Races and Different Ways of Recharging (10-21-25)

Blog coming to you today, because I’m out of office tomorrow. 😉 This week is about different ways of recharging.

This might not make any sense to anyone. My racing hobby is one of my favorite things to do to RECHARGE my batteries. Right now, at least one of you is thinking, “So, running/hiking for miles in the heat, crawling through rock and mud, climbing on stuff, carrying heavy things, and picking up all kinds of bumps and bruises is recharging for you. Is there something wrong with you?” It’s a fair question 😉 All of those things are true, AND it’s time outside, mainly on my own without any distractions. It’s a time to be with my thoughts. It’s also a time to discover and push past my limits which is invigorating. Because of those things and more, races might take a lot of physical energy, but they fill so many of my other energy buckets.

Let’s connect some dots. Whenever I find myself feeling stressed or tired from work, one of my first instincts is that I need to rest to recharge. Resting looks taking it easy all day, not doing anything, and maybe even fitting in a nap. Sometimes, this helps me feel a bit better. Sometimes, it doesn’t. It’s not that resting was bad. It just wasn’t what I needed at the time.

Over the past few years, I’ve learned that when I need to recharge, sometimes I need to rest and other times I need something different. Sometimes, recharging looks like reading or writing blogs and poems. Sometimes, recharging is playing with Legos. Sometimes, recharging looks like hanging out with my family. Sometimes, recharging is being by myself for a period of time. Sometimes recharging is a good workout or an obstacle course race. How do you recharge?

The challenge: How are you being intentional about recharging in these busy and stressful times?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Handling Heat and Showing Compassion (7-9-25)

Last week, our air conditioning went out and we had to replace the entire unit. This bit of bad luck will be the inspiration for this series, so I’m hoping it’s fire 😉 Our first entry will be about handling heat, what that does and doesn’t mean, and showing compassion.

Let’s set the scene. The air conditioning is out. It is hot and humid outside. The house feels gross. The heat was particularly tough on my wife and kids. At night, I would go upstairs and sleep, even though it was hotter up there. Meanwhile, they had created a fort of cool with portable mattresses and all of the fans they could muster.

The factual statement is that I was able to sleep upstairs when they couldn’t. It would be easy to think this somehow makes me tougher or stronger than them. This might be true, but there could be other explanations. Maybe, our bodies process the experience of being overheated differently. Maybe, our bodies get overheated at different rates. Maybe, since I’m usually hot to begin with, I just have more experience being hot and uncomfortable so it’s not too different for me. Maybe, they are dealing with other challenges I’m not dealing with, so I can put more energy toward temperature regulation. I could sleep upstairs, but that doesn’t necessarily make me tougher, stronger, or better.

Let’s connect some dots. Have you ever looked at someone else and thought, “They must stronger or better than me, because they handle that well?” Or have you ever thought, “Why am I so much worse and weaker than other people?” I know I have. I’ve thought about these things as it relates to physical pain, stress, and more.

When I was younger, I’d look at people and think, “Whoa! That person must be tough,” or “That person just needs to put in the effort and suck it up!” as if it were that simple and straight forward. As I get older, and hopefully a bit wiser, I realize there is more to it than that. Maybe that person has put in the effort and is that strong. Maybe that person appears strong because they have cut off all of their emotions, which isn’t exactly healthy. Maybe that person who is struggling on a task has a whole lot of other things in life kicking the crap out of them right now. Maybe I’m experiencing a person when they aren’t at their best, while they are so strong and amazing in other aspects of life. The bottom line of all of this is I’ve learned to show more understanding and a heck of a lot more compassion.

The challenge: Will you show more understanding and compassion to others? Will you show more understanding and compassion to YOURSELF?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Recharging and Mental Health (10-2-24)

Last week I finished the series on lessons I’ve learned from therapy. This week I want to touch on one more mental health lesson, before moving to new topics. Today, I want to touch on the importance of recharging for our mental health.

Let me start by saying that everyone is okay. Here’s the story. On Friday, I drove a few hours away for an obstacle course race on Saturday. On Saturday morning around 1am, I received a text that a family member was in the hospital. I packed up and drove the 3.5 hours home to see what was going on. It was a long day of waiting and little sleep. Eventually, I felt good about everything and went home.

When I got home I sent a couple of emails to folks letting them know what was going on and that I wouldn’t be at work on Monday. Then, the guilt started to set in. On Saturday night and Sunday morning this little voice started whispering, “You’re really behind at work. You’re going to be even more behind, because you aren’t working on Monday. You should start doing work right now. You’re not doing anything else right now. You’re just staying at the house. You’re just sitting there. You could be doing work to catch up.” Have you ever had something like this happen to you? Have you ever heard guilt whisper to you like this?

For a moment, I almost gave into that voice. Then, I paused for a second and I assessed how I was feeling. I was sleep deprived, physically tired, and emotionally exhausted. Working is not what I needed. I wasn’t sitting around doing “nothing”. I was recharging. I was catching my breath. I was taking care of myself. I was being present with my family. After embracing these things, I let go of the urge to work.

What does this have to do with anything? I don’t know about you, but it’s easy to get lost in the hustle and grind. It’s easy to subscribe to this idea that we should be doing something every moment of every day to better ourselves and deliver for the business. This is the same mentality that leads to burnout. We don’t always need to be running ourselves into the ground. We need to challenge that voice of guilt. We need to embrace that sometimes we need to do “nothing”. Sometimes, we need to slow down, reconnect, and recharge for our own sake and for the sake of others.

The challenge- Will you allows yourself to recharge when you need to?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Therapy and Investing Effort (9-25-24)

This will be my last in the series about lessons I’ve learned from therapy. We started with asking for help, analyzed root causes, and explored thought traps and radical acceptance. We will end by reflecting on therapy and investing effort.

As I mentioned in the first blog, I leveraged our Lyra services for therapy. Going through this experience consisted of a few different things like live sessions, assessments, articles to read, and online videos to watch. We were a few weeks in, and I was telling my therapist that I appreciated the different resources. She shared that she was concerned she was assigning me too much, because she recognized that I was busy in life. I thanked her for her consideration and told her that she was not overburdening me. I explained that I wanted the materials, because I knew how important it was to invest in my mental health. I came to her, because life was kicking my butt, so my number one goal was to work through that. As a result, I was committed to investing in my mental health, and I made the necessary trade-offs to do this.

How does this connect to anything? So much of life is about putting in effort to grow. The challenge is that there are so many domains in life we could invest int. We can put in effort for our physical health, mental health, relationships, parenting, careers, etc. This can be overwhelming, especially if we allow ourselves to fall in the trap of thinking that we need to master and max out all of those domains. Instead, we need embrace that everything can’t get equal focus all the time, AND THAT’S OKAY. For me, in that period of my life, I over indexed on my mental health, because I needed that. I did the extra work in that space and deprioritized other things. As my life moves from season to season, I know I’ll continue to evolve where I put the work in and how I invest my effort.

The challenge: Where will you invest your effort?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Therapy, Symptoms, and Root Causes (9-4-24)

Last week was about acknowleding things are heavy. This week is about therapy, symptoms, and root causes.

At this point in my therapy process, I’ve listed all the challenges I have going on in life. From there, we talk about the negative impact this is having on me. Being honest and vulnerable, I was participating in a lot of numbing/avoidance behaviors. For me that looks like eating and drinking too much junk, doomscrolling, laying around vs moving my body, and binging on video games. When I’m mentally healthy, I might partake in those behaviors in moderation and get joy from them. During this time period, I was doing those things to escape instead of dealing with my issues.

It would have been easy to assume we should start going after those avoidance behaviors with things like, “Try to eat healthier,” but those were just the things on the surface. We needed to find the root cause. I had become so overwhelmed by things that I started telling myself a story that sounded like this, “All of this sucks. It won’t ever get better. I’m stuck and powerless.” Have you ever felt this way? After talking about this, I recognized this was the root of my problem. I had convinced myself I was stuck and powerless, and that prevented me from dealing with these challenges. I needed to address this feeling.

What does this have to do with anything? Whether it’s therapy, marketing, or a business challenge, it’s EASY to see something on the surface and ASSUME that is what you need to solve for. However, solving the surface level issue is often a temporary fix at best. You can’t make meaningful progress, until you address the root of the issue. In my case, the issue wasn’t necessarily that I was demonstrating avoiding behaviors . The issue is that I started to believe I was stuck and powerless. Addressing this and learning to let go of this has made all the difference.

The challenge: Will you address symptoms or root causes?

Have a jolly good day,

Therapy and Asking for Help (8-21-24)

Today marks my 600^th blog! It’s wild to think I’ve been doing this for about 12 years. I appreciate all of you for reading and encouraging me to keep writing.

I mentioned a few months ago that after having a tough time I leveraged our Lyra benefit and reached out to a therapist for the first time. This series is going to consist of lessons I picked up from that experience. I’m hoping that it helps normalize therapy, and that maybe a few of the things I learned will be useful to you as well. We will kick the series off by focusing on asking for help.

I was nervous for my first therapy session. After a few moments of small talk, my therapist asked, “What brought you to therapy? Why now?” I paused for a second. It was hard to admit I needed help. I was used to having broad shoulders. I was used to being able to handle anything thrown in my direction. Eventually, I responded, “To be honest, life is kicking my a$$ and has been for a little while. Yes, I’m making it through it, but that isn’t the same as living. I don’t feel good about where I am or the person I am right now. I tried a few things on my own and they didn’t work. I decided I needed to get some help to handle life better. That’s why I’m here.”

What does this have to do with anything? It can be difficult to ask for help sometimes. It can be hard, because you’re worried about others judging you, being less than, or feeling weak for needing help. I’ve felt all those things. Have you? Once we start feeling those things, it’s easy to get stuck feeling those things, which prevents us from asking for the help we need.

Instead of focusing on the discomfort surrounding asking for help, I focused on the pain I was experiencing without the help. Once I acknowledged and embraced that life was kicking by butt and how that was having a negative impact on all aspects of my life, I realized the pain of living with that far outweighed any discomfort from asking for help. The next time you’re hesitant about asking for help for anything, ask yourself if you’d rather face the short discomfort of asking for help or if you’d rather be stuck feeling the current pain you are experiencing.

The challenge: Will you be willing to ask for help?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Professional and Personal Quarterly Check-in (3-27-24)

This week’s entry is about quarterly check-ins for work and for yourself. It’s a longer email, because I’m including my own quarterly self-assessment as an example.

As we finish out the end of Q1, I find myself doing a lot of reflecting on the progress that has been made on various projects and tasks at work. I’m asking myself things like, “Where are we now compared to where we were at the beginning of the quarter? Were we able to achieve our goals? If so, how do we keep up the momentum? If not, what should we adjust to do better? How can we ensure we regroup and are clear and focused for Q2?” It seems like a perfect moment to pause, reflect, regroup, and plan before attacking Q2.

What does this have to do anything? While this is great for work, we could apply this same thinking to our personal lives as well. What are some of your goals for 2024? How did you do with them in Q1? Have you stopped to CELEBRATE your progress? Stop RIGHT NOW and celebrate something you’ve achieved. After you celebrate, then you can reflect and see if there are any gaps. If you have gaps, why do you have gaps? What happened? What got in the way? How can you adjust to reach your goals for this quarter?

The challenge: Will you take the time to do a quarterly check-in? What changes will you make to set yourself up for the rest of the year?

Bonus: Here is my review based on the dimensions in my life I set goals for. Hopefully, it sparks a thought or two for you. Also, just know if things have been tough lately, you’re not the only one. Bottom line- tough quarter, and I need to bounce back. The picture of me flipping a tire is from my most recent obstacle course race and summarizes my Q1 in a nutshell. It was all about moving heavy stuff and getting through it. I did it, but dang it was so much harder and uglier than I wanted it to be, or it needed to be.

