The Lazy Genius Podcast - #286 What’s Saving My Life

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Today is one of my favorite episodes we do every quarter or so on what’s saving my life. Y’all like it too because it always has above average downloads. I think we’re always looking for language around what’s making life easier and better for other people so that we can experience that for ourselves. So I hope today’s list will do just that.   Helpful Companion Links The next edition of the Latest Lazy Letter hits inboxes on Wednesday. Get on the list here. Episode #258: The Seven Kinds of Rest and How To Know Which One You Need Massage tool Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas Bonus episode of The Lazy Sisters where we talk about relationship rhythms Download a transcript of this episode.   This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there. You're listening to the lazy genius podcast. I am Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is one of my favorite episodes we do every quarter or so on what's saving my life. Y'all like it too because it always has above average downloads compared to the other episodes. I just think we're always looking for language around what is making life easier and better for other people so that we can experience that for ourselves. that today's list will do just that. So let's start with what my life looks like right now. Now, I don't usually do this, but I am realizing that our lists of what's saving our lives, that list is closely related to what is happening in our lives, right? You need different things

in different seasons. So I'm going to share mine with you just to offer a little bit of context. So on the work front, things are good. They're a little slower right now, which is nice, because we have come down pretty significantly from like book launch energy with the lazy genius kitchen. But we really have some good creative energy happening towards a couple of projects, more about that later. But work is really fulfilling right now. My family life is kind of a mixed bag. We have a couple of pretty significant things happening, like hard, significant things happening in both of our extended families, mine and my husbands. And that takes a lot of emotional energy. and they also take time sometimes, right?

Kaz and I, we're doing really great in our marriage, but we're not really seeing each other as often as we usually do because we both have things going on. Like we have commitments happening, but also in regards to these family situations. Plus, we're both real tired. So, like, I'll go to bed while he's, like, just gearing up or he will fall asleep.

You know, it's just kind of, we're good, but we're missing each other a little bit, which is sad. Parenting is a bit of a bear right now. that takes a lot of energy. Also, it's fall. And fall is our busiest season by a landslide, always, every single year. It doesn't matter what is happening. The reason is because we have 10 family birthdays during the fall slash early winter season. So from mid-November to the end of December where my birthday is, there are 10 birthdays. 10. 10. Now you add that to holiday stuff alone. That's all. It's nuts. It's nuts. It's nuts.

and this season, Kaz and I are also both individually involved in a couple of things right now that take us away from home. It is also the first year where we're like really in show for season. My oldest has an activity like pretty much every single day. So that's been a transition to figure out like how to navigate that as a family. We're definitely handling it better than we were, you know, a couple of months ago. It feels more normal now, but it's still really hard. So, you know, we are busy for sure. But I just because I'm, I'm, I'm, I am busy. Just because my schedule is busy, it doesn't mean that I always feel busy. Now, sometimes I totally feel busy. But for the most part, I'm not carrying my busyness in my body

the way that I used to. And this is the perfect time to start talking about what's saving my life. And the first three of them have to do with rest. So let's jump into the list. Number one, the number one thing saving my life is remembering the nuance of rest. Now, I did an episode a while back about the seven kinds of rest, and I really, really like that episode. I have also been paying attention to where I need to refuel and rejuvenate, which is a specific kind of rest. I shared this on Instagram a week or so ago, but I had a stretch of days early in October where I had some harder things to process.

I had some conversations that took a lot of energy. and then after, you know, several days of conversations that were hard, we had the most fun weekend as a family. We went to the fair. We hosted our church community group at our home. I got to cook for people, which I really love doing. So we did things on that weekend of rest that made me feel like myself, right? That are so much fun. But those things also required a lot of energy, a lot of physical energy and they were not restful. Specifically, they were not rejuvenating, right? A lot of you mentioned in the comments and in my DMs after that post about the difference between rest and recovery. We need to recover before we truly rest. I also read something recently that was super fascinating to me

about how the opposite of overwhelm is not rest, but wholeheartedness. that we can experience calm within circumstantial overwhelm when we are whole on the inside, when we are not fragmented. Now, I find great healing in therapy in that area. That's why I've gone for a decade. I go every other week. I likely will do that for the majority of my life. Processing my own internal hairline fractures, right?

