You can wake up with the best intentions, move through your day doing all the "right" things, and still find yourself completely wiped out before dinner.

For a long time, I thought that meant I was carrying too much. Lately, I've been seeing it differently.

Everything has weight. Making breakfast. Getting your kids ready. Saying yes. Reading a book. Sitting on the couch. Even the things that fill you up still take something from you. The problem isn't that life has weight. It's continuing to pile things onto your plate after you've already reached your own capacity.

It made me realize exhaustion isn't always a sign that you're doing too much. Sometimes it's a sign you've gone past your own full point.

Your body usually knows you've reached your limit before your brain is willing to admit it. Feeling completely depleted isn't something to judge. It's information. A chance to look back at what was on your plate before you automatically added more.

Because maybe the answer isn't doing less. Maybe it's learning to stop overriding yourself.

Work with me:

1. Lighter: A 12-Week Live Experience for the woman who has it handled. The one everyone leans on... at work, at home, everywhere.
2. The Leaders Table: https://www.samanthapenkoff.com/leaders-table
3. Breakthrough Intensive: You already know you should slow down, delegate more, stop overcommitting & be emotionally present. So why can't you? That's what we figure out in 90 minutes + integration call 1 week later. Book your Breakthrough
4. Exhale Private Coaching: For women ready to do this work until it sticks and you can't revert back. 3 open spots: Work with me

Connect with Sam: Instagram | Facebook

Welcome back to Beyond Awareness. I had a couple moments recently, if I'm being honest. One of them was just a couple days ago, and it was at 5 p.m. where I found myself sitting on the couch just completely exhausted, depleted even. Like my battery was totally drained, and it was 5 p.m. And I hadn't even had dinner yet. I was fried. And I

almost did the thing that I used to do most, which was judge myself for just being done so early, for being depleted so early. Like I think that feeling is fine at 10 p.m. Like once you get through the whole day. But I used to really judge myself when it hit earlier. I remember I used to sit on my bathroom floor when my son was bathing

And I would text my twin sister saying, I am so depleted, like, you know, with hyphens in the middle. And I physically remember not only typing it in that way, but judging myself for how exhausted I was. And it was only 7 p.m. Like I still had to change him into his PJs and like do bath or bedtime routine and then, you know, get myself ready for bed. And I was also kind of hating on

how much I was carrying, like how much I had to do, how much was on my plate that I had to be this tired this early, if that makes sense. Like almost like the victim mindset of like, I have no choice. Like I just am doing so much that like this is what it is. Right. And I feel like a lot of women do this. And so that's what I want to talk about today because my second realization or aha moment or

You know, I've I've had so many moments where I'm driving lately, and I was like, and what it was is I've been thinking about mental load and specifically that weight that made me feel so depleted. And I realized that mental load isn't the enemy. The weight is right, it's all these things that add up up to my 5 p.m. that one night or 7 p.m., you know, back in the day when I was on the bathroom floor.

But I the the kicker for me is that everything we do has weight to it. And this blew my mind because when I initially was thinking of mental weight, it was specific things. You know, it's like, when I say yes and I want to say no. Or, you know, I we just blame certain things or maybe people for the reason that we're overcapacity.

Like anytime Sarah asks me for something, or it's definitely school pickup, or for me, drop-off is always rough by 9 a.m. or whatever time drop-off is. That's the thing. And my realization is that everything has weight to it. What we choose to make for breakfast, you know, a quick smoothie or toast with eggs and bacon. Toast with eggs and bacon takes a little bit longer.

But also that would be like super nutritious. And it could be an act of like self-care and self love to pour that much into a breakfast versus just a quick smoothie, or even, I don't even want to say worse, but just like grabbing something on the go or nothing at all. Getting our kids, your partner, yourself ready for the day has weight to it. Driving to work and what you choose to listen to, maybe.

Maybe in silence or listening to a PD book, listening to music. Some choices might refuel you and others might distract you or numb you. And that can be different for you each day. Like the same exact thing could be different. Like one day, music is like pumping you up, and the other day you're using that to numb you. Every task you do at work has weight to it. Everything that you say yes to throughout the day has weight to it.

