Strength in Nature

Overwhelm is...well, overwhelming. I have been chatting with many of you offline regarding overwhelm. You have described it to me in a variety of ways. I have tried to summarize your input in the following list. Let's take a moment to look at what overwhelm looks like in our everyday lives.

Overwhelm is...

• Too tired to feel emotion
• Soreness in our "bones"
• No longer having energy to take action
• Working in a bubble
• Saying "whatever" in the face of conflict
• Too tired to "care"
• Unable to take an action, even when you know what to do
• Unable to answer a question, even when you know the answer
• General feeling of malaise

It is important that many of these descriptions are similar to depression, but perhaps at a milder level. If you struggle with depression, I ask you to get help. If you have historically had stable mental health, but do not take action dealing with your overwhelm, you can slip into depression.

Disclaimer:

This blog series is a coaching series focusing on moving from the...

Happy Sunday! Thanks for joining me again. Today, I'd like build upon three recent blog posts: A Time for Self-Care, Joy in Gifting, and Finding Peace in Goal Setting. We are here to celebrate.

Let's start with a story:

I used to have a pup named Sequoia. She was my heart and soul and best companion. To know her was to love her. The neighborhood saw us regularly walking, roaming, exploring. Through our roamings, we became a neighborhood identity. Somehow in my memory, these walks were just like a 1950s sitcom: perfect weather, perfect people, smaller homes, and happy smiling children.

Sequoia was my introduction to a type of peace I had never known. She greeted our neighbors with joy. Children would come to her house to play with her. She was gentle and patient. Through her, I made many friendships I would not have otherwise been able to make. One such lady was named Susie (name changed).

Chapter 1: Susie

Susie was fiercely independent. She also loved dogs and nature. She read the...

Recently, we talked about Email Etiquette. One topic I'd like to highlight more specifically is the advantage of using a deadline or timeline in the Subject Line. When we are writing and considering our positions as servant leaders, our objective should always be to seek clarity and connection.

Including the deadlines for the action you request in the email borrows from the marketing concept to

• improve clarity,
• drive action, and
• increase time efficiency.

Clarity

Servant leaders understand the pressure of time on their (our) readership. We talked about crafting emails using the Call to Action or Cover Your Asset layouts. In a Call to Action (CTA) email, we are asking the readers to accomplish a specific task. As business leaders, we need tasks to be accomplished by a set time. Help your readers by putting that deadline up front in the subject line.

Marketing

The Rule of 7 in marketing was developed in the 1930s, while the principle is a very different in today's world, we can...

Etiquette | 'et * i * ket

: the conduct or procedure required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be observed in social or official life (Merriam-Webster, 2021)

As leaders reaching out to our team members, it is both helpful and mindful of their needs to follow email etiquette. For those of you working in manufacturing (and increasingly other industries as well), you will be very familiar with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Etiquette is a bit like these SOPs, with a nice name. Following standards helps readers quickly identify the information they need, so they can gain and retain information efficiently. If your life is busy as a leader, the statement is also true for the people reading your emails. As a servant leader, try to help them by following etiquette. So let's dive in and take a look at email etiquette.

The Writing

Subject Line

As they sang in Sound of Music let's start at the very beginning. The subject line is important. We will devote an entire...

Hello Succulent Sunday Readers. Happy Valentine's Day. As I write this post, I am waiting for my family to drive home through a snowstorm. It has been long week with some exciting developments and a bike crash, so today has called for a bit of self-care. Honestly, I recognize my next statement is generally impossible for most moms: I slept all day. For my self-care this week, I went to bed on a Friday night at 5:30 pm and slept nearly 24 hours.

It is a testament to my personal journey that I have been able to do this today without feeling guilty. I am not sick, although I am recovering from the soreness of an unexpected bike crash. I have many things that I wished to accomplish today (including publishing this post earlier than usual.) I am not even feeling guilty that I haven't cleaned the house to my personal satisfaction. It is Galentine's day, my body clearly needed rest. I chose to rest without guilt.

Self-Care without Guilt

As we talk about Overcoming the Overwhelm, we must...

Hey Succulent Sunday readers! Thanks for joining me again. I love sharing this blog with you each Sunday. Your questions help me through targeted, quiet reflection on these topics.

Today, let's chat about finding joy and regaining some power and control through joy. Today's blog post will turn from our focus on the physical elements of overwhelm to the spiritual and mindset elements.

Powerless in the Face of Overwhelm? No.

Overwhelm by definition indicates that we are not in control of the emotions and activities throughout our day. However, we are in control our our actions. We may not be in control of the day to day events that we face. A few weeks ago, we talked about setting inch-by-inch goals to help us find and achieve peace. Setting these small, achievable (sometimes even laughably small) goals helps us regain some power in our day.

Joy helps us face the overwhelm head-on.

You (we) are not powerless in the face of overwhelm. You can regain your power by asking for help,...

This week's blog post focusing on writing brings you the TEACH method of writing. I have borrowed this method from Kent Sanders over at the Daily Writer Podcast. If you are intent on learning how to write for a living, then go find the Daily Writer Podcast at your favorite podcast listening site. If you want to find the specific episode where Kent shares his TEACH method, take a look at the link in the reference section below. In the meantime, leaders continue reading here to learn how to apply the TEACH method to your emails.

I am sharing the TEACH method today on the heels of the Call to Action (CTA) blog post from last week, because Kent has done an excellent job helping you as an email writer elucidate the steps necessary to lead to a successful CTA. OK, so what exactly is the TEACH method? Below you can find an explanation of each letter:

T - Take their attention

E - Explain the main idea

A - Apply it to their situation

C - Counter their objections

H - Help them take action

T...

Hello Sunday Succulent readers! Thank you so much for returning to this series. Each week, I bring you relevant topics that focus on the emotional, physical, and spiritual elements of the overwhelm. This week, we continue the focus on the slight adjustments we can make in our lives to address the physical elements of overwhelm.

Meal Planning

Meal Planning. Yes. Meal planning. It is not glorious or sexy, but a little bit of control in our healthy habits pays dividends for our mental, physical, and spiritual health. Additionally, since much of the world is still battling Covid-19 spread and surge, meal planning not only helps get our week planned, but it helps us reduce unnecessary trips to the grocery store.

Let's talk about the 5 benefits of meal planning:

1. Saving Time
2. Saving Money
3. Increased likelihood of eating greens
4. Reduced likelihood of inappropriate snacking
5. Peace of mind

Saving Time

As a mother, side-hustle entrepreneur, amatuer musician, and full-time grad student, my time...

Why are you writing an email?

Earlier in this series, we talked about telling a story and two different types of email formats: the CTA (call to action) and the CYA (cover your assets). Today, let's dive more deeply into the Call to Action emails. The CTA emails exist to connect with your reader so that they take an immediate action.

In marketing literature, the copy is intended to drive you take a specific action, "Click Here!," "Let's get started," "Lose 10 lbs. Start today!" In each of these buttons, it is the clear which action the user should take. Unfortunately, work emails are seldom written so clearly.

As a servant leader, it is our duty to write with clarity and connection. To help our reader quickly come to the conclusion we want them to find, we must be precise in our writing. Precision, in this case, means stating the desired outcome explicitly.

 Hot tip: if you have a deadline, include it in your call to action.  

~Angela Buckley

In a CTA email,...