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14: How to Handle Burnout
305 Plays3 years ago
Welcome to Episode 14 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss burnout: what is burnout, how do we avoid it, what do we do when it happens, and why do we see so much of it in the yoga and movement world.
- Does everyone experience burnout in the same way
- What does it mean to be emotionally labile
- Why do so many yoga and movement teachers go through burnout
- Can a teacher in a big expensive city make a living on group classes?
- How do we create boundaries that keep us from trying to ‘solve’ our students’ problems?
- What’s the best kind of relationship to have with your students?
- Some practical tips to prioritize yourself and preserve your own time
- What does Work Smarter, Not Harder actually look like?
Reference links:
I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam
Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Talib
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Transcript
Introduction to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
What is burnout and why is it common among yoga teachers?
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to episode 14 of the Movement Logic podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah Court, and I'm here with my co-host Laurel Beefersdorf. Today, we're talking about burnout. What is burnout? How do we avoid it? What do we do when it happens? How do we know that it's happening? And why do we see so much of it in the yoga and movement teacher world?
00:01:03
Speaker
You know, and Laurel and I are, as always, coming at this from different perspectives. I am a physical therapist. Laurel is a strength coach and yoga teacher, but we tend to have sort of similar, but like complimentary opinions about a lot of things. So as always, we haven't scripted this conversation. We picked a topic and got excited about it, but we've never had this conversation before. It's really just the two of us
00:01:30
Speaker
thinking out loud, bouncing ideas off of each other. And sometimes I think that's when the greatest kind of brain nuggets come out. Ooh. Curp plop. Yeah, curp plop. That's the sound of my one brain nugget per day. I say one smart thing per day. And it goes fully. Curp plop. Curp plop. Curp plop. And then I'm like, oh, thank god. Now I can go take a nap.
00:02:01
Speaker
I don't have to think anymore. I feel lighter now. Exactly, exactly.
Personal experiences of burnout
00:02:05
Speaker
Alright, so burnout. Let's define what burnout is. What is burnout? And I made myself laugh when I was making my notes for this because I was thinking about every school paper anyone ever writes that starts with Webster's dictionary defines. This is how we do it here. Yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
So, so I actually quite honestly did go into Webster's dictionary and Webster's dictionary defines burnout as the cessation of operation usually of a jet or rocket engine. And I was like, well, that's not relevant. I mean, if cessation or
00:02:42
Speaker
of operation is kind of what burnout is, but then it goes on to say, exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation, really as a result of prolonged stress or frustration, and then also to cause to fail, wear out, or become exhausted, especially from overwork or overuse. So since we are, this is not a podcast about jet engines, we're gonna talk about the other definitions, but it feels irrelevant, the jet engine one.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, um as a metaphor. Yeah So so laurel i've heard you talk before about uh, just sort of you know in passing about how burnout How you experience burnout what it looks like for you when when it hits you what your psychological and emotional state? And it's not something where you're you're my understanding. I mean for me as well It's not something where you're walking around going. I have you know
00:03:37
Speaker
physical and emotional exhaustion. Like you don't necessarily recognize it as that, right? I certainly don't. Yeah. So can you talk about when you feel burnout, what it, what that experience is like, how it hits you?
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, it usually takes me a while to figure it out. Like you said, like I'm not just walking around like I am present with my experience right now and it is physical and emotional exhaustion. It's more like I start to become bored and I was thinking about like boredom and how actually I think boredom is
00:04:09
Speaker
a pretty good thing a lot of the times. In some cases when I'm burnt out, what I probably need is more of that good kind of boredom where I'm not scheduled to the hilt and I have some time that is committed to think about, what am I going to do now? I don't know.
00:04:30
Speaker
And so it's not that kind of boredom of having openness in the schedule and not knowing what to do with it. Or being on vacation, for example, like the boredom of being on vacation and having, you know, set boundaries around cell phone and work. That's a wonderful boredom that I, again, when I'm burnt out feel like I need more of that type of boredom. The boredom I'm talking about when I'm burnt out
00:04:53
Speaker
is more of a, I don't care about this. Why are we doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard at this? What is happening right now? Does this matter to anyone? And it's usually that it doesn't matter to me. And it's usually that it doesn't matter to me because I've taken it too far. And
00:05:16
Speaker
gotten off track a little bit. So whether that's taken, you know, computer time too far or taken just a particular endeavor a little too far, like teaching maybe privates or teaching
00:05:30
Speaker
group classes, you know, when I was first starting out as a teacher, I took on a lot and it took a couple of years, but eventually I was like, I'm burnt out taking on too many teacher trainings at a particular time. You know, and also I could talk about, you know, burnout with physical exercise. I mean, I don't...
00:05:52
Speaker
I don't know if I've had the scientific definitions of burnout, which are non-functional overreaching and overtraining syndrome, but I've definitely gotten to places where things weren't ... I wasn't supporting my body with enough, for example, sleep, or I was not eating well to sustain the amount of physical activity that I was doing and would have burnout from that.
00:06:16
Speaker
And it's just, it's a feeling of like, I don't wanna cause I'm bored. And that's kind of what, cause I don't care. That's kind of what it feels like to me. That's interesting. I have some of that same, but for me, a lot of the time it shows up as just, I don't care.
Emotional and physical symptoms of burnout
00:06:36
Speaker
Like I don't care about my clients. Like I, and I remember specifically when I, the first time I had really, really gnarly burnout,
00:06:44
Speaker
as a PT was when I was working a 40-hour clinic schedule, which is actually not unusual. Most PTs do nine to five every day, or they'll do four, 10-hour shifts. I mean, I was seeing eight patients, and I got to see patients on the hour. I was seeing eight patients a day, but there's plenty of PTs that see three patients per hour, and they're doing 24 patients a day. There's a relentlessness to it. I really specifically remember
00:07:15
Speaker
a client patient talking to me and they were talking about their low back pain. I remember in my head, I was just like, I don't care. I don't care about your back pain. I don't care if I make you feel better. It was just an extreme, I've lost all desire to give a shit. Oh my God, let's swear on this podcast. I don't know. Well, it's your podcast.
00:07:41
Speaker
And it also showed up as just being very irritable. I was very snappy. I was very short-tempered. Everyone was irritating to me. And I think what that's a symptom of is having no space left. I felt like I had very little room for anything to be wrong. If I was stuck in traffic, I couldn't handle it.
00:08:09
Speaker
You know, somebody said something and I didn't think it was funny. I couldn't handle it. You know, like there was just so little space for anything to be, you know, not quote unquote perfect. And so those two things, like feeling really irritable and feeling like I didn't, I wasn't caring about what I was doing, which by the way, I love my job. Usually I care so much. So the fact that I got to this place where I was literally like, I don't care.
