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How to Scale Your Game

by Emma Laurence

Bill is an advanced pickleball player who knows how to scale his game. When he joined our intermediate level group on the court, I’d never experienced a more generous player.

We don’t often mix with advanced players because they take the game very seriously. Much of the laughter we enjoy is lost. A few prefer to join in our games even if it means scaling their game because, in their words, “it’s more fun and less mean.”

To appreciate a musical metaphor, listen for a moment to a simple C major scale—to the up and down direction (30 sec).

American culture is all about scaling up—bigger, better, greater, faster. This can burn us out. Yet, just like in music, scaling is the ability to play up and down the resonant range.

Bill’s choice to slow his pace and calm the intensity of his game is like moving down the scale. Rather than forcefully slam the ball, he uses a lighter-touch accuracy. This models how to make better split-second decisions on the court by choosing precision over power.

Opting to slow down or decrease our intensity in life or at work is not lowering standards. It’s learning finesse. When we’re not driven by a need to prove ourselves, we’re freer to enjoy moving up or down the scale to suit a situation.

Riding the full scale requires listening, paying attention to others, and adjusting. We do this when we break things down into smaller steps for ourselves and our team, or parent a small child. Great teachers consistently scale, tailoring curriculum to their students’ comprehension.

So, let’s scale up when that’s required. And let’s consider when it’s more beneficial to ride down the scale—slower, easier, gentler, simpler, and perhaps more precise.

Is there a situation in your life where you could benefit by scaling your game? Could you benefit someone else by doing so?

Flexibility is the key to success. Remember the musical scale.

That is living as music.

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If you or someone you know needs help learning to scale, check out the illustrated Beyond Burnout Playbook. Downloadable for free.

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Find Your Rhythm. Harmonize with your heart.

Burnout Support

Until You Can Exit, Embrace the Pace

by Emma Laurence

If you’re burned out at work but can’t exit yet, embrace the pace and navigate your environment in a healthier way.

You may know your job is unsustainable. The pressure is too intense, or leadership is not aligned with your values. You wonder if you’ve outgrown what once seemed an ideal opportunity.

You’ve contemplated, or even begun crafting, an exit plan.

But for financial or other reasons, it’s just not wise to leave right now. You can feel the timing is off and, much as you want to move on, you have to finish the cycle.

At the same time, you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and a victim of your negative work environment. You want be in the driver’s seat until you reach that exit ramp.

Rather than resist the current chaos or dwell on your despair, consider this short-term approach with a long-term benefit:

Today, you can begin learning to master your personal pace—a skill that will serve you no matter where you go next.

A Common Challenge

Learning how to gear up your physical, emotional, and mental energy is challenging!

Maybe you’ve had a lovely weekend or vacation. You’ve gotten some rest, enjoyed what lights you up, spent time with those you love. Now you need to shift into high gear for a demanding work week.

A common trajectory is: spiral downward into Sunday anxiety, struggle with a restless night, lean into caffeine and sugar the next morning, and hope for the best. 😃

Highly-skilled and well-meaning workers often live in inner conflict, struggling with a job that doesn’t fit. Even with the best intentions, a burnout lifestyle seems hard to avoid.

However, using your creativity to remain in alignment with your rhythm is a key practice for life beyond burnout.

Why not start learning now?

Embrace the Pace with Creativity

A client with high emotional intelligence recently shared her need for a “harder shell” at work. Without closing her heart down, she wants protection from the intense pressure—including productivity demands, office politics, and other peoples’ worries.

As a coach, I often use the words my clients speak to help them design and test out an imaginative technique. This is a powerful way to take charge of our inner state in tense environments.

Creativity and playfulness ease stress. So, we get curious: what has a harder shell? A turtle, a medieval soldier, a mollusk. What provides protection? Bones encase the spinal cord; thick stone walls safeguard a castle; a bodyguard provides security and prevents threats.

See where we’re going here? Give it a try.

