Episode 45: When You Feel Depleted

Sometimes the hardest part of feeling tired is the way we pile guilt and self-judgment on top of it. This week, I’m sharing a mindset shift (and a super helpful printer analogy!) that helped me see my own depletion in a whole new light. If you’ve been running low, this is your gentle reminder that it’s okay—and that you’re probably doing an amazing job.

Are you curious what coaching is like?  Schedule a free mini session with me and try it out! 

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 45, When You Feel Depleted.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hey, how's it going? How's your summer? Summer is fun. Summer is chaotic.

I actually am a person who thrives more on routine, and so it's a little bit challenging for me in the summer to embrace the lack of routine and the more sort of chaotic fun that is going on, but there are definitely things to enjoy. Recently, we got back from a little family reunion, which was super fun, and also included 20 hours of driving within a four-day period. We were sleeping on the floor.

We were sharing space and bathrooms with lots of people, and I wasn't in my usual routines of exercise and sleep and scripture reading and personal time, right, like all that stuff got put on hold so we could connect with family, which is great. We got home, and all of our furniture was in the center of the rooms, and all the stuff on our walls and the home decor that we have throughout the house was all down in the basement, and the stuff from my closet was all over my bedroom because we had multiple rooms of our house painted, and also the trim in the upstairs bedrooms, and so when we got home, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and worn out, and it was really interesting because I actually was feeling pretty guilty about that. Do you do that too? Where like you feel depleted, you feel worn out, but then you're like, well, I shouldn't be so tired.

Like I shouldn't be this. I shouldn't be that, and I realized it's like I was sort of thinking if I could have managed things better, then I could have prevented myself from being tired like this. I could have prevented the back pain that I was experiencing if I had just handled it better, and I was feeling a desire to get a little bit of alone time, and I felt guilty about that too.

Like, well, I shouldn't want to be alone. I was feeling overwhelmed by all the house projects. We have a lot of sticks in the fire of things we're doing this summer in our home, and we have a youth camp that's coming up where I'm in charge of a lot of things and family details that I'm coordinating, right, for my kids, and my son getting his wisdom teeth out and just all these things, and of course work projects, and I was feeling overwhelmed but telling myself like, well, if I had just managed my life better, I wouldn't be overwhelmed right now.

If I had just figured out better exercise routines, I wouldn't be in back pain, and that was just kind of fascinating, like looking back on it now to sort of see how that all went, so I ended up having a coaching session with my coach where I was the client, and it was super powerful. So I want to tell you about the mindset shift that I experienced during this coaching session, and my hope is that it will be helpful for you if you're in a time where you're juggling a lot, and maybe you feel tired or cranky, and maybe you're judging yourself that you're feeling depleted. I'm hoping that this will be helpful for you.

So I began my session feeling like I shouldn't be tired and overwhelmed and depleted, and I was actually feeling a little bit of shame. If I were handling this better, I wouldn't have back pain, my mind wouldn't be racing with a million categories of tasks and things I feel behind on, and my coach was holding space and asking me great questions, and at one point she asked me a really, really powerful question. She said, what if, given all you have going on, what if you're doing an amazing job? And I paused and considered that question, and just started crying.

And I said, yeah, actually, I think that's true. I think I am doing a really good job. And so then she was asking me some questions to help me explore the resistance, right? Like, why am I reluctant to say that to myself? Why do I not want to tell myself that I'm doing an amazing job? Why did I need to hear that from somebody else to believe it? And we sort of uncovered that I was worried that if I tell myself I'm doing amazing, that I'll get complacent, and that I'll be overwhelmed and behind the rest of my life, because I won't develop strategies to be able to overcome those things or prevent them in the first place, I guess, which is super funny.

But when I don't have back pain, when I feel energized, when my house is orderly, I can tell myself, hey, Emily, you're doing a great job. But when I'm depleted, it's easier to tell myself like, yeah, well, this is your fault. You're failing in some way to manage your life well, and so that's why you're tired.

So the shift that I experienced in this session with some really great exploring questions and just some time to unpack it and to think about it and be guided through discovering what I was thinking, I realized, you know what? It's completely valid for me to feel depleted. And so I was able to shift from I shouldn't be so tired to like, well, of course I'm tired. And the way my coach described it is validation of my state based on the exchange.

So if time is a currency, if energy is a currency, if all the different things that I'm doing in my life, that's a resource. And so, of course, it makes sense that if I'm spending those resources, then I'm gonna get a little bit worn out. And so it's like, yeah, we spend 20 hours in the car in a period of four days.