and finding tools to help tend to those and heal those before they become full on breaks, that is massive. Not only in my mental health in the traditional sense, but in my ability to manage my time, to process my schedule, to be in relationship with people, and to really truly experience rest. So the first thing that's saving my life is paying attention to and remembering the nuance of rest. Number two, what's saving my life. And I did not mention this before, but what saving my life comes from Barbara Brown-Taylor, who I love. It's a question that she has posited that many of us

continue to ask. But I did not mention that in the beginning, and I want to mention that here. So the number two thing that is saving my life is sleeping on my back. Okay, you guys, I have struggled with back pain most of my adult life. Now, for a long time, I thought it was because my chest is on the larger side. I got boobs, so it's just the truth. So I started getting regular massages a couple years ago, hoping it would help. And it did. It did help. But it did not heal. I still struggled with back pain. Every time I would go see my massage therapist, she would spend the time just trying to get me to like a baseline. And we never had enough time to get to a full baseline. The knots in my back and my neck are always enormous. And then they become bigger, the more active my life is. Like the more

stressful it is? Well, about a month ago, she said to me, how do you sleep? Like, what's your body doing when you're sleeping? We all sleep on my side like everybody else does, you know? She said to me, I wonder what would happen if you slept on your back, because the body is actually designed to rest on its back. And I think it could really help you. It could really help your spine and your alignment and the stress and your muscles. I was like, well, who wants to sleep on their back? Ew. But I tried it. and I hated it. Like the first night, I was like, well, this is, it was a nightmare. The first night of sleeping in my back was a nightmare. I hated it so much. I felt like, like a robot, just lying there. Like I was powering down and unable to move. Like it was not okay for me to move. But the next morning,

you guys, my pain had noticeably decreased. It was not gone, but it was definitely, it had definitely decreased, which, I mean, dang it, you know. I was hoping it wouldn't work and I could keep sleeping on my side. So the next few nights, I tried to figure out how to sleep on my back without feeling like I was sleeping on my back. So what I do is I like, I lay there on my pillow, right? And I really try to nussle the pillow like really into my, like under my neck. So it feels really supported. And then I wedge like a super squishy pillow up against one side of my body. So I feel more grounded. And then I also will sometimes turn my head to the side a bit when I sleep. I'm not sleeping like face. full up to the ceiling all the time. Now, sleeping with my head to the side, it does not seem to impact

the sleep negatively at all. Really, it's the back that matters, not the head. Y'all, my back pain is gone. I am not kidding you. I am not kidding you. It is wild. Just a few days ago, I was really comfortable on my couch, but I was lying on my side. And I started to get the droopy eyelids, meaning it was time to take a 17-minute nap, which I'll talk about that a minute. And I was like, well, I'm so comfy and I'm about to fall asleep. I don't want to have to like move myself to lying on my, like, it's fine, it's fine. And so I took my 17-minute nap on my side. It took me three days to reset and get rid of the pain caused by 17 minutes of sleeping

on my side. Bonkers. Absolute bonkers. Also, when that happens now, and I did this before, There's this little massage tool. I'll put this in the, we'll put this in the show notes. But I've started using this little massage tool that helps release the pressure and the pain when I do sleep funny or I roll over in the middle of the night and I'm on my side.

Or I just actively choose to nap on my side like I did the other day. It's called the inducer original. And honestly, it looks like a little set of red foam boobs. You lie on the floor for 15 minutes or so with a sloth. thing under your neck, like right on the pressure points, like right under your skull. And it relieves the tension in the most mysterious ways. It does, maybe, I've never had acupuncture, but I wonder if it does kind of what acupuncture does with pressure points and release, but there are no needles, you know? It's just this fascinating little thing. So that was my main mode of like pain management for a while.

I would just manage the pain. It would sort of take some of it away, right? And then I started sleeping on my back, and now the pain is gone. So if the pain shows up, after a weird sleep, I use the inducer. Both things have changed my life, y'all. Like sleeping on my back has saved and therefore changed my life. It's just I am now asleep on your back evangelist. If you have back pain, please try it.

Okay. Third and final rest-related thing that's saving my life is my television, lunch break, and nap time. I have shared before about the importance of eating lunch and not working during lunch. It was a process to normalize a lunch break for me. It took a while. And now that I have, I'm building on that a little bit at a time, right, and making it work better for me. Now, right now in my season of life, I'm doing a lot of reading. More about that in a second. But reading during lunch, it just was not doing the same thing it used to, because I used to read during my lunch break. But right now, in this season, it's just, it's not saving my life how it used to. So in late

September, I started taking my lunch break with a TV show instead of a book. I started with the Rings of Power, which took about three episodes to really sink into, by the way, but I absolutely loved it. That's on Amazon Prime. Season 1 is over. I'm going to have to wait like three years because this thing has such high production value. It's going to take so long for the big season two. It's fine. It's fine. It's But I started with that and I loved it. Then I moved on to Andor, which is the Star Wars. It's like a Star Wars adjacent thing, which is so rad. You don't have to love Star Wars or understand Star Wars to actually really like this thing.

I have not finished it, but I love it. That's on Disney Plus. And then on days where I feel the need for like a slower kind of action than Andor or gives me, I have started watching alone on Netflix. That's the show where like they drop survival experts into the wilderness. and then they have to just survive alone. But right now they're in grizzly bear country. I have never watched this show before.

