Ep 137. Space Before Schduling: What Your Wellness Routine Is Missing

Something kept coming up across Carly’s client sessions this week. A composite thread running through different conversations with different clients all trying to figure out how to make their self-care and routines actually stick.

And the question that kept arising was this: could you plan your downtime as much as you plan your workout time?

In episode 137, Carly explores why scheduling the decompression first, before adding anything new, is often the missing piece. 

She introduces the continue, stop, start framework for creating space before scheduling, explores the two kinds of imbalance she sees most often, and talks honestly about what firm compassion really means in practice.

This isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing things in the right order.

In this episode:

→ Why adding new habits onto a full plate doesn’t work

→ Space before scheduling: decompression as the first habit

→ The continue, stop, start exercise for creating room

→ The two kinds of imbalance and how to know which one you’re in

→ Firm compassion: what it really means to be held accountable with care

→ Self mastery as the real investment

If you'd like to explore how to work with Carly, connect through email carlykillenpt@gmail.com or book a few clarity call at carlykillen.com

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

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Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your host and guide for what is now episode 137, and this week I'm sharing with you something that has been emerging across all of my client sessions this week, a theme that just keeps showing up in different conversations with different people, women and men. Uh, with a slightly different circumstance each time, they all have their own little slant, but one of the threads that makes you think, "Hmm, perhaps I should do an episode on this." So I'm gonna paint a bit of a composite picture here. I like to, of course, protect the confidentiality of my sessions, and I'll just be pulling out the overarching theme and the lessons that I can share with you. So of course, this is anonymized and blended just a little, but I keep finding myself in conversations where my client is trying to figure out what their routine needs to be, how do they need to pace things, how to spread their self-care more sustainably, and how to make the changes they wanted to make actually stick. And across all of those conversations, something really similar just kept coming up, and eventually, I found myself asking this question, and it was, "Are you planning your downtime as much as you are planning your workout time?" And the honest answer over and over again was no, it hadn't occurred to them, and it's not as if we haven't had that conversation, and this is not a criticism of their way of being or living or of my coaching. These things happen. Sometimes we get into the routine of things. Things start to go well, but then life changes as it does, I expect it to do so, and we can sort of forget some of those things that we needed to do at the beginning. We can find ourself with so much energy going into scheduling and the doing and almost nothing into scheduling in that recovery, perhaps just expecting it to be there when we have a gap. But as we know, as capacity builds, as it does with my clients, so can all of the things that we do. So my clients are not alone in all of that, not even close, and I fall into this trap too. So if you are somebody who finds themselves overscheduled with a lot on your plate, I think you might be worth listening to this episode. So let's get started. So let's talk about something I see a lot, especially in the people that I work with, especially in midlife. They come to me really motivated, committed, genuinely wanting to make some change in their life, and the first thing they want to do is plan. Where are the workouts going in? What's the nutrition going to look like? How do we structure the week? All very sensible questions. And that planning impulse is not wrong. Of course, these things need to be done. When you're establishing new habits, especially around movement and self-care, structure genuinely helps. Boundaries need to be drawn and new patterns need somewhere to land, so yes, scheduling really does matter. But there's something that often gets missed, especially with the people I work with. When your plate is already full, life is already very busy, work, family, responsibilities, the relentless accumulation of things that need to be done. And when you try to add new habits onto a plate that's already overloaded, they often don't stick. Not because you're not committed enough or because you don't want it enough as per many a fitness person's uttering on the social media. But genuinely, the people that I work with, when they come to me, there is just no space for new things. And you can't actually pour into a full cup either, and yet so many of us still trying to pour. It actually reminds me of a story about myself pouring a cup of tea. I'd actually made myself a beautiful pot of herbal tea, and it was one of those glass pots so I could see everything inside it, and it looked super nice. And something happened, actually. This happened twice. I poured tea all over the floor. Not because I missed the cup, but because I was so enthralled with looking at what I was pouring into the cup. I was watching the teapot and not the actual cup, and I ended up overflowing it. And of course, just to make sure I got the lesson, I did this on my second cup as well. So as I was mopping up tea on the floor, I realized, yeah, I really should have placed my attention on the cup and not the teapot and how much tea wanted to be poured out. I hope that has some kind of relevance, but it feels like it fits here, I think So let's talk about something a bit more practical, that space before scheduling, as I like to call it. So let's think about this. What if the first thing we scheduled wasn't the workout? What if it was that decompression, that space, the walk that has no destination, the 15 minutes of sitting quietly before you do the next thing, the evening that isn't earmarked for productivity or being the taxi. Perhaps that morning that starts a bit more gently rather than at full speed. The breath that happens between one task and the next, or even being able to fully be mindful with the one thing that you're actually doing before racing onto another thing So decompression, it's not laziness, it's not wasted time. It's the thing that makes everything else possible. This is where our nervous system comes down from that state of high alert that it can often be in all day, especially if you're very high functioning and very busy. It's where your body processes what it's been carrying. It's where the mental chatter has a chance to quieten enough for you to actually hear what you need. And when you create that space first, before adding anything new, something interesting happens. The new habits have somewhere to land. There's room for them. They don't feel like one more thing on an impossible task list. They feel like a natural part of life that has some breathing space within it. So that's space before scheduling. That's the reframe I'm offering here. Create the space first, then see what wants to fill it Now, one of the things I use with new clients, and it comes originally from corporate and coaching world, but it has relevance still here too. So some of you might actually recognize it, and it's called the stop, start, continue exercise. And I find it particularly useful before we start scheduling anything new. And it is exactly what it sounds like. You look honestly at your current life and ask three questions. What do I need to stop? What's on my plate that's draining me, that's not serving me, that I'm doing out of habit or obligation rather than genuine need or value? What can I put down? Is there anyone that I can give this to? And I know that's not always the case, so of course, this is very much individualized and held with compassion because my clients come from all sorts of different backgrounds and have different levels of resources and support networks. And next we look at what needs to continue, what's already working, what are the things I do that genuinely support me that I want to protect and keep? And then finally, the last thing we do is we look at what do I need to start? And this is where the new habits get to live. The movement, nourishment, the practices that they wa- they want to bring in to support their journey But notice this is the last question, not the first one. So it's kinda should be called a stop, continue, start, but doesn't really have the same ring to it. And the reason I love this exercise is that it creates a space before we start scheduling a ton of new things, because you can't know what to start until you've looked honestly at what wants to stop, and that stopping, the putting down of things that are taking up space without giving back to you, is often where the room comes from Now I just want to name something because I think it's very important, and it speaks to how I actually work too. Everything I've said so far is true, space before scheduling, decompression first, creating room before we add more. I mean all of that. But there is another version of this that I also see, and that's the person who has become very skilled at scheduling the self-care and the rest, but has lost touch with the practical steps that actually move things forward. This person's diary is full of gentle things and restorative practices, but where the actual doing comes into play, the showing up, the training, the consistent nourishment, just keeps getting pushed back and postponed. And I say this with complete compassion because I understand exactly how this can happen. I've been there too. The rest can feel safer than action when you've been through a phase of burnout. Softness feels more aligned than the structure you've spent years in a rigid routine, especially those of you that have been on a lot of six, eight-week shreds, very strict dieting, very rigid, overly scheduled lives. So these are genuine and understandable responses to real experiences, and the nervous system needs time to learn that it's safe to do again. Because sustainable change needs both space and structure, the softness and the showing up, rest and the rebuilding. So this is why I describe my approach as a bit of a firm compassion. I am genuinely not a soft touch. I will hold the space for everything you're navigating, the exhaustion, the hormonal shifts, the fullness of your life. And I will also, at the right moment, with the right care, ask you, "Is it time to take a step?" Because staying in the decompression phase indefinitely isn't really rest. At some point, it becomes avoidance, and you deserve more than that So let's talk about what I'm really getting at here. Underneath all of this is what we're learning together here is self-mastery. Not in a rigid, high-performance, optimize everything kind of way, but in the truest sense of the word, knowing yourself, understanding your own rhythms, your own needs, your own patterns, being able to read your own signals and responding to them wisely. The kind of self-mastery means you don't need a program telling you what to do every day. You don't need a rigid schedule that overrides your body's signals. You'll start to develop that kind of internal compass that helps you know when to push and when to rest, when to add and when to clear, when the space needs protecting, and when it's time to fill it with something new. And I know that this approach can look from the outside like it might not be very effective. If you're used to coaches who give you a 12-week plan and expect you to follow it to the letter, a more responsive, adaptive approach can feel less certain, less structured, and a bit like you're not really being held accountable. But the results speak for themselves. The people I work with, they don't just achieve the thing they came for. They build the internal resources to keep going long after our work together ends. They become more self-sufficient. They trust themselves. They know how to read their own needs and respond rather than override. So that, in my opinion, is the more valuable investment, not just a result, a whole new relationship with yourself. So here's what I want to leave you with this week before you schedule one more thing, one more workout, one more commitment, one more habit you want to build. Perhaps you could just pause for a moment and ask yourself three questions What do I need to stop? Even something small, something that's taking up space without giving back. What do I need to protect? The decompression, the rest, the breathing room. Schedule that first. Put it in the diary before anything else goes in, and then what do I want to start? Perhaps you've noticed where there might be a little bit of space now that the plate isn't quite so full. What's the one small thing that wants to come in? So that is your space before scheduling decompression first approach before you gently do the next thing So thank you for listening to what has come up in my world this week, and I hope it's landed somewhere useful in yours. Whether you're the person whose place is overflowing and who needs to create space before you start to look at new things, or whether you're the person who's been resting for a while and is beginning to wonder if it might be time to take a gentle step forward. Both are valid, both are real, and either space you are in, there is space for you here. You deserve that support. So if you'd like to explore what that looks like for you specifically, whether that's finding your own space, building your strength, or something in between, you can find me over on stillspacehull.com online or in person. I would love to have that conversation. And if this episode resonated, please share it with someone who might need to hear it. It genuinely helps more people find their way here. So until next time, may you meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence, and remember, you already have everything you need