00:08:34
Speaker
I was like, okay, something is going on and something needs to change. So I think it's interesting because I think for some people it shows up in other ways. Maybe you feel really weepy. Maybe you are very like just kind of shut down. Maybe it's sort of this over
00:09:01
Speaker
You think you're super, super happy, but you're just trying to force yourself to be super happy. Oh, yeah. I can definitely get into a little bit of that as well, of just pushing through. Right.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think it's, it's, you know, while it's a, it's a, it's an experience that a lot of us have, but we have the experience in slightly different ways. And I think it's useful. I mean, I think probably everybody at some point in their teaching career will have a burnout moment or two. And so I think it's, I don't think it's the, you know,
00:09:35
Speaker
it's not a great feeling but i think once you recognize it once it's happened to you at least once then if you get yourself in a situation where it's starting to happen again you can recognize it because you can be like oh wait a minute why is everybody annoying i mean i let's be fair i find a lot of people annoying
00:09:54
Speaker
I'm teasing, I'm teasing. But like, you know, why am I feeling so edgy? Or, you know, if you have that kind of clarity of like, I don't care about something, which you and I seem to do, but experience it in a slightly different way, so that you can see it coming. And then and then that way, at least your
00:10:09
Speaker
Um, kind of ready. Yep. The part of it for me as well was, uh, you know, because I was so scheduled, um, I didn't, things that I was supposed to do for fun, I didn't want to do because all I wanted to do was not be scheduled. So even if it was like, let's go to a movie it's at four o'clock, I'd be like,
00:10:30
Speaker
you know, because it was like another thing I had to do. It was another event, you know, all of the all of the commitments of like, I have to remember this time on this day to go do this little thing can be like the straw that's about to break the camel's back. Like I totally feel that it's like, no, I can't handle one more thing. And there's also, there's also something called being emotionally labile, which is a
00:10:54
Speaker
I have a lot of experience of it happening to me, but I love it as a phrase. All I can think of is labia. What does labile mean? That's where my mind went immediately. It's when all of your feelings just blow from your uterus. No, that's not what it means at all. But it could be. That might be the etymology. I don't know. It might be.
00:11:18
Speaker
We have to look at... You know how emotional women are all the time. You know, just having to... Calm down, lady. Hey, listen, you need to calm down. Lady.
00:11:27
Speaker
It is my favorite. Hey lady, you need to calm down. Watch me punch you. Emotionally labile is when you're, you feel kind of like at the mercy of this sort of like tidal wave of different feelings that might just show up all of a sudden. Like it's 3pm on a Monday and you're suddenly crying for no reason or no apparent reason. Nothing happened. Fragile almost.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, or and and just kind of like very, very not having any sort of objectivity, just really kind of getting like bashed around by your feelings, and then anywhere on the spectrum, and and not have anything necessarily to do with what is immediately happening in your life in that moment. You know, somebody might say something completely benign, and then you're just like, grumpy. For the rest of the day, I have had that happen.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, me too. And so that's part of it as well. It's that thing where you don't have, you know, bandwidth gets really overused as a phrase, but it's useful because it's like, well, I don't have any more bandwidth. So it's the tiniest little thing. I have no more grace to give.
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah, you're just like, I got no room for this. So why do you think we see so much burnout in the yoga and movement teacher world?
Causes of burnout in the yoga and movement industry
00:12:49
Speaker
Laurel, I know why, or I have some thoughts around why it happens, but I'm curious to hear what you think the reasons are.
00:12:58
Speaker
Well, if I think about what my schedule looked like for various parts of the beginning of my career and what I've heard from colleagues about their schedule is, you know, it's not uncommon for movement teachers to be at least, you know, pre-pandemic when everything was in person to be running around
00:13:21
Speaker
an area city in New York City, for example, from gym to gym to gym or studio to studio to studio and teaching classes back to back all day long, then maybe going to people's houses and and doing one on one sessions. And so you are doing something that's physically demanding, you're doing something that's emotionally demanding, and you're
00:13:45
Speaker
Maybe, especially if you're heavy on the group classes and light on the privates, probably not making a ton of money for all of that effort put forth. I think it's still really common, for example, that group class instructors make about $20 to $30 a class. Yeah, it's actually really still very common.
00:14:10
Speaker
When I worked for one of the biggest yoga corporations in the world, my starting rate was $25 a class, and there was this policy that we cannot give you back-to-back classes.
00:14:28
Speaker
So you got to go to the studio, teach your hour, sometimes hour and a half class. This is back when like yoga classes were sometimes 90 minutes. It would depend on mine were usually 75 minutes.
00:14:43
Speaker
and make $25 before taxes. And on top of that, as a newer teacher, there was a lot of cognitive overload, because I was learning to teach. I was still learning to teach. And so it felt cognitively very demanding, physically very demanding, and then all the anxiety of being new at something. And also worried about not having the numbers,
00:15:09
Speaker
to remain on the schedule. So there were classes that you just were going to have a hard time filling because of the time because of the.
00:15:17
Speaker
Whatever, location, it's that magic thing of like teacher time, location, class type, right? If all of the stars were not aligned, despite your best efforts, despite your talent, despite all the good things you bring to the class, it might be a failing class and therefore you've also got to worry about having even that measly $25 taken away from you.
00:15:39
Speaker
And so it's difficult. Did the Yoga Corporation that you worked for, was there a specific number? Like you have to have X number of students in your class? No, it wasn't like that. It was kind of like, you know, they also obviously they understood that it takes time to build classes and that it will ebb and flow.
00:16:00
Speaker
if you happen to get sick and sub your class out three weeks in a row, that's going to hurt the numbers, but then you build them back up. So they did allow for, there was some grace period in some wiggle room, but after a year, if the class is still not doing well, and look, I get it. I think that despite how much we might feel like it's unfair that group class instructors aren't paid fairly, the fact of the matter is, and it's pretty well known that
00:16:29
Speaker
operating a gym, operating a yoga studio, it's pretty difficult to be in the black as a studio owner, as a gym owner, just like a restaurant. The overhead is so high and the rents, especially in places like New York City, are so high that it's actually difficult for the business to survive and therefore things like
00:16:52
Speaker
paying staff can, you know, there's only so much money, right, coming in, and therefore there can only be so much money going out. Yeah, I don't know the ins and outs of, and I would never ever wanna run a brick and mortar studio, but I have a lot of empathy, actually, and whatnot for people who do take on that business risk.
