If My Plate Could Talk: “Managing The Mental Load Of Your Responsibilities”

Hydra sphere. What is up? How's your week been? I want you to take a moment and really think about that. What's been on your plate this week? What feels heavy, what feels overwhelming, chaotic. What feels amazing, what feels wonderful, what feels great. Because we always want to metaphorically look. And what are you noticing? What's up, Luke? About how you're nourishing yourself and the way you're nourishing yourself in relation to what's on your plate. If this is your first time here, I'm so glad you chose to come.

I'm Dr. Charryse, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner, and author. Hello, Jackie. And tonight is all about you. Hello. Oh, Palm Springs. Yes. That is amazing. Oh, I'm so honored. You're hopefully in the sunshine, sipping on something wonderful, surrounded by your family, and watching as we continue to do. Oh, Jackie, I'm so glad you prepped today. I love it. I love that all of you who are used to being on this space are coming in. You're letting me know your wins.

I will never stop asking you to tell me what's going well. Hello, Statesboro. Thank you for rating your week. If this is your first time here, we always rate your week one to ten. One meaning your week is working you. Ten meaning it is the most fabulous week in the world given the context of your life. Right. It's not about how someone else would rate your week. It's not about last week. It's about here's what's going on right now. I will give my week a nine. I feel like it's been a minute since I've given my myself a nine.

And it doesn't mean that the week hasn't been crazy, because it has. But I feel like I've done some really great work to reset this week. Super excited about what we're going to focus on this month. I'm working to be a little bit more thematic for all of you. I mean, don't. Don't think I'm gonna stay like that all the time, but I think it's helpful so that as we work on things, you can build on them. One of the things that I want to focus on that has come up in our conversations throughout time is the mental aspect of managing your time and your priorities.

It's something that we all know, but it's really easy to forget. So tell me this first. How are you doing with managing your priorities? You can decide how honest you want to be. Are you managing your priorities or your priorities managing you? Give me A little insight to where you are, Jackie. Good to know that you're heading in the right direction. You know, I would say for myself, I am. My priorities are kind of managing me. It's not horrible, but there's a few other things that I need to tweak and I need to reset.

And so part of us having these conversations weekly is this is your opportunity to really inventory what the past week has been like and then think ahead to what you want to see for yourself this week. So I want to start you with this quote from Stephen Covey. If you're not familiar with him, he's a phenomenal author that talks a lot about leadership and it says the key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Here's what I want you to get out of that. When you're looking at your calendar and when you are looking at your week, you want to center you and then your family first.

Then you fill in all the other responsibilities and tasks and goal. We often do it opposite. We often put in all of our work responsibilities and all of the things we need to do for our children. And that's not bad. But it can put you in a situation where you then look and go, oh, wait, I don't have time for me. That's not what we want you to do. Because when you don't make time to prioritize you, your well being, your health, movement, a cold plunge, yoga, meditation, prayer, whatever it is, then you're starting from lack, you're starting your day out of scarcity.

So I also want to add, I'm a huge proponent. I know this is going to sound antiquated, but just stay with me for having a paper calendar. I know that we're all into the digital world. I have a digital calendar. But here's what you're missing by not doing something on paper. You're missing the repetition of writing down what you need to do, which is so important for our brain health, which strengthens our telomeres, which helps our neuroplasticity, which helps our memory to continue to retain as we age.

Every time you look at that calendar and you write it down, you're putting that in your core memory and you're less likely to forget. It's really easy to forget or dismiss a notification. We also know that there are lots of times where you have so many notifications coming about what you need to do and what's on your schedule that you get overstimulated. But then you're like Oh, I can't take a break from my phone because my whole world is on there. Let's shift that. Let's change that. The other reason why a paper calendar is so helpful, even if you're just looking at it once a week, is it gives you a chance to be an observer of your schedule.

