The linchpin: taking care of yourself

Hey there!

I spent half an hour last week writing a list of all the ways I was failing.

It wasn't intentional. I sat down at my desk after a draining morning of meetings, opened my journal to reset, and suddenly found myself filling an entire page with evidence of my shortcomings:

• Projects I've stalled on

• Ideas I've abandoned

• Time I've "wasted"

• Promises to myself I haven't kept

With each bullet point, the weight on my chest grew heavier. The voice in my head grew louder. The path forward grew dimmer.

Maybe you know this feeling too.

That spiral where one difficult day avalanches into questioning your entire approach to life. Where temporary exhaustion masquerades as permanent inadequacy. Where you can't distinguish between genuine obstacles and the stories you're telling yourself about them.

I had already tried my usual remedy—a walk outside—but returned to my desk feeling just as heavy as when I left. The list kept growing. My energy kept shrinking.

And then, out of options and overwhelmed by exhaustion, I tried something different.

When nothing works, change the channel

I put binaural beats in my earbuds, laid down on the daybed, and let myself drift into a power nap.

That's it. No grand strategy. No complex intervention. Just a simple acknowledgment that my brain needed to reset in a way that thought alone couldn't accomplish.

When I woke up 20 minutes later, the world hadn't changed. My to-do list was the same. My projects were in the same state of completion or incompletion.

But something else had shifted entirely.

The clarity that had evaded me all day suddenly appeared: My energy was naturally flowing toward a newer project, and in this season preparing for our move, that made perfect sense. I could see why I had been struggling to focus on other areas, and instead of interpreting it as failure, I recognized it as my intuition guiding me toward what mattered most right now.

The shame I'd felt about "wasting time" dissolved when I realized that my body and mind had been trying to tell me something important—I needed rest and recalibration, not more pushing.

The linchpin that holds everything else together

That afternoon, sitting on the daybed with the clarity that only comes after the storm, I understood something fundamental:

Taking care of yourself isn't just another task on the list—it's the linchpin that holds everything else together.

It's not self-indulgent to prioritize it. It's not a luxury to protect it. It's not optional if you want to build anything meaningful.

Without this foundation, even our best strategies crumble. With it, even our imperfect efforts gain traction.

This isn't about toxic positivity or ignoring genuine challenges. It's about recognizing that our perception of those challenges—and our capacity to meet them—is profoundly influenced by how well we're caring for ourselves.

The fallacy of "knowing better"

I realized something else that day: I've been falling into a dangerous fallacy.

I've mastered certain mindfulness and self-care practices in the past. I've read the books. I've done the work. I know that negative thoughts are just thoughts, not reality.

And so I tell myself: "Since I already know this is just in my head, I should be able to bypass its effects and keep going."

It's as if knowing the theory should exempt me from having to practice. As if intellectual understanding should override emotional experience.

But that's not how it works.

This is wisdom we all "know," but sin my experience it seems like I have to learn again and again through my own experiences. It's the kind of lesson that doesn't stick until I’ve failed to heed it—sometimes repeatedly.

The skills that supported me in the past don't maintain themselves. The awareness I've cultivated doesn't automatically translate into action. The tools that once helped me navigate difficult emotions don't work if they stay on the shelf.

Knowledge isn't enough. Practice is everything. And sometimes we have to hit a wall before we remember what we've known all along.

Small interventions, big shifts

I'm learning that sometimes the most powerful interventions are sometimes the simplist:

• A 20-minute nap when your brain feels like static

• A conversation that pulls you out of your own head

• Five minutes of conscious breathing when thoughts start spiraling

• Starting just 2 minutes of art of writing

None of these solve the underlying problems. But they create the clarity needed to distinguish between real problems and the stories we tell ourselves about them.

These are things we all "know" work. They're not revolutionary insights. And yet, we often have to learn their importance through our own struggles, through moments when we've pushed past our limits and finally been forced to remember: taking care of ourselves isn't optional.

What I'm carrying forward

That day taught me something I keep forgetting and remembering: self-trust is built through these small moments of listening to what we truly need, not by forcing ourselves to be who we think we should be.

The projects that feel like a struggle right now might actually be telling us something important about our current season. The impulse to rest might be wisdom, not weakness. The shifting of priorities might be evolution, not inconsistency.

I'm curious: Where in your creative life might you be interpreting natural rhythms as personal failings? What would change if you approached that area with curiosity instead of judgment?

Poll, Prompt & Recap

Journal prompt: 

Think about a recent day when you felt stuck or inadequate. What was your body or intuition trying to tell you that your conscious mind was resisting?

3 Daily Habits

I haven’t been able to get back in the routine of waking up before the kiddos since spring break. That routine is definitely essential to me making progress on writing and staying consistent with journaling. Once my trail run race is complete I think I’ll have energy to early rise again!

4 Weekly Habits

Thank you for reading! I appreciate you!

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Warmly,
Jennifer