My Daily Habits for True Restoration

(air hissing) (clicker clicking) (gentle music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) Hi, my name is Samantha Edu, and welcome to Radio Headspace. I am super excited to be here. I'm a clinical leader, DEIB specialist, and I've been at Headspace for a few years now working on building community and brave spaces. I'll be here occasionally to talk about some things I think you might find helpful or interesting in the world of mindfulness and mental health. So recently, I've been feeling a little burned out, well, maybe a lot burned out, so I decided to take a long weekend to get back to feeling like myself. But the weekend came and went, and, to be honest, I did not feel the restoration I was looking for. It made me think about how restoration is not something we should just look forward to on the weekend. It's an ongoing process. It needs the attention and intention that you give to anything else in your life like your friendships, your family, and your work. So today I'd like to talk about how to make restoration a lifestyle, and the key to that might be a little different than what you're expecting. (gentle music) So, I work in DEIB which is diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. It's basically a process of making workplaces safe enough for people to bring their authentic selves. I love it, but it's also exhausting 'cause it requires an extensive amount of empathy and compassion. Sometimes I feel like I spend so much time trying to help other people that I forget to help myself. That's why burnout is a huge problem for people in helping professions which is exactly how I was feeling when I decided to take a trip to unwind. (gentle music) So when I was taking the time off for vacation, I was on a plane, and this family was coming to sit beside me, and I can like feel their excitement as they were preparing to sit down. And I was tired. I was getting ready to put my earbuds in, actually, and go to sleep. It was a dad and son, and I think that this was the dad's first plane ride and the son's first plane ride, and the son excitedly was like, "Oh my gosh. "I think we're about to take off." And the dad was like, "Yeah. I think it's about to happen." And I didn't put my earbuds in. I just was being nosy (laughs) and decided to listen in on this conversation and sharing their joy. And it really made me think about, there was a time when I was a new plane rider, when I would get excited just going to the airport 'cause I knew I was going on a trip. And I would relish in the plane taking off. I would feel myself going through the clouds. I would take time to think about, like, "Do the clouds have weight? "Are birds up here too?"...