Every chore when you get home has weight to it. Nighttime, right? Choosing to be on the couch with your family has weight to it. Being on the phone has weight to it, watching TV, reading a book. It all has weight to it. And so I don't believe that weight is really the problem. It's really we need to think of, if you think of a plate, we need to know what full looks like for us.

And the problem is bypassing the moment that we're already full and adding on, anyways. It's easy to think of every task that we do at work as weight. It's easy to think of like cer those certain things as weight, but it's not we we don't typically think of of the good things of getting dressed as weight or.

Going to get ourselves coffee as weight, but it is. It's a choice. It's something that we do. It's something that we're spending our time and our energy doing. And so good things add weight as well. And so we need to know our plate, our capacity, and when it's full, what we want to choose to make it full, and know when to stop adding on to it.

And it's also not about doing less, right? It like not picking up your kids from school or always saying no to Sarah. Sorry if your name is Sarah, that's just the name coming to me right now. It's about two things. One, proactively choosing what you want on your plate, like I mentioned. And two, knowing when you're at that capacity and honoring that instead of overriding it. And the good news.

For you and for me, is that it this is not a math problem to master every day, or it's not a system to optimize. This isn't something that you now need to think of every day, which is a good thing. It's not a tool. My whole thing right now is taking things off your plate, not putting more on top of it. And this is just something I really want you to visualize.

If it were math, you could build a formula once and be done. But your plate isn't a fixed size. Your capacity moves. Some days your plate is small and it can't hold as much. And other days it's bigger. It's not static, right? It's just like with seasons of your life and what's happening and the people in it. And it was never supposed to be. Our plates, I mean, even think of picturing like.

Actual plates, there's different sizes. There's dessert plates, and then there's these huge plates. There's paper plates, which the same size of a paper plate can hold a different amount of the same size as a like actual dinner plate. I'm trying to think of the material that that's made out of glassware, whatever it is, porcelain, whatever the case, whatever the case. I like to think of it as tidal, like ebbing and flowing.

Our plates and our capacity. And your full point also is not the same as your sister's full point. It's not the same as Sarah's full point. It's your own full point. Okay? So the real work, if it's not a math problem and it's not something to like master, like a system or planner type thing, the work is filling your plate. In in filling your plate is

Learning to listen to your body, knowing what your capacity is. And your body, I believe, knows your full point before your brain will admit it. And that's where when I end up on the couch at 5 p.m. or the bathroom floor at 7 p.m., that fried feeling, that short fuse, the wall that we hit, that's not weakness.

That it feels like to me, at least in the moment, it's information. That's where on those days for me, I went too far. And it's information for me to look back and be like, okay, what decisions did I make today? What was on my plate? And just reflect back on that. What could I maybe have done differently? Most women override that signal because they've been taught. I mean, honestly for so many reasons, but

They've been taught that the day isn't over until it's over, until the list is done, until not not until their body says stop. And so even if their body is like blinking the warning signs and like, Sam, you should stop now, take a breather. and we'll talk about this in a minute, but like refueling throughout the day, but your body is giving you these signals.

Women are taught like you have to finish that list. You have to keep going. Otherwise, you're not productive. You're not gonna get the promotion. You're not a good mom, right? These are where the beliefs start to kick in. You can gain capacity back throughout the day. So it's not like we're just losing capacity as we move and we're not just adding to our plate. If you

Keep going with this plate analogy. We're adding to our plate, we're getting it fuller throughout the day. There is a way to take stuff off of our plate, but only if what we're choosing is refueling us and not numbing us. And again, it's not the same thing, even when they look identical, kind of like that music choice earlier: the music versus listening to a PD book. One day for you, one option.

Can be refueling you. And even later in the day, that same option, it looks identical, could not be refueling you. So it's really about learning to listen to your body. Inside lighter, which is the 12-week experience that I'm creating, we are going to talk about the four things that you need to actually regain space on your plate and in your brain as well throughout the day, no matter how.

busy your day is. And it'll also explain why have you ever done something you're really good at? Like probably at work and you like get in the zone and it feels great, even though you're working, even though you're like maybe hustling or just like doing something productive. You're not resting, you're not sleeping, you're not reading a book, you're doing something and that feels really great. It doesn't feel draining. We'll talk about why that is and how to apply that.

In other areas. So that's something that we'll talk about inside lighter. But I want to share an example of all of this with you that happened to me a few days ago. This was the the night at 5 p.m. But I'm gonna tell you what happened leading up to it because I was reflecting. And that day I had said yes to babysitting my sister's two kids. And I thought that it was going to be a great idea because my son Griffin.

Is five and a half years old. So he's like super active and he loves playing with me. And so I thought babysitting meant he could play with my niece, who's two years old, and that would give me a little break. And then she also has a three-month-old baby. My niece is three months old, and she's honestly the easiest baby ever. So I didn't have any regrets making the choice to say, yeah, bring him on over, even though part of me.

was like, you know, my sister and her husband, they intentionally, only a handful of times since my niece was born three months ago, have either of them ever been alone with both of them. They always like one of them always has the other one if my sister or my brother-in-law is alone. So I was like, wait, is there a reason for this? Am I why am I having both kids? And one of them never has both.

But, anyways, I I took it on and I didn't think about how that yes to babysitting was going to add on to the fact that Griffin had come home a few days before completely dysregulated from a trip when he was with his dad. For the prior few days, he had been punching me and kicking me.

So much not listening, obsessed, addicted to his tablet, trying to negotiate with me. Like I asked him to put away his clothes. And he was like, fine, but I'm only doing my shirts and just like attitude, all this stuff. Like it's been a lot. Lot, lot, lot. And I just didn't think that babysitting would add on to this. And so I was checking in on myself throughout this babysitting three kids.

And while the kids were there, I felt good. But eventually my mom stopped over and she grabbed the kids. And I had about and then my sister came over to pick up the baby. And I had about 10 minutes by myself. And I thought I should really pick up the disaster of the house. there are crackers and pretzels and juice crunched on the floor, toy boxes fully dumped over, train set pieces all over the place.

I couldn't walk two steps without stepping on something. But when I had those 10 minutes to myself, I literally crashed on the couch and just was like, ugh, like I just took deep breaths. I could have probably fallen asleep. I my body was just like hit its limit. And then it was the next day, I think, that by 5 p.m., I had just

crashed. So it was almost like my plate was full from the day before and then I didn't really let it recharge. And then it got fuller even faster the next day. So I don't think that I was wrong to accept babysitting. I just didn't apply the season that I was in. The fact that I have been working really, really hard on trying to get Griffin back to an emotionally regulated state before adding two more kids on top of it. And so we can't always

Predict our season, but we can learn to check in with ourselves, with our plate size, before we add to it. Instead of just finding out that we are over capacity after we've already snapped or crashed, or however it is that you feel when you're just depleted, that our our full point isn't.

A failure state. Again, feeling that way, getting to that point. If you felt that isn't weakness, again, it's data. In fact, I hope that you felt that because then you can go back and think, what did I do to get here? You've reached that point and we can work backwards from that. This is exactly the type of work that we are going to be doing inside Lighter, which is learning to feel your own full.

Point instead of overriding it every day and also not changing your to-do list, but changing the way it feels. So you can still be productive, still do the things you know you have to do, still be ambitious, but feel lighter as you go about doing all the things. Presale for lighter is now open this week only. So for this week, you get founding pricing.

Plus the bonus that is live right now, which is the Clear Your Mental Load Workshop Plus Toolkit. So go check it out. There are limited spots. I'm accepting 12 to 15 women total. So if you for sure want to see, you already know, hell yes, that's how I want to feel. Go check out the link in the show notes. If this episode, you know, really resonated with you, that is your body telling you something too.

So check it out. I would love to help you. I would love to see if this is the time for you to do something about how you feel every day without just asking for more help. Because I know you've tried that. And this is way different than that. This is going to teach you way more than just asking for more help and more gratitude. And we go way deeper. So thanks for tuning in, and I will see you next week.