Rest & Play = Sunshine

A simple formula I've discovered as I take steps to live "A Vibrant Life" is

Rest + Play = Sunshine.

In this episode I'll be sharing insights on  balancing rest and play, and how recognizing and addressing our exhaustion can rejuvenate our souls.

As a bonus, here is the link to my energy awareness tool.

But that’s not all! I'm excited to extend an open invitation to you, to be a part of my group coaching circle on Zoom. To be a part of this self-awareness focused coaching circle, feel free to connect on Facebook or Instagram. 

Let's Fill our Soul with Sunshine!

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

0:00

Friends this summer, I am sharing a few of the podcasts that I've already recorded that point you to the tools that I share in my summer series where we're learning how to fill our souls with sunshine. So this week we're gonna talk about the value of rest and play as we create sunshine in our own lives. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Tibbitts and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started.

Speaker: 0:47

Today we're gonna be talking about a formula that has served me when I think about the responsibility I have to take care of my own soul. Now, before I became a life coach, I was an elementary school teacher, and then I was a pastor, both in the children's area and as an executive director for about two decades. One of the things I noticed both in education and in ministry is how many people don't realize how easy it is to get to a place where we are depleted. Over the last seven years, I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned a lot about what exhausts me and what energizes me. I hope our podcast today can do some of that for you as well. Help you grow a little bit in your own self-awareness and help you decide that this might be the year you decide to fill your soul with sunshine. When I think of that phrase, fill your soul with sunshine, I think of that song from the eighties, Katrina and the Waves. I'm walking on Sunshine. What would that look like for you to live a life where it's fun and it's easy and you just feel like you're walking on sunshine? I talk a lot about the Enneagram. It's a way to understand why we think, feel, and do life the way we do. One of the energies, those nine different ways of thinking, feeling, and doing is the Enneagram seven. And we see that energy in characters on TV all the time where they say things like,"everything is working out for me". For some of us who tend to be more rational and try not to live in false positivity, that might not seem like a thought you To keep. But I wonder if you could be curious just for today. Say, what would it look like if for the next month I filled my own soul with sunshine? I walked through life walking on sunshine. Well, I have a little formula for you. It's not a real math formula, but it looks like one. Rest plus play equals sunshine. Rest plus play equals sunshine Check in with your energy, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual and notice.Are you in the gray, exhausted, depleted energy? I lived a lot of my life there that didn't keep me from over volunteering and over-serving. I just did so from a very resentful, frustrated, exhausted place. Then the next three colors look like a traffic light. Green, yellow, and red. Red means I'm getting tired. Yellow is just neutral, almost hard to notice, and green means go, and then above the green is blue for flow. Many of us got at least a few moments of our childhood to experience that Where you were out in the field pretending to be Laura Ingles Wilder, collecting flowers Maybe that was just me! Whatever you used to do when you were younger and the time would just fly by and you didn't know where it went. Hopefully you've had a few of those days. In order to get to a place where we're not exhausted and depleted, we need to rest. How do you rest really well? Some of us might need a nap, but others might need a walk. You might need a conversation with somebody, or you might need to be alone and have some stillness and silence and solitude. What kind of rest do you need today? We're supposed to rest until we're no longer tired. I know that sounds very funny, but if you've ever been raising a toddler, you know how important it is for humans to rest well, to get those naps or go to bed a little earlier. You know, we can't always decide when we're getting up, but we often can, can decide when we go to bed. So whatever works for you, find a way to rest. When you notice that you're not an exhausted and depleted energy, let's add on some play. Rest plus play equals sunshine. If you can, I want you to think for a moment, who is somebody in your life and if there isn't somebody for real, maybe it's a TV character or a book character that you would say lives life, like their walking on sunshine, just think of them for a moment. Now this might be interesting. Notice what thoughts you have about them. Those thoughts could be the reason why it would be hard for you to rest and play and bring sunshine into your own life. And as we've talked about so many times, just because our brain thinks a thought doesn't mean it's true. So there may be thoughts that you're thinking that now that you've taken the time to notice and write them down and observe them, maybe they're not the thought you want to keep. Maybe you want to start looking for examples of people who really do look like they're living a life where they're walking on sunshine. Now, this is not for false positivity. There are really hard things in life, but how hard is it to change anything from a place where we are emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, exhausted, overwhelmed, depleted? I don't think that is what Jesus meant when he said I came, that you may have a life and a life of abundance. So in spite of the physical ailment, in spite of the economic realities of life, in spite of the relationship struggles that we have, we still have the ability to think thoughts, feel feelings, do things, and stop doing things so that we fill our own soul with sunshine. I mention the artist's way a lot with the series because I feel like the two are so aligned. In it, Julia Cameron talks about the practice of taking ourselves out on an artist's date. Where we think we are so incredibly awesome and wonderful that we're worthy of going out and doing something that we want to do. I can remember one of my very first artist dates after I read the book was taking the bus by myself into Boston. I had met my daughter there a few times because she was living in Boston but she'd always met me at the bus stop. This time I decided I want to walk myself to where she works and I'm not really good directionally, it's something I very much struggle with. So I gave myself plenty of time'cause I knew it wasn't going to be one and done look at the map once and get there instantly. After we had our incredible lunch together, I was heading back home. And I again gave myself plenty of time and I had enough time to stop at one of my favorite bakeries in Boston and just get an iced tea and sit in one of their fun Adirondack chairs looking at, the big buildings in Boston and the people running around. And it was a beautiful, beautiful day. It was an artist date. I'm the artist, the creator of the universe has made each of us in their image, right? Father, son spirit, we're made in that image of being creative ourselves. I used to be a kindergarten teacher and I worked for a long time in children's ministry, and I'll tell you, most three and four year olds still know that they're creative. They want to show you their art, whether it's Play-Doh or Legos drawing or painting. But somewhere along the line we start to think thoughts like, well, this is foolish, this is silly. What a waste of time. And we lose that connection to the part of us that enjoys creating new things. That part of us that loves having a life filled with joy. So find that time. You are worth it to sit down with a notebook or your notes app and make a list of things you like doing. Maybe a few of them still scare you and that's why you haven't done them in a while. Often we only need 10 seconds of courage to do the thing that we're most afraid of doing. And you know that saying third time is the charm. I have found that true with so many of the different things I'm doing as I become a life coach with a podcast and webpage and classes that are online that need to be recorded. The first time is so hard. The second time is also so hard, but sometime between the third and 10th time, it starts getting easier and most things in life when we practice them and discern what to do better and make the next one or the next version a little bit better. By a hundred to a thousand times, we're pretty good at it. What would it look like if you took an artist date and did something that was a little scary or uncomfortable? Well, after two or three years, that would just be who you are, the person who does things. That makes them a little nervous, a little uncomfortable. One year of my life that would be easy for me to decide to just get super comfortable in is driving and not going anywhere. I live in a pretty small town in New Hampshire. I don't have to go on the highway very often, and it's easy for me to decide maybe I don't want to do that anymore because it gets so scared. It's very silly. You probably don't have the same problem, but there's probably something that you don't enjoy doing. Maybe it's new meeting new people. Maybe it's going out to dinner by yourself. But the more I do it, the more confidence I have that it's something I want to keep doing. I went to a concert recently. We flew down to Washington DC, and one of my daughters was supposed to go to the concert with us, but sit with friends. And at the last minute, the friends decided not to go. I jumped into mom mode and thought, well, should I move this and should she take my ticket? But she decided to go and sit at the back of the concert. She had the kind of ticket that you sit on the lawn and she decided to go by herself. And she had the very best time and was so inspiring and made me think, I'm gonna go to concerts that I want to go to, even if I can't find someone to go with me.'cause she had the best time. And that's what I want to remind us all today. I listen to my own podcasts. I try to only share with you things that I'm using in my own life. The three steps for today, the little equation, step number one, rest. Well, whatever you need for rest, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, rest, they all look a little different. You might be physically just fine, but mentally exhausted. Try to put the phone away if you are emotionally tired, and that one's a little hard to notice until we start doing the work. But I promise you, emotional exhaustion is so exhausting. Some relationships that you're in where you've forgotten to allow those people in your life to think any thought, feel any feeling, do any action, and have their own consequences. If you like me, struggle a little bit and being a little codependent and people pleasing, I really highly recommend Boundary Boss by Terri Cole, T-E-R-R-I. And if you don't really love reading a book, just follow her on Instagram. She gives great insight into why so many of us feel so emotionally exhausted. We're not only taking our energy and using it to repair and enhance our own life. We're using our energy to try to get into other people's boxes, hoping that we can help them to think a new thought, feel a new feeling, do a new action. And unfortunately, that's not how life works. If it was, we would do that. If there was a way to help the people in your life think a new thought. Feel a new feeling or do a new action. You and I would probably do everything in the world to make that true. But the reality is that person that you love, for some reason, thinks the thought that they're currently thinking is serving them, and that's why they're thinking it. So the best thing we can do is be an example of living a vibrant life of thinking the thoughts that we want on repeat to be repeated. What's your favorite thought if you don't have one to try on right now? How about this one? I want to live a vibrant life. I want to use every color in the 64 box of crayons. I want to experience the highs and the lows, all the feelings. I want to do, things that make me scared, and I want to rest really well. I. So rest well, and then when you have energy, do things that are fun and bring you joy and you don't even have to look around for other people to do it with you. Maybe part of the gift you're gonna give yourself is doing some of these things on your own. Find that place that you love to go for a walk and make sure you get there this summer. Find a way to just enjoy the simple things in life. A glass of ice tea, an ice cream cone from your favorite place going to pick fresh blueberries. Whatever it is, take the time to remember and put yourself in a place where you do the things that bring you fun. I promise you, when we are self-aware and filling our own lives with rest and fun the whole world gets the best of us. You might be like me, and you may have had an experience with other people who live really exhausted lives, and it can be hard and frustrating and exhausting. Let's choose to change that at least in our own life. Rest plus play equals sunshine. So that's my word of encouragement for you today. If you'd like a community to help you grow in these tools, which are simple but not necessarily easy, I'd love to invite you to join me in my group coaching circle. We meet almost every week on Zoom hold space for 30 minutes to make sure that we are investing our best energy in the things that are creating the results we want. I also different classes I've taught and they're all recorded for you to watch at your own time. If you'd like to learn more about joining that coaching circle, you can find me@kellytibbits.com, T-I-B-B-I-T-T-S. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. You can send me a message and I'll be sure to reach out. I hope you have a wonderful week. We'll talk soon. Thank you for joining the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encourages and equips you to move forward in your vibrant life. To learn more, you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook or visit my website, kellytibbitts.com

13:35

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