You won’t do a good job if a good job is all you do
I have a confession: it didn’t feel quite right leaving this part of the book until the end because the topic it covers – distinguishing between our work selves and our private selves – is the most important thing I want to impart to everyone who reads this book. But it made sense to place this chapter here so we could first walk through the earlier facets of seizing your yay and give context to this discussion before we got here.
The distinction between our professional or productive identities, on one hand, and our private identities, on the other, is so important to explore, especially because some of us have never made this distinction at all. We all have ‘work selves’ (or at least most of us do) but not all of us have cultivated the other parts of who we are (yet).
Leaving our private lives until last to discuss serves as a perfect illustration of how easily the personal can slip down our priority list and, sometimes, fall off the list altogether. When everything else is so much louder and demanding of our attention, it becomes easy to let our time and energy become wrapped up in examining and evaluating our working lives. We don’t give nearly as much airtime to who we are outside of our productive output or what we ‘do’ – after all, we are human beings not human doings. We define ourselves and others, and we make sense of things based on our jobs and output, but that was never meant to be the totality of who we are.
The bulk of this book has been dedicated to discussing how to chase your goals and find your joy in relation to your working dreams (whether entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial), and that is absolutely a crucial part of creating a life you love given how much of our time is dedicated to working. However, earlier on I briefly touched on the idea that you don’t necessarily need to find joy in your work. Joy can be found in hobbies or elsewhere, provided you’re searching for it somewhere in your life. It’s only recently that we seem to have adopted this societal belief that your work must excite you and be fulfilling in every single moment in order for it to be worthy of doing.
It’s called work for a reason. Historically, this word has always been defined based more on effort expended or activity undertaken than on the subjective engagement or satisfaction of the worker. My grandparents would probably turn over in their graves to hear millennials (and, to be fair, other generational groups) turn down great job opportunities simply because they don’t see them as being ‘fun’ or don’t feel ‘passionate’ about the industry or what the job involves day-to-day (okay, that’s a mass generalisation, but a common stereotype). I have worked since I was fourteen and legally allowed to, and I wasn’t at all passionate about most of the jobs I had, but I accepted that I had to work to get the ‘cash monies’ to pay those bills, bills, bills.
'We define ourselves and others, and we make sense of things based on our jobs and output, but that was never meant to be the totality of who we are.'
I will always remember turning to one of the amazing people on that Rwanda trip with us, Pat O’Callaghan, to chat about the many ways the trip was opening my eyes to greater purposes in my life besides corporate law. And I shared with him how I had started feeling a little lost even though I wasn’t a year into full-time work. He wisely responded that perhaps we don’t need to be passionate about our work, and that instead, our work can simply be a means for us to fund a lifestyle that makes room for passion elsewhere. I had never really considered that perspective until that moment, and it really helped me get through the next few years at the law firm without constantly questioning why I didn’t feel completely engaged by everything I was doing.
Understandably, many people may choose to stay in jobs they don’t necessarily adore because, on balance, that job provides enough money, opportunities, growth, stability, etc. for them to live a good life and still have time to find joy in other outlets. If you’re an artist or creator, turning your talents or passions into a job with specific briefs and deadlines can kill the joy it brings you, so perhaps you would rather not make your talent your job as well. I’ve had friends who have taken a risk on their passion and made a big life change only to find out it wasn’t what they thought it would be, and they’d rather go back to what they had. It turns out, the grass isn’t always greener when you get to the other side.
In those cases, rather than finding their yay in their work, those people have simply turned to other things in their life that bring them joy. The great thing about feeling the yay is that it has flow-on effects that can filter through to all other areas of your life from just one activity that ignites you. I wonder if many people who feel unhappy at work are actually just unsatisfied generally in their life because they don’t have a ‘yay practice’. They’re not investing any energy in finding that joy somewhere else, which could in turn make work tolerable – even enjoyable. It seems that, although I love the quote it came from, the essential element of seizing your yay is not just about finding a job you love and never feeling like you’re working a day in your life. After all, I’ve been lucky to have found a job I love but some days definitely feel like hard work! Rather, seizing your yay is more about finding something you love and making time for it at all costs.
