#38: How To Manage Your Energy & Compete In a Man’s World

Michelle:
It's time to stop being the victim of your over-scheduled life and become the most powerful version of yourself. Welcome to she's got power. You know, I thought the

Michelle:
2020 holiday season was going to be real quiet, real mellow, but I got to tell you, I ended up under a pile of work preceding a last minute trip to Miami. Not that I'm complaining at all. I'm so happy to be getting some sun and fun, like hello, South beach, but I'm really looking forward to January with all of you, because in January, I'm bringing back my lift program and this will be a full on lift for the new year. Shaking off the habits that have not served us well during the most challenging year that I can remember creating more energy lightness and ease for 2021 with my support, it's always a blast. So I hope you'll sign up to join us at she's got power.com/lyft 2021. Now, today I've got a great interview to share with you. It's all about how to balance a high achieving mindset with your body's needs.

Michelle:
It's a real life story that you're going to relate to entirely. And I think love hearing about, but before we dive in a big, thank you to Denise for this five star review on Apple podcasts. Now Denise participated in the last lift program that we did, and here's what she had to say in her five day program. Lift Michelle has given me everything I need to get back on track. Her recipes are simple and delicious, and she offers practical advice and encouragement. It's only day three, but I already feel more rested, less stressed and have more energy. Thanks Michelle. Thank you, Denise. Thank you very much for that. Please email support at she's got power.com with your mailing address and just mention episode number 38, because we have a little thank you gift to send your way. And for everybody listening, I would so appreciate your review as well. There are so many women who need support after the year that we've had and your reviews will help me reach them. So thank you in advance for that

Michelle:
Now onto the show. Hey, Rina, thanks so much for joining us today. Glad to be here. Thank you for having me. I want to jump right into the thick of it. When you knew

Michelle:
That like all the stress and your overworking tendencies were too much, you told me that it happened after your divorce. Could you expand on that and tell our listeners, like, what was going on for you? Why did it hit you then that like something needed to change? Yeah.

Renia:
So at the time I had two young who

Renia:
Were, where I live. I don't have a family or like a friend support group. That's close enough by to help a lot. And I was literally dropping them at daycare at six o'clock in the morning. And like the last parent picking my kids up at six o'clock at night. So my, you know, not even school age yet, kids were spending 12 hours a day in daycare. They knew the day daycare teachers better than they knew me. And it really became clear pretty quickly that it was unsustainable. My ex-husband is a teacher. And so when he was around to be with the kids, there wasn't as much of a guilt factor there. But when it was just me, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't let the daycare teachers raise my,

Michelle:
Okay. Again, even getting there for 6:00 PM. I mean, hats off. That's hard to do.

Renia:
Yeah. So my schedule, I would get up at four o'clock in the morning and work for like an hour or so, get ready to get the kids in. I'd be in the office by like six, 15, six, 20, and I would leave at five 55 and then I'd get them home and feed them dinner. And then I'd work for like three more hours. And it's just there's there was no life there.

Michelle:
Uh, no, I feel you, that is such a tough position to be in, but this wasn't the first time that you were sort of confronted with. Maybe I'm working too much. Tell everybody what you told me about what happened when you were 25?

Renia:
A couple of years before that, when I was 25, I was just driving 30 hours a week. So don't add

Michelle:
The, yeah, don't add all

Renia:
The work. And just the driving at that point was 30 hours a week. And so as a marathon runner and vegetarian twenty-five year old, I came down with severe pneumonia. Basically I got sick and I was like, sick. I'm not sick. I don't do sick. So I was in the hospital for what, four days and out like completely out for six weeks at the ripe old age of 25. And I still didn't get the best.

Michelle:
Wow. Holy moly. Can I just ask, how are you driving that much? Were you in sales? What was happening?

Renia:
So I had just started my own company and I was working as a trainer for an organization where I would go and train their groups in five different counties around central Florida. So I would have to drive to all these locations where their different groups were. And I live in a rural area, like anywhere where there's a group of people who need to be trained is at least an hour from me to begin with. So I was always on the road. I can't tell you how many meetings I did from my cell phone on the road.

Michelle:
Oh, I bet. Okay. So I am really getting this of you. You're you, you said a marathon runner, you said vegetarian mom, doing all these trainings all over Florida, driving 30 hours a week. And so, yeah, there's that seems like there might be like a little bit of an overachieving tendency going on here. Did you start to notice any other symptoms or anything else going on in your health or your life that in retrospect were sort of red flags that you were doing too much?