00:17:16
Speaker
And understand that when you're signing up to be a group class teacher for a brick and mortar studio, you're signing up to not be paid very much probably, at least in the United States. So I also did a fair amount of teaching in Dubai. And those teachers in Dubai at the studio that I taught at made very good money. And they were actually quite happy with the amount of money they were paid for their classes. And I'm not sure how that
00:17:41
Speaker
works in Dubai, but Dubai is not United States. But anyway, yeah, it's tough. The moral of the story is we all need to move to Dubai.
00:17:50
Speaker
No, I recommend that. So a lot of what you're saying is like why people experience burnout is, my notes are basically kind of the same thing. There is that inherent lack of financial stability when you are an independent contractor, which is someone who goes around and teaches at different studios. It's a very different job.
00:18:17
Speaker
you know, my brother worked a job for 20 years where he had a salary and he was there, you know, whatever hours he was there and he knew exactly what he was making every month and it never changed or when he got a raise, things like that. And it's not that kind of job. So I think part of what happens as well because of that is you get that independent contractor mindset of you never say no to work.
00:18:39
Speaker
You say yes, you say yes to everything because you don't know when something else, when it's going to show up. You don't know when a class is going to get taken away or a private client is going to say, oh, I'm going to Dubai for three months or something and they're not taking with them. There's that habit of just saying yes to everything and then overfilling your schedule and then suddenly being like, oh no.
00:19:08
Speaker
It is a it's a habit that I'm trying to break, but it's very hard. Yeah, it is. I often I'll look at my day and I'll be like, Oh, past Sarah just really screwed future Sarah. What an asshole. I know. Past Laurel is such an asshole sometimes.
00:19:34
Speaker
It's that habit of looking at the calendar, seeing space and being like, Oh, I can fill that space. Right? I'm not doing anything. And then not, yeah, yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker
And then, you know, it's easy to get into really bad habits of not just like, like planning filling your schedule, but just any moment that you have that you've got some free time, putting work in it, you know, as opposed to letting it just be like, like my current bad habit that I'm trying to break is I wake up in the morning very early. Uh, I get my coffee and then I get back into bed with my laptop.
00:20:11
Speaker
and start working for like two hours and then go to work and do like a clinic for a half a day and then maybe see some habits in the afternoon. So my work day was starting like the second I woke up and I realized that was a habit that was not
00:20:29
Speaker
It was not giving me any space to regenerate, right? There's no time to kind of refill your own cup, but what's hard about it is there's always something that you could be doing, you know? And you and I both do a fair amount of work online. You do all of your work online at this point, right? Or most of it, not all of it. No, no, all.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah, so right now it's all there's Yeah, yeah. So there's always something there's always an email that you could be prepping. There's always a social media post. There's always planning a class. There's always, there's never nothing, right? It's never like, Oh, I got to the end of my list. The list is just so I had to start to really train myself how to how to, you know, deal with that.
00:21:08
Speaker
Um, and I want to, I'm going to talk about that in a little bit, but, um, and then also it's a very physically, you know, another reason, like you said, that people get burnout. It's a very physically demanding job. And it, it's something where it's like, I remember when I used to teach, when I lived in New York and I would teach, you know, group classes and privates and things, I would get to the end of the day.
00:21:29
Speaker
And people will be like, Hey, do you want to like, go out and be like, no, because I don't want to walk. Yeah, I want to lie down on the couch. I don't I've been talking. This is the other thing that people don't really think I remember when people used to say, Oh, you're a yoga teacher, that must be so relaxing. And I'd be like, Yeah, so ironic. Because it's not, you know, you you are, it's physically tiring. And you're, you're talking, like, all the time. Yeah, it's not a job. I would get like,
00:21:58
Speaker
And the same with when I'm in the clinic. It's not the kind of job where...
00:22:04
Speaker
when you're doing your work, you're doing your work. You can't be like, oh, I'm going to go on BuzzFeed and look at this listicle of like five pictures of Channing Tatum that are hot or something like that. It's not one of those jobs where you're like, oh, I do my little project and then I goof off for a minute. When you're working, there's nothing else that you can be doing in an hour. Yeah. You're talking, you're maybe demoing, you're moving around,
00:22:28
Speaker
you're taking on like what you're getting from your students, whatever that might be. And then also on top of that, you're having to be 100% focused and present in the moment for the entire duration of the class. That's what really struck me when I first started teaching was how actually demanding it was from a focus standpoint of like,
00:22:53
Speaker
Oh, this is because I went to acting school and and spent quite a bit of time on stage where you know, you have your lines memorized and you have to be present in the moment because that's really where the the art comes alive and acting. But with yoga teaching, it's that plus now this is all this is all
00:23:10
Speaker
you're making it up on the fly. You don't have script that you're memorizing unless you teach Bikram or whatever, but you're coming up with the cues and responding in the moment to students, so it's that step above even of maybe improv-ing for an hour straight. I can't imagine being an improv artist and improv-ing for an hour straight. That's next level
00:23:34
Speaker
mind energy requiring. And teaching is that. It is a lot. It is a lot of energy. And there's sort of like the psychological, the emotional, the energetic stress of that. And also there's like you said, the sort of your
00:23:55
Speaker
If you're being that present in the moment, it's almost unavoidable that you end up, you know, I think of it like off-gassing, but like whatever the students are off-gassing, I don't mean parts, but sometimes they're...
00:24:14
Speaker
But whatever they're putting out, you are absorbing whether you want to or not. There's sort of no way around it. Like if you're, you know, that feeling of going in and subbing for someone else and you walk in the door and everyone's face falls. Oh yeah, that's the best. And that's the beginning, right? And then you have to be with those people for an hour.
00:24:33
Speaker
and try to try to convince them that actually you're not the worst and your voice goes up an octave you're like hi everyone right so you're starting at a deficit place please you know and trying to trying to kind of yeah clamber back up um you know as a as a clinician in the pt world there is a you know i i have
00:24:53
Speaker
Learned how to because you really have to not take on the psychological burden of my clients Pain or their emotional state or their psychological state, you know I I might be thinking about a client and like oh I should try this thing with them next time I see them but that's basically where it where it ends because it has to right I can't you know the this the
00:25:19
Speaker
When you're working with people that are coming to you that are injured or in pain or they have chronic pain or they had a terrible car accident five years ago or all of those things, it's heavy. It's really heavy.
00:25:33
Speaker
You know, you really do learn to create sort of boundaries for yourself. I have a neighbor who has Parkinson's disease and is sort of at that point where they really need a lot of help, but they're not, they don't want to take it on. They don't want like a stranger in the house. Like it's not uncommon.
