The sabbatical, this was my biggest learning, I got to tell you. The sabbatical was the beginning of my healing journey. It didn’t contain my healing journey, meaning I was able to calm my nervous system so that I could now rewire it. You’re listening to Sari Swear on the Sari Swears podcast.

Welcome everyone to the first episode of season nine of the Sari Swears podcast. That’s right. I said season nine. Can you believe it? I know there’s so many of you out there that have listened since the very first season. In fact, I’ve had so many of you come out to command the courtroom are, I was going to say brand new, but we’ve been doing it now for about a year, year and a half. Our command the courtrooms are so much fun. You want to have to come out and play with me in one of those if you haven’t already. But you’ll come up to me at these and you’ll say, “I have listened to every single one of your podcasts.”

And that’s crazy, y’all. I mean, I’m impressed. I haven’t even listened to all of them from beginning to end. I used to at the very beginning, but I haven’t had the chance as of late to listen to every single one as they come out. Although, there are times when I listen to the podcast and I pose a question and then I think to myself, “Damn, that’s a good question. How did I answer that?” And I’m a little worried for a second like, “Did I have a good answer?” And I had a good answer. So, that’s great. But season nine is here.

And if you’re brand new, our season runs from September through June of the podcast. Then, we run some popular episodes. I mean, all of them are popular, but really popular episodes over the summer. And this last summer, Coach K, who is our lead mindset coach here at H2H and also happens to be married to me, did that podcast take over in July and you got to hear from him. And I’m hearing from so many of you of how much you enjoy him that fine, you can fucking have him, right? I can just. No, I’m joking. I’m not the jealous type, but we will have Coach K back on for several episodes this season as well.

And I do hope that you did enjoy when he was on his own in the summertime with some episodes primarily on mindset. We’ve got a lot of great stuff this season coming to you, a lot of great trial debriefs that you’re going to hear. We have some updates from people who have been on the podcast, went back to trial and got better, even better results. And so, it’s all coming to you this ninth episode. But what today I want to talk to you about is the fact that I have been, and I just came off of a 12-week sabbatical. I know. It was amazing. I wish it was 24 weeks. It was so amazing.

And I say that not because I don’t like my job, I love my job. But today, we’re talking about how I was on sabbatical and how you probably need to take a sabbatical too. Now, if you’re thinking there’s no way I could ever do that, today we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about how to know whether you need one. Here’s the point you need to remember, you do need one. I don’t even need to know you to know that you need one. If you’re a trial lawyer, you need one.

We’re going to talk about what a sabbatical is and is not. We’re going to talk about the dos and don’ts and the mistakes that I made on my own sabbatical. And then, we’re going to talk about how to make it happen in your life because it absolutely can happen for you just like it happened for me.

So, let’s talk a little bit about how this all came about in my own life. So, I was burned out. And again, I want to be really clear that you can absolutely, totally love your job and the people that you work with because I absolutely love my job and the people that I work with and still be burned out. And the way that I knew that I was burned out was a couple of things. I started to have some health problems and I’m getting some diagnoses.

Don’t worry, it’s not cancer. There’s just some things that I was struggling with that when I finally slowed down over the sabbatical, went and saw my doctor, have run some tests that we’re going to get some answers on that are going to actually help. I’ll probably share them with you because I share everything with you. But I was having some health problems. That was a sign of burnout for me for sure. But the big one for me was I was creatively tapped out.

I was feeling like it was really difficult to come with ideas to podcast. I hope that didn’t come through. It was difficult for me to come up with new ideas for the business. All the things creatively that I love to do, which is such a huge part of my job, were just feeling really difficult. And when you’re listening today and thinking about whether or not you could use a sabbatical, again, you could, I want you to think about the fact that trial lawyering is a very creative job.

It takes being creative to be a trial lawyer. It just does. And if you are finding that it is difficult to strategize on your cases or to come up with good opening statements or great voir dire questions, that could definitely be a sign that you too need a sabbatical. But everything just felt hard all of a sudden.

So, between not having the creative juice that I’m used to having and everything feeling difficult and then having some health problems. And also, I would say trying a variety of things because I am a mindset coach. I have my own coach. I have a coach husband. And, of course, I’m trying things and they’re not exactly working. I finally realized that I needed a break because I wasn’t honestly doing my best work.

Now, Kevin always tells me, “Me on my worst day is better than most people on their best day,” and I appreciate that coming from him for sure. But you know what I’m talking about when you just feel that you yourself are not bringing the best you. Now, does any of this sound familiar? This could be a sign to you that you also need a break.

Now, let’s talk about what a sabbatical is and what it is not, because I think people have different ideas. And by the way, it is different for different people. I’m going to talk about the type of sabbatical that I took, but many people take sabbaticals for all different kinds of reasons. Some people take a sabbatical to travel, for example. Some people take a sabbatical, for example, in education to go and do some research.

So, those aren’t the types of sabbaticals that we’re going to be talking about today. The one that I’m talking about today is really what I’m going to talk about as a rest and restore, kind of a recalibrate type of sabbatical versus one where you take an extended leave from work to go do something specific.

So, of course, I looked up the definition because you know I love looking up definitions of words. And sabbatical is defined as an extended intentional break from your job, which is actually what I want for you. I don’t want it to get to the point where you actually have to have a break from your work because you’ve had an actual breakdown. That’s why we want these breaks before you get to that point. But we’ll also talk about the difference between a vacation and a sabbatical when we get to the end here today.

So, it’s an extended intentional break. And I was very lucky around the time that I decided that I needed to do this and that I already take the month of July off. That’s something I already do. And so, I just needed to carve out an extra six weeks, six or seven weeks, which I was able to do because I didn’t have a lot on my docket anyway in August. I normally don’t see clients then and I asked my current masterminds if I could just not be available for a couple of weeks in September for their walk and talks that I offer them and I was able to do it. But let’s talk about what a sabbatical is and isn’t.

So, in this reflective rest and restore recalibration type of sabbatical, which is what I was doing, again, not all sabbaticals are about that, but this is the kind we’re talking about today. What it is, is one, it’s a time to clear your head. This I think is so important, especially for creative types, which again, if you don’t believe me, I’m going to continually say it until you do, trial lawyering is a creative craft. What you do and why I’m so involved in it, I wouldn’t be in it otherwise, is a creative endeavor.

Absolutely. And that’s what I love the most about is we’re creating all the time, whether it’s voir dire questions or opening statements or closing statements, different strategies. It’s all creative. And so, a reflective or recalibration type of sabbatical is one where you are clearing your head because in order to create, you need to clear out sometimes. It’s like rebooting a computer. And sometimes, only a very distinctive time away from work will allow you to do that.

It’s also a time to reflect, to take stock, kind of where have you been and look forward to where you’re going. This was a big reason for mine in addition to having to clear my head, so I could still continue to be creative, is that I was so busy achieving for the last 15 years of my life. I’ve just been growing this business from me at my dining room table to now a staff of 10 with a mock courtroom.

So, I never really stopped and went, “Okay, hold on. What have I achieved up to this point? Which has been a lot. And where am I in that journey?” And I really had some time to think through that and think about what the next part of my journey would look like. I hadn’t given myself time to really stop and think about that.

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A sabbatical, at least this type, is also a time to rest and restore. So, it’s not just about clearing your head or doing these things. It’s also a time for deep rest and restoration, whatever that might look like for you. For some people that’s doing yoga every day or meditating. For other people, it’s taking a walk every day. For other people, it’s journaling, whatever that may be, getting lots of good sleep, lots of water, good hydration, good nutrition. It’s also a time to get back in touch with what really matters.

And, for me, I found it was so interesting is that I started to get back in touch with things that I haven’t really picked up and done for decades. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that had I not had this 12-week period. Now, here’s what sabbatical is not. Sabbatical is not a time, hear me now, it’s not a time to get more work done. I can hear a lot of you thinking, “Oh, this would be great if I could just take 12 weeks to go and get caught up on everything.” No, no, no, no, no. If you want to do that, great. That’s not a sabbatical though.

A sabbatical is an absolute, total and complete severing of you from work. I have had not an email, a Slack message. Kevin and I designed that he did not talk to me about work for 12 complete weeks. I had no idea what was going on in my business and it was glorious. Now, we’ll talk about how to get to that point here at the end, but it is not a time to go and get more work done. I can tell you that much.

It’s also not a time to take on big projects like, “Oh, I have 12 weeks now. I’m not working, so I’m going to totally repaint the interior of my house or I’m going to go get a master’s degree or whatever it may be, what your big project is.” It is not a time for that either. It is not a time to be like, “Oh, I haven’t seen all these friends, so I’m going to go and go out every weekend and every evening.” I’m not saying that you can’t socialize during a sabbatical, but it’s not the time to catch up with friends. It’s not the meaning of a sabbatical unless it is, but this kind of reflective recalibration type is not. It’s not a time to spend time on other people.

So, maybe you have some guilt as a parent and you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to go and volunteer and be in my child’s classroom every afternoon for the next 12 weeks, or I’m going to go finally volunteer every day at the soup kitchen because I’m one wanting to do that or I’m going to donate blood every day.” You probably couldn’t donate blood every day, you’d be dead. But you get my point.

What I really want you to get here, when you’re doing a recalibration sabbatical or restoration sabbatical, I should have probably thought of the name of this type of sabbatical. It is 100% about you. And as amazing as that sounds, it’s also really terrifying is one of the things that I recognized because when you really don’t have all of these other things, doing things for other people, socializing, big projects, work, all this shit is going to come up and you’re going to have to deal with it.

And yet, that is one of the biggest benefits of a restoration or recalibration sabbatical, is that all this stuff that has been there, you’re going to actually pull out and look at and deal with. In fact, one of the metaphors I came up with as I was thinking about this podcast is the one of cleaning a closet because I did clean a closet on my sabbatical. I’m an organization person and I couldn’t help myself. And I was thinking about how this type of sabbatical is very much like cleaning out a closet in that you’re really not doing anything else, you’re not seeing other people, you’re not working, you’re not socializing, you’re not doing these big projects.

And so, all you can really do is look at the stuff in your closet. And so, you start to take this stuff out of the closet because it’s just there. It’s the only thing you really have on your agenda for the next 12 weeks is to look at the shit in your closet. And as you start pulling out all this shit out of your closet, you start realizing some things, right?

So, if you’re married to a husband like mine, you realize that that’s where half the shit was that you were looking for that he just shoved in the closet and didn’t tell you. So, that’s one thing. So, you find things, you’re like, “Oh my God, I forgot all about this.” Or, “Here’s where that thing was that I was looking for forever.” And you’re like, “Oh, this is amazing. Yay.” And so, that happened on my sabbatical. I re-found my love of classical music, for example. I’m a classically trained pianist, as many of you know. But I haven’t listened to classical music in years and I used to listen to it all the time.

And now, I’m in the car all the time listening to my Beethoven or my Brahms and I’m conducting with one hand. I still got one hand on the wheel. And so, it was like, “Oh, cool. Look at this thing that I used to love that got shoved in the back of a closet.” The other things that you’re going to learn when you open up that closet is like, “What the fuck is this doing in here? I haven’t used this forever. Why am I still holding onto this thing?”

And so, you get to throw away some shit, right? You’re like, “Okay, I have no idea why this was in here.” Then, you find things that other people gave you to hold onto and you’re like, “This shouldn’t be in here. I don’t know why I’m still holding onto this. They never came back and got it. I don’t want this, this heirloom whatever from my mom that I supposedly am supposed to hold onto to the end of the day. She’s not going to know if I throw that away. It doesn’t need to take up space in my life anymore.”

And you start to organize that closet and you toss things that you don’t want and you use things and bring them out that you hadn’t used for a while and all the rest gets organized and categorized. It’s very, very awesome, both in actually organizing a closet and doing this metaphorically. That’s how I see this process that I went through over these 12 weeks.

So, I want to give you some do’s and don’ts, should you decide to take on this process of having a sabbatical of your own. The first one is you do want to start with the end in mind. And when I say that, I don’t mean goals necessarily, and I’ll talk about goals in just a minute. What I mean is I want you to start with how do you want to feel at the end of your sabbatical? And maybe 12 weeks, maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe three weeks. Any length of sabbatical is great. Longer the better in my mind, but how do you want to feel?

So, I was writing down things like I want to feel clear. I want to feel energized. I want to feel creatively fueled. And that was then the impetus to then direct how I was going or what I was going to be doing over the 12 weeks. Because if you’re a master planner like I am and every moment of your life is down to the minutes, it was very frightening for me to not have a set schedule of how I was going to do things. And I didn’t want a set schedule, but I also wanted this time to be fruitful. I didn’t want to have 12 weeks of Netflix and donut eating either.

So, it was really helpful for me to think about how I wanted to feel at the end of the 12 weeks versus what I wanted to do. But the second do is once you know how you want to feel, then I would set what I call gentle goals. So, you shouldn’t have goals on there that are like these big projects like we just talked about. What I mean by gentle goals is one of my gentle goals was rewire my nervous system. Now, what I realized over 12 weeks is I’m not going to be able to do that in 12 weeks, which was also one of the things that I want you to think about when you do this is a gentle goal. What I realized what I was able to do in the 12 weeks was calm my nervous system.

Now, I’m going to start rewiring. Now that it’s calm, I can start rewiring some of the trauma and all the other things that I’d been piling up in that closet. I’m starting to organize it. It’s almost like I pulled everything out of the closet and saw what was there and it’s not that scary and I calmed everything down and now I can start putting it back in the way that I want, the rewiring.

So, I put on my goal, rewire, but I didn’t get to rewire. I calmed and that was actually the perfect first step. The next do that I have for you is to set some guidelines. I worked with my coach on this before I went and I didn’t do any coaching with her over the 12 weeks because it was really introspective and I didn’t want any outside. I won’t share all of my guidelines with you. They’re going to be very specific to you. But some of my guidelines were no strict schedules, for example.

I didn’t want to get into that planner mindset. I wanted this to be different. I also had move every day. I didn’t want to be like work out every day in the way that you normally do at home. It was just move, set an intention in the morning, but let the day unfold as it will. Again, no strict schedules. Reflect in the evening, just gentle guidelines to help me shape the 12 weeks, but also go with the flow, get outside nature every day.

So, those were some of the things instead of these big, huge, hairy, audacious goals that are part of my normal life, this was more gentle. Another do is to get a journal. I just wrote down every thought that was coming and things came out of the closet and I was looking at it, I was writing about it. Oh, here’s this scary thing that came out of the closet that now that I’ve slowed down enough to let all this stuff bubble to the top, “What do I think about this?” And I would ask myself questions and I would journal some more and as you all know, I figure everything out on paper.

I had a great book called, The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse from Debbie Ford. She has great daily activities. You don’t have to follow the whole thing, but there’s great journaling prompts in there to help you pull up all of your stuff and take a look at it and just reflect and think about it. And again, know what’s in your closet. But my last due for sabbatical, which I think is a huge one, is you have to build in alone time.

Part of our time was already family vacation, so I wasn’t going to say, “You know what? I’m not going to see my family for three months.” But in that time, I was able to carve out about two to three weeks with weekends here. I had one full week or time there. We luckily have an extra home, our beach home, that I could be by myself. And I think this is non-negotiable, that if you can carve out some time, whether it’s a hotel or if you have a second home, or even if it’s just some time that you’re not interrupted in your own home, alone time is absolutely essential during this time.

All right. Don’ts. The first one is going to be hard for y’all. And the first one is no work of any kind. I mean it. If you truly want to be restored, this is not the time for work. You guys live, breathe, sleep, work. In fact, I was on Facebook. One of the things that I tried to not do at all was social media while I was on sabbatical, and I was really pretty good about it. I was hardly on there, if at all. But just recently, in the last day or two, I saw someone, it looked like it was on a lake. And if this is you and you’re listening, I’m not trying to shame you, but feel shame.

No, I don’t want you to feel shame. I want you to think about this. And it was like a computer set up with three full screens outside in front of this lake. And you guys put this shit on. This is the first time I’ve seen stuff like this. This is how hard you work. And I’m like, “Oh, my God, you’re not doing yourself any favors.” In fact, if that person had just taken the day and not worked and sat outside and just reflected and gave their brain a break, they would come back tenfold creative and strategic. But it’s very important if you do a sabbatical that you do not do work of any kind, period.

Second, no strict schedules. That was a big one in my guideline and I’m going to give it to you as well. Don’t set it up ahead of time. Very gentle. I want to make sure that I move every day. I want to make sure that I have some reflection time every day. But the rest of it, I want to see where the day takes me. Because if you have these strict schedules, you’re not going to be able to reflect and have things come up that may need to come.

What you’re really doing on a sabbatical like this is giving space for things to bubble up and it’s going to drive you crazy because you’re a lot like I am. That’s why we like each other so much. And we don’t like to not have things to do, projects, work, whatever, because stuff bubbles up. But what you’re doing is you’re inviting it in. You’re saying, “Okay, what’s here that needs to be looked at?” And because you’re so bored, you start opening that closet door and pulling the shit out and you start learning some really great stuff.

All right. Another don’t. Don’t give into your saboteur. Your saboteur is going to be all over you. You should be at work. You could be making so much money. Everyone is driving the business into the ground. All the things that are coming up. You’re being lazy. Shouldn’t you get something done today? Oh, my gosh. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m telling you right now it’s going to happen, so expect it, but don’t give into it.

You’re going to get into a rhythm. It may take a while. It took me a good four to six weeks, half the time, to finally even get into a nice little rhythm in my days where I felt the saboteur wasn’t all over me and that I could really start looking at some stuff and not feel like I had to be productive. Just teaching your nervous system that it doesn’t need to produce all the time would be a great goal of your sabbatical. Don’t be expected to be done in three to six months or year or ever.

The sabbatical, this was my biggest learning, I got to tell you. The sabbatical was the beginning of my healing journey. It didn’t contain my healing journey, meaning I was able to calm my nervous system so that I could now rewire it. I was able to shut my brain off so that now I can be creative. I didn’t try to be creative over that 12 months. I didn’t try to make anything happen. Everything I was doing was to calm, restore, recalibrate, and that took not doing things versus doing things.

Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “This sounds great, but how the fuck could I ever do this?” First, I want to say that remember my audience are mostly people who own their own businesses, so this may not apply to everyone and I apologize for that. Not everybody is at a space in their career where they can take a sabbatical. But those of you who are in my demographic and you know who you are, you own your own business, you absolutely could take a sabbatical even if you tell yourself you cannot. I’m talking now to you. And if the rest of you who are listening, if some of this also applies, great. But the first thing I’m going to tell you to do on how to take a sabbatical is to not take it yet.

The first thing I want you to do is to take a non-working vacation because you can’t even do that, y’all. That is super difficult for you. I let one of my masterminds borrow my beach house this weekend before our trial lab that he’s coming out to, and he’s working at my fucking beach house, which he’s getting in trouble for. If you can’t even go on vacation and not work, you are going to be a mess on sabbatical and I don’t want to set you up for failure.

So, your first assignment on your prep to take a sabbatical is to just try to go on vacation and not work at all. Maybe that’s just four days, and then maybe it’s a week, and then maybe it’s two weeks. After a two-week vacation of no working, then you can start thinking about maybe doing a sabbatical.

Two, train your team to operate without you. There’s no way I could have done this without my team. I couldn’t have done this 15 years ago or even 10 years ago, but my team and I have been working very hard to put processes in place to have everybody understand what their job responsibilities are. Everyone here is a leader in their own right. They lead themselves. They don’t need someone telling them what to do.

We have oversight, don’t get me wrong. We have accountability. But they each know what they’re responsible for and did before I left.

Set goals for your team, that’s the third thing, while you’re gone. Here’s what I also learned coming back. Sometimes, you need to leave so your team can actually get to work. My team has done amazing work while I was gone. Now, I try not to believe that I’m in their face all the time and I don’t think I am, but I know a lot of you are constantly micromanaging your team and I’m wondering if you set goals and you had systems before you leave, what they could do without you in their face all the time.

So, yeah. If you can’t take a sabbatical, at least build in breaks because I’m telling you as a creative professional, which is what you are, you have to give your brain a break. Start with what I start with my clients on not working evenings and weekends. Start there. That’s huge. And you think I could never do that. Most of my masterminds now do not work evenings and weekends. They just don’t. And they are doing better than ever before. Winning verdicts, happier lives, healthier. Start there.

Then, go to a vacation where you’re not working. Then, work your way up to a sabbatical. But you need breaks. All that said, I’m glad to be back. I cannot wait to see what we uncover together in Sari Swears podcast, season nine. I hope that you’re here for the journey. Let’s get going, y’all. Talk soon.