You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode 57. This is the one
where we're going to talk about whether or not you're giving yourself permission to
have fun. Let's dive in. This is a podcast for overthinkers,
overdoers, and overachievers who are tired of feeling overanxious and just want to
feel better. I'm your host, certified life coach Jackie de Crinis. Hey there,
welcome back. It has been a minute. So my one month hiatus from the podcast turned
into a little longer than I expected. And I knew that I was going to take a few
weeks off for vacation, which I told you all about, and planned on giving myself
maybe another week or so for re -entry. And I know that I just made myself sound
like an astronaut coming back to Earth, but it is like a re -entry. I mean,
whenever we take a break from real life, whether it's work or taking care of kids
or whatever your routine is, it's like stepping out of one world into another and
back again. I know that I felt like when I was gone for three and a half weeks,
I was really away. I went to like seven different cities all over the US and we
went to Italy and we saw family and We saw friends and it was really glorious. And
I really felt like I was escaping, like escaping from my routine, escaping from my
mindset, just refreshing, recharging all the things. And then when I was back, it
was like I never left. I think we all feel that way, right? 'Cause you just get
plunged back into like regular life. And it's hard because you've unplugged,
which is what I talked about on the last episode. And I gave myself that permission
to unplug. I was unplugged for 23 days, but then you kind of have to hit the
ground running when you come back. I mean, there's stuff to do. So it was
interesting 'cause I really was very mindful in this vacation, I hadn't taken a
vacation or this kind of vacation in a very, very long time. I've taken, you know,
obviously weekends off and days off and holidays off and things like that. And I
took my daughter to go to college. So I've been away from my home and my business,
but not where I was that unplugged. And the interesting thing is, and I remember
this from when I was a young executive, there's this feeling like, will I ever get
back my momentum? And I know when I was younger, it was something that fear was
really instilled in me. As a television executive, there was so much shame attached
taking time off. Whether you took off one week or two weeks, it was such a badge
of honor to work through your vacations, you know, to have read all of your emails
before you got back on Monday. In my case, it was always about reading scripts and
watching cuts for episodes. So You needed to be caught up when you came back
because otherwise there was this shame that you took time off. Even though it's in
your contract, everybody has allowed vacation, whether I said one week, two weeks,
whatever. But then there was this implication like you really shouldn't be taking it.
Or if you do, you better be ready to hit the ground running when you get back. So
the interesting thing for me was a lot of times I would take a vacation, but it
wasn't really a vacation. It was more of just a location. Like I changed locations.
I got out of the office. I was looking at something different. I went to a hotel,
but it was never really or truly a break. And now, because I'm in the business of
coaching people and teaching people how to be mindful, how to unplug,
how to have work -life balance. And I try to walk the walk and talk the talk and
do what I preach, I now coach all of these people in the entertainment business who
still talk about this, who still talk about the shame attached to taking a break or
taking a vacation or taking a hiatus. And even with people working remotely, there's
a sense of shame or fear about it. So I had one client recently confess to me
that she not only fears taking vacations, for all the reasons I've just listed, but
she also has a fear of simply allowing herself to have too good of a time
anywhere, whether it's a party or a vacation or anything. She said,
"It's not just the fear of judgment "that I'm not working, like from her agent,
"her manager, her studio or network, "she's always fearful, like they're paying me a
lot of money "so they expect me to be working, I guess, 24 /7. But that's just a
thought. But then as we started to dig deeper on this, she admitted, it's not just
the fear of the vacation, it's actually the fear of letting go and admitting that
she's having fun, because somewhere her own guilt tells her that she should always
be working. And because she fears that if she lets go and has too much fun, she
knows it will come to an end. So rather than letting herself bask in the fun of
an event, she tries to find something wrong with it, or she'll end up focusing on
what she has to do when she gets home, or she'll worry about something that hasn't
even happened yet. So the craziest thing about this is that it's not that crazy
because I was exactly the same way. And I have to still fight that tendency or
pattern of always perpetuating that line of thinking. I can't remember if I told
this story before, but I had a friend who was a doctor who was really, really
smart, and she went to college at like 16 and graduated medical school like at 22.
And she and I would often bond over our overthinking hypervigilant brains and our
tendency to over obsess about every detail, kind of at work and at home, but more
at work. And she would joke that if we were breezed as at Starbucks, we'd probably
find ways to worry about restocking the sugar packages when we got home at night.
It's just who we are. It's just a mindset. And I've recorded two different episodes
about this line of thinking. This is what I talked about in episode 35. Are you a
chronic warrior? And again, in episode 42, are you looking for problems?