00:25:57
Speaker
Um, and I was talking with my mom about it because I've actually gone over and like physically, you know, helped them when they've fallen and things like that. And, um, you know, my mom was like, what do we do? And I, and I had to be like, you know, I, we don't do anything because this person thought my patient.
00:26:12
Speaker
they've been extremely clear about what they want and it's not help. But it's that kind of thing where it almost feels cold in a way, but you can't take on everybody and their needs. People come to yoga class with that level of need as well. They've been to a bunch of doctors, none of them have helped them. You made them feel better. Suddenly, you are their savior angel. There's that burden as well. Have you had that experience?
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah, I get asked questions all the time, even in email form and Instagram DMs and then in person when I was teaching in person that I am not qualified to answer, that I couldn't possibly answer. I mean, because we're emailing right now about something that if I were able to help you, if I were going to help you as a movement teacher within the scope of practice that I have, I would actually have to watch you move and work with you. But yeah, it's pretty amazing how much
00:27:11
Speaker
I'm solicited for, you know, clinical advice that you wouldn't even be able to give Sarah because you again would have to see that person, right? Right. And so, yeah, I think that people are looking for answers and
00:27:27
Speaker
it makes sense to me that they would come to me. I'm sure I've asked people questions that they didn't feel were appropriate questions for them to answer as well because we seek out the people that we trust and like and whose opinion we value. And I think trust is probably the first and most important thing about that person. And it's a good thing that we're trusted as movement teachers, but we have to be careful with that because
00:27:55
Speaker
with great power comes great responsibility. And so the way that you answer questions like that is really important. And I've gotten better at it over the years because I think in the beginning when people would ask me to take on stuff that was inappropriate for me to take on, I would feel bad about it. And then also maybe even a little bit anxious about getting it wrong. And so I would kind of just say like, oh, I'm not a doctor, so I can't
00:28:22
Speaker
answer that question and leave it at that, but now I think I've gotten a little bit more skilled and nuanced at holding space for them to share and talk with me without taking on the emotional burden of what they're sharing or feeling bad that it is somehow my responsibility to give them answers, but really to just let them talk through what's been going on because sometimes that's enough, right?
00:28:44
Speaker
It's enough to have someone listen to you and not offer solutions to your problems. And sometimes that's really what people want too. They don't necessarily need solutions to their problems. They just want to bounce their ideas. They want the thoughts that have been rattling around in their head to be spoken out loud to somebody else so that they don't feel so alone with them. Yeah. And I think that, but then what you, excuse me, and we're saying about not taking on that emotional burden. I think that's very hard because
00:29:13
Speaker
uh it's almost like you know we feel responsible for that person in that moment right because you're the so so to be able to not only say like well i'm not necessarily qualified to answer that question or something like that but also to not think like oh well just because this person shared this information with me doesn't mean like i am now
00:29:33
Speaker
their actual, you know, I'm their person, they I have to fix this for them, I have to go research, you know what, like, it's very easy to take on, you know, other people's need.
What strategies help prevent burnout?
00:29:42
Speaker
And I think that ends up is as being something that can can burn you out psychologically.
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think it might, for me at least, when I would try to solve people's problems, you know, when I really probably wasn't my job to, I would maybe like give a little too much if you want to call it that. It was because at that time I think I was feeling insecure.
00:30:06
Speaker
about my capabilities of actually helping people and not really knowing what that should look like given my level of experience and my scope of practice. I was really unclear about the boundaries of what it was that I was there to do. And so I think I would flounder and then feel bad and then feel inadequate.
00:30:27
Speaker
And now, of course, every once in a while, yes, I still feel inadequate. I mean, who doesn't? But I feel much more confident in what it is that I am able to help students with, and then I can do that to the best of my ability, and then what I am not able to help them with, and in holding space for them to share with me whatever is going on.
00:30:50
Speaker
making it clear that this is what I can do and this is what I can't do, but here's who you could go talk to, or here's what you could look into, or here's the direction I recommend you head in to find the person who is qualified to help you. That feels really good to me. It feels like, okay, I did as much as I could do and
00:31:15
Speaker
First and foremost, what I did, which is what I can do, is I listened. And I listened without taking it on and making it my job. Right. It's like you took the, you know, it's a hot potato game. You took the hot potato and then you just handed it along so that by giving them a reference to somewhere else, you don't have to, you're not in charge of finding that somewhere else for them or you don't, you don't have to do anything else. You're like, here, go, go here.
00:31:40
Speaker
Yeah, I remember I was working with a more experienced teacher training and a training that I was co leading with this with this teacher trainer. Her name is Chrissy Carter, by the way, I have a lot of respect for her. And she was a senior teacher at yoga works. And she said something like we were coaching some teachers on their voice while teaching. And she said something along the lines of imagine
00:32:00
Speaker
That when you're teaching this class you're sitting in a booth with a friend having coffee How would your? Instruction of this pose sound if you were sitting with your best friend in a booth in a cafe having coffee and that was just such a light bulb moment for me and everybody in the room and Then you know from there
00:32:22
Speaker
you know, throughout that training, she would talk a lot about how, you know, your students aren't your friends, necessarily, some of them might be, they're not your friends. But how can you listen to students? And how can you relate to students as though they are friends, right? So not children, not spouses, not, you know,
00:32:42
Speaker
not in a way where there's this clear power dynamic, which there is, let's not pretend there isn't, teachers are in a position of authority relative to students, but can you adopt this attitude towards students that is friendly? So how would you want to be listened to when speaking to a friend? How would you like that friend to listen to you? And can you actually relate to your students
00:33:10
Speaker
you know, take the pressure off yourself and just know that actually it's more than enough to relate to students in a sincerely friendly way. And I've remembered that forever and I've since that time and I keep coming back to it because it was pretty profound shift for me in terms of like making it actually
00:33:29
Speaker
enriching and meaningful to listen to students when they come to you with their stories and their problems and then also not feeling like you need to as their friend right go home and really take that on because when we get together with our friends and we share
00:33:46
Speaker
parts of ourselves with our friends. It's actually more than enough. The friendship is inherently that. It's just listening. It's just listening and being there for each other. And I think we can have that as teachers as well. And that might actually be more cup filling than cup draining then, right? Because we're not putting these unnecessary pressures on ourself to be more for our students than we can be. Yeah.
00:34:10
Speaker
Um, and, and yeah, I think that's, that's a, that's an amazing, I love that idea of like you're just, you're talking to a friend in a booth or like your relationship is friendly. Like I think that's great. I think that's great. Yeah.
