303 | The Significance of Taking Vacations and Breaks for Social Entrepreneurs with Paul Zelizer
This week on the pod is our monthly solo episode with Paul Zelizer. Paul is one of the first business coaches to specialize in working with social entrepreneurs and the host of the popular Awarepreneurs podcast. He's also has a busy coaching/consulting practice where he works with impact organizations and does executive coaching with leaders.
NOTE: As discussed in the episode, the Awarepreneurs podcast will be on a one month break. Our next episode will be published on September 12th.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
The Significance of Taking Vacations and Breaks for Social Entrepreneurs with Paul Zelizer
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer a transcript and the below summaries by Castmagic for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
You can read the full transcript of this episode here.
Time Stamped Overview
[00:02:14] Episode explores burnout, creativity, and decision making.
[00:04:14] An example of burnout from Paul’s history.
[00:08:04] How vacations and breaks encourages innovation & creativity - a look at the research.
[00:13:13] Reducing stress through unplugging for vacation.
[00:15:04] The Outcomes of Taking Breaks: Connect, Slow down, Rejuvenate, Rediscover Yourself
[00:19:05] Why social entrepreneurs often struggle to take breaks.
[00:22:07] How to pitch an Awarepreneurs episode.
Key Quotes
The Importance of Taking Breaks: "When we can step back into a less outcome focused place, our ability to see things into you and reconnect with our creativity goes way way up."— Paul Zelizer 00:08:1600:08:27
The Power of Retreat: "I remember the feeling of coming back (from a retreat). I was really restored and renewed and feeling really fresh."— Paul Zelizer 00:09:2000:10:30
The Importance of Taking Breaks: "Again, we can do that (unplug) in day to day, week to week, take a Saturday morning, do a 7 minute meditation, go for a hike for 2 hours in the mountains. Right? All that is great. And when you're a high performer and you're doing work with a number of different clients and a number of different domains and you wanna do your best year after year. Sometimes you just need the longer unplug to let your decision maker muscles relax. And to give your brain a chance to step out of that performance mode and into recovery mode, just like the physical body, for runner or a weightlifter or any high performance athlete."— Paul Zelizer 00:11:1000:11:58
The Power of Unplugging: "When you really give yourself a chance to unplug, what you're doing is you're reducing the physical stress response in your body, right, to just, again, wander in a market or wander in a mountain or wandering in an art museum, whatever your version of the ideal vacation or break looks like. What's happening there is we're stepping out of that high performance outcome mode and into experiencing life with richness, with wonder, and with awe."— Paul Zelizer 00:13:4900:14:14
The Importance of Slowing Down: "It's important when you're taking a break for the reasons that we're talking about today, you know, I do these endurance events, you know, to go to another state and do an incredibly challenging run or a big event and whatever, you know, something that has a lot of excitement to it. And that's great too. I'm not putting that down. But this particular episode is about those experiences where we slow down, where we're less goal focused. And where we have more space in our days to connect with other people, to do things we love and enjoy..."— Paul Zelizer 00:15:0500:15:46
The Importance of Compassion in Underserved Communities: "Especially in communities that have been underserved, we need to be more compassionate, not less. We need to be more attentive to the holistic well-being of the humans involved, not less."— Paul Zelizer 00:17:1800:17:31
The Importance of Long-Term Initiatives: "We can be in this work for the long haul because for the most part, The kinds of initiatives that I've seen really move the needle don't happen in 6 months or a year."— Paul Zelizer 00:17:5400:18:05
The Importance of Self-Care in Movements: "So it's not just about reminding ourselves and getting that break ourselves but also when leaders in a movement, when leaders in an ecosystem are physically and mentally nourished, and we're showing people. We're modeling to people that this is one of the ways you do it. Those movements can sustain."— Paul Zelizer 00:19:2400:19:45