Both of these episodes talk about how we rob ourselves from the present because we
think if we worry about what could possibly go wrong in the future, we think we
can prevent it from ever happening. Or we think we can prevent being upset about it
in the future. In other words, we think that by worrying about it before it
happens, we'll be better prepared for it when it does just in case.
But that's like pre -greaving. That's like imagining that someone healthy is going to
die and grieving it before they actually get sick or pass away. How unproductive is
that? So this idea of pre -greaving or worrying about something that hasn't even
happened or robbing yourself of having a good time because work awaits you or
something else bad could happen If you let go and enjoy yourself, you have to talk
back to your brain and say, "This is just not true." Worrying or obsessing about
something in the future doesn't protect you physically or emotionally from anything
bad happening. Imagining what could go wrong or catastrophizing something accomplishes
absolutely nothing. Except it Exhausts ourselves it overtaxes our nervous system and
it robs us of joy by not being present so the same goes true for not giving
ourselves permission to unplug and slowly Plug back in which is what I did last
month. I gave myself permission to go on vacation I gave myself permission to mostly
not think about work although I did actually think about my podcast and a few of
my clients, but I tried to stop my brain from doing that and get back to the
present, like focus on what I was looking at and focus on breathing and focus on
the fun. And I had this friend, former colleague, who would always say she would
basically rob herself of the excitement of taking a vacation by worrying about how
much work she would miss and how awful the workload would be when she returned. So
sometimes she felt her pre and post stress vacation stress was almost not worth
taking the vacation at all. Now I love this story again, not because it's crazy,
but because I relate to it so profoundly. Now my modus operandi was that I managed
that anxiety by working on my vacations so that I could never be overloaded when I
returned because I basically just did a little bit every day or I did a lot on
the airplane going and a lot on the airplane going back. But even that kind of
robbed me of my vacation. Not entirely, of course, I still went down water slides
with my kids and laid poolside, but I was always preoccupied with how much work was
waiting for me in my hotel room. And the thing is, we deserve our time off. We
need to give ourselves permission to have fun and we need to set the intention to
be present after giving ourselves permission to have fun because you can't rob
yourself of a vacation or a party or even like a great afternoon with a friend
having a coffee or a cocktail by worrying about what you're not doing. So how do
you do that? Well, you have to trust your future self that you will manage whatever
else shows up or comes later. If you end up with a pile of work or something was
amiss or you forgot to return a phone call or whatever, you'll deal with it when
you get back. The world will not come to an end. The world will not stop spinning.
So stop indulging in the fantasy that if you pre -worry about it now, it will be
easier later. it won't. Now, for those of you who want to take this lesson to an
extreme, and I know there's a few of you, this is not about being reckless.
No one is talking about driving 100 miles an hour down a windy road without a
seatbelt because it's fun and it's thrilling. There's a difference between enjoying
yourself and being present, not worrying about the future, versus being reckless and
not worrying about consequences. So Don't compare the two. So for us overthinkers,
it's often difficult to make the distinction. But the benefit of being present is
that you get to create joy in your life. And energetically speaking, that creates a
magnet for more joy. So by allowing joy in your life, you create more joy in your
life. It's like what they say about gratitude. The more gratitude you express, the
more you have to be grateful for. So you're actually rewiring your neural pathways
to acknowledge the good, to sit in it. And if the negative, ruminating,
or fearful thoughts start to creep in, then acknowledge them and simply invite them
to leave. The same way you would do, like if a creepy stranger showed up at your
door while you're having a party. You're not inviting some crazy person into your
house because they heard you were having fun. You would politely acknowledge them and
say, "Hey, I'm sorry, it's a private party." You get to do this with your thoughts
in the same way. Thank you, but no thank you. So ask yourself, do you self
-sabotage your time, your joy, with worry? Are you always worried about what you
should be doing? Or are you always worried about what could go wrong instead of
what could go right, this is a super hard habit to break. It starts with awareness,
and it starts with self -compassion. And what do I always say? It's a practice. So
I invite you to practice enjoying yourself, whether it's a walk in nature, a nap,
lunch with a friend, a party, or even a vacation. But when you do this, can you
set the intention to be present. Because no one else is going to give you the
permission. It has to come from within. Permission to be excited, permission to have
fun, permission to be deserving, permission to recharge. All right, friends, I look
forward to talking to you next time. I hope you have a great week. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you're
enjoying these episodes, Please subscribe or follow this podcast so you can always be
in the know when the next episode drops. If you would like to learn more about
working with me as a coach, you can connect with me through my website at
jackiedecrinis.com. That's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N -I -S .com.