00:34:26
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:36:11
Speaker
And that sort of takes me into my next question about burnout, which is how do we avoid it? And if it happens, what do we do? And, you know, there's some really specific things that I have started to do that I, you know, I'm gonna be honest, I am not always successful at. Past Sarah still sometimes totally does Sarah, future, present Sarah in just in a bad, bad way. But,
00:36:40
Speaker
I'm trying to work at it. Right. Part of it is
00:36:45
Speaker
actually allowing space in your calendar that isn't scheduled for anything, not even just for work, but like nothing. Like this past weekend, I was feeling kind of, I've been feeling kind of burnt the past couple of weeks. And this past weekend, I had nothing especially scheduled. And I spent a lot of Saturday and Sunday lying in my bed watching movies.
00:37:10
Speaker
And it was awesome. And when Monday showed up, I wasn't like drained from the week prior as I go into the next week. I was excited to go to work. I was happy to be working with my patients. I was excited about the other stuff I was working on. So I think it's really, really important to do that and keep that space for yourself. But it's hard. It's hard. And especially, I think, when you are beginning
00:37:39
Speaker
you're trying to establish yourself. You have to, you may be teaching like a lot of group classes because you haven't gotten very many private students yet. A lot of times the private students come from the group classes or they come from the workshops or something like that, right? So there's, you know, I was last year not working for a lot of last year because I was in treatment. When I started up again in, excuse me, February of this year,
00:38:05
Speaker
All of my prior privates had disappeared, as they should have. I wasn't expecting them to work around a year. They needed care, but there was a chunk of time of two, three months where it was just crickets in the private student world. I started getting really nervous because I was like, well, this is not all of my income, but there is a chunk of my income that is usually from this
00:38:28
Speaker
category. Right. And then after a few months, suddenly, it just was like a avalanche of all of these people. And it was just, it took that time of people seeing me working again and teaching, you know, group yoga workshops and promoting things that I was doing. Okay, like, Oh, Sarah's back.
00:38:46
Speaker
And so it takes some time, but the value of the private student is obviously like, in that period of time, the amount that you're able to earn is sometimes, if you're getting $25 for a group class, you're earning potentially six times that much money in an hour. So it's a much more valuable
00:39:09
Speaker
hour. But early on, it's hard because you have to establish yourself in a way. So keeping some space in your calendar that is not scheduled, I think is good. I also, and again, I'm not always good at this, but I try to keep at least one day of the week where I'm not doing anything work related. I'm not answering emails,
00:39:36
Speaker
I'm not writing content. I'm not doing any of the like, you know, I was gonna say back door, but that's not backstage, back end, something in the back. I'm not doing any of the stuff that like behind the scenes, immediately physical behind the scenes. Yeah, I'm not doing the curtain. You know, if somebody emails me a question, I'm not answering it that day. And there's something it's hard. It's so hard. But there's something about that where you are prioritizing yourself.
00:40:02
Speaker
Yes, not your work, you're prioritizing yourself and your own sense of self outside of your job. And that I think there's an inherent value to that, I think. Can I share a little bit about how I work with this idea of preserving time? So I have a daughter, she's three and a half and
00:40:28
Speaker
I'm hearing you speak about how you would wake up in the morning and immediately start working. I remember those days. I remember when I would also do that. It's so funny to think back about my life before Eliana, my life now, and just how different my time is used and allotted because she is seeping into everything because she's in my place of work.
00:40:56
Speaker
Um, right now she's not at daycare, but she's, um, you know, in my life as my daughter. And so she's there in the morning right away when I wake up in bed with me, you know, we'll lie together for an hour. And so then I get up with her sometimes, or my husband will get up with her and like, we're taking care of Eliana. And then I pick her up from daycare, you know, a couple of days a week.
00:41:16
Speaker
She's, you know, home all weekend. And so it's so much cloudier. The lines are so much more blurred in terms of like, because now I'm fully working at home and I have a daughter.
00:41:30
Speaker
When is my work time? And it can be something that I look ahead the week prior and go, OK, these are the days that I'm working. These are the hours that I have to work. And then all of that can get thrown out the window because she gets sick or whatnot. Something happens, right? And so I encountered an author by the name of Laura Vanderkamp, who wrote a book called I Know
Balancing work-life to reduce burnout
00:41:55
Speaker
How She Does It. And she's written a lot of productivity books. And I have gone.
00:41:59
Speaker
like intensely down the productivity rabbit hole this past. Like since the pandemic struck, I was sort of like, I got to get my life together because I'm just very disorganized. I'm not using my time well. And so she's one author that I've really resonated with her book. I know how she does it where she basically has you on a spreadsheet track what you do with your time for an entire week in half hour cells.
00:42:23
Speaker
And she calls it the mosaic of your life and how you're spending your time. And it turns out that there are 168 hours in a week. And so this idea that we need to have all of our work happening within a certain time frame and that we
00:42:42
Speaker
supposedly shouldn't be working on the weekends or we shouldn't be working at night or we shouldn't be working, you know, these odd hours as working mothers and also working fathers some of the time, but it's usually working mothers that are battling this a little bit more.
00:42:56
Speaker
These types of constraints can be really limiting, this idea that, oh, I should feel bad because I'm working during this particular time when for some reason I'm expected not to be working. And this tracking system, this mindfulness system really of just becoming aware of actually how much time there is in a day because there's actually quite a bit of time.
00:43:19
Speaker
There's quite a bit of time in the week and and using the time when you can to work working when you can and then when you can't being fully present with those times when you're not working and and like recognizing that
00:43:38
Speaker
you have time to work and you've done the work that you needed to do and now this is maybe an interrupted time, a spontaneous time when you're not able to work or maybe this is scheduled in where you're not working and to really go just like you would go all in on your work.
00:43:54
Speaker
go all in on your not work, go all in on these other chunks of time in your day, even if it's just 30 minutes, 45 minutes where you can sit down and be with your kid and read a book and like, feel really good about that and really enjoy and be present with that. And 45 minutes is actually quite a bit of time.
00:44:13
Speaker
You know, you can make pretty profound connections with people in 45 minutes, including your child at, you know, four in the afternoon randomly. Right. So that book was really paradigm shifting. I do recommend it for anyone, actually. I mean, you don't have to have kids to benefit from that type of mindfulness around how you are using your time and how much time you actually have. And I found that it was just a very
00:44:38
Speaker
It did what I like to do as a movement teacher, which is that it questioned and helped to decrease the burden of unnecessary beliefs around how we should be doing things to free me up, to free, I like to free my students up.
00:44:54
Speaker
to take into account that there are so many more possibilities beyond the stories that you're telling yourself about what you can and can't do and when you should and shouldn't do things. So it's a great book. That's great. I know how she does it. I'll stick that in the show notes. One of the things that I
00:45:12
Speaker
was thinking about while you were talking is this idea that um uh this this I mean I really like that idea of being like okay well traditionally you know the work day ends at six but for me my entire day has been taken up with parenting or something I think so my work time is actually like now a couple of hours in this evening I wonder about a couple of things I wonder if
00:45:36
Speaker
you know, I mean, it's like anything taken to the extreme that, I think it sort of depends on like who's filling in the Excel spreadsheet, because I think it would be easy to be like, oh, well, I'm just, you know, I'm giving myself a 15 hour day because I'm filling every single cell with something, right? And I think for some people, there is a challenge in going from the work kind of mindset that you're in,
00:46:02
Speaker
And then, yes, you've got this time here where you're going to relax or be with someone or meet up for dinner or something like that. But if it's sometimes shorter little chunks of time, I think it can be challenging for people to switch out of where they were with that thing and actually
00:46:21
Speaker
Like I come home from the clinic at the end of the day and I need a good like half hour at least to kind of just decompress and not be talking to anyone and just be like puttering around and you know maybe I wash my face maybe I change my clothes maybe I
00:46:41
Speaker
you know, listen to some music. You know, maybe I stretch a bit something like that, where it's it's like, I can't, I need a transitional period. You know, what's funny, you need to work on that. Yeah, I've always gotten a sense that you're a little bit wiser than me.
00:46:56
Speaker
like that you no no in all honesty like I do I know you're laughing hysterically but no in all honesty in all sincerity I have always gotten the sense that like Sarah really knows herself and your boundaries have come through to me as being like really solid and like
00:47:14
Speaker
and admirable, and I learned from you in that way. You do have a very, to me, from my perspective, clear set of healthy looking boundaries around work. So you say that I know that I need this buffer when I come home. Well, what's funny, Sarah, is that I didn't know that about myself until I tracked my time on a spreadsheet.
00:47:41
Speaker
Like the tracking of my time on the spreadsheet actually showed me in a way that maybe I need to be able to see that, like, Laurel, you finished, say, recording a podcast and you were not able to do anything that was cognitively high demand for another two hours after that. You needed to spend the next two hours going for a walk
00:48:06
Speaker
You know, and so I started to recognize that there were these almost like high intensity interval training. There were these high intensity cognitive intervals in my day where I, the work to rest ratio needed to be adjusted because it would be like two and a half hours of deep work, which for me can look like having recording a podcast. It can look like teaching a live class. It can look like, um,
00:48:34
Speaker
Writing right writing a newsletter writing a blog post posting on social media sometimes because that's a fair amount of writing and and and you know Work exhausting and then weirdly exhausting and then and then recognizing that like oh, I just did Two hours of work, but it was deep work and it was tiring and now I'm gonna go watch selling sunset and eat a burrito
00:48:59
Speaker
for like two hours. And I'm gonna feel okay about that because I recognize now that this is the ebb and flow of my energy. This is what's available. And now I've drained myself and now I need to fill up again. And you know what I realized by doing this spreadsheet, and this is something that Laura Vanderkamp makes a point of kind of helping us discover, I think, is that I don't work as much as I thought.
00:49:25
Speaker
I do not work as much as I thought because you might think that you wake up and immediately start working and then you work straight through until 6 p.m. But how much of the time between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. are you actually taking these breaks and do you actually realize you're doing it when you're doing it and are you enjoying it while it's happening?
00:49:47
Speaker
Or are you just in your mind running on the hamster wheel of everything that you need to do after you take this break so you actually don't stop working during the break? Because for me, that was what was happening. I would feel like I was working at least 60 hours a week, right? No, as it turns out, I'm often working less than 40.
00:50:06
Speaker
Sometimes 30, like really working 30 hours a week is a lot of work, by the way. It's a lot of work, by the way. And we don't we don't need to feel like we are the champions of life because we work 60 hours a week, actually.
00:50:22
Speaker
Let's feel like the champions of life when we do really deep, good work for 30 hours a week, and then we really enjoy the time when we're not working. And this is my takeaway from this book. And I have to say, this is one of the better books I've ever read because it did actually cause me to have this epiphany about myself that I don't know. I'm like, I'm not Sarah. I don't realize these things about myself. I'm just running around and working and feeling overworked. And then I sit down and I do this spreadsheet. And I'm like, wait, I'm not actually even working that much.
00:50:52
Speaker
Whoa. Well, let me say, I'm not the thank you, first of all, for for thinking that I'm wise. But usually come it doesn't it doesn't come inherently to me. It comes because of sometimes I yelled at someone and realized I felt bad about yelling at someone and I had no reason to yell at them. And it was actually because it was during that decompression time when I really can't do anything. Yeah. And
00:51:18
Speaker
I then had to go around and then actually apologize and then recognize, okay, well, I don't want to do that again. So clearly I need this time when literally nobody says anything to me. Um, so it's, it's usually whatever wisdom I might have is usually comes from giant screw ups.
00:51:34
Speaker
Yeah. And then trying to learn from it. Yep, me too. But what I was going to say... Oh wait, I was going to say something else. Oh, what was I going to say? Oh, that sucks. Well, hopefully it'll come back at some point. Yeah, so allowing... Oh, this is what I was going to say. There we go. Sometimes it just takes a minute. Recognizing what you're talking about is that sort of deep work
00:51:58
Speaker
One of the things that I had to do was recognize what time of the day am I most capable of doing that kind of deep work and scheduling it for them. So for me, I wasn't, it used to be this way, but I am now kind of an early bird. I get up and my freshest, smartest thoughts, my top shelf thoughts are usually top shelf thoughts.
00:52:21
Speaker
right? I like that. Not the well thoughts, but the top shelf thought. I have very little experience drinking anything off the top shelf. Believe me, me neither. But so they're usually in the morning. So I've learned that I shouldn't schedule like, something where I have to teach and have to think a lot at like 4pm, because it's going to be harder. It's not that I can't do it. But
00:52:49
Speaker
I'm going to, it's going to require a more energetic output from you and I might need more of that, you know,
00:52:57
Speaker
non-thinking time afterwards. Whereas if I put the stuff that is more demanding in the morning and then I recognize in the afternoon might be where I just sit down and answer some emails. It's not a particularly effortful thing to do. I go on a hike or I do my laundry or do whatever. Then I've set up a day where I'm not setting up a day where the burnout is more likely to happen. I'm setting up a day where I'm less likely to burn out.
