Hey friends, how are we doing out there? I know I ask you that every week pretty much, but I really do care and I really do think about you. I love you. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for being here. It means so much to me. The other day, out of the blue, someone sent me the sweetest message saying that she had just loved what she’d learned on the podcast and it had helped her so much, and I just, It meant so much to me.

So I have something to ask you. If you have a minute, would you rate and review the podcast and tell me what you think? Tell me what you’re learning. Tell me what you’ve gotten out of these episodes, or tell me your favorite episode. I read every review. I would really, really appreciate the reviews because what that does is.

Like everything else, there is an algorithm of some sort, but when there’s more reviews, it’s easier for people to find the podcast. It helps it be in front of people. And also, I love reading reviews. So if I’m gonna try a new podcast, I love to see what people are getting out of it. And that’s what I want for other people to hop on Smooth Stones and be like, Ooh.

This sounds really, really good. I wanna listen, so I would really appreciate you doing that. Now I gotta remind you, last week we talked about the Dare of the Day Challenge, and I had a free printable that you can get@smoothstonescoaching.com slash one 13. But even better, I now have email. Prompts that will come and help you do this challenge.

So whenever you are listening to this episode, um, right now I am in September, 2022. But no matter what, if you wanna do this 30 day challenge, I wanna help you and support you So, Go to smooth stones coaching.com/one 13 and you’ll be able to download the checklist with some prompts and some ideas and some places to check off your dares, and then you’ll be signed up to get prompts every day.

Just really short little email that says, Hey, do your dare, or Here’s some ideas, and it’s gonna be so good. You gotta go sign up. That is starting right now. What about today’s episode? You guys need to listen. I just looked up sleep aids on Amazon and there were more than 3000 results, and that shows me that we have a lot of tired people walking around this world.

And if you are one of them, you gotta keep listening because this episode is gonna change the way you feel forever. Literally, life changing. I don’t throw that around lightly. It will change your life to change the way you’re thinking about being tired, because today we’re not talking about how to fix being tired.

We’re actually helping you navigate life when you are tired. I recently was. In a group of entrepreneurs, and one of them had just gotten over Covid and she was feeling really down because she hadn’t been posting on social media as much as she wanted to, but she just didn’t have the energy. Like if you’ve had covid, you know that sometimes that fatigue is for real and it can last a long time.

But this lady was feeling really, really bad about the fact that she couldn’t be doing all the things she wanted to. Now, when I had little babies and I was getting up all hours of the night and then getting zero time for me during the day, I remember being so tired. But I continued to berate myself for not getting everything on my list done, and I constantly felt like I was failing.

Of course, at that same time, I was eating like all the junk food and whatever easy, quick things were around. When I had a minute, I for sure wasn’t exercising, even though people kept saying it would help with my energy and my mental health. I was too tired and my kids made it really hard, like they would start climbing on me as soon as I’d.

Put down my exercise mat. My clients who are in early grief are often up at night in the silence. They feel drained, like they have no energy for anything, and a simple interaction. The store sends them to the couch for the rest of the day. They’re sometimes afraid to sleep because of the dreams that come.

They can’t get comfortable with this body. That has changed during pregnancy. The hormones are always changing, whether they’re postpartum, pregnant again, doing infertility treatments, or just dealing with a regular cycle and wishing it was different. There are so many reasons we are physically tired. So here’s a question for you.

What are yours? What. Why are you tired right now? And I feel like I can ask that question with a lot of confidence because I’m guessing almost every one of us listening is really tired. Lately, it feels like collectively as a world we’re just tired. I wanna tell you the effects of sleep deprivation.

There is a loss of cognitive function. You’re gonna have memory issues, you will have mood changes and trouble with concentration. And then there are effects on our body, right? Especially long-term effects. If this is going on for, um, a prolonged period and tiredness can affect your libido and just like I said, so many parts of our body are affected by not having enough sleep.

What do you usually do when you’re tired? You might reach for some caffeine, some sugar, some carbs to give you energy. You may try other ways of self-medication to get to sleep, but most of these things make our tiredness worse because we are essentially fighting with our body and its natural processes.

