The Hidden Cost of Your To-Do List (And How to Take Your Life Back) | Courtney Carver

We live in a world that often feels relentless – the noise, the chaos, the never-ending demands on our time and energy. It can leave us frazzled, burnt out, and disconnected from our deepest selves. But what if there was another way? A gentler approach that could help us reclaim our peace, rediscover our joy, and create the space to live with more intention and purpose?

In this inspiring conversation, I sit down with Courtney Carver, the bestselling author of Gentle: Rest More, Stress Less, and Live the Life You Actually Want. Courtney shares her hard-won wisdom for pressing the pause button on the overwhelm and cultivating a kinder, more compassionate relationship with ourselves.

You’ll learn powerful practices for breaking free from the tyranny of toxic productivity and the relentless pressure to always be “on.” Courtney reveals how simplifying our lives, letting go of physical and mental clutter, and giving ourselves permission to truly rest can be revolutionary acts of self-care.

Along the way, we gain insights into overcoming the guilt that so often accompanies putting our needs first, setting boundaries against unsolicited advice, and asking ourselves the gentle questions that can guide us back to our authentic path.

Whether you’re craving more balance, yearning for deeper meaning, or simply seeking the courage to embrace your perfectly imperfect human journey, this uplifting dialogue will inspire you to welcome a sweeter cadence into your daily life.

You can find Courtney at: Website | Instagram |  Episode Transcript

Courtney Carver: [00:00:00] The world doesn’t feel gentle, but it seems to have been getting increasingly more chaotic and really so much harder to to trust ourselves or come back to ourselves or even know ourselves. With the height of the.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:19] A leading expert on simplicity, compassionate minimalism, and living well, Courtney Carver is the founder of Be More with Less and the Simplicity Space, and the author of Soulful Simplicity and her new book, Gentle An Invitation to reclaim a more Gentle Approach to Life.

Courtney Carver: [00:00:34] I looked at the people I loved and wondered why I didn’t put that same measurement system on them as I did on myself, like I thought, and I always think they.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:50] Are going to be thinking about that for a little bit now.

Courtney Carver: [00:00:54] Little bits of trauma all day long about things that are going on in the world, Like we’re just freaking ourselves out for no reason.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:05] If you haven’t yet followed the show, it would mean the world to me. If you took just two seconds to tap the follow button on whatever app you’re listening in. It helps us grow our Good Life Project. community and continue creating the best possible show we can for you, and it ensures you’ll never miss an episode. Now on to the show. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project..

Courtney Carver: [00:01:30] It’s so interesting. I think gentle and being gentle has always been a part of my work, but I couldn’t really identify it because I didn’t see it in myself. And the reason I couldn’t see it in myself is that I was so focused on looking around me, and the world doesn’t feel gentle. And even if I reflect back five, ten, 15, a million years ago. It didn’t really feel gentle then either, but it seems to have been getting increasingly more chaotic and really so much harder to trust ourselves or come back to ourselves, or even know ourselves. With the height of the noise. And for me, I just knew this was the path. It was the advice I had been giving for a long time to people, which I think we all do this. We tell each other, be gentle with yourself. And meanwhile we’re just stressed out and adding more things to our to do lists and it feeling chaotic. So to turn that advice to myself, especially while I wrote the book and reflect on how I’ve done that, was really meaningful to me. And of course, I hope it will be meaningful to other people.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:53] So I want to dive into some of the ideas that you share in the book. But before, since you just talked about the about the process of writing the book itself as a like, I’m a maker. I, you know, I make stuff, I write books. Um, and I will write a bunch more. And I know how brutal that process can sometimes be. How did you step into the process of writing? Like a book length piece is really hard to do. You know, this is not like a post or an essay or a newsletter. This is something that often takes years to do. And it’s not just the content, it’s the structure. It’s and it can be a fairly brutalizing process. Um, and I’ve tried to figure out how to make it less so for me, whether it’s a book or any large scale creative endeavor for me, like I’m always trying to figure out how can I make this so that I can get the thing that’s in my heart and head out into the world, but not make it so painful? Um, what was your approach to actually or what was your experience of writing this book, and how did you approach it in a way a way that, um, embodied the spirit of what you were actually writing about.

Courtney Carver: [00:03:59] I decided that’s what I would do, for starters. I mean, in the very beginning, I. This is my third book, and even though I don’t completely know what I’m doing yet. During my first two books, I feel like I really had no idea. And that ignorance was helpful, actually. But when I finished each one of those books, I said to myself, I probably won’t write another book because that was a lot. It just takes you away from so much of your life. And at the same time, I love being in that space. So the writing part of a book is my favorite place to be. Whether it’s hard or not, I love it. And when I started to write gentle and even beforehand when I was doing the book proposal and having meetings, that word was always there, and so it was really hard for me to ignore that and then make it a really difficult thing. It had to be gentle, and when it couldn’t be gentle in big chunks, it had to be gentle for five minutes. Or I was lucky enough to be able to carve out time to go away to some of my most favorite places and be in a really gentle atmosphere. So I created this gentle space to create the book, and I’m sure I’ll look back in a couple of years and think, that was hard. But right now I think between the title and then anytime we would have meetings with the publishing team or anyone else, it would always all the meetings were titled like gentle meeting or Gentle conversation, and so everyone would come onto the call already feeling a Feeling a little relaxed.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:54] That’s pretty funny. Just the name of it. Sort of like was an adjective for for whatever the thing was going to be. It’s like, okay, completely gentle. Zoom. Gentle. This. That’s awesome. I love that. Um, one of the opening ideas that you share is this notion that, um, you speak to the idea of rest and this notion that we often position rest as this thing that is a reward that we earn our way into. And you kind of say, like, we’ve got that backwards.

Courtney Carver: [00:06:23] We do, or I know I did forever, because I certainly thought that’s how it was, like I could rest on vacation. Um, maybe. I mean, once email came around, there was no real resting on vacation either. But it was this constant like quest to do enough to prove myself enough to myself and everyone else that I deserved to take a break. And it never seemed like the break that I got was worthy of all of the proving and earning. And before you knew it, I was back on the into that vicious cycle of now you have to earn your rest again. But it was more than that. It was almost like I was earning my worth on this planet by the amount of crap I got done every day. And until I really saw that disconnect, I couldn’t make a change. And so even after I simplified my life and started my own business and left a really stressful career, I was still proving myself by every little thing that got done and checked off.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:38] So I mean, how do we how did you rewire that in your own mind? Like when you when you realize, oh wait, this is actually I thought I’ve been spending years now rewiring all different aspects of my life, you know, to to really simplify and to elevate what is important to me. But there’s still this one thing where I feel like I have to keep proving my worth in order to. Have the right to actually take a breath and to rest. How do you rewire that? Because I know so many people feel that right now, and they’ve probably not been able to to flip the switch on. Reversing that and saying no, like rest actually is more of a right, you know, like this is not something I have to earn my way into. How do you start to to reframe this?

Courtney Carver: [00:08:23] I looked at the people I loved and wondered why I didn’t put that same measurement system on them as I did on myself. Like I thought, and I always think they deserve everything they deserve. Of course, to rest. They deserve to be less busy. They don’t have to do a thing for me to love them all the way. Nothing. They don’t have to do anything to earn my love. So why was I trying so hard to earn my love from myself? And why was I trying to? And I don’t even know if I was doing this on a very conscious level, but clearly I was trying to earn love from everyone else to like, look at all of these amazing things I’m accomplishing. Do you love me now? But I didn’t require that of anyone else but myself. And that’s, I think for me, what really showed me that there was a path forward of not having to do it. And what was so cool about it is that I created even more room to listen to myself, because we all have our inner thoughts. But do we ever, number one, really hear them? Do we act on them? Um, and do we trust them? Do we trust ourselves to carry through, or do we need a committee to decide?

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:47] I mean, I feel like we all have her in our thoughts and for some bizarre reason, the ones that we tend to hear most and trust the most are the ones that are most negative and destructive towards us. Um, and then we put the ones that are positive and constructive and helpful off to the side saying like, oh, sure. Um, but let me focus on all the stuff that’s wrong. And, you know, it’s the chatter, the spin that Ethan Kross talks about. Um, which is a weird wiring. I think, you know, psychologists often say, you know, this is more, uh, survival based, but it’s dysfunctional now. Um, and yet for so many of us, it’s still there.

Courtney Carver: [00:10:21] Of course. I mean, I think we do it with feedback from around us as well. Like, we appreciate the good feedback, but that one little piece of negative feedback, we’re like, okay, we have to unpack this. We now have to spend the next seven nights just spinning out over what this meant and how they meant it and what they. And the more that I’ve let go of that for myself, the more I’ve let go of go of that for the outside messages as well. I just don’t really have the interest or energy anymore. Not that something won’t throw me off my own thought or someone else’s. And for sure, still a human. But I can really laugh at myself more quickly and remember that this is just a thought or an idea or someone’s opinion. And I know, just from my experience in talking to people, whether it be people like in my day to day life or people on the internet, that generally what anyone says to me has so much more to do with them and like what they had for breakfast and how they slept and what’s going on in their life than anything I could have possibly done.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:36] Yeah it is. It is amazing when you try and reframe that way. I remember years ago reading a study of decisions made by an Israeli parole board and the likelihood of getting parole immediately after lunch if you appeared before them, compared to immediate before lunch was dramatically different if they were well fed. There was a much higher chance that you would actually get parole. Um, we are so, like, influenced by all these internal signals that we’re completely unaware of and that are really not rational. And, you know, once you start to understand that about ourselves and also other people, I feel like sometimes it’s easier to let what comes at you go, even though it may be hard in the moment, but like, it’s easier to pull back and reframe and say, like there’s a lot that’s bigger here, that’s going on. This is not just about me.

Courtney Carver: [00:12:24] Right?

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:26] Which actually speaks to another thing that you write about fairly early, um, and it’s this notion of underreacting, which I thought was really interesting, which is the opposite of what so many of us do.

Courtney Carver: [00:12:34] Yeah, we love to overreact because I think we we believe it’s going to bring us to a solution faster. Like, it’s some kind of way for us to be proactive. So when something happens, we want to be on top of it. But oftentimes we sort of lose our minds over something that isn’t that important and in many cases will resolve itself. I don’t know how many times I’ve inserted myself into something that didn’t need me at all, and all it did was, you know, raise my blood pressure and my heart rate and my stress levels. When I didn’t, I just didn’t have to bother myself with it. And so I’m trying more and more now to pause before I react, to not react at all. If I’m in kind of one of those states we were talking about, like hungry, tired, stressed, bothered for any reason and just seeing what happens. Like, will this resolve on its own? Do I need to be involved here? And if I do, is there a way that I can do it more gently so that I don’t get everyone all excited about the thing that they’re already so excited about? Like, why am I going to bring more drama to the drama?

