Last week I sent you off to do one unfamiliar thing. 🤹🏻

I forgot to tell you what to do when you get home.

Mostly because I didn’t do it either.

Manhattan was everything I promised. 🚕The art, the noise, the food, the whole world walking past us on one corner. And 25,000 steps a day. 🚶🏻 EVERY day.

25,000 steps is about 12 miles. We walked a half marathon a day,🏅three days straight.

Then our last night there, our son’s morning flight got cancelled. So instead of sleeping, we were up working out alternatives. 😓

We landed Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning I was back at my desk like nothing had happened, expecting my body to behave as though I’d spent the week on the sofa. 🛋️

By Wednesday I was flattened. Thursday was worse.

I have rarely been so glad to see a Friday. 😃

That was the mistake. Not the trip. The Tuesday.

I needed a vacation from my vacation. 🏖️ And I’m the one who teaches this.

So let me tell you what my body was doing while I sat there insisting I was fine.

Your system doesn’t sort stress into “good” and “bad.” It doesn’t care that you were having the time of your life. It only tracks what you SPENT. The walking, the noise, the stimulation, the middle-of-the-night flight problem. Every bit of it came out of the same account.

The adventure 🧭was the withdrawal. The rest afterward was supposed to be the deposit.

I skipped the deposit. So I got the bill.

We treat sleep like a credit card. Run it up all week, pay it off Saturday, all square. Your body does not settle up that way. Recovery takes longer than the deficit did, and it takes longer at 64 than it did at 27.

Note: the “I’ll catch up this weekend” plan is why you’re still tired on Tuesday. Two nights doesn’t cover it. Protect the FIRST night after the debt, not the fifth.

So what does a proper landing look like?

You come home before you go back. One buffer day. 💆🏻‍♀️ If a whole day is impossible, take the morning. Unpack, eat real food, get outside, get to bed early. Treat that first night’s sleep as part of the trip. Because it is.

That’s your assignment this week, and it’s a smaller one than last week’s. If you took my advice and went and did something unfamiliar … good. Now go schedule the recovery. Put it on the calendar the same way you’d book the flight. 📆

Spending is the easy part. Every woman I work with is world-class at spending. Rebuilding is the skill nobody taught us, and it’s the rhythm we practice inside the StressLess Sanctuary. Deep clean, rebuild, repeat. Your reserves are real, and they are not infinite.

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m still a little wrung out. We have a massage this afternoon💆🏻‍♀️(our Sunday indulgence). I expect to be 90%+ by tomorrow.