00:53:25
Speaker
And then the other thing that I do, and again, recognize that I have the gift of not having children, which means I'm completely in charge of what I do when, but I made for myself, and again, this is what works for me, I made a hard stop 6 p.m. So after 6 p.m., I do not engage with, I don't like, I'm not like, oh, let me just write that email real quick or what, because the reason why I started doing that,
00:53:53
Speaker
is there's always something to do when you work for yourself. There's always something to do. And it's so easy to just be like, oh, well, I could do this thing and I could also do that thing and then that'll be done and da, da, da.
00:54:08
Speaker
If you stop at 6 p.m., the thing that you have to do will still be there tomorrow, and you'll probably do a better version of it tomorrow, and you'll get to experience more of that decompression downtime, self-time that you need. Maybe for someone listening to this, it's not 6 p.m., maybe it's 8 p.m. For me, something about 6 is like, now it's evening and I am done. But also, my day starts at 5 a.m.
00:54:33
Speaker
So, that to me is like, that's enough time, again, with breaks and whatever in between. But, and then the other thing is, you know, I talked about just how as an independent contractor, we feel like we have to say yes to everything.
How can saying no and diversifying income prevent burnout?
00:54:50
Speaker
And in the beginning, especially, you sort of feel that because you are trying to establish yourself, you're trying to get known, you're trying to get something to do. It's kind of true. Yeah, in the beginning, you do actually have to have a little bit. Yeah.
00:55:01
Speaker
a looser filter in terms of what you let in. Yeah. But then when you can. A looser filter. A looser filter is a little tight. Large pore filter. I don't know. Something about the mesh. I don't know.
00:55:15
Speaker
But then when you can, starting to say no to things that you recognize as like, okay, this is going to be a huge amount of output for very little return on the investment of my energy. Everything is a trade-off. I still sometimes do things that are really large output, not a ton of immediate return, but I know that it's going to have an impact down the line.
00:55:45
Speaker
What? No, I love this podcast. I would sit here. Me too. I would talk to you all day. It's a lot of energy though, right? It is a lot of energy, but it's fun. It's fun energy. It is. It's a hundred percent fun and that to me is actually what's in it for me. Yeah.
00:56:05
Speaker
The other thing is you do get a lot of the time early on people being like, oh, will you come teach this free class for my blah, blah, blah group? And it's great exposure or something. Oh, yeah, that. And again, sometimes you need a bit of exposure. But eventually, after a while, I started saying no to free things.
00:56:26
Speaker
Not because I was a huge jerk, although maybe that is partly why, but because it didn't want to. Sometimes you can just be like, I don't want to do that. And that's a great place to get to when you get to make choices for your life that are not always like, I should, this is something I should do.
00:56:47
Speaker
I think for a while I was listening to Oprah's podcast because I was finding like some of her interviews were really interesting and Oprah is just a fascinating, you know, person. And she said like it was like this, it was sort of like this litmus test for whether or not you should take something on or whether or not you should stop doing something, which was like three checks. Check. How do you feel before you do it?
00:57:12
Speaker
How do you feel while you're doing it? And how do you feel after you did it? And if two of the three are, I don't want to do it, or I don't want to do this, or I didn't want to do that, or that was, I don't feel good, it's probably a sign that you should say no.
00:57:29
Speaker
Quit it or you know move in a different direction and that's been that's been really helpful for me Like when I was first starting out teaching I would often times before the class not want to teach it because I was anxious But then while I was teaching it I was super engaged in like really jazzed up and having fun and then after I taught it I felt like this wonderful sense of accomplishment so two of the three were there and
00:57:52
Speaker
But I've had the opposite, where in those moments of burnout where I'm bored and I'm like, who cares? Does this matter?
00:58:01
Speaker
It would be, I don't want to teach the class. I'm teaching the class, and I keep looking at the clock like, is it done yet? Can I go home now? And then afterwards, I'm like, thank God that's over. Maybe I need to drop that class. Maybe I need to move in a different direction with my teaching. Maybe I need to go take a training and get inspired and learn something and have new ideas about things. So yeah, that litmus test, I find, was very, very helpful. And I still use it. Yeah.
00:58:30
Speaker
With relationships, too. Like, this person wants to hang out. How do I feel before, during, and after?
00:58:37
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, you know, and recognizing the people in your life that are emotionally, there's this great TV show called Vampiric. Yes, Emotional Vampors. What we do in the shadows is a phenomenal TV show, and if you're not watching it, you definitely should. Okay. It's a better way to spend your time, I would say, than selling Sunset. No, there's no better way. There's no better way. I'm convinced.
00:59:02
Speaker
Listen, I spent an entire summer watching the British version of Love Island, of which there are five seasons, I believe something 50 episodes per season, like it's just, it was on TV every single night. And it's it was I was like, I love these people. Anyway, I know every once in a while there's a show like selling the sunset where I'm like, this is just so bad. It's
00:59:22
Speaker
It's so good. Yeah. The other thing, and I think especially, I mean, this happened to me when I was a yoga teacher. We may see it more in the yoga world where this idea of, you know, pursuing financial gain as a yoga teacher was sort of this like, you know,
00:59:44
Speaker
almost judged in a way in the in the world that I was in that like, you know, because your your yoga practice should be a practice of, you know, non attachment. And that you're near your teaching is your your way of expressing, you know, your your yogic experience. And, you know, that that, you know, if you were trying to to make more money or that there was just something about it, like that shouldn't be your goal. Yeah, you shouldn't you shouldn't want to make money teaching.
01:00:13
Speaker
Right. Right. You're not a true yoga teacher. Yeah. But then we have to get real and be like, look, yeah, sure. If you're living on an ashram and you don't pay rent and the food is free. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. You've left your family and all your earthly belongings. Right.
01:00:29
Speaker
but you live somewhere expensive or householders anywhere. Yeah, you have rent, you have house, you know, your expenses of your life. You know, there's a certain amount of money that you have to make. And so I think there's nothing, understand that, you know, there's nothing wrong with actively pursuing work that is more financially beneficial like private clients or like I used to do corporate classes or go into a business and, you know, do some like, you know, let's,
01:00:59
Speaker
Unkink your neck for the hour because you've been sitting in front of a computer or something like that. There's nothing wrong with actively pursuing that, knowing that ultimately what that's going to do is allow you to liberate some of your own time. And then the other piece of that that is huge and that I sort of more recently have
01:01:20
Speaker
I've recognized it for a while, but I've come to kind of really want to make this a big part of my work is passive income. And so passive income is, is again, that sort of like, how much of my work, it's a myth. No, it's not a myth. It's not a myth.
01:01:35
Speaker
How much of my work did I put in? And how much is that work now generating for me financially? Yes. So like, you know, the movement logic tutorials that we make, we put a lot of work into making them. But then, you know, as they go on sale, there's no more work happening. Well, there's a little bit, but but much less. I mean, yes, that's what I mean by passive is like, well, there's also no passive stretch because there's a little bit of muscle tone always unless you're
01:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But there's something, I mean, you know. There's work happening, but it just depends on the intensity level. Yeah, or there are sometimes, you know, like I just did a course for Yoga You Online, and I don't have to do anything else, and it will be like evergreen on their site, and who knows what it's going to generate, but I don't have to do anything for that. Work harder not, or work smarter not harder. I almost said work harder not smarter.
01:02:27
Speaker
Work smarter, not harder. Yes, there are better returns on your time investment.
01:02:37
Speaker
that are these potentially smarter ways to work. And you might want to think about peppering your schedule with creating more of that. Yeah. Exactly. And it is a long term strategy because usually that passive income happens after a period of actually a lot of active work. Exactly. And a lot of that active work is professional and personal development.
01:02:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like figuring out who you are and what you want to say. Right. Yeah. I mean, it is. But that's another way, as far as how do we try to avoid burnout, is not having all of our work be like, an hour of work equals this much money, but starting to have variety.
01:03:21
Speaker
in that way. Yeah. One of the beauties of being an independent contractor is you do have multiple bosses and multiple revenue streams, which makes you much harder to fire. You don't have all your eggs in one basket. And you can also have multiple types of revenue streams, as we're discussing. And so diversifying your revenue portfolio is just smart. And so you do that via various types of offerings.
01:03:51
Speaker
demand, different amounts of time. Yeah, like all of this stuff that we're talking about, I just kind of learned it by
01:03:59
Speaker
it happening to me in a way. And I think it wouldn't hurt a lot of yoga teachers, especially newer teachers, to actually take some sort of business development course or understand these ideas and apply it to their teaching as a way to help avoid that burnout of like, you know, it's just, I get an hourly rate and it's every single hour has a, you know, things like that. Like learning how to strategize
01:04:27
Speaker
your career. I certainly never that wasn't part of my teacher training in any way, you know, and it really again just sort of happened from me realizing and like that moment where I had enough private clients that I was like, Oh, you know what, I can let go of this class that I don't enjoy. They don't seem to enjoy me. You know, portion of my rev my income per month, I'm gonna get to sleep an extra hour or whatever.
01:04:52
Speaker
or it's the only thing I'm teaching on that day. And so now if I get rid of it, now I have a day where there's no classes scheduled, right? So things like that, it really, really allows you to diversify. And the other thing too is that when you say no to something, you're saying yes to something else. You might not know what you're saying yes to, but if you've got your day booked out or your week booked out, you can't say yes to anything else.
01:05:16
Speaker
But when you do start to trim away the things that aren't really giving you enough of a return on your energy investment, you open up possibilities for better opportunities. The key is being able to recognize those good opportunities. And when you don't recognize them, to be able to say, no, I'm going to wait. I'm going to hold this space free until something like,
01:05:38
Speaker
you know, even better comes along. And I think I'm just starting to get the hang of that, to be honest with you. It just makes me think of Marie Kondo. It's like you have to Marie Kondo your work. Yes. Does teaching this class bring me joy? Or Via Negativa, the stripping away. What's that? Via Negativa.
01:06:03
Speaker
What's his name? Okay, we're gonna have to show notes this. He's written a number of books. He wrote about anti-fragility. He's actually a finance guy and wrote about anti-fragility. And then the movement people took this concept of anti-fragility, anti-fragile, resilience.
01:06:23
Speaker
is something that is able to be stressed and become more robust as a result of stress, not break in the face of stress. So via negativa is one of his philosophies that he waxes poetical about in his books that are, you know, not written like someone you would expect in finance, actually. They're pretty interesting. He's a philosopher. Gosh, I can't remember his last name. His first name is Talib. Or is that it? Yeah.
01:06:49
Speaker
Nassim, is it Nassim Taleb or Taleb Nassim? Nassim Taleb maybe. So he writes about Via Negativo, which is Marie Kondo-ing something. You move, you create via subtraction.
01:07:03
Speaker
You can create a garden via the subtraction of weeds to expose the flower. You can create discernible areas on your bookshelf for certain types of literature by taking away certain types of books. This is the poetry section because I've removed the history books. I think via negativa, especially in a capitalist,
01:07:31
Speaker
world where more is always better and we say yes to everything because more is better, that adopting this mindset and this approach of via negativa might be really life changing.
01:07:47
Speaker
My thing with Marie Kondo was always, well, my Swiffer doesn't spark joy, but it cleans my house. So there's some things in my house that I have that are not joy-sparking, necessarily. And I think that's also the understanding of, OK, this corporate class that I'm teaching, maybe it's not the most joy-sparking of everything I do, but I don't hate it. And I get more income versus if I just spend that hour. So there's value, recognizing the value. Yep.
01:08:17
Speaker
All right, well thanks. What a good conversation. Yeah, it was good for me. Was it good for you? Yes, it was really good. It's always, I think, good to be reminded of these concepts and this wisdom. Definitely.
01:08:35
Speaker
at every stage. Note to our listeners, you can check out our show notes for links to everything that we mentioned in this podcast and I'll make sure that those two books that Laurel referenced are in there. You can visit the MovementLogic website where you can get on our mailing list and that way you'll be in the know about sales when we do sales on our tutorials. You can watch the video version of this episode if you like watching more than listening and
01:09:01
Speaker
see what our faces look like when we are thinking. Sometimes my face looks like I'm entered the fourth dimension because I just can't find a word. So that's always entertaining. And that's movementlogictutorials.com forward slash podcasts or podcast. I don't think there's an S on the end. I think it's just... No, I don't think we have room in our schedule for two more than one podcast.
01:09:29
Speaker
No, just a singular. We're a singular with the podcast, yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today. It really helps us out if you subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you listen, and then also rate and review it in iTunes. We would be super, super appreciative if you would do one of those things, some of those things, part of even just like hit that little star thing. And you might as well just give us five because anything less than five is mean.
01:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, come on. Come on, you like this. Five star and minute. Yeah. You enjoyed this. Yeah. Join us next week when we will be once again filling your ears with our strong opinions loosely held. Yes. Look at Portia.