Picture yourself putting on a kind of protective gear. Step into a suit of armor or visualize a bodyguard standing beside you. I’ve imagined a black jaguar walking beside me, or sitting in sphinx position near my desk. The image serves as a reminder that I’m not alone in times of need.

Your conscious practice of imagination is key to lowering your stress level and taking charge of the situation, allowing you to remain intact in a fast-paced environment.

Literally craft what you need. Strength? Imagine yourself lifting weights. Courage? See yourself facing your nemesis without blinking. Endurance? Feel yourself smile at the end of a day as you finish work with energy to spare.

I know this is easier said than done. It’s in daily practice that victory is won.

If You Have to Wear a Mask

If you feel the need to wear a mask, to be someone different to survive at work, take a tip from theater. Until you find the workplace where you can be yourself, consciously create a character.

A client of mine had to fill in for her boss at a meeting—an usual request in her company. Her boss got along well with his colleagues, and she felt she wasn’t good enough to represent the department.

To overcome her fear, I helped her create a character she was excited to play. This character (really a version of herself) was completely confident, at ease meeting new people and speaking up in the group.

She dressed a little differently that day—slightly taller shoes, added a scarf—wearing a bit of a costume. Courageously, she stepped in to that confident role, wondering if she could pull it off.

It worked! She introduced herself to people she hadn’t met and spoke up to share ideas. Through this persona, she engaged an aspect of herself that she hadn’t been able to access.

Stepping into a role you’ve created puts you in charge. You know you’re playing a game. You stay in integrity with yourself—the version of “you” that can master every possible situation.

Your Exit Ramp

Creative techniques allow you to finish out a work cycle on your own terms. It’s grueling to resent the energy demands required. So be playful, laugh about it, and love yourself through to the end.

Sooner than later, your clearly-marked exit will appear. You’ll be done. You’ll welcome the pause that transitions you to a fully sustainable, inspired life beyond burnout.

The Beyond Burnout Playbook (free and downloadable) gives you five keys to crossing that threshold at your own pace. Burnout isn’t all bad! Learn how to shift your perspective, try out some exercises, and have fun with the process.

If you’d like help planning your exit strategy and creating a life beyond burnout, I’m here with a free Clarity Conversation.

And if someone you know wants to make a change at work, please forward this blog. There’s always a way beyond burnout!
💜Emma

Photo by Sammy Wong on Unsplash

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Uncategorized

Claim Your Creativity: Burnout to Brilliance

by Emma Laurence

Exhaustion or inspiration? Life beyond burnout is far more fun! So, let’s look at how claiming your creative play and power build a joyful, sustainable life.

Am I saying that creative arts help us thrive beyond burnout? Absolutely. But, I’m also referring to the innate creative ability within each of us, as individuals, to bring our dreams to life.

Burnout’s Gift

The overwhelm, deep fatigue, and even draining despair of burnout comes from constantly pushing beyond our work capacity. Like an overloaded donkey, we can barely navigate the narrow streets of our daily life.

We all agree; this is not a healthy lifestyle. Yet burnout’s gift is a loud call to action from our creative self. Burnout shouts, pay attention!  It asks:

  • Are you living in alignment with who and what you most value?
  • Do you want to be crushed under the weight of life-as-you-know-it?
  • Or do you want health, joy, and freedom to enliven your every step?

Our creativity—both play and power—establishes a strong foundation of well-being and wisdom.

Is Your Creative Play on a Shelf?

Creative play primes the pump for a flow of vitality that never burns out. Let’s invite this precious part of you to come out of storage.

I believe that creative flow once came so naturally to us that we didn’t require labels or permission. We simply immersed ourselves in activities that brought joy. As adults, it’s harder to keep that channel open.

Did you used to paint, sing, or play dress up? Maybe your creative self went bike riding, running in the hills with the dog, baked cupcakes, danced in the rain, read books, took pictures, or designed a new game.

Right now, though, are oils and acrylics gathering dust in your attic? Journals boxed in a closet? Has your guitar become relegated to wall art?