Well, yeah, I'm probably gonna have some back pain, especially where I'm not exercising and not doing my stretches and not doing the things that typically keep that back pain at bay, right? A desire to be alone and spend less time with people, that actually totally makes sense after four days of not being alone at all and sharing all the space. So validation of your state based on the exchange, I love that concept of like, actually, I can just kind of wrap my arms around myself and say, that's completely understandable that you would feel that way. Like a feeling of overwhelmed about painting the house and coming home and having everything from our walls and all the furniture displaced, like that's actually kind of understandable that that left me feeling off kilter rather than the belief, like if I had better techniques, I wouldn't feel overwhelmed.

It's like, no, this is totally normal. This is okay. Nothing has gone wrong.

And now let's figure out what I need. So as we explored some of these different ideas, I came up with this printer cartridge analogy that really helped me to shift my energy. So I was thinking about, okay, so I have a printer and I love my printer and it has four ink wells, I think four, let me look back at it.

Yeah, there's black and then there's the three other colors. So there are four ink wells, right? And as the printer prints paper in lots of different colors, then those ink wells go down. And from time to time, I need to check or sometimes there'll be an alert, like, oh, your ink is running low, right? So what do I do when the ink in my printer is running low? Well, I don't be like, what is your problem printer? If you had done a better job, you wouldn't be running low on ink.

Like, no, I would never say that. I'm like, oh, thank you so much for printing all of those pages with all those beautiful colors. It looks like you need a little bit more ink.

Let me go ahead and fill that well up for you, right? And I get out the black ink and I squeeze it in and that well fills up. I get out the blue ink and I squeeze it in and the well fills up. And so once I realized how much I was judging myself, I was able to shift my thinking and say, you know what, I can view myself like my printer.

And instead of the judgment of like, why are you depleted? You shouldn't be depleted. It's like, oh, your ink wells are low. Of course they are.

Because it used ink to travel. It uses ink to interact with family and to do house projects and to plan a youth camp and to coach clients and to teach workshops and to record podcast episodes and to find college housing for my son and to schedule wisdom teeth appointments and all of these other things that are going on, right? Like those things take ink. And I'm happy to spend that resource.

I don't regret spending it. But also I'm gonna need to replenish the supply. So I don't need to judge myself when the printer ink wells are running low.

What I need to do is assess what is needed and then have the goal is to fill the ink back up, right? So this was a fun shift to view myself in this way and be able to say, oh yeah, you've been using a lot of ink lately. That's so awesome. Thanks for printing lots of pages in such beautiful colors.

Looks like some of your wells are running low. How can we refill those? What do you need? Okay, so this was my experience and I wanna offer it to you. That if you're juggling a lot, if you feel tired, if you feel cranky, if you find that you're judging yourself when you feel like you're kind of running low, here's what I wanna offer to you.

You can actually approach it in a different way and you can think of yourself as this printer and just validate. Oh, it's completely understandable that your ink cartridges are running low because you've been using a lot of ink. And then in that moment, you can ask your body, hey body, what do you need? And you can ask your soul, hey, what do you need? How can I help you to replenish the supply of what has been used in these things that you've been doing? And that way you can begin the process of filling back up without judgment.

You can get back on your own team and instead of thinking, oh, I just need to get more done. I just need to get more done. Maybe what you'll find is you actually might need to get less done for a little bit or less of certain kinds of things so that you can balance out those ink wells.

For me, when I really asked those questions, hmm, body, what do you need? My body was like, I'm craving movement. And my soul was like, I need to be alone. Like, okay, I'm gonna go on a long walk all by myself.

And my body and my soul were so thankful after that long walk by myself. And I felt the ink wells start to fill up. So the word that I took away from that session was replenish.

And replenish without judgment, right? That I can actually acknowledge. Yeah, it's understandable since you've been using a lot of ink that your cartridges would be running low. Let's find out how we can refill those.

So that's what I wanna pass on to you. Here's my question. What if, given all the things you have going on, you're actually doing an amazing job? If you need to hear that today from somebody else, let me be the voice that offers it to you.

You are doing an amazing job. You're printing some pretty awesome pages in lots of different colors. What will help you replenish those wells so you can keep printing beautiful pages in your life, keep connecting with your family, keep serving in your church community, keep helping your kids, keep managing your household, whatever it is that you do.

I believe with everything you have going on that you are doing an amazing job. I think it's totally understandable on the days that you feel depleted. And I wanna encourage you to ask your body what it needs, to ask your soul what it needs to refill.

And hey, I'm still offering some free mini coaching sessions, a 30-minute free coaching session with me. If you've been curious about coaching, if you wanna try it out, if you have something specific that you know you wanna delve into, go to emilyrichcoaching.com/mini-session and sign up for a time that works for you. And I would love to meet with you.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.