Intentionally Invest (D+)- This is my mantra for the year. This is about being intentional about where and how I invest my energy. Investing my energy means doing the right things that help me be the best version of myself. I gave myself a bad grade, because I wasn’t intentional. I got overwhelmed by a lot of things and just started recklessly spending energy. It wasn’t helpful and it didn’t help me get to where I wanted to go.

Mental Health (C-)- Overall, I want to feel like I’m in a good, strong, solid mental state. In full transparency, life and work just kicked my butt this quarter. The stress was overwhelming and was too much for me to manage in an efficient way. I got really lost and stuck trying to trudge through everything. Feeling lost and stuck drained so much of my mental energy. I spent so much energy here that I didn’t spend it on taking care of myself. I am proud of myself for getting some help. Moving forward, I need to use the new tools I’m developing, so I won’t get so stuck. If I can do that, everything else will improve dramatically.

Physical Health (C-)- The goal is to take good care of myself, so I can do the things I want to be able to do. The only reason I’m not giving myself a worse grade, is because I did manage to at least hold things together enough to complete a couple of obstacle course races. Other than that, I was inconsistent with working out, my sleep was poor, and my nutrition was abysmal. I’m ready to do better in Q2.

Family (ugly hard-earned B)- The goal is to feel like I’m being an amazing husband and dad. As they say in The Inside Job podcast, “Life gets lifey.” It’s been a hard few months with each day seemingly bringing new challenges. I give myself an “ugly hard-earned B” because it’s like one of those things in school where you have to put in so much effort you dang near exhaust yourself just to make it. I was not necessarily excellent, but I found ways to hold it together. It’s an ugly B, but one I can be proud of. At the same time, I think some work and mental health challenges got in the way of me being on the top of my game here.

Career (ugly hard-earned B)- The goal is to feel like I’m delivering magic. It’s a high bar about being in a flow state and getting incredible things done. Similar to my Family category, challenges kept popping up and compounding on themselves day in and day out. As a result, this quarter was filled with nothing but peaks and valleys, and they couldn’t have been further from each other. At times I was operating at a high level, and there were other times when I felt like an ineffective burned-out piece of garbage. This is another hard-earned ugly B that left me a little bruised and roughed up. I believe I focused on the right things. It just so happens that all the right things were the extremely difficult, and it was like carving through ambiguity made of marble while walking through quicksand. It took so much energy to keep slogging forward, and I know I was burned out for a period of time. On the positive side, I’m proud of myself for finding a way to regroup. I feel I’m getting my energy and magic back. All I need is a little more momentum, and then I’ll be like the Juggernaut (bonus points if you get the X-men reference)

Financial (B)- The goal is to ensure we are saving/investing money in the right way. I’ve already shifted money for investments. Some of these have been home repair things (replacing the hot water heater has been AMAZING!) and some of these are investing in fun vacations for later in the year. I do acknowledge that I was wasting too much money on junk food and stuff as I was super stressed.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Protecting Your Energy and Blowing Fuses (1-11-23)

Last week I talked about protecting my peace. I want to continue with this idea of protecting your energy by thinking about blowing fuses and burnout.

Have you ever blown a fuse or a had to reset the circuit breaker in your house? If so, this means the fuse was doing its job of protecting electrical circuits. A fuse is blown if too much electrical current goes through it at a given time. When the fuse blows it breaks the circuit, so electricity can’t flow through it anymore. Without the fuse, an overpowered electrical current would fry anything it ran through. To get things working again, you have to pause and replace the fuse or reset the breaker.

What does this have to do with anything? When a mechanical device is overwhelmed, the fuse blows, and it stops working. It’s then OBVIOUS that something is wrong. It won’t resume working again until it is fixed. I’d argue that we have our own internal fuses that blow when we get overwhelmed. The issue is that these fuses aren’t always obvious to other people or even ourselves. Since a blown fuse isn’t always obvious, we just keep going on and on and on until we fry our whole systems and become burned out.

