A lot of people are talking about FOMO, especially as the US is opening back up after the pandemic. As everything and everyone starts to come out of quarantine and shelter in place, and we are feeling safer about being in public, it seems that a lot of people are feeling he push to rush back into life, and, rush back to returning to life at the same pace we'd all been keeping in the end of 2019 (if not faster). And, many people are layering this return to "normal" with an urgency to catch up for "lost" time, or, trying to cram in more during this time because we fear what's to come after losing so much over the past 16 months. Because 2020 was a total sh*tshow, it's reasonable to be cautious and concerned, but I think it's amping up our anxiety.
In this episode I'm sharing about how it's OK to slow down, and it's also totally OK to Opt Out during this transition time. Maybe you realized that you like a slower pace of life while you were in quarantine. Maybe you discovered you needed more quiet time for yourself. And now that invitations are going out about social gatherings, and people getting together you might feel like you "should" go (and not really want to).
I want to give you full permission to do a couple of things:
1. Take stock in what you really want to do. If you're craving alone time, don't feel like you need to go to an event, or go do anything. Opting out is an option.
2. Notice where you feel like things are "too much." We've all just been through a lot, and our brains and nervous systems have been on high alert for over a year. We've been living in a time where even basic tasks were not as safe as usual, and it will take time to re-acclimate. If it feels like you've done enough today as far as socializing or going out in public goes, let it be enough. Opting out of doing more, or doing anything, is an option.
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Resources
Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg McKeown
There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing by Adam Grant in the NY Times
Make Some Noise by Andrea Owen
Get it Done: The Email Course by Alexandra Franzen
In this episode, I'm talking about the term "languishing," which is something that Adam Grant recently wrote about in the New York Times. His article was titled "There's a Name For The Blah That You're Feeling, and It's Called Languishing." When I read it, it struck me that languishing really is one of the predominant emotions that you find in the messy middle. It's languishing. Isn't full on depression. It's not boredom or anger. It's not any of those. It's just that vague feeling, that things aren't great.
Adam Grant describes it this way, "Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you're muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield, and it might be the dominant emotion of 2021." And, in reading this I felt similar to the way I did when I read about people naming the feeling of grief that was a predominant emotion at the beginning of the pandemic. It has also given me something to call the annoyance and mild overwhelm I've felt recently, and that I even did a podcast episode about.
This low-level funk made me feel that I needed to try and do something, anything, to find my way out and into something else. And so I signed up with Tami Hackbarth's "Deferred Maintenance" program and I tackled just one thing.
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Resources:
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination