How Lazy Afternoons Can Lead to Innovative Breakthroughs

Did you know that lazy afternoons might be just the thing you need to spark some innovative breakthroughs for your business? If you've ever had one of those days where work feels like pulling teeth and then, you beat yourself up for not getting stuff done, today's episode offers some insights on how to handle these moments differently. Show Notes | Transcript "Knowing that I could give myself grace, pardon the pun, that is my middle name, to not do the stuff I needed to do yesterday. Knowing that today is another day, you know, tomorrow was another day and I can get to that stuff. It would not be the end of the world if I didn't get those things done." - Gloria Grace Rand     As the founder of Align to Shine Academy, I've learned the importance of adapting our work routines to our personal energy levels. In this episode, I open up about my recent experience with a low-energy day and how I turned it into an opportunity for growth and self-reflection. Discover how to: Recognize the factors that influence your productivity Give yourself grace during low-energy periods Use downtime as a catalyst for creative problem-solving Evaluate and adjust your business strategies for better results Key insights include: The impact of external factors like weather on our motivation and energy levels Why self-compassion is crucial for long-term success and well-being How taking breaks can lead to unexpected breakthroughs in your business The importance of regularly assessing your business activities for maximum effectiveness I also share a personal story about how I reevaluated my social media strategy after giving myself permission to take a break. This led to valuable insights and a new approach to content creation and distribution. Whether you're struggling with productivity guilt or looking for ways to work more efficiently, this episode offers practical advice on aligning your work habits with your natural rhythms. Tune in to learn how embracing your unique energy patterns can lead to greater success and fulfillment in your business and life! Resources: Join the Soulful Women's Network here Receive daily inspirational email messages: bit.ly/LoveLightNotes Need support? Go to engagewithgloria.com to schedule a call. Connect with Connect with Live Love Engage: Send Gloria Grace a message ☕ Support the podcast ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating LinkedIn: Gloria Grace Rand Facebook: Gloria Grace Rand YouTube: Gloria Grace Rand TRANSCRIPT Have you ever had one of those days where you just don't feel like working? Oh, it's like it's pulling teeth to get stuff done. And then when you do get the things done, then it's like, you know what? I can't do any more. I'm done. And then maybe you beat yourself up over it because, oh, all this stuff I didn't do today, oh, gosh, that's terrible. Oh, my gosh, I'm such a horrible person. Have you ever done that, too? Well, I want to tell you about it because been there, done that, and I got some advice for you on how to handle things differently. But first, if this is your first time joining me today, joining the Live Love Engage podcast, let me introduce myself. I am Gloria Grace Rand. I am founder of Align to Shine Academy. And I love empowering women, especially women over 50 like myself, to really be able to step into their power to just be the amazing people that they were born to be. So, which I know is not how I totally normally introduce that, but that's what I'm doing today. I'm going with the flow. And. And that's. That's ultimately the point of this episode, because yesterday I had one of those days. And, And I'm starting to notice something about when I have some of these days. And, And. And this is what I want to be able to encourage you to do, too, is to start noticing if you have had one of those days where you just, ah, it's like just pulling teeth to get stuff done and you just are not motivated. Look at what's going on. It could be something as simple as the weather, which is what it was for me. Yesterday we had a cold front come through, and it was cloudy and rainy and cool. And I am a fair weather girl. I admit it, okay? I grew up in Michigan and now I live in Florida because I like sunshine. I really do. It makes me feel so much better. And it is a nice sunny day today, and I feel so much better. That's why I didn't record this podcast yesterday. No, I'm recording it today because I feel better today. Now I have things that I needed to get done yesterday, and I did get them done. Thankfully, I did have a productive morning. And then in the afternoon, there were still lots of things I could have been doing, lots of things I should have been doing, and I didn't do them. And in the past, I really would have beaten myself up over it. And I'm so grateful that I have done the work that I needed to do, to learn how, you know, applying love method, the L O V E method that I teach about letting go and letting God and opening your heart to receive and valuing your uniqueness and embracing your divinity by really embodying that and especially the valuing your uniqueness part, that's really what I want to lean into today. Knowing that I could give myself grace, pardon the pun, that is my middle name, to not do the stuff I needed to do yesterday. Knowing that today is another day, you know, tomorrow was another day and I can get to that stuff. It would not be the end of the world if I didn't get those things done. And frankly, today, again, because I did give myself that grace to basically not do stuff. In the afternoon I was watching one of my favorite shows on Netflix. I love the Parisian Agency. I love listening to them speak in French. All these wonderful real estate agents who deal in these high end properties. It's, it's, you know, it's a. I guess some might call that my guilty pleasure. I watched an episode of that and I, you know, watched some YouTube and I just did things to distract myself from the icky weather. I value who I am now and I value that there are days, there's going to be days like that where I just am not going to be as productive and it's okay. Oh, and as I was starting to allude to is this morning while I was journaling, a practice that I highly recommend, if you are a longtime listener of the show, I'm sure you've heard me refer to that over and over again as a really good way of being able to tap into your higher self and connect and, and it's a wonderful practice. So I'm journaling and I been trying to figure out what to do with some different aspects of my business and I had some great ideas come through of how to make the most of the resources that I have to be able to maximize my presence, shall we say, on social media, for instance, and taking a look at how things are performing and making some course corrections, which I've also talked about on this podcast before. There's episode that came out a couple months ago where I talked about a course correction in my business. But I've realized that I think part of sometimes where we get into this overwhelm which then leads us to be like, I don't want to do anything, is putting our resources in the wrong place or just putting them in, I shouldn't say wrong. I would say putting them, putting our resources into areas that are not giving us the ROI that we wanted. So case in point, I'll give you an example. I have been recording on Wednesdays something I call Wisdom Wednesday and I use the daily word from Unity as inspiration. So whatever that Wednesday's message is, that's the topic I use. And in fact, as I'm recording this, it is on a Wednesday and I just actually finished recording a Wisdom Wednesday. Now what I had been doing, I started these at the beginning of 2025 and I was live streaming them out to LinkedIn, to Facebook and YouTube and I wasn't getting a whole lot of traction on LinkedIn and I've been really putting a lot of effort into showing up on LinkedIn this year and using that as a way to be able to grow my business, actually starting even last year as well. So I decided okay. And I also talked with another friend of mine who is also a business coach. I know she does something called Teach Me Tuesdays, but she just uploads the video to LinkedIn. She doesn't go live. And so I said, you know what, I think I'm going to do that. So I was stopped doing them live on LinkedIn. I still livestream them to Facebook and YouTube and I would upload the video to LinkedIn and that's seemed to be doing better that, that was doing better for me. Now Facebook and YouTube, it dawned on me this morning. I'm. Let me, let me really take a look at this and see how we're doing. Well, the live stream on YouTube is doing nothing. I mean, I get, I've been getting like no views on several of those episodes. So clearly that's not doing me any good. That's just a waste. And then on Facebook, I have had one of my friends would wind up watching it and commenting and, and I love her dearly and she's amazing, but that's it. So again, and then I looked at my analytics on Facebook and it's like, yeah, they're not really doing that well live streaming. So this morning I decided that no more live streaming. What I'm going to do is record the message and then I'm going to upload it not only to LinkedIn but I'll upload it to Facebook and I'll upload it to YouTube and I will try that for about the next eight weeks and see if I don't get well, I'll just see what the results are because whether it's, you know, it does give me some better engagement or not, maybe I stopped doing it on both of those platforms and I just focus on LinkedIn. But I have to try it out. And that's the thing, is you have to be able to experiment in your business. You've got to try new strategies if some things aren't working out. But let me go back now to the beginning of what I was talking about here. So I think it might have taken me a lot longer to even come up wi