Even if you have been able to merge your passion with your profession, like I have, it is still crucial to distinguish between your work identity and your joy outside of that. You’d be forgiven for thinking your yay project was done, but work (even very happy, fulfilling work) was never meant to be the whole picture. In fact, in your situation, it’s possibly even more important to draw a line between your life inside and outside of work because, when you’re completely dedicated to and invigorated by your work, you have no motivation to stop or put boundaries in place, and can easily become consumed by it. When you’re indifferent to or disinterested in your job, by contrast, that desperate desire to clock off and do other things helps make the distinction between work life and personal life much clearer.
'Frustratingly, I have realised that you can actually have too much of a good thing.'
So now, whether you love your job or not, you can’t do a good job if it’s the only thing you do. We live in a ‘more’ society that conditions us to think that more is better, but I’ve found that all (or most) things are actually best in moderation. As you’ve heard, I had to learn this the hard way during my first few years in business. At first, my new job felt like pretend work because it was so much fun, so I never felt like I needed a break from it. That drive was fuelled by how visible the impact of our labour was on the growth of the business. Unlike my corporate job, I could see the direct financial and growth benefits when I worked longer and harder on our business, so what was my incentive to invest time in anything else?
You already know that this relentless mentality ended up in my complete physical burnout (again, the face-palming is real). But it also ended up in two other kinds of burnout that I hadn’t encountered before: emotional and creative burnout. Frustratingly, I have realised that you can actually have too much of a good thing. Positive and exciting stimulation is still stimulation, and all of us need time out both physically and mentally. Everything works better when you unplug it for a break then plug it back in, including us.
Look after your body, it’s the only place you have to live
It’s fairly obvious that our body has physical limits, we’re sometimes just not very good at identifying what those are until we’ve well and truly crossed them. Unless your job depends heavily on your physical state or performance, like in the case of elite athletes, many of us are quite out of touch with the impact of our lifestyle on our bodies. I know that I assumed that as my job wasn’t physical it probably wasn’t taking much of a physical toll on me. It took many a rude awakening and some serious symptoms before I realised that I’d been chipping away at my energy bank more than I thought, without taking the time to put deposits back in. I only learned my limits (and trust me, I’m still learning every day) by mistakenly crossing them and paying the price afterwards. It is so important to start learning the signs your body sends you when it needs you to take a break, and respect how important it is to respond effectively.
We ask so much of our bodies these days. We bombard them with information and sensory overload on the daily, then get frustrated when they won’t keep up. I hope that you haven’t had to experience a full health crash or burnout to fully grasp the importance of resting and taking breaks from work, although it wouldn’t surprise me if many of you have. Even short of a full-health burnout, there can be so many other negative health or wellbeing outcomes that can happen when you don’t look after yourself physically. For example, regularly catching colds and getting sick from low immunity is uncomfortable and inconvenient.
When I’m pushing it, my body’s signature move is to flare up the old swollen glands down the sides of my neck and throat, and my immune system starts to fight back in response. If I ignore this for long enough, my body will whip out the beginnings of a delightful UTI (urinary tract infection), which is not a good time at all. For some of you, your body’s messages may come via cold sores or mouth ulcers or whatever else your body does to show you it’s on struggle street. It’s funny how we think it’s optional to slow down in those times rather than essential to do what our body is screaming for.
I have (I hope) gotten better at responding to these physical signs of being run-down before things get too serious, but I still grapple with that pesky little bugger, adrenaline. After moving into the health and wellness industry, I learned just how much you need to nurture your body and interpret the signs it so readily gives you about what it needs. But I’d wait to hear from my body before I’d slow down, rest or take time away from building the business. The problem with this approach was that adrenaline would creep in and gave me a false surge of energy and motivation – it would override any other symptoms my body might be giving me. This would keep me going well beyond the physical limits of my body, and before I’d know it, I’d have done too much damage.
Adrenaline can make you feel so good – like you’re thriving and filled with unlimited energy – when you’re really just entering the primal ‘fight-or-flight’ state traditionally reserved for dangerous or stressful situations. Now, I’m learning that I won’t always feel like I need to rest before I truly need to because adrenaline can so cleverly mask the signs.