If you reflect for a minute, what are some signs that you have blown a fuse and are heading toward burnout? For me, it could look like any of these things: I’m not working out, not getting enough sleep, eating junk food constantly, and I’m easily irritated at work and at home. All of these are destructive behaviors that hurt me and others around me. Now, imagine what would happen if I noticed when these things started to happen AND STOPPED to figure out how to fix things vs. continuing to go and go and go. Think of how much better off I’d be mentally, emotionally, and physically. Think of how much better off you’d be if you did the same. Part of protecting my peace this year is understanding what it looks like when I’ve blown a fuse and then STOPPING to remedy the problem.

The challenges: What are signs that you’ve blown a fuse? How will you respond once that fuse is blown?

Bonus- A year ago, I wrote a blog post about surge protectors. It’s one of my favorite entries. You can read that HERE. The surge protector entry was all about being PROACTIVE to set up things that would prevent you from being overloaded. The ideas work well with this week’s entry which is about IDENTIFYING when you are overloaded.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Getting Back into Rhythm vs. Choosing YOUR Rhythm (10-3-22)

It’s been a long time. I’m back from an amazing trip feeling recharged and full of wonder. With that in mind, I have a blog entry that I felt was best shared on a Monday morning. It’s about getting back into rhythm vs. choosing your rhythm

Yesterday as I was mentally preparing to go back to work after 2.5 weeks of vacation, I said to myself, “Starting tomorrow I’m going to need to get back in the swing of things. I’ll have to get back into that rhythm.” Then I paused for a moment and asked myself, “Am I sure I just want to go back to the old routines and rhythm of doing things?” Some of the old habits, routines, and rhythm were great, but others didn’t serve me well. Before plunging headfirst into the way things used to be, I needed to take a moment to decide what I would like to carry forward and what I’d like to adjust.

What does this have to do with anything? Maybe you’re coming back from vacation. Maybe you’re coming back from a weekend. Either way, right now you are likely in front of your laptop or smartphone getting ready to dive into the week and get back to the rhythm of doing things. Before you dive in, is this the rhythm you want to be part of? Are there any tweaks or changes you’d like to make to what you are part of and how you are doing things? Now would be a good time to think about those and figure out how to evolve your rhythm.

The challenge: How will you find the best rhythm for you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Shin Splints, Stress Fractures, and Paying Attention to Signs (8-24-22)

This week we are going to start a series on lessons I’ve learned dealing with a stress fracture over the past few months. This week is about paying attention to warning signs.

Many of you might remember that I started doing obstacle course races last year. Originally, I had planned to do more races April through July, but that didn’t quite pan out. Here is what happened. I had been training hard for months. I noticed that my shin hurt when I ran. It was inconvenient. I just kept running. Soon, it went from being inconvenient to hurting. I ignored it and just kept running. Soon, I got to the point that my shins were hurting even when I wasn’t running, and if I did run the pain would be sharp. I ignored all this, and just kept running. Finally, I got to the point where my shin hurt bad enough that I saw a doctor. I was diagnosed with a stress fracture.

Looking back, I wish I would have paid attention to my body earlier. At the first sign of pain, I wish I would have stopped to better understand the situation, so I could have made adjustments to help me recover before it became a substantial problem. However, I didn’t pause, so what likely started as a shin splint became a stress fracture. What started as a minor issue, became something more intense that sidelined me from running and physical activity for 3-4 months. Luckily for me, the leg has healed and I’m back to running and things again.

What does this have to do with anything? How often do you keep “running” despite the pain and all the warning signs telling you that you need to stop and figure out what is going on? Maybe the “running” is working yourself to the point of burnout and not functioning well. Maybe the “running” is continuing to operate in a culture where there are signs that something isn’t quite working. Maybe the “running” is continuing to press forward with the project even though there are signs that people aren’t exactly aligned. Maybe the “running” is doing everything else on your own and not having the right support around you. I’ve done all of these things. Have you? In all those situations there are initial signs that indicate that things might not be going well. If we can pause when we first see the signs, we can often fix things before any real harm is done. However, far too often we put our head down and keep pushing, believing that pausing is weakness. We keep pushing, ignoring the warning lights until something finally breaks. I know I’m guilty of this and am trying to do better.

The challenge: Will you listen to the initial warnings when they come?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry