rate variability shot up to the highest it’s ever been and I felt EPIC!!
And, my nervous system literally wasn’t ready to feel that great, so I quit! Excited for when I feel ready to get back to it. I literally “failed“ at my own breathing success. But that’s okay… breathing will be there for me when I’m ready to get back to it.
My rejection sensitivity can’t really take being told I’m breathing wrong. 😂😂😂 It’s kept me alive so far. My poor technique will just have to do. 😭😭😭
Oh my, this has soooo much good advice in it. It gives me LIFE to read about all the ways that your community are sinking into softness and self-compassion rather than the productivity punishment we’ve all been putting ourselves through. I completely agree with all these people who are reclaiming their mornings for themselves.
“Productivity punishment” what a great phrase!! In IFS, that’s manager parts of us cracking down and using self-criticism to motivate.
Many of those critical manager voices in our head are actually very young child parts— as young as four or five or six – and that’s the only method they know to motivate us. Now, as adults, we have access to a more centered voice inside of us – which IFS calls the Self, whose compassion and patience and understanding is so much more sustainable, supportive and enjoyable!
Exactly! I came to appreciate and make peace with that punisher part of me as my immature inner warrior - the shadow of the masculine warrior archetype. And he was running my life for a long time because he was my “protector” when I was a young girl, without parents, trying to stay safe in the world. He has since been matured and given a different role in my life 🔥
Thanks for the shout out, my friend. I love reading people's notes to you.
You have always blazed a path through your integrity and authenticity and your clear priotrity of people over profits which is rare in people with similar reach. I'm really excited you're here and to be part of the community you've created. It might help ease the sting of never having made it to WDS!
So so many gems in here! Thank you Chris for curating them so we could all enjoy it. I’m really going to look forward to this series!
Thanks for launching "A Year of Mental Health", Chris. I relate to so many of the things you write about, and reading some of the comments left by other folks today, I was like, "Yeah, that's me."
Nowadays it's all about "productivity" and "habit trackers." Since everyone is talking about habit trackers I decided to start one in one of my notebooks. I started tracking things that I had already been doing for years, like taking my daily lunch-time walks. I was already taking my daily walks because I like to go out and get some sun and fresh air, disconnect from work for a bit. It's something I enjoy doing, so why do I need to start tracking it all of a sudden?
We get so hung up with being "productive" that we think we need to log everything we do. I think about when I was a kid. Sometimes I would watch cartoons on TV, sometimes I would draw, and sometimes I would go out and play with my friends. There were no calendars, To Do lists, or habit trackers. I was just being a kid.
Somewhere along the way we lose that, and we start doing what we think adults should be doing. Like someone here commented, I'll go back to walking just because I want to walk, and I'll exercise when I feel like exercising, not because it's on my habit tracker.
Keep up the great work.
YESSS As a lifelong overachiever, I’ve spent the last year disentangling my identity from achievement. Once I broke that link, all the sudden I stopped caring about productivity. The stuff I care about gets done and the rest...well I earned the right to be lazy at this point.
Exactly. Lately I've been forcing myself to not take my laptop to the dining table before dinner. Before, I felt "productive" if I got on my laptop for a little bit before dinner was ready, to get a few things done, which meant that after dinner the laptop would be nearby, ready to be turned on so I could continue doing whatever "needed to be done."
Now, I'll take a book with me instead, or my Kindle, and I'll leave it somewhere close to the dining table. Once I'm done with dinner I'll linger, especially if there's coffee, and I'll just read. I may spend an hour or two at the table, just reading. Later on I may go upstairs to my home office, turn on my laptop and check my calendar and email. I may take care of a few payments and such, or may respond to a couple emails, but in some cases I find out there was something that I needed to do, but that can easily be done the next day. So the laptop is turned off and I go to bed. I may read a bit more in bed before going to sleep.
I've noticed that following this somewhat relaxed routine slows me down in a good way, and I feel good at the end of the day. And strangely enough I feel like I spent the evening in a productive way. Not in the sense of checking off things in a to do list, but in the sense of having invested more time on things I enjoy doing.
Looking forward to reading your posts. You'll find my Substack The Unhustle Experiment at unhustle.substack.com
Loving this sense of community and the way people are reclaiming their time, energy, and mental space. Elle’s point about taking back the best part of the day really hit home—why do we feel obligated to give our peak energy to work instead of ourselves? Also, the perspective on productivity from Stella’s Acorn is gold: sometimes the best thing to do is the opposite of what seems productive.
This whole series feels like a collective permission slip to breathe, reflect, and unlearn all the ways we’ve been conditioned to measure our worth. Excited to see where this journey leads!
Hey Chris, thank you for sharing my routine. I like to start my mornings peacefully and with Elle on that one!
Chris, I've followed you since your early Side Hustle podcast days and happy to follow your latest project here on Substack.
Thanks for the invitation to share our own Substack newsletter. Mine is "Today's HEARTSPOKEN Note" to support note and letter writers who want to claim this powerful tool (pen and paper and a heartspoken note) to connect, comfort, encourage, and inspire: https://heartspoken.substack.com/about
I really like this "Notes From the Community" feature! Thanks for the mention! It's always remarkable to me when I'm having a tough day or week how quickly everything can change when I stop focusing on whatever is upsetting me and do even a small thing to help someone else.
I wrote my first Substack last week. I’m going to lean into it more and see what evolves. For me it’s sharing my 3 am thoughts that I often overthink later in the day and block myself from sharing. https://substack.com/@wanderingaunt
Hi, everybody. I'm loving everything I'm reading, both in Chris's posts and the comments. So much is resonating with me. I'm on Substack too, and my publication is called Imperfectly, Beautifully Human. ❤️
Hi Chris! Super excited about this new series. And so much great advice in here. Really love the idea of non-productive mornings.
I write about juggling a side hustle alongside a day job. And things I’m learning along the way! https://jesspicks.substack.com.
I have a substack about songs that only have two chords. I started becoming obsessed with two-chord songs looking for materials to use when teaching. At the moment, it's a bit of a repository of said two-chord songs with commentary aimed at fellow music teachers, but I will start to add posts aimed at actually learning music if you want to teach yourself, say, ukulele, and you are starting from scratch. twochords.substack.com
If you would like to know just how hard it can be to breathe, take up a wind instrument. ;)
Love this: "It took me a long time to realize that I didn't owe the most vibrant part of my day to to a job. I took it back as mine." I've done the exact same in the last year and it's been such a game-changer for my energy and focus on my personal priorities (like the novel draft I finished!) ✨
Chris--nice to see you here. And an excellent initiative--I'm in :)