The science around our fight-or-flight response is fascinating. To put it simply, we are meant to spend most of our time in a normal, relaxed state sometimes referred to as ‘rest-and-digest’. Occasionally, however, things around us that are threatening or terrifying will trigger a stress response known as fight-or-flight. When our ancestors confronted danger in their environment, they’d have one of two choices: stay to fight the danger or flee to escape it.
In a modern-day context, the trigger for a fight-or-flight response could be a physical threat such as a growling dog or the fear of a big presentation at work. It can even be a perceived fear, such as a phobia. When this response is triggered, the body prepares itself to react to danger and a flood of hormones activates the sympathetic nervous symptom, which then stimulates the adrenal glands to release adrenaline as well as other chemicals. When this happens, you might feel yourself becoming much more alert, your body tenses up and your heart rate increases.
This type of stress can be critical to our survival in a dangerous situation, and it can help us perform under pressure. The problem these days is that we are surrounded by so many potential triggers that we spend prolonged periods in this fight-or-flight state. We then mistake this for genuine energy without restoring the equilibrium of rest- and-digest. The productivity hamster wheel I speak of, and the constant stream of busyness, can leave us in a state of chronic low-level stress.
Before I understood this form of energy and alertness, I would mistake it for having a full tank of energy and I’d push through life at full speed (or in ‘beast mode’ as I love to call it). This unwittingly destructive pattern put my adrenals in overdrive and ultimately led to burnout. Nowadays, I am more conscious of focusing on restoring the rest-and-digest mode and returning to a tranquil, balanced state of mind as much as possible. This is one of the reasons I feel it’s so important to give yourself time to literally slow down and rest, even if you don’t necessarily feel like you need it just yet.
If you want to read more about this, I often turn to the work of Dr Libby Weaver, internationally acclaimed nutritional biochemist, author, speaker and founder of her own plant-based supplement range. One of her books, Exhausted to Energized, was especially helpful to me and helped me to understand my energy systems and ways to interrupt the burnout circuit. Although I have tried, unsuccessfully, Dr Libby explains that we cannot fight our biology and the symptoms that our body ‘gifts’ us to guide us towards the things our body needs more of. The key to better health is not resisting those signs and making better choices accordingly.
'Nowadays, I am more conscious of focusing on restoring the rest-and-digest mode and returning to a tranquil, balanced state of mind as much as possible.'
To be clear before we go further, I am absolutely no stranger to the guilt and discomfort of slowing down something that is going well or that ‘needs you’. It’s not as easy as just pressing ‘pause’ on your life and responsibilities. In most situations in our modern-day life, the to-do list is never-ending because there’s always something else we could be doing and the incentive to rest seems to get feebler every day. In the case of small-business owners, you are often the only person who can do most of the work so if you take time off, literally nothing gets done. If you’re a parent, which I am not just yet but can fully appreciate, the guilt of taking time off rather than spending every spare minute with your family would be even more intense.
What keeps me focused in those times is to come back to the whole idea of reframing things in a way that gets the message through to your brain. For example, if you don’t want to rest because you want to be productive, just flip that into a reminder that if you wipe yourself out and get sick, your productivity will stoop to a grand total of zero. In that light, it becomes irresponsible not to rest and pace yourself. Same goes for parents or anyone else, really. Remind yourself that there’s no point going at 110 per cent of your capacity for a few days before crashing and making yourself useless, when you can go at 80 per cent and last forever. If your concern is that taking a break or looking after yourself takes time away from others, think of how crabby, exhausted or distracted you will be around them if you’re unwell or exhausted.
Something that also comes to mind here is an anonymous quote, ‘You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.’ While some of us are prone to burn out through overwork or pushing too hard on our own way to yay, others burn out trying to help those around them at their own expense (or, if you’re like me, a combination of both). Very early on when I started seeing my psychologist, the first word she introduced me to was ‘enmeshment’ which, on a technical level, is one of many schemas or patterns of thought we use to organise our understanding of the world and frame our thinking. (If you’re interested in schema therapy, look it up. It will likely spark a lot of reflection.) Put simply, enmeshment describes excessive emotional involvement in the life of another (or, in my case, also in the wellbeing of our businesses), in which boundaries are permeable and unclear. After learning more about this, I recognised that this was a huge (and long-enduring) area of concern for me; I was constantly setting myself on fire for other people.
While I find it hard to rest at the best of times, I find it even harder to switch off to the needs of others. For example, I find it very hard to say no when people request a sit-down or a coffee so they can run through their business ideas because I genuinely get excited to help others succeed and want to pay it forward for those who helped me in the same way. I also think once we start to see ourselves as a type of person (e.g. a giver), we put so much pressure on ourselves to keep up with that standard (perhaps by going out of our way to keep giving at all costs). I would often commit to giving far more help than I was able to provide while also maintaining my own work and downtime. I intimately understand the guilt factor in saying no to people and how it can feel awkwardly selfish. But I’m slowly starting to understand that saying yes to others sometimes costs you what you need for yourself and it’s not selfish to prioritise those things again so you show up better for those around you. Some might even say that self-care is a community service!
'You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm.'
Of all the things that will constantly change throughout your life – your location, your surroundings, your family, your friends, your job – the one thing you are stuck with, and the thing through which you experience that life, is your body. And yet, we so easily forget that and invest our time and energy in everything else. What you overdo now, you steal from later, and while it might not seem so in your younger, reckless days, physical health is a longevity game. In the more relevant present, the quality of your physical state is going to have an impact on the quality of everything you experience in that body. As an obvious example, you all know what it feels like to try to live your best life with a hangover. It’s not exactly the best foundation for gratitude and zest for life.
Self-care is not selfish; it’s imperative. The more your physical self is nurtured and well fuelled, the better the outcomes of your performance and emotional state will be (for you and the others around you). There is so much evidence about how important good nutrition and regular exercise are, and how they have positive effects on all areas of life. In my case, I have slowly been learning how to make my health a non-negotiable. I’ve been building certain things into my week to support myself in this area. I’ve learned that we are so incredibly different to each other, and things that work amazingly for some people will do nothing at all for others. It’s a great thing that health and wellness is becoming a bigger industry, and that we have access to so much more information, but we are positively swimming in confusing and sometimes contradictory information. If you’re interested in improving your health, I highly recommend seeing some experts who can tailor things to your body and lifestyle.
Broadly, what I think is most important to prioritising health is that you find some sort of routine that makes it easy for you to stay consistent. It’s also important that you make decisions about this time for yourself in advance so you can’t forget to factor it in. I’m constantly tweaking and adapting my personal routine, particularly between the seasons or between trips, but there are a few key things I try to keep up.
• Exercise three–four times a week: Like many of us, I’ve admittedly been through phases of working out every single day religiously, and I’ve overdone it without needing to. I didn’t realise at the time, but my strict daily gym visits when I was working at the law firm were probably also motivated by my mental rather than physical needs, as they provided a midday break from whatever I was working on. Now, a daily workout is too ambitious for me given everything else I want to fit into my week without skipping any sleep. As we discussed above, my body’s appearance isn’t related to my job, so I don’t need to prioritise working out over other activities that leave me feeling strong and balanced, although I completely understand that some of you may have different goals. After lots of experimentation, I have found that three–four decent workouts of 30 minutes to an hour per week with a few gentler walks with our dog in between is a great balance for me. Any less than this and I feel sluggish or lethargic; any more and I start to feel quite run-down and perpetually sore. So, while some of you might thrive off a once-daily or even twice-daily form of movement or exercise, that frequency has the opposite effect on me and leaves me feeling less energised.
• Experiment with different workout styles: Like most things, it’s good to move your body in different ways instead of repeating the same thing over and over. I’m a bit phase-y and find I get obsessed with something for a few months before swapping to something else. I’ve done yoga, F45 workouts and, more recently, running. But I also have a short attention span so when something becomes too predictable, I get bored and like to change it up. A typical week of workouts for me might include a weights session, a cardio workout like F45 or a long run, some conditioning like Pilates or yoga and then a repeat of something or a random fun class like boxing or something I haven’t tried before. I’m quickly falling in love with the new Strong rowformer classes that Michael Ramsey recently brought to Australia. These combine the isometric conditioning of reformer Pilates with the intense cardio fitness required for rowing. When I’m travelling, I find it harder to keep up a routine, but I’ll often take a resistance band with me and do a body-weight-resistance workout or just find a staircase to run up and down. Whatever form suits you, it’s just important to move your body not only for your physical form but for the many mental benefits (love that rush of endorphins!).