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:55] I mean, under acting? Well, I guess we should probably clarify. Also, we’re talking more about underreacting in the cases of things that are potentially drama inducing or negative. Um, somebody comes to you and they want to celebrate. I’m happy to overreact with, you know, I can celebrate, like, you know, all the over the top as much as they want. Um, but it’s the other side of the spectrum that we’re really talking about here, right?

Courtney Carver: [00:14:22] The damaging overreacting. And it could be about something really small, or it could be about even, like a big world event that you would think there’s reason to overreact here. Of course. Like, this is I, I feel outraged, I want to do something about it. And I know that a gentler approach, a calmer approach, will be more effective. There’s just no way around that. I won’t have to take time out to recover from my overreacting, which I certainly have had to do in the past.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:00] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors, which I think also brings us to something else that you speak to, which is this notion of breaking up with breaking news, which often is a thing that we get consumed by and drives our overreaction. Um, and especially because literally the chyron on TV, if you ever look at any news station right now, like there’s a breaking news thing that runs across the bottom of the screen 24 over seven. There is no breaking news anymore. Like, it’s all just breaking news, and it’s clearly designed to try to elicit a certain response and engagement, almost addiction to the feed. Um, take me take me into this a little bit more.

Courtney Carver: [00:15:42] Well, I don’t have TV in the sense that there’s breaking news, so that’s one place I’ve eliminated it completely, but it’s everywhere. I mean, it is on your computer, on your phone, in your social media feeds. It’s really hard to completely disconnect from breaking news or news overall. And whenever I talk about maybe taking a break from the news, which I do pretty frequently, um, if I share that online, some people are concerned that I’ll then be uninformed. And I agree, I’m going to be uninformed for a minute. I’ll come back to it. It’ll be okay. And if there’s something that I really need to know, people always find me and tell me. I’ve never been completely uninformed. But what I have been is way more calm by not subjecting myself to headlines that were reading without any context. So we’re not reading the articles. I think generally we’re just reading the headlines, especially on social. You know, we see a quick video with a headline and then we’re just horrified and we go on to the next thing. And so it’s just like little bits of trauma all day long about things that are going on in the world that by the time the week is over, they’ve all changed in some way and they’re still breaking but with better information. But because we never really got all the information to begin with, what are we doing? Like we’re just freaking ourselves out for no reason. Um, and again, not to say that there are not horrific things going on, but we can choose how we consume that information and what we do about it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:17:34] Mhm. No, that definitely makes sense. You know, the um, it’s like when you have the fire hose turned on, all you can do is react. When you. And it feels like maybe that is the appropriate thing in the moment. Um, but so often with a little bit of space and better information, which almost never comes in real time, you know, we’re able to actually formulate much more conscious and intentional responses. That and this is, I think, one of sometimes the pushback of saying, you know, like turn off the news is that, you know, you’re going to be a under-informed, but also be, you know, like, we actually we need to be informed because we need to be taking action because there are things in the world now that need to be responded to. But I think that sometimes overlooks the thing that you’re sort of sharing, which is that there’s a difference between reacting and responding, you know, and being reactive often adds to not only your own personal stress and self-harm, but also oftentimes it’s a reaction to misinformation. And over time, often there’s a much more balanced, sort of like fuller set of information that we can respond to in to in a much more intentional and hopefully constructive way. Does that make sense?

Courtney Carver: [00:18:41] Of course. And we have to sort of decide where we’re going to give our attention, because if we try to care about all of the news and every breaking bit of information, we’re just going to be flat on the couch. There’s no possible way to absorb that and have any meaningful impact. So I think if we were all a little more discerning about what we were going to pay attention to and support and move forward in that way, I mean, I think we might feel a little better at the very least.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:16] Yeah. For you, how do you make decisions like that when you say, if we were a little bit more discerning, like, um, what’s the how to better discernment?

Courtney Carver: [00:19:26] Well, for instance, for me, I if we’re just talking about the news here, I really limit how it comes in. So I don’t watch any video around the news. I don’t need that visual. I have a vivid imagination. I can create those graphic scenes all by myself. And if I watch it, I’ll have nightmares about it, there’s no question. And I also take it in in smaller doses during times that work best for me. So not first thing in the morning. Definitely nowhere near when I’m going to sleep at night. So I might like. I subscribe to the Skimm, which is an email that will give you a few headlines of what’s going on. And then I’ll decide. Do I want to go deeper on any of these stories? Is there something I can do? Am I in a place to take action right now? And if not, maybe this is best for another time. So it’s just asking those questions and really taking time around it, knowing how easily I can get caught up in it and it will just sweep me away. And I think we’ve all experienced that where you’re just in it, and then it’s really hard to come out of it. Without this recovery period.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:51] Yeah, 100%. I think you just you get caught in the undertow basically, and it just keeps pulling. It’s like a riptide that keeps pulling you out and out and out and, um, and we never, you know, it’s really hard to start swimming sideways to get out of it once you’re really deep into it. You also mentioned, um, so you never look at it before going to bed, which I think brings up another topic that you speak to, which is this notion of sleep procrastination. And I’ve it’s funny, I’ve gone fairly deep into, you know, sleep hygiene and stuff like that, but I haven’t really explored this idea of sleep procrastination. So take me into this a bit.

