Episode 208: Unlocking Your Potential: 4 Lessons from My Soulbattical
A soulbattical – sounds a little different, right? The tried-and-true sabbatical gets an introspective makeover.
In today’s episode, Erin gives you her four takeaways from her most recent soulbattical and gives you the formula for taking one of your own.
If you’re feeling disconnected from yourself with no time to reconnect, this is the episode for you.
ICYMI – Your Post-Episode Homework: Follow the steps Erin shared to take your own soulbattical, then send us a message about how it went. Click the link below to download The Wellness Workbook before it’s removed from our website.
Show Links:
Episode 49 of The improve it! Podcast, where Erin shares about her experiences with infertility
Did today’s episode resonate with you? Please leave us a review for a chance to win a self-care package from us.
Take the quiz to download your free Wellness Workbook.
Send a question/voice message on SpeakPipe here.
Want to book Erin to speak at your organization or large-scale event: Learn more here.
Connect with Erin Diehl:
@itserindiehl on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter
Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 208 Transcription
Erin (00:08):
Improve it. Improve it! Podcast.
Erin (00:21):
Improve it peeps. Welcome to today's show. I am Erin Diehl. Now on paper you might know me as a founder and c e o of Improve It, an improv comedy expert, this host of the Top 1% podcast, the Improve It Podcast, a new author and a keynote speaker. But speaker on your soul level. I am a mom. I'm a recovering perfectionist turn, feel flu. And I'm your new director, my friend, because every day of your life is an improv scene. Now, if you are new here, welcome to the show if you already are and improve it peep. Welcome back and welcome to version 4.0 of this podcast because we are changing things up left and right. So before we dive into today's show, a couple quick housekeeping episode notes here. My new book, I see you, a Leader's Guide to Energizing Your Team through Radical Empathy is going to be available for pre-order when this episode launches.
Erin (01:25):
You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and pretty soon we will have an awesome new website that you can it directly from. This will give you a free gift with pre-order purchase and spoiler alert, it is a one hour radical empathy workshop built as a partner to the book and I'm hosting it. It is absolutely free when you purchase a book on pre-order, you have to go to our website, enter in the receipt code of your pre-ordered purchase, and this absolutely free workshop built in conjunction with a book will come your way. So stay tuned for more info on that in the next few weeks. Now second, this is highly important. This is time sensitive. My people. If you have not gotten your wellness workbook yet, please get it before it's gone. Literally, this is the last week to get it. So if you're listening to this episode in the future, not the week it launches, it may be gone.
Erin (02:26):
This is a free guide that gives you energy boosters and tangible activities rooted in improv to expand your wellness. You can check out the link in the show notes to get yours because we will be doing away with this soon and I wanna make sure you, my peep gets it before it's gone. Go, go, go, gone. So show notes will have the link for the Wellness workbook and also the pre-order link to get the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Now lastly, stay tuned because we will also be releasing a meditation album built in conjunction with the book. So many exciting things are coming, so I wanna make sure you my Improve It Peeps, hear about it first. So before we dive in, one more thing. If you have not listened to last week's episode, episode 2 0 5 with Elizabeth Martin, our internal media strategist here at Improve It, stop, press Pause, go back, save the episode and listen to it.
Erin (03:26):
I gotta tell you, it's all about investing in a stylist to empower you to show up more confidently. And it is J See, we talk about how to style yourself if you don't have a budget for a stylist, how to make yourself feel more confident, where you can get cheap threads, where you can get some fun things that you definitely don't have to spend a ton of money on. And it's one of my favorite episodes. It was launch in the month of September and our theme that month was all about investing in you. And now this slides right over into the month of October. We're, we're announcing our new theme here today, the month of October. We're talking all about radical rest, my friend, and that is what today's episode is all about. We're talking about unlocking your potential and I'm giving you four lessons from my sabbatical.
Erin (04:20):
So just to catch you up, three weeks ago I took a sabbatical. What is a sabbatical? Great question. It's a break from once regular routine taken with the intention of rejuvenating the soul, exploring personal growth or seeking deeper sense of purpose or meaning in life. There's a focus on self-discovery, wellbeing, and spiritual or emotional fulfillment. It's a time to step back. It's a time to recharge and make transformative life changes. Thank you chat, G P T for this definition. Lemme tell you how it got here. All right, how did I take a soul B? And then I'll get to the steps that it took for me to take the sabbatical. And then I'm gonna give you the lessons that I learned just to fill you in on where we're going here because it is through the lens of this journey on my journey that I hope I can impart this wisdom on you and you can take it and run with it and apply this to your life.
Erin (05:20):
So let's start with how we got here. Okay, for far too long, I'm just gonna take you way back to my childhood. For far too long I was pushing myself. Okay? Now I've been working a lot with a therapist. I've been doing some E D M R work, and I have realized that from the age of eight years old, when I first moved from Greenwood, South Carolina to a new city, Tifton, Georgia, I felt like I had to prove myself that I was not worthy. Because in order for people to like me, I had to be seen through achievement. And I found that the first time I achieved something, I was like, whoa, I get recognition. People notice me. Cool. I'm gonna keep doing this. So it started a lifetime pattern of perfectionism of people pleasing. I moved again when I was 13 years old. I moved again when I was 18.
Erin (06:23):
I moved again when I was 22. All of these times I'm starting completely over. So achievement meant that I was seen. Awards meant recognition and recognition meant that I was validated externally. Okay? The keyword here is externally because being seen by others was a priority for me. However, internally, this external validation lasted for a day or two, and then it was right back into the pattern of what's next, what's next, what's next? What's next? This pattern lasted until I was 40 years old. So for 32 years I was people pleasing and seeking achievement after achievement after achievement.
Erin (07:15):
So if you're a longtime listener of the show, you might know that I had a concussion this summer. If you're new to the show, let me stem up a very long story. This summer I got a concussion and I had what is called post-concussion syndrome. And the only cure for post-concussion syndrome, which can last anywhere for three months to years is rest. Okay? That's it. Rest dark rooms, little to no brain activity, which is impossible. If you run a business, you have a four-year-old and many people depend on you for their livelihood as well as keeping them alive, right? So <laugh>, I realized that this concussion was actually a gift. It was during this time that I realized so many epiphanies about my life and my patterns. I would never even recognize this pattern without slowing down, getting a therapist and recognizing the pattern that I had in my life. And the reason I did slow down was because of this concussion. So this concussion really rewired my brain. It really did. It was a very dark period of time that ended with enlightenment.
Erin (08:36):
My mind, my body, my energy could not keep up at the pace that I was going. My 40 years on earth would not be another 40 years if I kept up this mentality of it's never enough with little to no rest or downtime. So the epiphany came when I realized that rest was actually productive. And I realized that most of my life I had resisted rest. I didn't know what to do with downtime. I truly thought napping was lazy. I thought sitting and staring at nature was boring and unproductive. I realized that in order for me to rest, I was gonna have to schedule it into my day like I did everything else. So I started scheduling breaks at work. If you've listened to past shows, you've heard me talk about this. That was something I never did. I just worked through my lunch break. I would literally forget about lunch sometimes or I'd eat while working on a document, okay? And that was great that that, hey, that is a start. But I knew I needed more. I needed a chance to recharge. I needed to be in nature. I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to be by myself. I wanted to have no distractions.
Erin (10:02):
I needed to be still, I needed to be inspired. I needed to be calm and collected, and I needed a soul sabbatical. Now, if any of this sounds like you, then listen up my friends, I got you because I was you, I am you. And I want you to take these lessons and apply them to your life, your own journey, because we're gonna get into the steps that I took to make this happen. We're gonna get into what I did and we're gonna get into the lessons that I learned. And you can do this too. You can do this too. So let's get into it. Let's start with the how. How did I make this happen? I did this in three easy steps. All right? So here's step one. What do I want? Ask yourself. What do I want? Now, for me, I knew I did not wanna fly because I fly a lot for work.
