How are you doing?
A few weeks ago, I got really burned out,
and have been consciously restoring myself since.
One of the things I keep coming back to is my morning routine,
it’s always a good place to start when I’m feeling off.
And lately it’s even begun to inspire me to write other times of the day as well.
As a result, I’m starting to feel like my old self again!
Plus I’ve had some big aha moments…
Morning Routines
Here’s the morning routine that has helped me bounce back from burnout and overwhelm.
Plus it’s inspired me to write more.
Note: I might not do this all in one day…
- Try not to touch my phone. If I do, it’s only for listening to some music to get up and moving. But I avoid social media, communication, and anything that will create noise in my brain.
- Spiritual Time. I listen to guided goddess meditations by my friend Kris Seraphine Oster. I also love to pull Tarot Cards.
- Exercise. I like to dance or do physical therapy exercises for my right hip and wrist.
- Tapping / EFT. Whether I have two minutes or 20, I tap to get calm, grounded, and focused on long term goals.
- Writing in my notebook or in my digital journal. I’ll explain this one in depth below.
The Writing Practice
I want to go deeper into my writing practice specifically and what a day might look like,
since I combine writing by hand and a digital journal in a way I don’t see very often.
Playing with my digital journal lately has become my FAVORITE piece of my ritual.
Yesterday, I didn’t get that writing time, and I found myself craving it later in the day.
Like filling out a puzzle, something just felt missing.
Craving aha moments,
things fitting together into a bigger picture.
Knowing where things belong and thus where I belong.
I’ve gotten so many big aha moments over the last few weeks doing this practice,
plus repeating it has helped me review and remember those insights.
I cannot handle the thought of a juicy idea falling in the cracks!
I feel safer knowing that my big ideas aren’t just going to go poof, and are
deeply embedded in my system so they actually change how I live and the results I experience.
This is helping me do it all.
Example of a day playing in my digital journal.
I didn’t get a chance to write in the morning yesterday
but I craved it so much I sat down to do it in the evening.
I followed my same process…
Just FYI for the last two years I have been keeping a digital journal.
I don’t always start by writing directly into a computer document.
I like the way a pen feels in my hands as I write, so often I write on paper.
But if I leave it in a journal I won’t use my ideas so I have to get them into my digital journal.
To do that, I might summarize my main ideas and type them, or
I’ll transcribe them by reading them out loud into an app.
Lately, I have been tired so I’m taking it easy.
I just add to my notes a little whatever it’s relevant
and mostly just look at old notes I already have there.
old notes, diary entries, ideas…
Whether I wrote an entry yesterday, a month ago, or two years ago,
there are a lot of cool things to rediscover that I enjoy reading.
There has always been something fulfilling about reviewing my old notes and journals.
But now I use a special program to organize and find things more easily than
Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Scrivener.
My current process also creates additional connections between documents and ideas each time I review them.
This repetition helps me to remember, learn, and develop even more ideas.
To start, often a general theme calls to me.
Sometimes I get this from tapping, a tarot card reading or a dream.
That’s where I start exploring…
I go off from there,
reading,
making connections,
writing new notes, and
just generally having fun.
Yesterday I was thinking about the word “patience.”
Patience is a theme that has been important to me over the last several years especially.
Since 2022, I noted it as an important 28 times across the 3,000 digital notes I’ve created.
Note: this isn’t a general search for the word ‘patience’,
these are notes I intentionally marked with this theme over the years.
The best thing about the free program I use to digitally organize all these notes is that
I can easily find and click through to the relevant sentences about Patience in each entry.
It doesn’t take me very long to read through everything I have written about patience,
about 20-30 minutes of finding old gems and ideas on the topic.
I revisit notes from 2022 when I began to see having patience with myself as self-respect.
That really changed my life because it made me realize how important it is to stick to.
I came across many other interesting thoughts and quotes and copied anything that felt extra-relevant to ponder later.
Here’s a quote that doesn’t mention the word ‘patience,’ but feels connected anyway:
“Regard yourself as a cloud, in the flesh, because you see, clouds never make mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that was misshapen? Did you ever see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing. But, if you will, treat yourself for a while as a cloud or a wave and realize that you can’t make a mistake whatever you do. Because even if you do something that appears totally disastrous, it will all come out in the wash somehow or another. Then through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence. And through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition.”
Alan Watts
Eventually clicking through my notes, and poking around to whatever catches my attention,
I look at my goals for the year 2023.
Patience was a goal for that year, which is why I ended up there…
New Years of 2023, I made a huge mindmap of different documents, themes, intentions and ideas
(see pic below).
Here’s a zoomed out version of that mindmap —
if I want to reach the words in each square, I zoom in or click into it for a closer view.
I felt impressed that I did this in January 2023,
but also aware that I never did a mindmap like this in 2024.
My next thought was:
Did I set intentions for 2024 at all?
I went poking around to see if I had any notes on that…
I quickly found a review of 2023 I wrote in January 2024, and skimmed through it.
I went down the rabbit hole a bit looking at things like that…
After 20 minutes or 30 minutes reading seasonal reviews and big-picture notes,
thinking about my goals and intentions…
I wrote down what I noticed had changed from a year ago,
what I had done,
what I was still working on, and
what was still to do.
And this felt very good.
Necessary.
Right.
Organized.
The Pay Off
Ultimately something became very, very clear.
As I processed all of this,
my thoughts returned back to patience and
what it meant for me now.
I didn’t do it on purpose, it just naturally happened.
And my big aha moment of the day:
Patience relates to the things that have made me feel burned out.
Since January 2024, I’ve had a lot on my plate.
With my business, my nonprofit work, my life, and
now an additional business that I recently acquired…
Since the beginning of the year, deadlines created a lot of urgency and pressure on me.
In a situation that feels urgent, patience with myself can easily go out the window
but that’s no excuse for self disrespect.
I have to set boundaries to protect my mental health.
I decided to put more emphasis on TAKING MY TIME for the rest of 2024.
For a while now, I’ve been trying to take a slow and steady mindset, because it’s more sustainable.
But I needed to recommit to it.
Why?
I forgot I cared so much about it.
Taking time is more enjoyable for me.
It also tends to be easier for my nervous system, while urgency is bad:
it triggers anxiety, depressed feelings and flashbacks to bad times in my life.
Not to mention burnout and overwhelm.
My mental health suffers under a lot of time crunch.
While I might not be able to control every deadline, there are things I can control, and
I am making a commitment to myself to slow down.
And I think it’s going to make the rest of my year a LOT better.
And if I get into these habits, it could make my whole life better, as well.
So there you go.
After a little more than an hour of playing with my notes on Tuesday night while my husband was playing a video game…
a process that was totally enjoyable and satisfying for me,
almost like a game for me, too…
One little word, ‘patience,’ led me to recommit to myself in a life changing way.
I wanted to share it in case it inspired you to revisit your routines, practices and even,
play with your own notes or writing!
Doing this has been super fulfilling and nourishing for my soul.
Any writing you have, journal entries, old transcripts of you talking, ideas:
There is gold in there.
Don’t forget the power of reviewing things.
it can be fun!
While not all of my deep dives take this long–
some times I just spend a few minutes on it…
Playing with my digital journal has been a really beautiful and nourishing self-care practice for me lately,
That’s why I’m excited to share more about my process in my upcoming digital organization membership.
I’ll be sharing how to organize your ideas
across different notebooks, time periods, or documents,
around different themes, topics, intentions or reviews.
And we will have time to practice together,
so you can put your own spin on it,
and get your questions answered.
Does that sound like fun to you?
Join the waitlist for the Digital Organization Membership
where I’ll share my systems for:
- organizing my journals, content, and writing
plus
- organizing and making progress on projects.
and you’ll get 50% off the price:
===> $30 total for 3 months of membership
only available for the first week it opens…
Click here to join the Digital Organization waitlist for more info.