Courtney Carver: [00:21:25] Yeah, I think the actual term is, um, bedtime revenge procrastination. And it’s this idea that we want to reclaim some of our time for ourselves. And so if we’ve had a day where we’re, you know, working all day or just full of various activities and we haven’t had any time for ourselves that time where we would normally go to sleep, we want to take it to either scroll Instagram or watch television or do things on our to do list. So many people I work with, because I was really trying to figure out this sleep issue that a lot of people have, because I like going to bed. I look forward to it maybe a little bit too much. And I was asking people, um, do is the reason that you don’t sleep well because you wake up in the night or because you won’t go to bed? And 90% of the time, people just won’t put themselves to bed. And it is this, I think, this revenge bedtime procrastination has a lot to do with it because so many of them, they say, I just have to do one more thing. But we all know the one more thing, like one more thing leads to one more thing. And then when you wake up tomorrow, there will be one more thing like that’s never going away. So maybe it’s okay if we have three more things tomorrow and go to bed earlier. Um, but almost everyone who will then experiment and try to go to bed earlier falls asleep, and then they’re asleep for the night. I know there’s insomnia issues out there for sure, but I think this is a big problem. Is not giving ourselves a bedtime and going to bed.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:17] Now that makes a lot of sense. There’s I remember, um, speaking with a sleep researcher, um, and he was saying how, like, most people focus their alarms on, like, their wake up time, like they set a very specific alarm to wake up at a very specific time, but very few people actually have a designated sleep time where it’s like, hey, the little vibration goes off on my phone or whatever it is. It’s like, that means it’s time for bed. Um, but he’s like, you really need to actually do that because the more you regulate your time to go to sleep, he’s like, it’s also because oftentimes there’s variability between the time that you actually lay down to go to bed and the time you actually fall asleep. And the more you can build routine around it, but also part of that routine being a set time, your body starts to learn that, oh, now is the time where like, my mind can let go and I can drop off. But if it’s always random and you keep pushing it further and further, it’s like you never train your brain to say like, this is the time where it’s okay to just let go and say hi to sleep.

Courtney Carver: [00:24:17] Yeah. And then what are you filling your brain with in those few hours before bed? Because it I think it has to affect us in our sleep for sure.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:27] Yeah. Are you someone who keeps devices out of the bedroom?

Courtney Carver: [00:24:30] My devices are in the bedroom, but they’re not at eye level. They’re like underneath my nightstand on a charger. So the phone’s there. Um, but it’s on Do Not Disturb from 7 to 7. So it’s just charging, and I don’t. It’s not a problem for me, but I could see how it would be beneficial to keep it out of the room if it felt like a distraction.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:59] Yeah. And I think for so many people, it does. You know, it’s sort of like it’s the last thing they touch before they go to bed at night. It’s the first thing they touch when they wake up in the morning, which says how warped we sometimes are.

Courtney Carver: [00:25:11] Yeah. I mean, all we’re doing when especially I think when we start the day on our phones is we’re saying everything around me is more important than what’s within me. Because before I even get to have a thought to myself, now I’m looking at this cute dog on Org on Instagram. And then I’m looking at the news. I’m going right from cute dog to terror. And again, I haven’t even stretched or stood up or had my coffee. It doesn’t make any sense. Like a slow evening. And a slow morning really sets you up for connecting with yourself during the day. Otherwise it’s it just never ends. It’s sort of like we were talking about with the news. You just go in further and further the minute you pick up your phone during the day. It is the continual like checking, checking unless you set it to the side.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:07] Yeah, I literally as we’re having this conversation, I get um, on my phone, I get my sort of my weekly like usage notification on Sunday mornings. And I looked at it yesterday and I realized there’s a lot more detail for the first time when I was looking at it yesterday, because I was like, huh? Like, I want to really understand what’s happening here. And one of the metrics they report is number of pickups on the on the average day, and for me it’s close to 100 times. And I was like, wow. So I’m somebody who feels like I’ve got a lot of lifestyle things dialed in. And here I am reaching for my phone a hundred times a day on average, and I’m it took me. It surprised me.

Courtney Carver: [00:26:50] It’s wild. It really is. I mean, what else do we pick up that many times in a day? It. And I mean, I even wrote a chapter in the book about different tips and tricks to help you spend less time on your phone, and I still don’t think they’re enough. I mean, these little machines are all powerful.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:11] I want to switch gears a little bit. Um, part of the sort of like the macro model that you have, um, inviting us into being more gentle with our lives is, um, it starts out with the conversation around rest and then moves into conversation around less around decluttering. Um, talk to me about the relationship. Just big picture between clutter and, um, religious well-being and your ability to step into and experience life more gently.

Courtney Carver: [00:27:39] Wow. Well, I think decluttering is an underrated form of self-care for sure. And in this section, less that you’re talking about. It’s not just about clutter, but it is about reducing the stuff around you. And we do start with clutter because, well, for starters, it was such a giant part of my journey to feel better after being diagnosed with Ms. way back in 2006, and I realized that my stuff, my clutter all had stress connected to it. And the only reason I noticed that is because I was paying attention to it and trying to simplify other things in my life And the stuff. I mean, I just never had enough. I always needed something else. I mean, my stuff needed stuff. It felt like. And that in itself was stressful. So to clear a bunch of it out with, you know, without a really big, um, plan in place, but just to get rid of some of it, to see what it felt to have a little bit less was so eye opening to me that I just kept going. And we ended up downsizing and moving, and a lot changed in terms of the things that surround me.

