This newsletter is called The Untangling and so I started it thinking I was untangling a couple of necklaces from the bottom of my handbag, when in fact I’d pulled the thread of a mountain of dog eared balls of wool, some tangled themselves and others sort of neatly wound up at first glance ….
But when you picked them up?
Hopeless. An absolute mess.
So this space has been on my mind, while I’ve been untangling my relationship with time, my body, money, myself, family, work, alcohol, technology, social media, my industry and a thousand other things.
Then three weeks ago I started the 15 Hour work week mastermind with my coach Vikki Louise.
The first two weeks I spent wrestling with my thoughts, then last Sunday something clicked into place and I felt things start to flow, and today I realised that in the process of building my 15 hour work week I’m creating a lot more time and space (duh), I don’t have to choose between Substack or my Mighty Networks community or Instagram, turns out I have space for them all!
So decision made, I thought about what I wanted to share with you first and it’s an idea I’m going to teach about in my coaching membership, The Life Atelier.
The idea is that we approach workaholism/overworking/buffering with work/ whatever shiny name you want to give the state that I lived in for 20 years which was essentially ‘getting validation through doing, avoiding looking into the dusty crevices of my brain to see things that might be awkward or uncomfortable and being patted on the back for it by everyone because working hard is a socially acceptable and even encouraged state of being.’
The idea is that we approach this ‘state’ like we approach recovery.
Because guess what? You’re recovering.
I got the idea reading Holly Whittaker’s Quit Like A Woman, she talks about accessing confident sobriety, giving up alcohol not by doom and gloom shaming yourself with the label of alcoholic, but instead by building a life so gloriously full and packed with love and self-respect that you don’t actually want to drink alcohol any more.
I thought about how when I first decided to join the mastermind I’d had the thought ‘huh, what will I think about when I’m not thinking about work all the time?’ And how I’d realised how sad that was.
Part of the wrestling with my brain was that I didn’t actually have a vision for what my life would look like when not working ALL. THE. TIME. So I started to let myself daydream, then I started to take the gleeful recovery approach, going to bed ridiculously early, like 8.30pm and reading/snoozing/listening to mediations.
I replaced my 5am hustle alarm and coffee with 7am hot water in bed with my journal - this took literally months to get the hang of, my sleep routine of 11pm-7am is my proudest achievement of 2022. Not the rescuing myself from the crumbling renovation, not getting on top of my finances or relaunching my business, no, I have a bedtime that matches my circadian rhythm.
I’m a Bear if you were wondering, cheerful, but not the most fun late evening!
I stick to it like Mark Wahlberg in his cryogenic tanks.
10pm Bath/Book in bed. 11pm Sleep. 6:50am I wake up grinning just before my alarm clock. Every. Bloody. Day.
So proud.
So that was my first ping that maybe we need to approach this whole working less thing with a more recovery angle than I’d previously thought, turns out just offering a 15 Hour Work Week to a lot of people isn’t actually appealing, they too have dark brain crevice thoughts they’re avoiding!
The second ping came when I was reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, love it, fabulous book, lots of brilliant ideas to implement.
However, one thing that leapt out and I had another ‘huh’ thought, was where he talked about the business structure of Instagram, YouTube et al.
It’s shitty, no getting around that one, the combination of ‘they make money by our eyeballs being available for advertisers’ + ‘human brains having an 80% negativity bias’ means we click and click and get fed things that are bad for us.
My first thought was to delete Instagram.
Recover my focus, join the revolution to help people thrive without social media… then I thought about my behaviour before Instagram existed….
I have a pretty enthusiastically addictive brain.
Alcohol, cigarettes, biscuits, reading spoilers for horror movies I will never watch, compulsive reading of books.
And, for the last 8 years? Work.
If it’s possible to get hooked on something then my brain generally thinks it’s a fantastic idea. Thanks brain.
So if getting rid of social media wasn’t the answer then what was?
And, I came back to: building a life so amazing I don’t need to buffer with anything.
Recovery.
I want to open up this discussion to ask you what a recovery approach to workaholism means to you?
Maybe you don’t identify as a workaholic, but you might feel uncomfortable about perfectionism or procrastination….
How often do you check emails, or hear yourself ‘I’ll just …..’
Taking the recovery approach to workaholism can look like many things, but for me right now it’s about going slowly, long walks, naps, cooking soup, not beating myself up when I eat the whole packet of biscuits because I forgot to cook soup and I’m hungry, taking one decision at a time to unhook myself from work.
Daydreaming, scheduling things I want to do with people I want to spend time with in real life, reading about other people who are ahead of me in the recovery journey and already doing less and living more, baths, candles, hair masks, yoga, practising self-compassion.
Matcha lattes not coffee in the afternoons has been a pretty big shift too!
Let me know your thoughts and what you’re untangling right now, and thanks for being here!
Emma x