See, when you’re tired, your body is missing things it needs, and instead of a nap or actually resting, we’ve trained our brains to reach for the easy fake boosts so that we can power through our day. We don’t tend to use food as a fuel when we’re tired. It’s more like a bandaid because making something healthy seems like a lot of work and the junk is right there calling our names.

Now you might think that this podcast is gonna talk about ways to feel more energy and take better care of yourself, but no, not today. Today we are talking about how to manage when you are tired. In the self coaching model that I use, we would put tired in the circumstance line. It is a fact. If you aren’t familiar with the self-coaching model, I’m gonna give you a quick explanation.

But if you want more info, and I highly recommend you learn about this, go way back to my first episodes of the podcast and listen to an episode called How to Coach Yourself. I so. In the self-coaching model, we have circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. Circumstances are the facts in our life.

Then we have our thoughts about them. Our thoughts create our emotions. Our emotions, fuel all our actions and the way we act, the way we show up, that is gonna create our result. Our results always go back to that thought. So the way we’re thinking creates the results in our life, and that is the best news because that means we have so much more control over what happens and how we feel than we think we do, right?

It is not the things around us that create our experience, it’s really the things inside of us that are important. So today, We’re gonna put, I am tired in the self-coaching model. Now, usually in the circumstance line, we need to have only facts. Nothing sub subjective, right? It has to be provable. No one could argue with you.

Now, the feeling of tired is something that you feel within yourself. I’m guessing that some sort of scientist could measure and maybe tell that you’re tired. In this case, I’m just gonna let us have this circumstance as a fact. I am tired. Okay, so let’s just move on from there. So you get to decide what to think about this circumstance.

For most of us, we are not very kind to ourselves. When we’re tired, we have been raised in a go, go, go world. We have been raised in a man’s world where we are expected to have the same energy levels every day, day after day. Then we measure ourselves against that. Right, and that’s where we often are, like covering everything up with the caffeine and the sugar so we can force ourselves to show up the same every day.

So then we sprinkle in a bit of perfectionism where we have really high standards for ourselves and feel like failures if we don’t accomplish anything. I have that in air quotes, like we don’t accomplish anything, and you have a recipe for some serious tired self-loathing. I want you to think about what you say to yourself when you are tired.

What does it sound like? If you want to pull out a piece of paper and actually write it down? I’m guessing you have a really well practiced script that you use against yourself. Most people have a whole list of shoulds that they repeat over and over when they are tired. I should want to get up early. I should be able to get everything done.

I shouldn’t lay down. That’s lazy. I shouldn’t be grouchy. I shouldn’t snap at my family. I should be better. I should eat better and stop with a Diet Coke. I should be practicing more self-care, but I’m too tired. I don’t have time. I should get my thyroid checked. So then we add that to the list of everything else you are taking care of, right.

Because shouldn’t there be a magic blood test that can tell us why we’re so dang tired, and then a magic pill that would just fix it? And for some of us, that might be a really good thing to do, right? You might find an answer. If you are chronically exhausted, no matter what, go get checked by a doctor.

Stop thinking about it and like spending emotional energy on it and just do it even if you have something medically going on that’s causing your exhaustion. All this advice in this episode absolutely still applies. I want you to notice how thoughts about how to fix yourself when you’re tired, only make you feel worse.

You aren’t able to be present and just deal with what’s in front of you. You now have this big problem that you’re spending a lot of mental energy on. But here’s my question for you. What if you just allowed your body to be tired and decided it’s okay? What would be different? Most of us have a huge amount of judgment about how we are.

When we’re tired, you might forget things, not wanna do activities you normally do not feel like getting ready like you normally do. Like shout out to joggers and ponytails because I am loving that a lot of the time lately. You have judgements about what time you get up, what time you go to bed. You might be like me and get super tired, but still find yourself up way too late because it’s the only time you get to be by yourself or you just need to watch one more episode.

I saw a sweet mom on Instagram today who was exhausted and she had let her child watch screens all day. Then she judged herself as not being a good parent. Maybe when you’re tired you have takeout or cereal for dinner. Add in some judgment. Have you ever had the debate about whether or not you should go to sleep when you’re mad at your spouse?

