Welcome to IVF This, episode 168, IVF and doing nothing. Hello, hello, hello, my beautiful friends. I hope you're all doing so, so well today. I apologize I was not in your feeds last week. You might have noticed my beautiful mother had a hip replacement and I was spending time with her, making sure that she was doing well. She is doing very well.

But that was the reason I did not get to talk to you guys last week, but I have a little bit of a different episode, kind, flavor, kind of flavor. I don't know what I'm trying to say. We're gonna cut that. I do have a little bit of a different flavor of an episode today. I want to talk to you guys about a book that I recently finished listening to. If you have listened to me for any period of time, you know that my ADHD kind of makes sitting down and reading very difficult for me.

So in an effort to kind of trick my brain, I jumped on the Audible bandwagon a few years ago and I have kind of a voracious reading appetite through Audible. Anyone who tells you that that's not really reading, they're full of crap. That's my experience. But I recently finished this book called Do Nothing by Celeste Headley, that I was really inspired when I was listening to the book and the themes that she was discussing, kind of the topics. And then I started making connections between what she was talking about, which was like a more global idea. And I'll talk a little bit about the key themes and ideas from the book, but how it really does play out in a lot of ways in infertility and IVF. So, This is gonna be, I think I've only done one other podcast where I was specifically talking about a book. I don't do this very often. I really only do it when I think it is extremely applicable. And so I just want to reassure you, it is extremely applicable in my opinion to the experiences of someone going through IVF. So the book called Do Nothing, How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing and Underliving by Celeste Headley She is an experienced journalist and public speaker. She draws a lot of information in the book from research, history, and her own kind of personal experiences. It is in the self -help classification. I do tend to read a lot of self -help by nature of kind of my interest and working. I found this book from a colleague of mine who suggested it. I kind of go through periods where I want to do a lot more within the IVF This business. I have a regular kind of roster of clients that I love and people come in and out of my orbit. Full disclosure, if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook or something, I don't tend to post a lot. I don't do a lot of engagement. It's actually, it's a little bit overwhelming for me. I have a little bit of struggles of like, logging on and actively engaging. I know that for a lot of people who run online businesses, that's kind of a no -brainer. Why wouldn't you do that? It's not really authentic to me. My podcast is the most authentic expression that I have. When I'm talking to you guys, I feel like I'm literally talking to you guys, as if I'm speaking into this microphone, but we're sitting around like a warm fire at a retreat or something like that. I really do feel like this is kind of the most intimate that I can be with you guys and the most authentic. So I was reading this book and kind of trying to figure out a way how I could be a little bit more Emily in terms of just marketing and things like that. But it was actually through this book that I realized a little bit more about myself that that's not necessarily who I am. I'm not someone who will actively engage on social media 100 % of the time or even 50 % of the time, but that doesn't mean that that is a bad thing. It's just not true to myself and kind of what guides me. Also what My expression, I guess, is the best way to put it. I'm a very verbally and physically expressive person, which is why the podcast feels really natural to me. Also, it's up on my YouTube channel, so if you actually wanna see me talk, I use my hands a lot, but you can do that. I just tucked my hands in for if you're listening on the podcast. this is the way that I like to communicate with you guys. I know that that was a big aside.

But that was one of the things that I kind of discovered when I was reading this book. And that's one of the reasons, aside from just the parallels I was able to draw to IVF and infertility, that I wanted to share this book. This book was kind of a low frequency movement for me. Like it really shifted some things for me. So I kind of wanted to share that with you. 

Remember the full title is Do Nothing, How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing and Underliving. So it's very general themes, but the themes are important nonetheless. So one of the key themes that, One of the themes that Celeste Headley talks about a lot is kind of how the evolution of productivity or work culture, particularly in the United States, although a relatively common theme, was the industrial revolution and then like all of our technological advancements that we've had have really shifted our understanding of work and productivity. And so she really highlights how we've kind of moved away from natural rhythms of rest and really increasing the value that's placed upon outputs over well -being, just over general well -being. Another one is multitasking, kind of the myth or illusion of multitasking.

It has been debunked many times. Celeste Headley also debunks the myth of multitasking, that it increases your efficiency. A lot of evidence, not just from her in this book, I have read other articles and books that talk about this as well, how attempting to multitask simultaneous things at once actually diminishes your productivity, increases your stress, and really argues for the importance of focusing on one task at a time, which again, our history of efficiency and productivity makes that very difficult. The cost of busyness is one of her other themes. Really the psychological and physical, physiological cost of constant busyness, which includes burnout, anxiety, strained relationships, that's gonna be a big element that I tie to IVF in particular. But she really emphasizes the relentless pursuit of productivity often causes a decline in the quality of your life. So then her thesis, the power of doing nothing, which is contrary to cultural pressure to always be busy, Headley really advocates the value of doing nothing, right? She discusses the importance of rest, leisure, downtime, explaining how these can lead to greater creativity, better problem solving, and improved mental health. Now, for me, kind of personally, that really spoke to me because I constantly felt like if I wasn't talking with clients, that I needed to be doing something. I needed to be either writing or I needed to be engaging on social media or something like that. When really over the last couple of years, I've realized that the emotional labor of kind of sitting with you guys, like that's not a problem. When I say emotional labor, I don't think of it as a problem. I actually think of it as like one of the greatest values that I bring to the world, but it is kind of emotionally laborious for me. So being able to have someone kind of tell me like, it's actually okay that you can't do everything, right? It's okay that you can only see a certain number of clients per week and that you show up fully and intentionally with them every time. And that that's kind of the value add. When I write my podcast, I think about you guys all the time.

And so writing my podcast is like that labor of love of this is what I'm hearing from my people. This is what I'm seeing from my people and I want to share it with my people. So that was just the idea of like rest and leisure and downtime being an integral part of me being able to show up for my clients, for you guys with the podcast and not have to like place the external pressure on me to show up in every facet of my business was, was just such a breath of fresh air on a personal note. She talks about the practice or the practical steps of reclaiming your time. She offers a lot of really good steps. I think that if you've read self -help in even just kind of any capacity, you're probably familiar with them. If you've listened to me, you're familiar with them. It's the ideas of firmly and authentically setting boundaries, practicing mindfulness, reevaluating relationships with technology, social media, things like that. Those aren't groundbreaking ideas. think that having those reminders is really good for everyone, because we tend to have to hear things in repetition before we're able to implement them. But it's not groundbreaking research that changed my life when she was like, practice mindfulness. I'm like, I already do that. Practice boundaries. I'm pretty good at boundaries.

So if you're familiar with that, those are kind of what she talks about with reclaiming your time. And then reconnecting with humanity is kind of the last idea of her thesis. And one of the core messages that she talks about is the need to connect to our own humanity. Not necessarily connecting with other people's humanity, although that is a very important thing, but often in kind of like the mass productivity culture that we live in, we tend to see humanity in other people, but not ourselves. We tend to treat ourselves like we should be robots, like I should be perfect 100 % of the time. And if I'm not, then there's something wrong with me. That tends to be what we think about. So a large part of what she talks about is reconnecting with our humanity, right? Our being us and other people, right? So prioritizing human connection, empathy and community over this relentless pursuit of success and productivity. One of the things that I'm kind of thinking about moving forward in the future is kind of having our own IVF this like Facebook community. haven't 100 % decided on it because if I do something, I wanna do it with my whole heart and my whole chest and be dedicated to it. And I'm not sure what that could look like, but I know that there's a lot of communities that exist that after a while tend to make you feel worse in the infertility and IVF space and that's not what I want it to do. So while I'm kind of thinking about it and trying to be really deliberate and intentional about it, just know that those are some of the things that I think about when I walk through my everyday life and I'm thinking about all of you kind of going through this and what would be the best, most supportive thing that I can do.