When we're going through our phone, most of the time we're only looking a day at a time and we're not really paying attention. But when you see your week laid out, you're able to go, okay, or how am I going to make it through this week? Have you ever had that happen? Be honest. You can just say, yes, it's me. Have you ever had a week that you just. It was slam and you did not pay attention. I have been there. I wasn't using my paper calendar like I should be. And then all of a sudden I would kind of expand the calendar, go, wow, Charisse, you didn't even leave a break in there today.

When are you going to eat? When are you going to, like, go to the bathroom? So it's very easy to do. I want to add this as just a quick caveat around why that's so important. We are currently in a season of life, of world order, where there's so much coming at us. So quick, quickly. It is key for you to have enough space and time to pause and breathe. I don't want vacation to be the only time that you're able to pause and kind of check in with yourself. I don't want you to be sick before you pause and you take time to go, how am I feeling?

Do I have space to even consider what I'm feeling? Can I enjoy this ride that I'm on without feeling like while I'm driving, I have to be thinking about a million things at a time? Am I anxious? Can I take some deep breaths to slow down my body and my nervous system? So space is key to your mental well being when it comes to your priorities. Starting your priorities with you and then your family in mind and working around it is essential. And as much as possible, try to have a weekly or a monthly calendar where you are looking at all of your tasks and then asking yourself, do I feel like I have the capacity to approach this week or do I feel like there's some things that I need to change?

So I want to give you a few tangible tips for managing and organizing your responsibilities. I think I'm going to share two of them each week instead of giving you a whole bunch so that you can practice them and then we can talk about what you found helpful. The first one is to use the three category system. So you divide two task into categories. Must do, should do and nice to do. So what this does is it helps to reduce your overwhelm and keep your priorities clear. This is one of my favorite things to do with my task daily.

Must do. This needs to be done today. Should do. Oh, I probably should go ahead and start working on this because it's due in a few days or it's due next week or next month. Nice to do if I have time. If I have capacity and energy left over, here's something that I can go ahead and start on. Everything on your to do list can't be a priority in the same day. That is the definition of overwhelmed. Let's also do something fun. How many priorities do you think it's possible to accomplish well in a given day?

So just toss out a number between 1 and 10. What do you think is the average number of priorities that we want to have on a to do list? Jackie, you're sweet. It's probably. Oh, it's probably the lighting. But I've also been trying to drink water. So I'm curious. What do you think 1 to 10 average number of priorities that you think is reasonable to accomplish in any given day? I'll just give you a moment to think and don't be afraid. So I see four as an option. Let's see what others think. What do we get?

Guess. So some others will come in six. The average number of tasks that is reasonable to accomplish in any given day is six. Right now it could be less than that. If it's more than that, you're going to be overwhelmed by day two. Six is the average number. That number reduces if the task has multiple parts. 10. I mean you can, but I wouldn't suggest that on a regular basis. But six tasks to accomplish, to prioritize well helps us at our best potential and capacity and then we move like you think about that.

Over a given week you've accomplished 30 different things. Keyword. Well, we want you to be able to accomplish things and then have enough energy left over. So I want you to try the three category system. The other thing that I want to add, this one is fairly simple is the two minute rule. If a task takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. This prevents small tasks from piling up and causing unnecessary stress. So if something can be done quickly, oh, this is only going to take me a few minutes.

If I go ahead and call this. Go ahead and look this up, but go ahead and delegate this task to someone else. That's something that you want to go ahead and accomplish and move it off because that will also help you feel successful. Remember, your brain loves success. So you have two options to work through this coming week. You want to work through the dynamic of the three category system and the two minute drill. And I am going to ask you next Sunday and maybe even Wednesday if you join me here.

What are you doing? What are you working on? What we want is we want you to go into your week and feel like you can be your best self. We want you to be able to accomplish the things that are a priority in your life, but still feel that you have time and energy for yourself and for the people that you love. As always, I'm so glad that you came into this space. Continue to stay connected with me, whether it's on Cadre or anywhere else around the world. And I look forward to seeing you in a few days.

Have a phenomenal rest of the weekend.