I'm new to this show. And I am absolutely fascinated. Now, mostly I'm like flabbergasted because you could not pay me enough to do that, to go in that show. The winner gets a half a million dollars. You could guarantee me $10 million before I even began. You're like, hey, you need to go live in the wilderness for 100 days or whatever. I wouldn't do it.

No, thank you. It doesn't matter. You cannot pay me enough money. to do it. But watching it is so fascinating. So eating my lunch and watching a show has been so restful and good and slow and fun and also really rejuvenating. I've loved it. I've loved it. And then on most days, I followed that lunch break with a 17-minute nap. Not every day merits one. Because remember, here's the thing about the 17-minute nap. You have to feel physically tired to do it. It's not just like, okay, lay down for 17 minutes. You have to feel your eyelids drooping.

The nap doesn't really work without the ability to fall asleep. I mean, it can. You can just like lie still. You can keep your body still. Lie there, which is great. But I think the actual sleep does its best work when you're literally about to fall asleep. So I only take the nap if the conditions are correct for me to do so. But that happens probably four out of seven days a week, easy.

So I turn on my white noise. I set my timer for 17 minutes and then I close my droopy eyes. And I wake up when the timer goes off. It's amazing every single time. We'll be right back. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast.

Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, the number four thing that is saving my life is I am rereading the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Moss, but I'm doing it with our beloved Bree McCoy. Bree just finished the series also by Sarah J. Moss, a quart of Thorns and Roses, which I also recently read and loved. And she asked me if she should read Throne of Glass, because she could not imagine loving a series the same way that she loved Thorn. Well, I'm pretty sure I love Throne more than Thorn. So I said, yes, she should read it. Also, side note, hearing Brie, who is new to the world of fantasy, try and keep these titles straight is just the delight of my life. Sergei Moss did us no favors, no favors with using Throne and Thorn, and then all kinds of things about like ice and fire in every single title.

it's like a whole thing. And they're two different trilogies, but it's just like, is it a throne of a, of a, of a, of a frosty castle? Like, what are we reading here? It's just the best thing ever. Well, anyway, I typically do not read things. That's generally not my choice unless I'm in a reading rut, and then I read something short like the ocean at the end of the lane by Neil Gaiman. But I'm in a season right now of reading a lot of nonfiction. I've mentioned this in a couple of other places before. I think the newsletter maybe. But one of the things that's making, our fall as a family. One of the things that's making our fall busy is I'm taking this class at my church where we're reading a lot of books on faith and theology. It's a class that runs from October to May. So it's going to be a lot of reading for a long time, right? I also have added

some books of my own to the list I've been given because there are topics I want to explore further outside of the syllabus. So because of this nonfiction reading energy that's pretty heavy, right? And it needs to happen every day. There's just like big nonfiction energy every day. My fiction needs to be the easiest thing in the world. So when Bree said she was going to start reading Throne of Glass and I knew I needed a reread or something easy, I immediately was like, we should read it together. So we are. It has been the best. We just text like various exclamatory sentences to each other as we read. And then I will send her photos of who I cast as the characters as they show up in the story. It's just been, it's just been the most fun. It's been the most fun.

So that's number four. Number five, there are seven of these, by the way. Number five is a new relationship rhythm with my sister. You all heard hopefully the episode I did with my sister Hannah about two weeks ago. And we recorded that episode like a solid week before that. So we are in week three or four now of this new relationship rhythm and it is the best. So to recap, if you're like, what are you talking about? My sister, she got a full-time job. We live in the same city. We actually live close enough that you cannot complete. Like if you start bejeweled by Taylor Swift, you cannot finish the song before you get to my sister's driveway. So we do live pretty close to each other. But she got a full-time job over the summer. And consequently, we just fell out of

rhythm in how and when we talk to each other. So the podcast episode is the real-time conversation of us trying to lazy genius our disconnection. And we came up with a couple of next steps and we've been doing those. We are having our Tuesday phone call. We have gone to lunch. We've had a walk. We've already used the hourglass and airplant language and our texting, which came up in the episode. It has just been so fantastic. So if you have a relationship that feels like a little on the fritz, I highly, highly recommend that episode. So that's number five. Number six, fall sports. You guys, you guys, I am a huge sports fan of pretty much all kinds. And I love a postseason of anything. I love the finals or the playoffs of anything. I don't love regular season baseball. It's just like,

it's too long. But I adore postseason baseball. Oh, the drama. It's so fun. So right now, right now we're in the middle of the NFL season, which I love the NFL. We are obviously in the middle of college football season, which I like. I like college football. We are in postseason baseball, like actually in the World Series right now, which is so fun. Go Phillies. And drum roll, please, my favorite sport of all, the NBA. The NBA has begun its season. We're like two or three weeks into the NBA season. Y'all, October is my favorite month for sports. More than March. More than March Madness. It's just been the best. Just the best. It's like an emotional buoy every single day because every single day a game is on. Every day. It's just so much fun. I love it. And then finally,