Erin (10:59):
I wanted to be able to drive to this location, and I knew that I wanted it to feel secluded. I knew that I wanted my family to be a part of this in some way because when I travel for work, I'm gone from them. And my husband also travels for work. So more time away from them didn't feel right. But I knew some of it I needed to be alone. And most of it, I wanted to be with them. So that was step one, identifying what I wanted. All right, so that's what I want you to do. If you're thinking about a sabbatical, what is it that you want? Step one, step two, figure out how you're gonna make it happen. How are you going to do it? So for me, it was easy because I started thinking about this in July. I saw that I had no plans on Labor Day weekend.
Erin (11:46):
So that's a three day weekend. So I decided that's when I'm gonna take off work. And I'm gonna take off that Thursday, Friday we have Monday off and we have a weekend in between there. And then I'm gonna take off that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday again, Monday was a holiday. All right? So technically I'm only missing four days of work. I'm missing a couple days in a couple of weeks, not a full week for whatever reason. Full weeks of work stress me out to no end because when you get back, there's so much catch up. So I knew that I wanted it to be over the course of two weeks, and I knew that I was going to do this over a seven day period. So that was my, how am I gonna make it work? So think about how you can make it work. Is there a three day weekend coming up?
Erin (12:31):
Is there time in the next few months that you can give yourself? If you are a full week person, do the full week. But if you like spacing it out over the course of two weeks, you can easily do over, over a long weekend, two days the week before, two days, the week after. All right? Now here's step three. Once you know what you want, how you're gonna make it happen, you have to book it. Step three is book it. So I went on Airbnb and V R B O. I found a place on Seabrook Island, which is a 30 minute drive from my house here in Charleston, South Carolina. It is beautiful. It is nature filled, it is secluded. And I found a tiny tree house literally wouldn't recommend for a larger group than our party of three in Seabrook. And I booked it. Was it glamorous?
Erin (13:20):
No, it wasn't. Was it secluded and in nature? Yes, it was. Was it near the ocean? Check, check. So you have to decide what you're comfortable with. Side note, it did have an infestation of cockroaches outside, which was disgusting. So there's that. It's not gonna be perfect. So step three and a half, don't expect perfection. All right? I just added that step in there. But that's where, that's the how of how we made it happen. Now, now that we have the how, we're gonna identify the what. What are you gonna do? What do you want to do? What is calling your soul? This is your sabbatical. What is it that you want? So I started thinking about this and I had so many podcasts that I had saved that I wanted to listen to. I had so many books that I hadn't read that I wanted to read.
Erin (14:10):
I had so many shows that I couldn't watch because I had a concussion that I wanted to catch up on. I knew I wanted to be outside as much as possible. I wanted to exercise, I would love to get out on the water on a boat, and I wanted to eat delicious seafood. Those were my requirements. And so I now knew the what. And I also knew that saying all of those things meant that I was not working. I was away from technology. So I gave myself a boundary. With technology, you can decide if this is for you or not for me. Not checking email and the height of what we have going on felt a little stressful, especially because I'm working with a, a publisher and they need me at certain times and certain things to keep the timeline going. So I said, alright, I'm gonna check my email for 15 minutes on Thursday, Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday, that's it.
Erin (15:03):
And I'm gonna set a timer and I'm gonna give myself 15 minutes a day to post to my Instagram stories because it, a lot of cool things were happening and I wanted to fill my community online in with that. So if you're not following me on Instagram, let's do it. It's at it's Aaron deal. Let's make that happen. So you can see all the behind the scenes. I think I'm gonna make a highlight reel of the sabbatical. So let me know if you want that. I haven't done that yet, but reach out to me if that's something you would like to see. So now that you have your how and you know what you're gonna do, here's the most important part. Focus on the why. Why are you doing this? What do you hope to achieve by doing this? Why is this so important? Now I'm gonna share with you my whys and I'm gonna share with you my whys that I didn't even know that I had until after the fact.
Erin (15:59):
So hopefully this can help you think of your whys in a different way. This is what happened after being alone for three days with my family for four and being completely off the grid except for those two 15 minute intervals. Here's my first lesson. It was a giant lesson in self-discovery in the time that I was alone. When I listened to podcasts, I went on walks, I read books, I sat in my own silence. In those moments, I listened to my inner voice and my inner God and I reconnected with myself again. I got so many downloads and I'm not talking about for the podcast. I'm talking about internally in my mind. I had so much clarity that I know I would not have gotten while in my day to day of running from thing to thing to thing. Now, if you want clarity and want to understand what your inner wisdom is telling you, you have to slow down and actually listen. If you are craving clarity, a sabbatical might be calling my friend because that is one of my biggest whys for taking the sabbatical and why I will do it again, because that self-discovery was so real. Here's my second lesson balance.
Erin (17:32):
All right? This is about, this is gonna be real talk. I'm gonna give you some real, real deal here. Since I've become a mother, I would dare to say that my priorities were upside down. I know there are a lot of working mothers out there listening to the show show and perhaps you can relate because my career improve. It was my first born. Now I put everything into this. My heart, my soul, my money, my faith, literally this. This was my first child when my first child with, with two legs was actually born. It was an absolute miracle. If you don't know this, I struggled with infertility for many years and our son Jackson, is a miracle baby. We have an episode on this. I'll link to it in the show notes as well because it's truly, if you're anybody listening who's going through infertility, I just wanna shop that out. That episode will make you feel so much less alone. And know that when I was finally blessed with being a mother, I felt so grateful that anytime that I didn't feel like he was my top priority, I felt extreme guilt.
Erin (18:53):
So when he was added to our lives and I say added 'cause he is a value add and an addition, my plate was extremely full and the plate was full and just gonna keep it real. Adding another human to it at certain times felt like overeating. And I was, because I realized that the plate could have both work and my family on it. Not just work, I just had to set boundaries. So that one, one dish, one side does not start filling the plate more than the other. 'cause I'm a pescatarian. I usually eat a lot of side dishes. So think of my family and my work as two side dishes on a plate. I'm getting deep in this metaphor. Y'all just keep going with me. So now my weekends my downtime. I don't want work on the plate. I want that plate filled with my family.
Erin (19:58):
But during the work week, which is the majority of the week, and over the course of a year, I need to make sure that that plate is half full with my family and it's half full with work. Work cannot be overpowering. My family dish and family also needs to be around the same, if not a tiny bit more than a work dish. Okay? So you know that feeling when you overeat and you just can't do anything because you're so lethargic. Think of it like thanksgiving. Okay? After you finish that dinner, you just like take your zipper down, you lay on the couch, you let the gut out, and you just like wanna sleep, right? When we put too much on our plate,
Erin (20:46):
We,
Erin (20:47):
We start to shut down. The same thing happens. And I let work on my plate. Just really like it was like a full helping. And then Jackson, my son was like a full helping. There was no room on the plate. And sometimes work overpowered Jackson and sometimes Jackson overpowered work, but they were so full, there was no balance. There was no equilibrium in that plate. And guess what was not on that plate? Errand time. Errand time. There was no side dish for errand time. It was mom or work. Mom or work. Now,
Erin (21:28):
If I had allowed myself to balance the plate, maybe my body would not have shut down because guess what? My body in the past three years was screaming at me to balance the plate. I had chronic pain. If you have not listened to the self-healing series of this show, we started in 2023. Go back. You're all about that chronic pain, which is now gone by the way. And I developed a concussion, which I do believe was the universe's way of knocking you over the head to say, get your priorities together, girl. Get the balance in check.
Erin (22:03):
But what this sabbatical did was allow me to reflect on this balance. And it allowed me to see that balancing my life is the key to moving forward. I can still have a plate that is filled with family and work those two things. I need to have the same amount. I need to have the same helping of in order to feel fulfilled. And sometimes I need to scrap work off the plate completely. Family's gonna be on my plate forever. But sometimes work needs to go off and that balance just needs to be one thing. So this metaphor, thank you for sticking with me. I wanted to take you through because this lesson was the probably most apparent lesson to me through the sabbatical. That balance is key. And I hope that you can learn from it and listen to it and apply it to your life so you don't get knocked over the head with a concussion like God did. Okay? The universe knocked me on the head literally and said, girl, get it together. Don't let that happen to you. The third lesson. Now this lesson has happened to me time and time and time again.