But basically, Do Nothing is like a really compelling for me call to action for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the demands of modern life, just literally living in modern society. And a lot of what she talks about in terms of like being a support to yourself and other people are themes that already resonate for me and I already talk about, which may be another reason that I really enjoyed the book But when I talk about drawing parallels to Do Nothing by Celeste Headley and the experiences of my people going through infertility and IVF fertility treatments, whatever that looks like, I think we can draw some really meaningful parallels. One of the first ones, which I kind of hinted to earlier, was the pressure to do more, right? So in the book, Headley really criticizes the modern obsession with productivity and the pressure to always do more often at the expense of our well -being, right? I said that earlier. And what I see with so many of my clients and when I am on social media and I read posts and things like that, as individuals, we tend to try to push through any obstacle or barrier that we can with fertility treatment. that might mean going through four back -to -back treatments, even if that is at the expense of your physical, mental, emotional, financial toll, right? And kind of doing anything and everything possible to achieve pregnancy, to get your baby at the end of the pregnancy, right? I kind of joke, a little bit joke, about you know, sometimes we feel like we have to throw out all of our plastic wear and replace everything with glass and throw out if you use like a scented body lotion or cologne cologne, perfume, things like that. Anything was sent, we tend to like, well, this is gonna be the thing that really helps. I'm gonna throw all of this out and sorry, trying to charge them as we go along. I think that will get me through, yeah, okay.

We tend to push and push and push ourselves to a breaking point. And so I think, you know, when we talk about this idea of doing more, doing everything at the expense of this one goal, the thing that I want for you guys is just to do that intentionally, right? If that's the path that you're gonna choose, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But make sure you're doing it with intention. A lot of the people that I have worked with who have done that, who have kind of really just pushed and pushed and pushed at the physical, mental, emotional, or financial expense of their lives have done so typically in an attempt to avoid the feelings, right? Because if we're doing something, right, then our mind is gonna be, we're less likely to be overwhelmed with the emotions.

Now, emotions are very patient. They will wait for us and usually we will get knocked down when our guard is down. I have talked about this before how, you know, for a very long time, I had a lot of anxiety around going to bed, like bedtime, because, you know, at that time, if I had kids or, you know, they were in bed or, you know, even before kids, when we were really in the thick of primary infertility, that 18 months before we got pregnant, going to bed was like one of the most anxiety producing times because at that time I was a staff social worker. I was worried, sometimes I was up at the hospital 10, 11 hours. And so it was great because when I got home, my husband at that time was working on his dissertation. So he was working for hours and hours on end, but right before bedtime, this like sacred time where I wanted to feel at peace, I felt nothing but anxiety because it was like All of my resolve was down and so all of the emotions would just come up. I spent most of those evenings crying or being in just a terrible spiral, beating the crap out of myself and my mind. And I think a large reason that we push so hard, we think I'm gonna get rid of all of these things, I'm gonna overhaul my life, is an attempt to avoid those emotions.

Those emotions are gonna be there no matter what, right? And I think the more often that we press to do in order to kind of outperform or outproduce those emotions, the more likely we are to be really, really taken by surprise when they come up, because they will come up, but we're not braced for them. Because we think I've I've like outsmarted the system. can sidestep these emotions just by doing, and that's not true.