the number seven thing that's saving my life is working on projects. Now, I have a work project that I'm working on that I can't really talk about yet. And I might not be able to do that for a while because it's very early in the project. But every time I have a project, I feel more like myself. It doesn't matter what kind of project it is. If it's something I care about, it is so good for my mental and emotional health. It can be something for work. It can be throwing a party. It can be working on a cross-stitch gift for a friend's birthday. It can even be going into the holiday season and thinking about like how we're going to decorate and getting gifts for people and all of that. There is something deeply restorative to me about projects.

Now, I love routine. I love consistency. I love repetition. Those are really beautiful things. And there is a spark that happens in me when there is something else to keep tinkering away at in the midst of those routines and consistency. I also think that changing how we see upcoming seasons that require like additional time outside of our routines, I think changing how we see that is really, really a great benefit.

Instead of approaching, this is an example, instead of approaching the holiday season and just being filled with, you know, absolute dread over having to get gifts for people, you can reframe it as a fun project that you get to start and eventually finish. It's not an obligation. It is an opportunity to tinker away at something fun based on what matters to you. I can tell, like as a person, I can tell when I do not have a project in my life. I itch for it. It's necessary for me.

Now, if I don't have one, that's okay. I think it's good to learn from that. I can pay attention to how not having a project makes me feel and see what I can learn from that observation. Like, what is that trying to teach me? But ultimately, it's really good for me to have a project. Right now, the one for work is really fun. Now, not all projects are really fun all the time.

That's fine. And then I love the project of the holidays. I really do. So I feel like that's another area where my sparkle shows up is working on projects. I really love it. So to recap, the seven things saving my life are, remembering the nuance of rest, sleeping on my back, taking a lunch at nap break every day, reading Throne of Glass with Bree, having a new relationship rhythm with my sister, fall sports,

and fun projects. I hope this list encourages you to make your own or even to notice the things that are adding sparkle and groundedness to your life, even if you have not named them as such yet. And that's what's saving my life. Now before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it's Catherine Knees. I'm sorry, Catherine, if I'm saying your last name incorrectly. Catherine sent me this message on Instagram. Hi, Kendra. I recently started binge listening to your podcast, and I love it.

It's helping this, let me overthink this, career mama, to actually relax a bit. I wanted to share this for any holiday magic maker mamas out there. Santa comes to visit our little girls at Christmas, which happens to be my husband's busiest time of the year at work. It's legitimately hard and he's amazing for diligent. diligently taking it on each year. I take on most of the Christmasing, so when Santa fills stockings for each of us, mine has been conspicuously underfilled. Buying my own stocking stuffers when I'm already overwhelmed with all the things family work and holiday makes me sad, tired, and self-pitying.

So this year, she sent this to me in July, by the way. So this year, I'm buying stocking stuffers for me the same way I do for the rest of the family all year as I find them. I'm looking at you, clearance rack rifle paper company notepad. Now, my more convincing stocking will contain some things I'm actually excited about without feeling like a sad chore. Thank you for your awesomeness and pep talks, Catherine. Okay, I love this so much. I love this so much. Here are a few reasons why. And I'm going to bring in a couple of lazy genius principles here. First, Catherine is living in the season, right? It's already a busy season, but she has named that it's also her primary responsibility to usher in the Christmas spirit because of her husband's job. Also, Catherine, I just really love how you're

honoring your husband in your language. It's like, it's really beautiful to me. Anytime I hear partners speak highly of each other. I just love that. But Catherine is living in the season. She's not resenting it. And she's also paying attention to when she might resent it and doing something about it. Now, she's also being kind to herself by prioritizing her stocking as much as her family stockings. I love that too. Also, there is something super important here about adding one small component to an existing routine. It's kind of like build the right routines and start small. Catherine already has an intention and practice of buying stocking stuffers throughout the year. Because that practice already exists, she can more easily add this new component to it where she also

gets things for herself. It is not building an entirely new system, but slowly adding to one that's already working. Now, I'm not going to go into this a lot now, but this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, a lot. The process of living a lazy genius life is slow and it builds upon itself. You have to start small and create the tiniest of routines and make one thing easier at a time. But over time, those small steps add up. And, and they allow you to add one more small thing to something that's already there, slowly creating a life that feels solidly rooted in what matters to you without feeling like you're always behind.

So this is just an example of that. I just love seeing people add in small ways to things that were already added in small ways in the past. That to me is the real beauty of living like a lazy genius. Just love it so much. So thank you for this message, Catherine, and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, y'all, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life,

you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.