Women's Moon Wisdom Podcast Intro - Rebecca Rankin (00:01):
Stories teachings and guidance, welcome to the Women's Moon Wisdom Podcast with your host, Rebecca Rankin.
Rebecca Rankin (00:18):
Welcome back to the Women's Moon Wisdom podcast. I just wanna say I am so thankful for our time together. In my previous episode, I shared my three tips for when you've said yes to too much and you just start to lose your sense of self. There are times in our life that even if we are mindful of setting boundaries, we still end up with a lot on our plate. It happens to us all. And when we start to take on too much and our boundaries start to get compromised, we can feel overwhelm creeping in. And then the voice in your head starts to spiral into "how am I gonna get this done? I don't have enough time!" Even using all the time management skills you have and making checklists and to do lists and spreadsheets to manage projects, it can still give us this sense of overwhelm. Like that feeling of heaviness that sits on our shoulders as we work towards whatever the end result is. For me, this can happen probably more frequently than I truly want to admit.
Rebecca Rankin (01:19):
I've been an entrepreneur for over 16 years at this point. And with that, I have fallen into the trap of overworking and hustling to make ends meet. Rather than a nine to five, it's more like an all the time. In more recent years, when we left city life to move to a more rural, slower pace life, I have made drastic strides in slowing down, leaving more white space for play and raising a family. And for those of you who don't know, along with all the women's wellness and mindfulness work that I do in the online space, I also own a brick and mortar yoga studio, and it serves our community here in this tiny little village where we live. Actually, we recently shifted into a nonprofit status for the yoga studio, which has been great. It's helped distribute the load of work so that it's not all on my shoulders.
Rebecca Rankin (02:15):
Anyways. I can wear many hats each day, if you will. And shifting from mom mode to boss mode, to healer guide teacher. And sometimes it's just too much and I can feel overwhelmed. About seven months ago, I was in the midst of my first launch of my Women's Moon Wisdom, cyclical living self-care framework course. Now this course took me moons. Yes, totally pun intended. Took me moons to create, it's over 60 videos of yoga, movement, breath work, guided meditations, along with informational videos about syncing your cycle with your lifestyle choices, to help promote more mindful living. And I was putting it out there in the world for the first time and had tons of energy and, and hard work invested into it. Yet, I was self-inflicting a lot of pressure for it to be a success. And with that pressure creating a lot of overwhelm with it.
Rebecca Rankin (03:13):
Spoiler alert - the launch was a huge success. Anyways, in the midst of being in this launch mode and the endless to-do list and, and project management spreadsheets, I was feeling so overwhelmed. And this is when my mantra found me. Yes, it found me. It found me exactly when I needed to hear it, "let it be easy". This mantra found me while I was listening to a podcast by my digital course mentor Amy Porterfield. She was interviewing an author, Susie Moore, who had just come out with a book called, "Let It Be Easy". And now Susie Moore has a podcast with that same name, Let It Be Easy. While hustle culture might slowly be fading into a thing of the past, it doesn't mean there aren't seasons of our lives that, that we hustle. We still have those times where we're hustling to get things done. And this is when my mantra comes in, "let it be easy".
Rebecca Rankin (04:08):
How can I let this be easy? If Susie Moore describes the, the questions to ask yourself, like when you find yourself spiraling into overwhelm, like when your mind is rattling with, how can I possibly get this done? Like, I don't have time. What if you first ask yourself, how serious is this really? Like, I know I'm definitely not alone when I make mountains out of mole hills. And then you ask yourself like, first you ask, like, how serious is this really? And then you ask, how can I let this be easy? Like, here's a great example. A few weeks back, we put on a wellness festival as a fundraiser for our yoga nonprofit, and the next day was my son's fourth birthday. For his birthday all he wanted was, all he requested was a blue excavator cake. He's he he's really into all things construction at the moment.