They will come to you. so I think when you kind of do things from a very deliberate and intentional place, you are anticipating like, okay, I'm going to do these, you know, I'm going to do three cycles back to back. Let's just say, that's the protocol that my doctor and I and my partner, if I have one have agreed to, and that's what we're going to do. And I know that there's going to be emotional fallout and I'm to have to process through this stuff. I'm just, I'm not going to just try and shove it down the entire time. I'm going to be very deliberate with like, taking the time to process, whether that's every single day if I need that time or after I get out of doctor's appointments before I go into work or whatever that looks like for you, just as long as you're doing it intentionally and deliberately. Another topic that she talks about, which I talk about a lot on this podcast is the myth of control, right? Hadley discusses how the belief that we can control outcomes just through sheer effort, determination, and multitaskings, complete myth. And tends to just exacerbate or make worse our feelings of powerlessness or frustration or burnout when our results don't align with our expectations, which kind of often they don't, they don't. And so in a fertility journey, whether you're trying to spontaneously get pregnant or you're going through some sort of fertility treatment, IVF, whatever, It is fraught with this illusion of control, right? We believe that if we follow our doctor's guidance, our acupuncturist, our energy healer, our whatever, right? It starts with the egg book, right? We believe that if we follow these protocols perfectly and we try every possible solution that we can think of, it will guarantee a success. And when our efforts, when our, I'm sorry, when our outcomes don't match, our efforts, right, that feeling of despair is so palpable, right? Because I've done everything right. I did everything I was told to do. I pulled in multiple sources, multiple experts, and it's still not working, right? And so that really highlights the need to acknowledge our limits of control, just our limits of control. I talk about this all the time.

We can only control three things. We can control our thoughts, we can control our feelings, and can control how we show up, what we do in our lives. And outside of those things, when we try to control everything outside of those three things, that is when we feel the most out of control, right? It's quite the paradox, right? We think it's gonna give us control if we can control these other things. Ultimately, it actually leads us to feeling worse and more out of control.

Just kind of thinking about, right, when I ground myself specifically, like when I'm feeling really out of control, there are like, I've checked in with myself so many times, there are like things that I do with my body that I can tell, I'm like, I'm trying to like, I have a feeling of urgency or I'm trying to control this, right? So those, I've developed that like keen sense for my body when I'm doing those things. So just checking in with yourself, right?

I'm feeling so out of control about this, why? More often than not, you probably feel helpless or out of power or you're trying to control something you have zero control over, right? So thinking about those things. The cost of busyness, right? I told you the relentless pursuit of, I explained the relentless pursuit of productivity results in burnout stress, diminished quality of life. I talked about that earlier the relentless focus on fertility treatments and infertility can control and consume our entire lives, right? It leaves by nature, for me, it was like a switch flip. The moment I decided I wanted to have kids, it was like, that was then all I could think about after about two to three months of trying. It just consumed my, the vast majority of my waking hours was thinking about that. And it leaves very little room for rest joy or any other meaningful pursuit. And so the emotional and physical toll of constant treatments, doctor's appointments and the stress of waiting, it leads to that burnout. It affects your mental health, relationships, your overall wellbeing. And I'm not suggesting that you have to take off time after every single cycle. That's not what I'm saying at all, but what I am saying is again, doing those things from a very deliberate and intentional place. That's the crux of my thesis is you can decide to do 15 cycles back to back if that's what you want to do as long as you're doing it from a very intentional place and you're remembering how to care for yourself for rest, for joy, for pleasure, things like that. The importance of rest and downtime. I've gotten to, I don't wanna say like I've gotten to an age, but I've gotten to an age. Where one of my number one priorities is rest. I am someone who requires rest, not just like physical sleep, but I am someone after, you know, I can't do more than three or four client calls a day because then I don't have enough time to like regulate myself. And then that bleeds into the other areas of my life, right? I've had to come to terms with that. cannot be one of those coaches who coaches, you know, for six hours every single day, that's not me. But what Headley describes is that the importance of downtime and doing nothing, right, that's the joke of the book, do nothing, is to recharge, to foster creativity and to improve your overall wellbeing. So when you're going through fertility treatments, we can benefit tremendously from taking a step back, allowing space for rest and emotional, physical and financial recovery taking breaks between treatments can feel very dangerous for us because we have a lot of time scarcity around IVF and infertility and things like that. But it can actually allow you the opportunity to engage in aspects of self care or aspects of rest, restoration for us, right? That do nothing idea, right? Because the joke of the book is that rest is seen as doing nothing in a highly capitalistic, highly productive society. But rest is doing something, right? It's a passive productivity, right? You don't see the benefits that you would like writing a 5 ,000 word essay or whatever. But it's still an integral part of our overall wellbeing. Okay, two more topics. this getting long re -evaluating the idea of success and worth. So Headley challenges the idea that success is solely tied to productivity and output. Going through a fertility journey, treatments often bring up questions of self -worth. Like that's like the bread and butter of the self -help industry is that so much, almost everything boils down to a sense of worthiness, right? So especially when the outcomes are uncertain or unsuccessful. This process can feel very much like our worth is tied to our ability to conceive or our ability to carry. So when we draw from Headley's thesis, there is value in recognizing that worth is not defined by outcomes, right? It is defined as who you are as an individual, as a person. One of the big therapeutic modalities that I pull from in my practice is acceptance and commitment therapy.

