Leaky Cups: Identifying the small leaks to prevent burnout
How do you fill up your own cup?
That is the question with which I began the New Year.
I couldn’t even wrap my head around goals or intentions. Mostly because I just didn’t feel recovered from 2021.
I crawled into December feeling burntout and used up. My cup was dry. The cumulative fatigue of two years of trying to keep a small business afloat in the midst of a pandemic. So burnt out that I was contemplating abandoning Rise.Run.Retreat. altogether. Maybe it was time for something new? I wagered. So I applied to jobs. Surely that would help me.
But before I made a rash decisions I made the very wise decision to take a step back. A last-ditch effort to fill my empty cup. I took a 2.5-week vacation from work, went away to a cute little harbor town in Maine with my family and generally tried to shut off the whirring part of my brain.
But when it all came to an end and I found myself “back in the office” on January 3rd it didn’t feel like enough. My cup was just a little damp, hardly filled back up. And that’s when it hit me:
I think my cup might have a hole in it.
That metaphorical hole is my relationship with responsibility and control, with fear and anxiety. So no matter how much I pour into myself, I’m draining myself just as fast.
We talk about life stress as if it is something that exclusively impacts our minds or emotions, as if it exists in some intangible place, when really it has very tangible effects on our bodies.
Training stress is easier to wrap our heads around, we get that a long run or intense intervals impact our physical body. We feel it in our muscles, in our energy levels. We want food, a hot bath, and a nap, and the next day a nice easy recovery run.
But a quick check of our bank statement can have the same impact: your hand goes to your forehead, your brow furrows, shoulders hunch forward, chest tightens. You might not even notice it. And then you close your computer and move on with your day carrying that stress with you and it spills out as you snap at your kids, or suddenly notice all the clutter that no one has picked up and feel it closing in on you. And you carry it and carry it. And maybe a meal and a nap and a recovery run won’t provide the rest your body needs?
So your cup is not just pouring from the top, but leaking from the bottom.
I keep using “you” and “your.”.
It’s me.
And maybe it’s you too.
So I’ve been asking myself: if what I did in December wasn’t enough, what is? And what needs to change?
Filling my cup can’t be an end-of-the-year, last-ditch effort. It has to be built-in. And I know this. I KNOW this. I’ve talked about it a million times, it’s the very reason why I started Rise.Run.Retreat. because of an experience I had after the most stressful year of my life (when our son Jack underwent five surgeries between 4-months and 8-months old). I went out to Oregon to run Hood To Coast with Nuun and the women I met, the running I did, the swag bag I received all of it filled me up. It was energy pouring into me and I came back not just revived but different.
One of the core lessons I talk about at Rise.Run.Retreat. is the idea of honoring and nourishing our bodies, how as women, so many of us have lost sight of what that means and the little voice inside us that whispers the desires of our hearts has grown quiet. We can’t even hear it anymore, because we are too busy taking responsibility for everyone and everything around us.
So what happened? How did this core belief breakdown so completely and to my personal detriment?
Boundaries. Not necessarily lack of them, but a dishonoring of boundaries.
We think of boundaries as something for the people around us, but we also need some personal, internal boundaries. In 2020, I set the boundary that the Monday after every Virtual Running Retreat would be a complete day off. A day to recharge and rest. And then in November of 2020 when all the in-person and virtual events had finished, I took a day to go walk in the woods, treat myself to a coffee, go for a long drive on my favorite back roads and basically do nothing. I didn’t have to go away or rent a cabin or get a massage. That was all it took. I set those boundaries very clearly in 2020 and honored them. And then in 2021 I didn’t, not intentionally, but rather subconsciously.
I’ll just do a few emails.
I mean I could drive to the trail to go walk, but that’s going to be thirty minutes there and then thirty minutes back and that’s an hour and there’s a lot I can do here in an hour.
I basically spent the whole weekend alone running and riding. I’ll count that as my time away.
I can remember one day in particular in September of this past year, it was the day after the Virtual Retreat and it was a gorgeous ‘still-summer’ feeling day and I thought: I want to go paddleboarding. This could be one of the last days. Mark and the kids were out for the day to go to writing class and play practice and jiu jitsu. I was alone. And then I imagined the time it would take and when I’d get back and all the responsibilities I’d be walking away from if I did the thing I wanted to do. And I just stayed home and I cleaned and took care of some emails instead and told myself I was taking advantage of a quiet house to get things done. I told myself that my productivity would make me feel better.
Why did I deny myself what I wanted?
Why did I believe the lie that productivity is the feeling that will fill me up?
I regret that now. Because if I had honored that desire, if I had held those boundaries firmly then perhaps I wouldn’t be in a place where I felt so completely empty that I wanted to quit it all now.
Self-denial is the leak at the bottom of the cup.
Breaking the boundaries we’ve set for and within ourselves is the leak at the bottom of the cup.
Finding worth and value in our accomplishments and productivity is the leak at the bottom of the cup.
My intention for 2022 is to patch up this leak in the bottom of my cup and to keep filling from the top. To re-work my relationship with responsibility, productivity, and stress. To not bargain myself out of taking care of myself. To honor the desires of my heart that pop up on a whim, that might not necessarily be the most productive thing, but are the best thing for me at that moment. To set boundaries for and within myself and keep them.
Here’s to full cups in 2022, friends. What will you do this year for YOU?
-Sarah