EP. 193.5 — Office Ladies Announcement!

Angela [00:00:03] Good morning everyone. Hello. Hi. Hi. We are excited. 

Jenna [00:00:09] Very excited. We are popping into your feeds today to give you a special top of the year office ladies announcement. As of today. Office ladies has expanded to be a network, a network. We’re a network lady, and we want to tell you about the first podcast joining The Office Ladies Network. It is a podcast called The Lazy Genius with Kendra Darcy. 

Angela [00:00:35] We are so thrilled to have Kendra join the Office Ladies Network. We wanted to share with you an excerpt from her podcast. This week’s episode is called Starting Fresh When You Can’t Start Over. We hope that you’ll give it a listen and love it as much as we do. 

Kendra [00:00:54] I think we need a fresh take on January energy. We need some new words. When we feel this compulsion to start over. I shared some of these words last January, actually, and I need the reminder just as much as anyone. So we’re going to look at those words again. The first word that will help us start fresh instead of starting over is continue. Continue. Instead of beginning, continue. Everything you do builds on what has come before. You’re you’re living a beautiful, sometimes messy life. And it’s a continuation. January does not have to be a restart. It is not necessarily a new beginning. Now, energetically, there are some really hopeful things about those feelings of January, of the literal turning of the calendar. But that does not require you to begin everything anew. In fact, you can’t. That takes so much work. Instead, if you feel the pressure to begin something that does not truly align with what matters to you, simply continue. Continue doing what you’re doing. Knowing that you’re not failing anything. By not starting over, by not beginning again, just because it’s January. Continue. You’re really smart. You’re probably already doing a lot of great things that don’t need a reset. They don’t even need tinkering with. Just continue in the places that you know what matters and you know what works most of the time. Continue. The second word is tend, don’t fix tend. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are things that need fixing. They need to be, you know, taken apart and put back together. But usually that stuff like toilets or an Ikea closet that was not installed correctly, we fix things. We can’t exactly fix life, but we sure do try, don’t we? We come at it like a certain part of our life is a problem to solve and to fix, when really most of our lives need nurturing and tending. They need compassion alongside correcting. And when we compassionately correct one small thing at a time that is tending, that’s looking at what’s there with kind eyes, not going to fast and taking it one step at a time. That is so much more sustainable than continuously taking apart and putting back together all the systems and processes and goals of your life. So think about where you feel the need to fix and if instead you need to tend. The third word is small. I love small things. I love small choices, small differences, small steps, small problems. That’s why one of the 13 lazy genius principles is to start small. The smaller something is, the easier it is to solve, to tend to, to manage, to live with, to incorporate into your life on a regular basis. But January Energy is big energy, right? It’s big swings, big systems, big changes. And that’s why we can’t stick with anything. We’re starting with big problems. And big problems require big solutions. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have room for big solutions right now. Life is beautifully unwieldy and inviting. Big systems or big goals or big solutions into that is almost impossible. And when those big things don’t work and they won’t. I want to start over. I want to call them all again and get to try again. So that what came before wasn’t a failure. Instead, let’s start small. Like really, really embarrassingly small. I told a story in my first book, The lazy Genius Way, about how I started small with yoga. I have terrible joints as well as, like, a lot of frantic mental energy. I call myself a caffeinated squirrel, and consequently being a caffeinated squirrel with hips and knees that are basically made of glass. Yoga is really good for me. It’s good for my joints and for my brain. Well, years and years ago I knew this and tried to incorporate more yoga into my life, but I could not make it work. I couldn’t get it to stick, and I got so frustrated by that because it mattered to me. Like, it it yoga mattered to me for reasons that felt right and good and aligned with tending to my body, but I just couldn’t seem to get into a rhythm at all. And you know what I did? I just kept restarting. I kept restarting the commitment counter to zero over and over again. And that was also defeating. So I tried. I tried a new approach I made doing yoga in barre singly, small. I said that I would do one down dog a day. One down dog a day. If you’re unfamiliar with yoga, that’s basically like bending over once a day and sticking your butt in the air. Some might argue that’s not even yoga, but it was so small that I did it. I did this thing that mattered to me, and because it was so small and doable over time, I built on it. And hear me when I say over time, I don’t mean like days later. I’m pretty sure I did one down dog a day for weeks and weeks without much difference. Some of those days I would do like a full sun salutation, which still only takes like 60s. But I didn’t change what the daily habit was of one down dog a day for literal months. But guess what? I did yoga every day. It was so small that it became part of my life and my routine in a way that worked in a way that supported what mattered. So your third word is small, even embarrassingly small. Nothing is too small. Don’t start over. Start fresh by starting small. 

Jenna [00:07:00] I just love the way Kendra breaks it down. I just love. 

Angela [00:07:03] It. I know she’s the best. 

Jenna [00:07:06] If you want to hear the full episode, which I hope you do, head over to the Lazy Genius podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can find Kendra at the Lazy Genius collective.com/office ladies. And we’ll share a link in our Instagram stories as well. 

Angela [00:07:22] And please join us next Monday for a special episode. Office Ladies Monday motivation with Kendra. We had the best conversation with her and we can’t wait to share it with you! 

Jenna [00:07:33] Listen, if anyone’s going to motivate you on a Monday, it’s Kendra. 

Angela [00:07:37] That’s right. 

Jenna [00:07:39] Welcome to the Office Ladies Network. Kendra. 

Angela [00:07:42] Woo hoo! We’re so excited to have you.