Musings | Life Load

Musings

Dec 30

“It’s not the load that breaks you, it’s how you carry it”

— Lou Holtz

As we continue to “onboard” into this new year, you may find it helpful to consider your life load, the elements that contribute to it and how that load impacts you – at work, in your personal life and your engagement in self-care. All of us carry a daily “life load,” and that load is composed of physical elements, emotional elements and, right now, the stress of living through a pandemic. Sometimes our load is high, and that is ok; we can handle high loads – if they do not last forever! The key is to gain an awareness of your load, what makes it high, and what makes it low.

This week we provide an activity for you to walk through to learn about your life load.

Life Load Reflection

This exercise may take you 15-30 minutes, and it will help you identify your life load and the contributors to it as well as where you may find windows for recovery. You can also use this tool to start conversations with your manager or your family about your life load and the support you need to manage it. Asking the people around you to do this can also enhance your understanding of the load others are under. There are four steps:

Step 1 - Reflection

a. Identify the things that are most important to you (up to five or more).

b. Identify what you need to be at your holistic best (up to five or more).

c. Identify the things that energize you/relieve stress that could easily fit into a day (three to five).

d. Set this paper aside and take a 5 – 10-minute break.

Step 2 - Code

a. “Code” your week using a weekly day timer view or calendar (a template was attached to the email). The format does not matter; it just needs to make sense to you.

b. Use different colours or shading to identify how your time is used throughout the day (e.g., work, family, active time, self-care, commuting, food prep, sleep, social time, free time etc., whatever makes sense to you).

c. Do this for a typical week or a week or a period you feel you need to plan for.

d. Take a 5-10-minute break.

Step 3 – Review

a. Review your week and consider these questions (take your time): What do you see? What jumps out at you? Where are the pulls on you? Is the load sustainable? Where do you need help? What can be delegated? What could be dropped? What days would you consider a high load (physical or emotional)? What days would be low?

b. Remember, high loads are ok, but we will handle them better if we identify them and plan to manage them well. Do you have too many high days in a row? If the high load is unavoidable, what could you do to mitigate the high load on those days? (Do not worry if your answer is, “I have no idea”)

c. Make a list of the elements in your week that make you feel like you are under a high load and those that represent a low load. Another way to think about this is to identify the activities that drain you of energy and those that fuel you. Bringing awareness to these concepts can help us manage them and better understand how we respond to the different elements in our week and our lives.

d. When we understand the things that drain us versus fuel us, we can plan to support ourselves much more effectively (i.e., I know Tuesday is a hard day because I will have tough conversations at work so I will do my best to keep that evening free so I can go for a walk and then read or watch T.V. or make time to debrief my day with a friend or my partner).

Step 4 – Getting What You Need

a. Go back to your initial reflection questions (what is important, what I need, what energizes me) and look at your coded week.

b. Are those elements present in your week? It is not realistic to expect to see all of them every day or all of them in the week, but if some of them are present throughout the week, that is healthy.

c. If there are very few or none, try to look for 10-15-minute windows each day where you might fit in an answer from those reflection questions. These 10-15-minute windows can create space for you to engage in self-care and/or activities that support your well-being and your ability to be at your best.