Erin (23:19):
And this is what I teach. So you know what they say. You teach what you need to learn. This third lesson is all about resilience. Now let me tell you this. If you are a recovering perfectionist, turn, fail, flu like I am, breaking from your routine is challenging, but breaking from your routine teaches you adaptability. Sometimes when we don't take breaks or we venture into the unknown because it is just that unknown, we start to feel fearful and we're feel fearful of what we don't know or what we don't wanna take the time to figure out. So taking this break while I'm about to launch a book, when our revenue is down and when we're executing against a new media strategy, felt impossible. I was actually terrified of taking the break, but guess what happened? My team thrived. Everything went off without a hitch. And because I took time away and didn't actually listen to my ego screaming at me to check my email, I bounced back from this fear and came back to work. More clear minded than ever. So if resilience is something that you know you need to work on, a sabbatical might be calling my friend. It might be just the thing that you need to remind yourself that you can bounce back from any scenario. And it's extremely important. As we continue to go through these next few years, we're all recovering from the resilience. We're all bouncing back from the pandemic.
Erin (25:08):
You are resilient. You're more resilient than you think. So showcase that resilience to yourself by taking a sabbatical. Finally, here is the fourth lesson or the fourth why of why this sabbatical was so, so important. It helped me really define my purpose and my priorities. It helped me lean into the content and think about in a more strategic way what I wanna bring to you. My improve it peep over the next few months, it realigned me with my why, which is service. And it reminded me that sharing my lessons with you so that you can learn from them and then apply them to your life is my calling. I am here to teach. That is my purpose. That is my why. And it also helped me realize my priority. 'cause My priority now, and I'm making this promise, I'm declaring this promise to you. My number one priority is my mental health.
Erin (26:24):
Because without working on it, without making time for it, without intentionally making sure it's in check, nothing works. Nothing works. I cannot be a good mother. I cannot be a good wife. I cannot be a leader without it in check. This break also reminded me that life is so short and I love the work that I do. I love serving you. I love serving the people we get to work with that improve it. But none of it matters without taking the time to enjoy the fruits of my labor with people I love and fueling my soul so I can fill yours. I said it a hundred times on the show, but you cannot fill other people's teacup unless your kettle is full. And that break, that sabbatical moment for me, just taking a step back and really realigning with my purpose and priorities shifted me.
Erin (27:31):
I'm sharing these lessons with you so you can develop your own. Why. I hope that you listen and you take some of these why's and apply them to yourself. You can literally take them and define them for yourself. What do you wanna discover about yourself? What do you wanna get more into balance? How can you celebrate your resilience by taking this break? And how can you get more in alignment with your purpose and priorities? That's the why. If you want to take a sabbatical, start here. Define your how. How are you gonna get there? How will you take the time off? Define the what. What will you spend your time doing and with who? Then do it actually take the break. And finally reflect on the lessons learned. Here's the deal, and I make that pun intended 'cause it is my last name. I want you to take a sabbatical. Your team wants you to take a sabbatical. Your family wants you to take a sabbatical, you want you to take a sabbatical. So take it and then share it. Share the journey on your social. Tag me so I can see it and give you a big clap. Tag your friends, share the sabbatical. The world needs to realize that rest is productive and that's why I'm sharing it with you.
Erin (29:08):
So that's your homework. Take it and share it. And then I want you to get your wellness workbook please before it's gone. Make sure to click the link in the show notes. Share this episode if you haven't taken the sabbatical yet, 'cause you probably haven't taken it yet while listening to this show, but share this episode as a promise to yourself that you're going to take one and share it so other people can hear it and apply it to their lives. We have to keep our mental health in check. We do. And this is just such, even the alone just makes me happy to think about because it's taking care of ourselves. Share it online or share it with a friend. Here's one more reminder. Listen to episode 2 0 5 with Elizabeth Martin. If you want more inspiration on investing in you. And I want you to stay tuned all month, all October long as we give you more episodes on radical rest because my friend, you deserve it. And you know what I'm gonna say? Keep failing, keep improving because this world needs that very special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next time.
Erin (30:40):
Prove it.