Courtney Carver: [00:29:04] I like stuff, some stuff. I mean, I am looking around right now and there seems to be quite a bit of stuff actually in my house that serves me on a daily basis, but there’s not a lot of extra stuff to steal my attention and my energy. Um, and I just see how much is involved in that. It’s not just money that you buy the thing with. It’s the time it takes to find the right thing. And then when the thing arrives and it’s not the right thing, then you have to do the whole return thing, like it’s just this ongoing process, and I don’t want my life to be about that. So that was a big portion of my last journey, was getting rid of the extra stuff, but also recognizing that where you are in your life may require more stuff or less stuff. So what you’re interested in, what your family is like, what your home is like, there’s no like, right amount of stuff. It’s what feels like enough to you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:08] I mean, I love I’ve always associated with your approach, um, with compassion. You know, I know especially very early on in, in your journey a chunk of years back, you know, you fell under the label of minimalism and, um, and you would often say, but it’s not what you think. At least not the way that I practice. This is not about stripping everything out of your life and having, you know, like the most streamlined, the most minimalist aesthetic humanly possible. It’s really just about looking at like, what’s healthy, what’s like mentally and physical healthy for you. What are you good with? Um, and that’s going to be completely different for everybody.

Courtney Carver: [00:30:44] Exactly. I mean, I’ve never found like one system or one expert or one approach for life that works well for me. Even my own or for anyone else. And it’s it changes as you change, as your life changes. And this idea that we have to be these like disciplined beings that follow one path doesn’t resonate with me at all.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:14] Yeah. Nor me. And like you said, even like the same person in different seasons of your life, it’s going to change. There are times where, you know you’d be pretty good living out of a backpack. And then ten years later, you’re not going to be okay in that same space. You know, maybe raising a family or trying to create a space that feels like home. Um, so a certain sense of compassion and forgiveness, I think, is I love that that’s always been a part of your approach. It’s like you do you, but you do you in a way that’s healthy for you, for this moment that you’re in.

Courtney Carver: [00:31:44] Exactly. But also if you want to do you you have to know you and trust you. And we are really busy, almost too busy to do that. So creating space, if only to hear our own thoughts, makes such a big difference in getting what we want out of life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:05] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. On under the umbrella of clutter also, and the exploration of less. Um, it’s not just a physical thing that we’re talking about. Like this is a psychic and emotional thing as well, which is part of why you speak to these notions of really like looking at how you’re allocating your time, how you’re allocating your energy. Um, and at the same time, sort of like related to that, like how peaceful you are in the context of what you allocate your time and energy to and how bothered it makes you. Take me a bit into this also, and how this sort of like relates to the conversation around less and and even clutter.

Courtney Carver: [00:32:48] Yeah, I mean, we we all have these resources of time, energy, space, money. And we get to decide for the most part, how we spend them. But we give such little attention to energy or to attention that, that we have any control over that. But when it comes to, again, really having time for yourself and to hear your thoughts and know And know yourself and do what you want in your life. You have to make more time and attention for that instead of letting it just run out all day long until it’s empty. Um. I think that we pay much more attention to, like, watching our dollars than we do our, our energy levels. And so we will do things like, um, give it our all. And if you give it your all, there’s nothing left. So I know it’s just an expression, but I think a lot of us take it to the nth degree in that we do, we’ll just give everything we have to anything, and then you lose it all at the same time. So to be able to pay attention to that, like, how do I feel? How much energy do I have today? Do I want to do all of these things? Can I do all of these things. Um. And do I have to do them all? It’s okay to ask those questions and to have some margin in between your things. Like if you’re if you look at your calendar right now and your appointment to appointment back to back, which I am familiar with what that calendar looks like, it was mine for a long time. It just made me. I just ran late all the time, but I was giving it my all so I felt like I was doing the right thing. I was earning my my rest and my worth. But wow, it was exhausting. And with a little time in between everything, you have that space to come back to yourself and we have to do that for ourselves.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:03] Yeah, we definitely do. Um, it’s funny, as you’re describing, looking at your calendar, if you looked at my calendar right now, most of the the moments of the day are blocked out, you know, with different color blocks and stuff like this. But if you actually look at them, you’ll see a whole bunch of blocks that with just the two letters CF, which means keep free. That’s like my signal because other people have access to my calendar, they can book things and stuff like that from our team. So I’ve learned to carve out blocks all over the place in my calendar that are key free. And sometimes in my mind I know what I’m going to be doing there, but oftentimes it’s just like, I just need some space, you know, to do whatever it is I want to do or not do. And I want to make sure that’s actually built into my calendar already to do like I have. I hike on a regular basis that’s in my calendar and it has equal priority. Everyone on my team knows equal priority to any business meeting. Um, because that’s important to me. Like, that’s how I’m okay when I actually step back into some somewhat more of a business mode. But, um, we have so much trouble, I think giving ourselves permission to, um, allocate time and energy to taking care of ourselves. This is another thing you He spoke yet to write to earlier in the book, which is like this guilt that we have around, um, actually saying yes to ourselves.

Courtney Carver: [00:36:22] Yeah. I really think it’s all tied back to this worthiness part where we don’t think we’re worthy or we don’t think we’re proving our worthiness when we go for a hike by ourselves, or we kick our feet up on the couch and read a book, or we have space on our calendar with nothing to do, and we don’t know what we’re going to do. In fact, we can just show up and do whatever we want like that. That gets me excited. I mean, I love to have a block of I can do whatever I want right now. And if I felt guilt around that, if I felt guilt around taking care of myself, that’s not taking care. What’s the point? And I have felt guilt about that. And so I started asking myself the Itself. The question like, is this really guilt? Like, what is this thing? What is this? Because guilt means I’m doing something bad, doing something wrong. Is this wrong? Is this bad? Am I hurting anyone here? And I realized that what it was, for me at least, was discomfort. Because I wasn’t used to taking care of myself. I wasn’t used to, um, giving myself what I wanted just because I wanted it. Not because I instead earned it or deserved it. And that is uncomfortable. But you get used to it pretty quick.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:54] Yeah, but, I mean, I wonder if also part of what we’re talking about here in pretty much everything that we’ve talked about, these are things that affect us and our ability to feel like we can breathe as we move through the day, and that we can experience life and, you know, in a more gentle way. But they also most of these things, if not all of them, also affect how we show up to other people. And I feel like so much of the resistance, the fear, the guilt, the shame, it’s maybe it’s about ingrained, you know, scripts that we have going since we were a kid or something like that or a culture around us. But so often it’s about, you know, just the concern about how we’re going to be seen by others or how or maybe how it’s going to affect them. If I give this time to take care of myself to me, then I’m not taking care of someone else or take this time to rest. Then I’m slacking off on this thing that other people are, you know, like counting on me to deliver. Uh, how do you how do we grapple with that?

Courtney Carver: [00:38:50] Well, I think we’ve all lived in the space of giving it all away, putting ourselves at the bottom of the list and keeping everyone happy. Um, for women, I think it’s been very important to be a good girl as you were growing up. And we all carried that right into adulthood. So we’re looking for that validation. Are we still good? Are we a good mom? Are we a good daughter? Are we a good friend? Um, because we’re serving everyone around us. And at some point we have to ask the question, um, which a therapist once posed to me when I was crying to her about why aren’t I good enough? What’s so great about being good in this sense? Is it worth getting sick? Is it worth completely burning yourself out over? Um. Is it worth sacrificing your health, wellness? Your life? Yes. I love to give to other people. There’s no question about that. Um, but I’m going to give to myself first now. And not everyone’s going to appreciate that, but let’s just put it that way. But that again, doesn’t have a lot to do with me. So everyone has to feel the way they’re going to feel and and get right about what they need to get right about. Um, and it’s going to be different for everyone, but it’s time for us to start with ourselves because we see what’s really happening. Yeah, we are getting all of those things done, but at what cost?

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:37] Yeah. The notion of saying, well, what if I was a bad employee? Um, what would that mean? But also like, what would they. It’s almost like if you reframed it, if I was a bad employee, according to the person who I’m fearing, who I’m concerned might label me that way. What would be the upside of that to me? Uh, you know, like, do I get my life back? Do I get my mental health back? My physical health back, you know, time and space? Um, you know, it’s like, okay, so if I actually can make that trade off, like, what if I was labeled that, like, what if I knew this person was going to label this? What if a friend, like a friend is going to be like, you’re a bad friend? Okay, so they label that me, but do the behaviors that would have them call me a bad ex? Like, what does that actually give back to me in my ability to reclaim so much of what makes me human?

Courtney Carver: [00:41:33] I never really thought of it like that. I wasn’t even thinking about the opposite of good being bad, which I know it is, but I think our definition of good is such a disaster because of what we’ve put into that and how we let people measure us with that title. Like, are you a good worker? Are you a good friend? Are you a good mother? That’s I mean, I guess you could make an argument that it is your boss’s. He can decide that, but it’s really not up to anybody else to be making that making that determination. And for people who are thinking about, you know, are they a good employee or what they really should be asking is are they getting their work done? Because that’s what you owe your company. It’s getting your work done. Um, but this whole business of going above and beyond and jumping through hoops and climbing all the ladders and giving more than you’re paid for, that doesn’t really land anymore. I think we’re on to that. And I think if you like, I know if I look at what I gave my employers, wow, they didn’t pay me enough. There’s just no question about that. So I think there’s a way to reclaim your time and energy and still be getting your work done. But maybe you’re not coming in an hour early and leaving an hour late and checking email all night long for your job that you’re not getting paid for.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:06] Yeah, I remember, um, in, in many past lives now when I was a very young lawyer working, um, and heading out, I think it was about 7:00 at night, one day and walking past, um, you know, senior attorney’s office and saying, I’m heading out for the night. And he glances up. He’s like, oh, half day today, huh? And I was like, oh. And, you know, honestly, if I remember correctly, I probably turned around and went back to my office.

Courtney Carver: [00:43:38] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:38] And kept working. Um, because that was that was just the culture, you know, like you, I was in a place where I was being paid extraordinarily well, and the expectation was like, like to a certain extent, I was owned, um, and I had to live up to whatever that was like. I had to be good. Um, in the context of what that was, you know, um, but, yeah, re-examining, you know, like that, um, I think can make a huge difference in probably all the different domains of our of our lives, not just work.

Courtney Carver: [00:44:07] Yeah, I think so too.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:08] On the other side of this, you speak to the notion of advice, which I thought was really interesting. And because I never really thought about this in the context of how it affects us, um, and explicitly more, more specifically not receiving advice and how you receive it, but giving advice. Unsolicited advice. Um, take me into this a little bit.

Courtney Carver: [00:44:29] So I was going to write a book about boundaries. I wasn’t going to write a book about being gentle until later, and I put a survey out to readers of my blog and asked them, um, what are things that you tolerate that you wish you didn’t have to tolerate? And for me, what I was thinking about was people singing Happy Birthday to me. It’s not my favorite thing, and yet I tolerate it until, I don’t know, Over the past five years, I’ve started being more vocal about how I’d really like to celebrate my birthday, and so my friends and family don’t sing to me anyway. The responses I got really surprised me because they were all about unsolicited advice. So the things they tolerate, advice about how I raise my kids, advice about what I eat, advice about how I dress. Advice about my marriage. Advice about my money. And these weren’t people who were seeking this advice. They were just getting it probably at the holiday dinner table or somewhere else. And they all said they tolerated it, but that they wished they didn’t have to. And I started to think about how I offer advice and how other people offer advice to me. And of course, my advice is always super helpful.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:57] Of course, always.

Courtney Carver: [00:45:59] And then I, I saw a quote by Anne Lamott And she said, um, help is the sunny side of control. And I just felt very called out and realized that, sure, I might have good advice to offer, but if it’s not being asked for, it’s not going to be received. And I’m just being as annoying as the next person giving their unsolicited advice. Um, and my daughter and I joke about this because, of course, I offer her lots of advice, and I’ve pulled back quite a bit after thinking about this. And so before I will give her advice, I’ll ask her if she wants it. And that’s going really well. Um, except I still always advise her to take vitamin D and I’ll never stop. And she’s okay with that. We’ve we’re okay with that. But we do ask, like, do you want to hear about this thing that I’m thinking about since you just mentioned that, or are you just venting or you just want me to listen? What? How can I be helpful? Um, because it is this controlling thing and not, I think, in a malicious way, but more of in a like, we want to help and make everybody feel better with all of our wisdom. So to be able to pull back on that or to ask, is it okay if I offer some advice? And then once you do, you you’re relieved of your duties. You don’t have to follow up and make sure everybody’s doing what you said. Um, just put it out there. And if you notice that it’s hard for you to give advice because people aren’t signing up, I do recommend a podcast or a blog.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:51] And you just say it to everybody and not, like, have no idea what happens and you’re good. You said what you had to say.

Courtney Carver: [00:47:56] People can show up. They want your advice or they don’t and you’ll never know.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:00] Right, right. That’s too funny. Um, but the relationship, that relationship between advice and control is really eye opening, remember? Um, Terry Cole, um, coined the phrase, um, high functioning codependency. And she’s like, yeah, like, so often when we’re telling everybody what to do and we think we’re doing it in their best interests, you know, what we’re really doing is it’s we’re trying to exert control because especially in the context of people we genuinely care about, they’re they’re being in a place of uncertainty or, and anxiety makes us uncomfortable. So we’re giving them the advice, not so much to help them, but to allow us to breathe. And I was like, oh, wow, okay. That is a really powerful reframe. It’s kind of what you’re talking about here.

Courtney Carver: [00:48:48] Yeah. Like, if they’re okay, I’ll be okay. One other interesting thing I discovered in learning to not give my advice out so freely is I wrote about it. So I would write about the advice that I wanted to wanted to give other people because it had to come out somewhere, and I would just write about it in a journal that would then be destroyed. However, in many cases, that advice was something I needed. I needed the advice and that ended up being a really fun thing. I was like, oh wait, I thought that was for this other person, but I guess I’ll take it now that I see that it really was just for me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:29] So on on that same vein of control, um, you also invite folks to, um, to do less organizing. And I think the underlying thing here is that the organizing isn’t the problem. Um, it’s having the volume of stuff that you have to organize. That’s actually the real underlying thing that we’re not dealing with at all.

Courtney Carver: [00:49:53] Right? I mean, how often do we think to ourselves, like, I have to get organized, I have to get my shit together. I like you, we need a fresh start. We need to fix our space. And so we go to the Container Store or Ikea or target, and we get the labels and the bins, and we organize things, and everything looks so beautiful. Maybe we even get a picture up on Instagram before it’s totally unorganized. I remember that I used to have a label maker and files to put stuff in, and filing cabinets and, um, cute containers for all the things, and it never worked. I still could couldn’t find my things. There was just too much of it. And so owning less really serves me. Um, and I know there are a lot of professional organizers out there who are now focused on helping clients declutter first, because without that, it really you never get out of it. You’re just always going to be buying a new container. Um, it’s kind of like I said earlier with your stuff needing stuff, but if you had less of it and you didn’t have to organize it like there was too little to organize, what would you do with that extra time? And not even the time doing it, but the time you spend thinking about getting organized? I think we give that way more attention than the actual like, put this thing in this box. We’re just thinking about, like looking at our stuff and how we should reorganize it. Um, and now that I’ve said that out loud, my Instagram feed will be full of organizing hacks.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:39] Um, but it’s interesting too, right? Because, I mean, we’re not just talking about physical stuff. Also, you know, this is there’s a lot of stuff that’s just floating around in our minds. There are projects, there are to do’s, there are actions that we want to take that are things we’ve said yes to and committed to. Um, and we’re constantly trying to find better ways to organize those two, because, again, we want to feel like we’re in control. There’s some certainty we can breathe, um, thinking, I just need a better organizational system for all of these different tasks and projects and things that I’m committing to and for my time, when in fact, you know, like all that stuff is stuff also. And maybe the better, longer term, more meaningful solution is to say, like, what can I jettison of that? Like, what can I say no to? What can I walk away from or wind down?

Courtney Carver: [00:52:30] It’s so true. I mean, we look for new apps, for reminders and to dos and project planners, and then we get all of that stuff in there and we never then we stop looking at it because it was all too much to begin with. And I’ve thought about this too, like, should I have a better organizational system? Like, I barely just started using Google Calendar, which I know it’s 2025, but for me what works best is a list on paper. And yes, even if I’m traveling, I will bring the list with me. And if the list is too long, it’s not working because I know I’m going to have to rewrite the list the next day. So I have a planner where I’ll write like the bigger projects for the year, things I want to think about, and then I have a weekly to do list, so not daily. I think we way overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, but over the course of a week we’re a little more reasonable. And then as those things are getting done during the week when they’re done, I don’t take that as an invitation to do more stuff. Now I’ve got that space, that window of doing whatever I want. So fewer things on the list, a weekly list instead of a daily list and not trying to get too creative in terms of the organizational system, because I don’t want to spend my time learning a new app and moving things all around and color coding and all. Look, I really admire other people, I guess, who can do that? And their calendars look so pretty. And as soon as I attempt it, it’s it just does not work for my brain. If it’s too much, I don’t want it anymore. None of it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:21] I guess it’s an invitation to keep checking in and saying, you know, is what is the root? What is the deeper issue if I’m not feeling the way I want to feel, and if you’re feeling great and awesome and at peace with all this stuff, and your schedule is packed and you’ve got these complex organizational systems, but you feel really good and you can breathe and you’re healthy psychologically and physically, and you have great relationships and you’re, well, awesome. But that’s not the reality for most people. Once you’re well into adulthood especially, you know, and I think it’s we just keep trying to layer on better tools to accommodate the barrage of stuff, you know, like physical stuff like psychological tasks, activities, projects, all these things. Rather than saying like, maybe there’s actually the bigger problem. Is there just too much of all of it, you know, and it’s almost like the more you feel like you need bigger, better systems, the bigger the question is about whether you’re doing too much to actually sustain, um, the life that you want to live.

Courtney Carver: [00:55:22] Exactly. I mean, I do the same thing in my business where, for instance, when I knew I was going to be spending a year writing the book, I knew I couldn’t do that on top of everything else, even though I have a great team. There wasn’t going to be that, plus everything we already do. So it had to. Things had to rearrange. Normally we have a launch in the first part of the year for our membership know launch this year, just none. And at first that concerned me. I was like, should I? I’ve always had a launch at the beginning of the year. What’s going to happen if we don’t do it? Um, will it impact us financially? Yes. Will I be able to breathe? Also, yes. So I didn’t want to squeeze it in. And I think anytime we find ourselves trying to squeeze things in or putting something on top without removing something from the bottom or the middle, we’re squished. And that is a horrible feeling.

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:24] I almost want to say that squished is the opposite of gentle.

Courtney Carver: [00:56:27] It’s like, yeah, I think you’re right, you know?

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:30] Um, but it also brings up one other question. This is something you speak to towards the end of the book is this notion of, well, what are the questions that I should be asking myself to figure all this stuff out? Like, what are the clarifying questions? Um, take me into this a bit.

Courtney Carver: [00:56:44] Definitely. We have to make space for the questions. And then I mean hopefully by the time you’re towards the end of the book, you’re thinking about making that space for yourself and really thinking about the gentle you and what you want in your life, and not because everyone that you see as a success has those things in their life. Because I promise you, you don’t know the half of it. I mean, we don’t know anything about anybody really. So really deciding for yourself, what do you want for your life? How do you want to spend your time? What season are you in right now? I mean, do you need more rest before you start figuring any of this other stuff out? Um, when people ask me for decluttering tips because they’re overwhelmed, I will often suggest rest first. Don’t worry about the decluttering. Don’t worry about the tasks. Take care of yourself first, but creating that space to ask questions on a regular basis, I think is really great, because we forget what we know about ourselves until we take the time to ask and then we ask, we listen, we trust, and then we can start living the lives we want.

Jonathan Fields: [00:58:12] So what what single question do you think I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to challenge you here or I’m going to invite you up. What single question, um, feels like it would be, um, both a powerful but also a gentle and accessible opening move for people.

Courtney Carver: [00:58:34] I would ask, I’m trying to think what I would ask myself. I would ask myself, what is the gentlest thing I can do for myself in this moment? Like right now, not tomorrow, not when my to do list is finished. But right now. What’s the gentlest thing I can do to feel better?

Jonathan Fields: [00:58:56] I’m going to be thinking about that for a little bit now, especially as we move into the year ahead. Um, feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. Um, in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Courtney Carver: [00:59:12] I was kind of reflecting on what I said during our last chat together, because that was really the first thing that came up for me again. Um, but I think that to live a good life, you have to be able to hear yourself. So for me, having time to listen and trust and ask myself is a good life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:59:39] Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode safe bet, you will also love the conversation we had with Courtney a couple of years back about simplicity. You’ll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor and share it with just one person. And if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered. To reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.