Sunday night has a way of turning into a full mental rehearsal for the week ahead.
The calendar. The meetings. The school drop-offs. The appointments. The errands. The lunches. The things you promised you would remember. The things you already know you are probably going to forget.
And somewhere in the middle of preparing for everyone and everything else, it becomes very easy to forget yourself.
In this episode of Rooted & Rising, Dr. Carmela Maxell talks about the invisible load many of us carry into a new week and the pressure to keep showing up, saying yes, making it work, and squeezing just one more thing into an already full schedule.
This conversation is about more than time management. It is about boundaries, capacity, guilt, and learning to recognize that being capable of doing something does not always mean you have the capacity to take it on.
Sometimes the most responsible thing you can do is say no.
Sometimes rest needs to make it onto the calendar too.
And sometimes, while you are remembering the lunch, the charger, the keys, the appointment, and everybody else’s needs, you need the reminder that your limits matter too.
A gentle, funny, and relatable reflection for anyone who has ever looked at their week and thought, Who the hell agreed to all of this?
🎙️ Rooted & Rising with Dr. Carmela Maxell
Stay rooted in who you are, and keep rising into who you’re becoming.
Dr. Carmela Maxell: Sunday nights are interesting because somewhere along the way, Sunday evening became less about Sunday and more about preparing ourselves for the impending doom that is Monday. We pull up the calendar and really stare at it. Monday, meeting, meeting, meeting, Tuesday, appointment, Wednesday. Something you agreed to three weeks ago when apparently you were feeling very optimistic about your future availability. Thursday. Why is there something at seven AM? Friday. You know what? We'll worry about Friday if we survive Thursday. And while we're looking at our calendars, we're mentally calculating everything else that has to happen around the workday. Who's going where? What time do the kids need to be at school? Who needs to be picked up? What do I need to bring? Did I charge my phone? Where are my keys? Where's my other shoe? Where is their other shoe? Did I answer that email? Do I have coffee? And then Monday morning comes. We're taxiing kids to school, trying not to spill coffee on ourselves as we fly out the door, finishing up the last eyelash lift in the rearview mirror at the red light, plugging our devices into Bluetooth, mentally rehearsing the first meeting of the day, and somehow, despite remembering approximately forty seven other things, I've forgotten my lunch. Again. I've done this more than I care to admit. And there are really only a few options once you realize you've left your lunch sitting peacefully at home while you're decidedly not at home. You can buy something. You can order something. Or and this is where things get interesting you can start scavenging. Suddenly you're an archaeologist at your own desk. What's in this drawer? ⁓ Doritos. When did I buy these? Nobody knows. Are they expired? Almost certainly. Are we eating them? Apparently. Then you remember there might be something in the employee freezer. And there it is. A lean cuisine you shoved in the back six months ago. Questionably freezer burned. Covered in a thin layer of permafrost. With your name written on it. I C E. Because apparently labeling something I C E in case of emergency is the universal workplace sick signal for I don't know how long this has been here, but don't touch it. And then there's option number three. You just don't eat. You bust through the workday. Meeting to meeting, email to email, problem to problem. Somebody needs you. Then somebody else needs you. And suddenly it's 3 30 in the afternoon, and you realize I haven't eaten anything today. And instead of responding to that information like a reasonable human being, you think, Well, there's no point now. I'll just wait until I get home. And that is where forgetting your lunch starts looking an awful like forgetting your limits. Because sometimes we don't just forget lunch. We forget ourselves. We decide that whatever is happening at work is important enough that our basic needs can wait. We convince ourselves that we're too busy to take a break. That we'll eat after this meeting. We'll use the bathroom after we finish this email. We'll stand up after we finish this report. We'll drink some water eventually. We'll breathe when everyone else stops needing something. Except everybody never stops needing something. And eventually you can become very, very good at ignoring yourself. That's the part I think we don't talk about enough. Because we tend to think about limits as these big declarations. I'm setting a boundary. I'm saying no. I'm protecting my peace. But some of the most important limits you'll ever set aren't dramatic. Sometimes a limit sounds like, I'm taking my lunch break. That's it. I'm stepping away. I'm eating something. I'm not answering that email right this second. I'm not using my break to catch up on the work I couldn't finish because I was doing other work. I'm going to give my brain and my body a minute to stop. And yes, you deserve your breaks. Not just perse HR. But beyond what you're entitled to, you need them. You need pauses in your day because human beings were never designed to operate at maximum output for eight, twelve, in uninterrupted hours and somehow remain pleasant, thoughtful, emotionally regulated people. And when you repeatedly override those signals, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed, I need five minutes. I need to get up. I need some air. Something happens. You practice ignoring yourself. And anything you practice enough becomes easier. That's what worries me. Because skipping lunch once isn't going to destroy your life. Having a chaotic Monday isn't going to break you. Working through a break because something genuinely urgent happened isn't some catastrophic failure. Of self-care. Life happens. But when the exception becomes the routine, that's different. Because now you've developed a habit. And the habit says, My needs are the first thing we eliminate when there isn't enough time. Think about that. When the calendar gets crowded, what gets removed first? Usually us. We don't cancel the meeting. We don't move the deadline. We don't tell someone I can't get to that today. We cancel lunch. We cancel the walk. We cancel the five minutes we were going to sit quietly. We cancel leaving on time. We cancel sleep. We cancel ourselves because we're the easiest appointment on the calendar to move. And then we wonder why we're exhausted. Why we're irritable. Why something completely insignificant happens at four hundred seventeen in the afternoon and suddenly we are one Microsoft Team's notification away from becoming a person HR would like to speak with. It wasn't the notification. It was everything before it. It was the hunger, the rushing, the decisions, the interruptions, the constant availability. The fact that you've been sitting in the same position for six hours, the fact that your brain hasn't had thirty consecutive seconds where nobody wanted anything from it, you didn't suddenly lose your patience. You spent it little by little all day. And this is why I think limits need to be part of our Sunday night planning. Because we're already looking at the calendar anyway. We're already preparing for everything we're expected to accomplish. So while you're deciding where you need to be this week, maybe also decide where am I going to stop? Look at Monday. Where's your lunch? And I don't just mean the sandwich. Where's the part of the day where you step away? Where's the moment you get up from your desk? Where's the space between responsibility and the next? Where are you unavailable? Where have you deliberately decided that something can wait? Because if you don't decide those things while you're calm, the workday will decide them for you. And I can almost guarantee what the workday's answer will be. Keep going. There's always another email. There's always another task. There's always somebody who would happily accept five more minutes of your time. The work will take whatever you give it. Your job is deciding how much you're willing to give. So tonight, when you look at your calendar and incite the traditional Sunday dread, pack your bag, charge your devices, find your keys, get everybody's stuff ready. Put your coffee cup somewhere you'll actually remember it. And for the love of everything holy, pack your lunch. But while you're doing that, pack your limits too. Decide before Monday what you're going to protect. Maybe it's lunch. Maybe it's leaving on time. Maybe it's ten minutes outside. Maybe it's not checking your email while you eat. Maybe it's taking the break you keep convincing yourself you don't need. It does not have to be revolutionary. It just has to interrupt the habit of treating yourself as expendable. Because the limits that break us down usually don't feel particularly dangerous while we're building them. They feel productive, responsible, dedicated, necessary. Until one day we realize we've gotten exceptionally good at functioning without ever stopping long enough to ask how we're actually doing. So this week, don't wait until you're starving to remember you needed lunch. And don't wait until you're completely depleted to remember you had limits. Protect them before you need them. That's the Sunday seed for today. Thank you for joining me. Dr. Carmella Maxell on Rooted in Rising. And as always, remember, stay rooted in who you are and keep rising until you're becoming. Don't forget to like and follow and share. Take care.