Rebecca Rankin (05:04):
So in my mind, I'm, I'm thinking, okay, we'll go all out. I planned on baking his cake. Then I'd decorate it along with making just his favorite homemade ice cream, the works. And then, as we were getting closer and closer to the wellness fest and his birthday, the overwhelm just started to creep in. I, I started to go into a little bit of panic mode trying to figure out when I would have the time to, to bake the cake, then let it cool, frost the cake, then decorate it and then make homemade ice cream, which takes a good half day to properly chill before churning. Then I had enough pause to ask myself, okay, like how serious is this really? Like, definitely not that serious. My son wants a blue excavator on his cake. That's it. He didn't even request presents. And I asked myself, okay, how, how can I let this be easy?
Rebecca Rankin (05:57):
And I'm privileged to have resources to lean into and ask for help. And I wanna say here, asking for help is something that I am just now getting a hang of. And truthfully, I'm still not that good at it. I'm getting there. So I reached out to my mother who lives just up the road from us to see if she might be willing to bake the cake. And I would then decorate it, which note my mom is an amazing baker and she was actually thrilled with a chance to bake a cake, especially since she didn't have to decorate it. So she baked the cake while I was cleaning up and wrapping up the wellness festival. And then in the morning of my son's birthday, I decorate it by piping a blue excavator on it. And honestly it turned out so cute. And as for the homemade ice cream, nope, didn't do it.
Rebecca Rankin (06:51):
I didn't even buy ice cream. We just didn't have ice cream and you know what, no one even missed it. My son, even my daughter, didn't even notice it wasn't there. That is called, letting it be easy. And I know that seems like such a trivial, like little thing, baking a cake and making ice cream. And yet for me like those little things, those are the things that are just big enough to be the tipping point for overwhelm. And yeah, that, it's a pretty simple every day, even, even surface level way to apply that mantra, let it be easy. And yet that simple action of asking for help for my son's birthday cake and skipping ice cream saved me a ton of stress and feelings of overwhelm. It's often in the everyday little things that can add up to be just the tipping point for how we feel.
Rebecca Rankin (07:45):
As a recovering perfectionist and for anyone else out there who either is one or is recovering too, I invite you to ask yourself like, how can this be easy? Or how about this -what if we went for B+ work? This may resonate with, with those who might have been overachieving students like myself in school B's in my mind were, were just not acceptable. I was only going for A's. And while that hard work ethic and, and good grades got me into a good university, and those grades had a contributing factor of me getting a good job out of college, I can certainly admit that that work ethic was certainly not sustainable. Like pulling all nighters, self-inflicted pressure to perform well and the stress and overwhelm. And maybe you have a demanding career that you do have to give A-quality work. Yet, I'm willing to bet that somewhere in the work process, in the flow, there is something that you can let be easy.
Rebecca Rankin (08:45):
And for those of us that borderline on perfectionist, or maybe we can call ourselves those with high standards for what we put into the world, that mentality, at least for me, can be paralyzing. Like when your plate is full of things that need your attention, and yet you have this high standard of how it should get done. It's overwhelming. And for me keeps me feeling stuck, which only then perpetuates the feeling of overwhelm. So asking myself, how can I let this be easy? Gives me an actionable step forward. And when I give myself grace to do B + work, it takes the pressure off. It doesn't always have to be A+ work. Do you think my kids cared about homemade ice cream at the end of the day? No, they had chocolate cake. They had a huge blue excavator made outta frosting to eat.
Rebecca Rankin (09:37):
I'm the only one who cared. It's when I put the pressure on myself to put my best, my perfect work forward, that it actually slows me down and stalls me. That's when the feelings of scarcity move in. And I feel like I don't have time to, to meet my high standards. And then I freeze, I shift into a state of stress response and I freeze. And when I give myself permission to let it be easy and just put good work forward, not great, not my best, just good solid effort. Well, that feels great. That is letting it be easy because all of us who have these unrealistic ideas of perfection, we know like deep down, we know that it's unachievable. We won't ever be able to satisfy or reach perfect. We'll always be able to find a flaw or something that needs fixing. There will always be more to do.
Rebecca Rankin (10:35):
Yet, if you let it be easy, you ask yourself, how can I let this be easy? And you put something out there that's solid, that's good work. At least you did the thing, rather than still stewing stalling over something trying and, and overworking and to create this best, this perfect thing. I mentioned earlier about the cyclical living self care framework course that I created. So over 10 months I created the videos and practices along with just the tech involved of editing videos and writing the content and then marketing it to the world. And the initial process of creating this course, it was really just an idea that hadn't fully taken shape. I knew I wanted to create something like this, and I had started filming a bunch of yoga and breathwork videos for it. And yet I just let it nourish my creative side. I let it be this passion project with an real end to it.
Rebecca Rankin (11:31):
I was just allowing the creative process of doing, to see where it went. Then the full idea came through of creating a cyclical living course for women, right, for women to use, to help better align with their cycles. That's when it got very real, I had the date I wanted to launch, and that's when I started to put pressure on myself. At first, my high standards were slowing me down. And my spreadsheet of all the things that needed to get done, iqt just kept growing. And when I shifted my mindset to allow myself to just let the work be good, like not perfect as a way to letting it be easy, that's when I made the most progress. And to optimize my productivity I do align my workflow with my cycle. So not to get too tangential, I'll I'll quickly describe that. So during the week after your period ends, so your follicular phase or your inner waxing moon phase, your hormones, make it a great time to kind of see the big picture of things and, and to allow creative solutions to come through. Your ovulatory phase or your inner full moon phase and the midway of your, your cycle.
Rebecca Rankin (12:37):
That's, your biochemistry is great for visibility, like putting yourself out there, communicating, collaborating. So those two weeks were when I would do most of my filming and content creation. Then shifting to the second half of my cycle, the, the luteal phase. So the 10 to 14 days that lead up to your next period, your inner waning moon phase. This is when I had to do my admin stuff or the real like techy things on my list, like editing videos, editing the, the software to make the course kind of function properly. Then during my period, my inner new moon phase, that's when I'd do more review work, like I'd reread the content, I'd double check the processes and, and analyze like what is left to get done. So working in alignment with the biochemistry available to us for me at least, is this essential way in my workflow in letting it be easy.
Rebecca Rankin (13:29):
And this is interesting to note. There were actually a few times that I tried filming during my period. And, and it's funny to note the number of outtakes and the number of times, I just stumbled over my words. I messed up and I had to redo it. And it makes sense. My biochemistry at that point in my cycle, it's not one where it's encouraged me to put myself out into the world. At a biological level, when we ovulate it heightens us to be visible and communicate to attract a mate when we're menstruating, which is not primed for that. So me going against my own biochemistry only made things more challenging and definitely did not let it be easy. And I especially feel this mantra, let it be easy. It can be so beneficial around family gatherings and holidays. My partner and I often comment that for as much as our mothers both love having the whole family over for holidays, they are nonstop cooking and stressing and, and cooking and stressing over it all.
Rebecca Rankin (14:28):
When, while yes, the food is delicious and, and it's comforting. It's really like the company and the memories with each other that we're really after. So when this mantra let it be easy, kind of found me. It was in December, right kind of before the holidays. And I was sharing it in the yoga classes that I was teaching. And you know, how many people later came up to me and told me that their holiday experience was shifted so much because they took the attitude of how can I make this easy. So rather than stressing over the minutia, simplifying, and maybe just putting B+ effort out there, like feel great about doing good work, not perfect work. After all, you're probably the only one who cared about the homemade ice cream. They still got cake. Well, that's what I have for you today. Let it be easy.
Rebecca Rankin (15:21):
If you'd like to stay connected, I would love that. Feel free to head to my website and join my newsletter. I'd love to be in touch and don't worry, I don't flood your inbox with emails. Come on. I let it be easy. Check out the show notes for the link to my website, along with the cyclical living course that I mentioned. So wherever you're listening to this, just check out the show notes for those resources. And you can also connect with me on Instagram, just search for Women's Moon Wisdom. And I look forward to talking with you soon.