• Drink more water: I’ve always been a relatively good water drinker, especially since my teen years when my skin was more temperamental. You probably know that water makes up around 70 per cent of our body composition, and that staying hydrated is vital for optimum functioning of every process within your body. Hydration affects our skin quality, body temperature, oxygen levels and our digestive system, among many other things. However, as Dr Libby explains in Exhausted to Energized, too many people live their lives in a constant of mild, chronic dehydration even if they are aware of how much of our body is water. If you’re feeling foggy or fatigued, you might be overlooking hydration as a contributing factor when a simple glass of water could help you feel better. I try to drink two–three litres of water per day. Make it easier for yourself by keeping a nice water bottle or glass on your desk or wherever else is easily accessible so you can keep track of your intake throughout the day.
• Eat plenty of wholefoods and very little processed foods: I don’t want to get too prescriptive here as I don’t have a nutrition background and I know that we all function best with different nutritional regimens. There are some wonderful books out there that I regularly refer to for guidance in the food department, including books by Lola Berry, Luke Hines, Taline Gabriel and Lee Holmes. I don’t subscribe to any special form of diet (although I’ve tried more than my fair share, none of which worked as well for me as intuitively eating), but I try to eat a lot of wholefoods, a small ratio of meat to plants and as few processed foods as possible. I generally eat three big meals a day with lots of snacks throughout to keep my energy sustained. I’m one of those very sensitive ‘hangry hippos’ who gets spacey and irritable if I go too long without food, so you can imagine how badly it went when I attempted intermittent fasting. When I’m working intensely, physically but also mentally, I go to town on snacks to fuel my brain – many a spoon of peanut butter was consumed straight from the tub in the writing of this book.
• Get at least eight–ten hours of sleep: The most easily sacrificed area of our physical wellbeing tends to be sleep, even though it is the one most directly related to our performance. How many times have you cut into your beauty sleep because of a deadline or a Netflix binge (or a big night out, if you’re more of a party animal than me)? If you need any convincing on the importance of sleep, you must read Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution, which collates all the knowledge and research on the benefits of sleep in the most digestible but action-provoking way. A statistic that still shocks me is the similarity between being drunk and pulling an all-nighter: a study in the Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal found that after 17 or 19 hours without sleep, participants performed worse than someone with a blood alcohol level of .05 per cent. Everyone has a different threshold when it comes to the amount of sleep they need to feel their best, and it can take a bit of trial and error to work out what yours is. It also changes with time; now that I’m over 30 my sleep needs are very different than they were when I was 20. Given all the adrenal fatigue in my history, my sleep requirements are higher than the average person, so I work best off a ten-hour sleep (and I still sleep-in on weekends). This just goes to show, you don’t have to be a 5 am riser with a three-hour morning ritual to live a yay-filled life.
Whatever your threshold is, take the time to figure it out and stick to it. Since childhood, I’ve been a nightmare to get to sleep, even though I adore it once I finally wind down and let it envelop me. Poor Nic has to deal with making me wind down every night, knowing how ineffective I am when I don’t get my eight to ten hours. Because I know I don’t find it easy to let go of the excitement of the day, I’ve slowly developed a sleep routine to help signal to my mind that it’s time to shut down. All the apps on my phone shut me out at around 8 pm, making it a big barrier to override that if I wanted to work/ scroll mindlessly later. There’s an oil diffuser and silk mask next to my bed that physically cue me for sleep time. We all have different things that work for us. Of course, brand-new parents are the exception, I know they have few opportunities for a full night’s sleep, but sleep will eventually find them again (although if I come back for a second book as a mum, I may revise that!).
'You don’t have to be a 5 am riser with a three-hour morning ritual to live a yay-filled life.'
Looking after yourself can seem overwhelming but you don’t have to tackle every aspect of your wellbeing at the same time. It can be done in small increments, perhaps by starting with a little exercise and taking things from there. We often revert to the excuse of not having time, but you always have time for the things you put first. If you don’t put your health first, how can you expect your body to give you the best results? There needs to be as much give as there is take, so make time to give back to yourself. And that doesn’t just mean physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Finally, we’ve arrived at the wonderful topic of play!