Time to pick up the paint palette, grab the guitar by the neck, and put on those dancing shoes. Pull out the half-finished book of recipes, pump up the tires on your bike, and head for the hills.

Embrace your sense of timeless play and watch your energy transform into joy. You’ll be activating the necessary vitality to thrive beyond burnout.

Reclaim Your Creative Power

Creativity is not only artistic expression.
It’s also the essence of our being—our powerful core.
Think coeur, the French word for heart.
Or shinbashira, the central pillar of a pagoda that ensures
its resilience against earthquakes.

As an innately creative individual, you have tremendous power. Power to bring something extraordinary out of nothing, to blend ingredients in novel ways, to explore horizons beyond your wildest imagination.

Creativity is enlivening, giving, and often seeks to be shared. It also keeps us balanced and sane.

While arts are a channel to express the beauty, pain, ever-changing love, and challenge of human living, activating our creative core enlivens the journey overall.

This is when the real fun begins—just one brush stroke at a time.

Listen to Your Dreams

Dreams are creative visions of what / where / who we’d love to be. They resonate with the harmonic vibrations that allow us to rise ever upwards. Without them, we stagnate and lack direction.

How do you treat your dreams? As ethereal, impractical hopes-to-be-dashed?
Or as a parallel universe waiting to be activated?
The grounded one, where you’ve already built your heart’s most generous desire.

I come from the latter perspective, which is why I’m a coach. I firmly believe that by choosing to claim our creative power, we cross a threshold. We embark on a transformative journey to bring to life dreams that already exist within us, fully formed and realized.

Activate Your Dreams

A doorway “magically” appears when you say, I invest in my creative ability. It’s one you didn’t notice when you walled yourself in, trying to meet demands and expectations of everything and everyone around you.

Now, you can begin to play with life. You begin to perceive the presence of gifts that have been patiently waiting for you to believe that your dreams are within reach.

Sound mystical? Maybe. Or maybe it’s the gift of creativity that makes visions real.

So, how do you activate the dream? You pause.
You choose to gradually, playfully, and practically mold your daily life into the embodiment of your dream.

The vision takes over your imagination while ‘pragmatic you’ takes action
through necessary micro-steps that ground you.

Daily life gently transforms into an architectural masterpiece—a real version of the dream you hold dear.
You’re a long way from the burnout shell you chose to leave behind.

And, as you build, you dance while you put away the dishes, doodle while you’re on a Zoom call, and sing in the shower. Just for joy.

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Would a free clarity chat help?
Reach out anytime and I’ll help you get clear on your next step, whether it’s coaching or another option.

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Sam the Eagle Muppet as News Anchor. An example of how to play with your powerful chyron!
Burnout Support

Play With Your Powerful Chyron

by Emma Laurence

When we’re burned out, it’s natural to start thinking we’ve failed. Self-defeating messages run like a chyron scrolling the bottom of our mind screen. They gain momentum on every pass.

And just like a chyron, these messages can be easy to tune out. But the mind accepts and absorbs them whether or not we’re aware of our self-judgment.

For example, if we’re internally scrolling, “Exhaustion, overwhelm, and burnout prove that I’m a failure,” we do ourselves a great disservice.

Blaming ourselves for not being able to keep up, to compete, or to fit in—whether in a workplace or social space—roadblocks our individual, precious evolution.

What’s Your Chyron?

So, pause and pay attention for a moment. What’s your powerful chyron today? If it needs tweaking, try playing with an uplifting headline.

My favorite place to start is with a technique borrowed from my actor training— Stanislavsky’s the Magic If. The phrase, “But what if I’m not a failure?” frees my imagination to seek new thoughts.

Have fun with your chyron! Set it scrolling across your inner screen and test the power of your choice. Whatever you set up for the mind to play with, it will.

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Here’s more help with burnout recovery. And here’s the free Beyond Burnout Playbook to get started on your own.

You’re invited to subscribe here💜

Image source: https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Sam_the_Eagle?file=WGFNews.jpg