Welcome to the Libido Lounge, where we focus on all things love, lust, and libido. We believe that fabulous sex is important to health as exercise and good food. Everybody welcome back to another episode of the libido lounge. I am your host, Doctor. Diane libido expert. Today we're talking about juggling jobs and joy. How do we keep passion in these long term type of scenarios where we are busy, oftentimes stressed out, overwhelmed, overworked, and subsequently under loved?
So what do we do about it? One of the things that I I sent this email out and it it's I think I've talked about this once before. It got a lot of response from people. And I sent this email out that said, I don't like the statement relationships have to be hard work. And somebody actually wrote me back and asked if I was on drugs because of saying that particular statement. The reason I so so so basically, I was getting comments like that. Right?
So there's a sense of, like, why would you say something like this? Right? Of course, relationships are hard work. But the frame I was really trying to get at and what I wanna talk about today is in part the frame that I was trying to get at in terms of jobs, joy, pleasure, relationships, and more. And so one of the things that I think happens is we easily get into this frame of all of these things are hard work. Right?
So the point that I was trying to make, the point that I wanna make here is that, yes, anything that is good in life probably is gonna take effort. You know, any type of thing. We wanna have a good relationship with our friends and our social community. Guess what? It's gonna take effort. We wanna have good relationships with our parents, our children, gonna take effort. We wanna perform well at work, at school, at anything we're doing, gonna take effort.
We wanna have a great physique and we want to be strong, gonna take effort. So I just like to redefine that word work because if we look at it, anything in life that is really, truly valuable is probably gonna take effort to get and to maintain. And you could look at that as work.
But I get concerned and kind of the point is when we frame all of this as work, it becomes hard versus becomes sometimes challenging and sometimes hard, of course, but also a lot of fun and pleasure and joy and all those things. So I really like to redefine personally when we're talking about juggling jobs and juggling life and relationships and all these things, how do we do it? I really like the reframe of instead of, hey, it's hard work.
Personally, I like the reframe of anything that is great in life is something that is valuable for me to put effort into. And therefore, that brings into the next thing of like, well, how do we do that? How do we do this when we're overwhelmed? We have so much going on.
You know, the person that I tend to work with most commonly in my libido work is a woman that is stressed out, that is juggling career and family and all of the complexities that go with that, and still is interested in maintaining or getting back to a really healthy and sexy and fun and passionate relationship. So how do we do all that when the clock is ticking? All of us get only twenty four hours in the day. And there's a lot of things to fit in into that time period.
So one of the things I I really feel like is important is, like, anything that is important, anything that is valuable in life, we tend to put effort into. Right? So if we're under that that that foundation, that things in life that are worth putting effort into are things we love oftentimes or things that we find valuable. Maybe you don't love your job, but you, of course, value the ability to to provide for yourself, your family, your loved ones, those sorts of things.
So essentially, how do we get it all done? We do get it all done by making sure we have space for it. And so when it comes to juggling jobs and joy and how do we get back into that joy as part of our life? One of the things I find is that oftentimes people try to fit in, Oh, this moment here, this moment there of like, if they're lucky, they squeeze in that moment of relaxing and fun and of connecting without actually scheduling it.
And so when it comes to, say, exercise, exercise is one of the things I come back to when I use as an example most frequently because it's very common, I find that people find fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty five minutes, sometimes even longer, to put into the gym on a multiple day a week basis. Right? So we build that in and we schedule it. We know we have our class at 6AM. We know we have to get to the gym by 05:30 or we do it on our way home from work, whatever. There's a plan for it.
And part of juggling jobs with joy is allowing ourselves to have moments where we are actually these are our oxytocin, our joy moments, where we're getting all of those hormones and we're filling our body and we're actually prioritizing our joy. So I know some of you are listening and you're probably saying, like, doctor d, there's no way. There's no way. Like, I we have sports games, we have music recitals, we have all these kids, we have sick moms, we have all these different things.
And I think one of the things that happens and especially happens to us women is it's so easy to start getting into this mindset of, like, the perfect woman who can juggle all of these different types of things. And we juggle all of these different types of things. It's easy to be like, we will get taken care of last. And I know I'm preaching to the choir here.
I know you guys have heard some of this before when it's like, well, if we don't take care of ourselves, how can we take care of anybody else? But it's a reminder because one of the things in juggling jobs and joy and relationship and doing it all really is making sure you're literally scheduling time for your oxytocin, for that hormone that's giving you pleasure, that hormone that is actually balancing your stress.
So a lot of people out there are talking about mindfulness and meditation as a way of balancing stress. And I, you know, I think these are wonderful things. They show profound results and research. And another way of really balancing stress and getting that cocktail of hormones in your brain that is stress reducing, that is sleep improving, that is happiness inducing is increasing your oxytocin. And if we don't have time for it, if we don't make time, it's never going to happen.
A really, really wonderful woman who I just deeply respect, a woman named Sam Horn, has a new book out there right now. And I just got the pleasure of spending some time with her last weekend, and it's called Someday is Not a Day of the Week. Right? Brilliant title. And one of the points of this book is exactly what I'm talking about here. It's that if we just say, okay. Well, I'm gonna do that someday. For most of us, it never happens. Right? Someday is not a day of the week.
Brilliant. So definitely get Sam Horn's book. I I totally recommend everything that that this was woman does. She's completely amazing. And my point within the context of our conversation on the libido lounge today is where are we gonna fit the oxytocin? Right? Where are we gonna fit this? And so one of the things oftentimes, like, in business, one of the things that we talk about a lot when I talk to other people like myself that are business owners is we talk about these ninety day goals.
We talk about these these year goals, and the goals are usually oriented to, like, our goals around how many people do we get to help this year? How many more people do we get to touch and make a difference in their lives? And so we have goals around this. Right? Very, very common. But one of the things I like to do, and that's very related to our The Beetle lounge conversation here is, what about our pleasure goals?
Why are we not talking about our 90 pleasure goals when pleasure is this thing that we get as humans? It's this this thing that we're born to experience. We have pleasure receptors all over our body, and they do so many things for balancing our body, for keeping our body resilient, for supporting our and and reducing our stress, for improving our brain function, all of these things. And we can access these chemicals.
But when we don't actually prioritize pleasure because it gets put off sometimes like the gym or other things, what winds up happening is stress tilts up. So one of the ways out of this vicious overwhelmed cycle here, one of the ways of balancing jobs and joy is actually beginning to put pleasure goals back into your life. And this can be super simple, everybody. This can be simple as, like, okay.
Before I fall asleep, I'm gonna spend every night I'm gonna spend two minutes just, like, lightly stroking my skin to wake my skin up. This can be I'm gonna spend one time a day with food where I actually sit down and really deeply enjoy my food. I'm going to spend in one of my recent videos, we talked about the dialog of desire. In that video, I talked about the twenty second hug around with our partners actually giving a twenty second hug is twenty seconds.
It feels like a long time when you're hugging. It really does. It it still does to me. You know? And and one of my amazing friends, Emily Wishaw, who has all of these great courses on radical embodiment, she when we were together recently at a friend's weekend, she really, you know, invited this whole thing around. Like, nobody is leaving without a twenty second hug. And I love this so much because it's an example.
Like, when we're talking about juggling jobs and joy, some of this, just like the the gym, is, you know, we're all busy, but it's just like we talk about, like, with meditation or with eating right. And it's like, it's a choice that everybody has to make them for themselves around what is, you know, what is important.
And if we want to live life in a way where we're, like, less stressed and we're happier and we're more connected to our partner, then that is where the time and the effort has to come in, you know, quite frankly. And so but the ideas and what I'm really trying to to give you on today's episode is how can we integrate more of the pleasure? How can we create these ninety day pleasure goals to help us stay balanced without feeling like we have another job to do? Right?
The thing that we really wanna do as much as possible, self care and wellness, is integrated so much into our lives that it is almost like built on top of another habit. You know, if we're used to giving a friend a hug goodbye and it's a three second hug, can we share this information with them and be like, hey, if we actually hug for twenty seconds, we release more oxytocin. We feel closer. We feel more bonded and connected. We balance our stress of all this with fifteen extra seconds.
Can you imagine fifteen extra seconds with a hug giving such profound results? And so, you know, there's definitely other ways we can build on this. Right? So it's like with partners, like, I talk a lot about these, you know, this concept of making sure that we're scheduling sex, but another thing that we can really schedule is things like cuddle and intimacy. So I started saying something just over this weekend. I started saying this thing that I really like.
It's out it's off of that apple a day keeps a doctor away. I'm sure most of you guys have heard that.
But I started saying, you know, I think what it really is is a cuddle a day keeps Because what we're really doing here is like, you know, one of the purposes of the libido lounge is about sex and is about pleasure and it's about intimacy, but it's also about balance and health and how we can use our own pleasure, how we can use this to balance our hormones, to balance our stress, and to really live happier, healthier lives. Right?
That's one of the things that we're really doing in in this particular podcast. And so when we're thinking about this, I would encourage you to also, like, intimacy wise. And even if you don't have a partner, cuddling works great with a dog. If you have a dog or a cat, you know, if you have a, you know, a close enough relationship with a girlfriend and that's something that is, you know, in your in your circle group.
Like, sometimes when I'm camping with my girlfriends, I love to camp in a very glamping kind of way. And I have this palace of a tent, and it's, I have a huge queen-size, very, very big fluffy air mattress, and I bring my own bedding. And I just that's just, generally how, though, I like to camp. I do I do backpack and rough it some, but I really prefer, like, the glamping style.
And so sometimes we will if I'm camping with some girlfriends, sometimes we're all just all, like, come and literally just lay in that bed together. You know, just literally lay and cuddle and hug and totally platonic. Right? Completely platonic. It's not about intimacy from that standpoint. It's about sharing connection with people and allowing those hormones to actually release.
So I'm giving these examples, these personal examples to you to illustrate ways we can actually bring ideas like this into our everyday lives to make it easier to access so that we can more easily access the pleasure, the oxytocin. And really when it comes to juggling jobs and joy, it's really about prioritizing and habit stacking.
There's a great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear that talks about this com concept of habit stacking, where we take what we're already doing and we just stack on top of it so it really doesn't feel like an extra thing. And that's how I I'm hoping you're getting out of this episode to orient to pleasure is what if we begin to say, add these these extra fifteen seconds to our hugs to make it twenty seconds?
What if we have a little tiny, even if it's a two minute cuddle session with a partner at the end of the day before sleep? We're in bed anyways. We're doing this. What if we start prioritizing those things and allowing that oxytocin? And as we get more oxytocin, we get happier, we get more stress reduction, and we get better sleep. And allowing that as that foundation to then eventually saying, okay, well, okay. I'm less stressed. Okay. I have more oxytocin.
That actually allows us to show up intimately more present, more intentional with our partner, more connected. So I hope this has been helpful. Please do drop any comments in the hear from you. I always wanna hear from you. I'm always looking to find content that's gonna serve you all the best. Please also look in the show notes for my libido quiz, which will help you illustrate what is the fundamental, say, core physical root causes between behind any libido imbalances. And that's it for today.
Always reminding you to stay classy, sexy, and a little badassy. See you next time. Thank you for listening to the libido lounge. Please don't keep me a secret. Please share this with your friends. You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, as well as how to work with me at mylibidodoc.com.