And one of the biggest things that it talks about in acceptance and commitment therapy is living your life through your set of values, right? Values are very subjective, my values might be very different from your values, but that doesn't mean that they're not important. And so when we can kind of take that step back and process those things, process our ability to see like, well, that didn't work and that sucks. Like I'm never gonna be the person that says, it's okay that you're transfer or you're cycle was unsuccessful, no, it absolutely sucks. It's an incredibly painful experience to not have that work, but it doesn't mean anything about you or your worth or your contribution to this world, right? You are inherently a wonderful, worthy person, just a person. And that the success of IVF, the success of pregnancy, things like that, is not determining your worth in any way. And then of course, community and connection which was one of the last things that we talked about earlier. She underscores the importance of that connection, that community, and that can be neglected, I think is a very politically savvy way of putting it, when we're in that kind of pursuit of constant productivity. Infertility is probably one of the most isolating experiences of my life, and that is a theme that I see from my clients and from people that I talk to. And so, We wanna highlight the balance of self -compassion, the need to take back from pressure, finding a community, whether that's the community that you already have and they're incredibly supportive, finding an infertility or IVF specific community, a coach, a therapist, we need somebody, some people, a group to help support us. We cannot do it alone. I know because I tried for a very long time.

And I just ended up in a perpetual cycle of burnout and overwhelm. And that's, I want better for each and every one of you. Like I went through that, I experienced it in the hopes that nobody else has to, right? It is an inherently isolating experience because a lot of it is not talked about. That doesn't mean that you have to feel alone, that you have to be alone, right? So I heard, I don't even remember where it was from but that loneliness isn't so much that you don't have someone, it's that someone doesn't have you. And I never want any of you to feel that way. Even if you're just listening to me on the podcast, you are not alone. I'm right here. I'm gonna whisper into your ear. You can always reach out to me. I had someone email me not too long ago that she wanted to book a Take Back Your Life call, but she didn't see times available for her and she had heard me mention, know, just email me if you don't see times we can figure something out. That's what I want. I want you guys to reach out. Even if we never worked, you never have to pay me a cent, but I am here with you through this process. Even if I'm just the only person and that's okay. I've got you. So that is what I have for you today. I encourage you to, if this episode or the book really sounds like something that you think would be beneficial for you, do it. Read the book, listen to the book.

It's actually her who narrates the book on audible, which I really love. But we don't have to pursue this at the cost of everything else, right? And in fact, I would actually argue that one of the best things that we can do for our future family is to start recognizing when we are at our limit. You know, I am the best version of me when I step back and go, you know what? I actually can't do that. I cannot be there for you, or I cannot do this thing, because that will be at the expense of whatever that happens to be in my life. I can still love you and support you from afar, but setting, learning how to set those boundaries and maintain those boundaries to care for yourself will only make you a better, more evolved, more full person, right? More well -rounded person.

And so that is my hope with sharing this book. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If not, you didn't hear the recommendation from me, I'm just kidding. But I do hope you enjoy it, or at least that you can find something from this podcast episode, some of the parallels that I found while I was listening to it. So that is what I have for you today. I hope you have a beautiful week, and I will talk to you soon. Bye bye.