The classic marriage advice is to never let the sunset on your wrath. But staying up late and hashing things out can be so bad. But some people know they won’t be able to sleep if they can’t come to some kind of resolution. So there’s a lot of judgment around what the right thing to do is if you are.

Having disagreement with your partner and it’s late and you’re both tired now I’m in the camp of just go to sleep. It will seem so much less overwhelming in the morning. You don’t have to make it mean anything that your partner can fall asleep while you are still upset. Just get some rest and come at it later if you need to.

Many times what you really needed to happen was just to sleep. There are also so many layers of judgment from the actual physical things going on in our body that are the direct result of sleep deprivations, and then our reaction to these effects, like if you forget an appointment and you feel like a terrible person, and then everything snowballs because you’re tired and it seems worse and it just, I mean, you just end up feeling awful by the end of the day, but you can drop that judgment friend.

All you need to do is let go of the judgy thoughts and replace them with kinder thoughts. What this looks like is you just do what you can while you’re tired, and when you look around at the end of the day or all throughout the day, you just tell yourself, I did a really good job. You tell yourself I’m amazing, worthy and whole, just the way I am, just the way I showed up today.

It was perfect. You celebrate allowing yourself to function like a tired person instead of pushing too hard. You notice all the good things you have in your life, like that very comfy couch and fuzzy blanket that have been so wonderful today. You stop labeling yourself negatively and call yourself something that feels fun.

And kind. So pick your favorite word. A lot of people think if you lean into the tiredness, you’ll just lay around all day or go like half energy at work. Maybe you will. Wouldn’t that be an incredible gift to give yourself? To fight everything you’ve been told and socialized into and just let yourself rest.

You can celebrate that, but most of the time what happens is you still end up doing the same things. You just drop the part where you hate yourself, and that frees up a lot of space to do other things, and it feels a lot better. It’s funny how we think if we just loathe ourselves enough, we’ll change our behavior.

How about we try some love? And I want you to own your decisions. Instead of saying, I couldn’t get the laundry put away cuz I was too tired. Own it. Say I chose not to do the laundry Today, I chose not to put in my normal level of effort. I chose ice cream for dinner because I’m awesome and everyone is happy.

You are not a victim of your tiredness. You don’t have to defend your actions. You just need to make choices on purpose. We aren’t robots. We are humans. We are women. We cannot keep treating ourselves like we’re not. If you haven’t noticed, burnout is a big buzzword right now. Why is that? Because we don’t let ourselves rest when we are tired or emotionally depleted.

So let’s switch that up right now. I want you to repeat after me. Rest is productive. Rest is productive. Make a list of all the benefits of rest. There are so many, what are they for? Make sure you pick some that focus on you. Lots of times will say, I’ll be a better parent, a better worker, a better spouse, et cetera if I get rest.

And that’s okay. But you can stop the constant chatter in your head that tells you that taking care of your basic needs is something that has to benefit others. It doesn’t. Just you being a better version of you when you’re rested is enough, right? It doesn’t have to be in service of anyone. You matter.

You’re worth it. Let’s go back to that list of shoulds that we started before and turn them around and say, when I’m tired, I should want to sleep in. I should be able to leave things undone. I should lay down. That’s the best thing to do. I should be grouchy. I should snap at my family. Sometimes. I should be just the way I am.

I know Diet Coke might not be the healthiest choice and I love me anyway. I should not spend my energy wishing anything was different. I should ask for help. Strength is letting go of my conditioning to Work, work, work Strength is owning my choices. What else do you want to believe about yourself? When you are tired, you can pick anything you want.

Radical self-compassion means you fully and completely love yourself right where you are. This is especially necessary on tired days, grief days, pregnant after lost days, found out you’re not pregnant after lost days, sad days, days. You have a grief hangover. In days, you’re at a place in your cycle where your energy is lower.

What if instead of hating ourselves for being tired, we honored the wisdom of a body that lets us know it has needs. Our body wants to take care of us. It is always working so hard for us. Listen to her. It’s okay to be tired, my friends. It’s not a personal weakness. Choose what you wanna think about it and keep on keeping on.

And then take a nap. You have my blessing. I’ll see you next time. Are you tired of feeling like your baby was somehow your fault? Go to coaching com and get my free mini. How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.