Renia:
Yeah, so I had always been this way. So I grew up in pretty extreme Southern poverty and I knew that my only way to get out was to get an education. So by the time I was 16, I had an associates degree and was on my way to regular, like the rest of my college. By the time I was 18, I had a bachelor's degree by the time I was 21, I was vice-president in a bank. Like I had been this way as long as I could remember, and I didn't know any other way to be, but I was, I literally was always on the go. And I had like, not, not what you might consider really serious symptoms, but weird things happening to me all the time. Like I had acne all over my body constantly. I had horrible 10 to 14 day, really heavy, really painful periods cycles every month. Like in retrospect, I should have realized that my body was literally fighting the pace that I was going at, but I had been doing it since I was 12 years old. So I didn't know there was any other way to do things. Of course. Wow.

Michelle:
Yeah. So your hormones were wildly imbalanced if that was going on. And then it had been that way, I suppose, since you even got your first period.

Renia:
Yeah. Well, so I, yeah, I think my hormones were out of learning. I'm in a program learning about air Veda right now. And I think my hormones had been out of balance pretty much always. And I didn't realize that until just the last year or so.

Michelle:
Hold up. So now, now you're in a program to learn about Ayurveda and you've run your own business, please, please. We're just, I'm making a resume for you over here. There's a lot on it. Connect the dots for us. So you were a VP at the bank and now you run your own digital marketing agency.

Renia:
Yeah. So I have a double major in English and Iranian politics. I thought the plan was that I was going to go to law school and become a diplomat or go work in DC or something. But I got pregnant, uh, right out of school with my oldest son. And that kind of changed the plan a little bit. And I got a job at a bank in between what I thought was going to be in between my bachelor's and my master's. And I stayed because within a few months they had promoted me and I found out I was good at sales. I didn't know that at the time on I was, you know, right before my 22nd birthday, they made me a VP, which at the time I was the youngest VP in this bank's footprint. And I was making great money, like mid six figures money at 21, 22 years old, you should not make that much money at that age. You're done

Michelle:
Is, but

Renia:
I stayed there for five years, four years, yeah. Four and a half, five years. And I hated every second of it. I hated every moment of that job from day one to the final day, but I was really good at it. And it never occurred to me growing up the way I did that. If you had money and you were good at something that, that didn't equal happiness and fulfillment. And when I left, I had gotten involved with an organization where, um, there were a bunch of coaches and I was like, Oh, I can do that. I can go teach people how to run their business and be a coach. I had no idea what I was doing. It was totally wishful thinking. And I thought, because I had always been successful before that I could start this company. And within three months I literally told my ex-husband mess. Within three months, I'll be making the same money I was making.

Michelle:
Wow. So I

Renia:
Wasn't so brilliant about that. But at the time Facebook was Facebook business pages were really just becoming a thing. And I ended up the first year making almost no money as you do when you don't know what you're doing. And I grew my business out of Facebook using a Facebook business page and using SEO strategies that I learned on the internet. So people started asking me how I was doing that. And at the time that digital marketing industry, particularly around SEO was just exploding. And I got very lucky and got to work on some projects that technically I had no business working on because nobody knew what was going on at that time and was able to build a reputation that ended up building it. I thought I was building a coaching business and instead I built a digital marketing agency.

Michelle:
So tell us about digital marketing, because as I shared with you earlier, this was my first career. And I know that it's, it's not for the faint of heart.

Renia:
It is not. And it is not a great career path for a lot of people who really care about time. The expectation in the agency, world and digital marketing is that you're going to work 70, 80 hour weeks. You will work every holiday. You will work anytime you are needed. And it's full of a lot young, single young, single, sexy Pico kill. Can I say it that way?

Michelle:
I mean, I'd like to think I was one of them

Renia:
And you use a lot of substances to keep you going, you know, it's, it's a breakneck speed industry and it's why people flame out of it. So often. I mean, I just read something the other day that the average tenure of a digital project manager is three years. Wow. That it's, it's, it's a tough space.

Michelle:
So you're kind of running on all cylinders since you were very young and really succeeding in so many areas of life. You mentioned the acne and the heavy periods. I'm just curious if you experienced any issues with either digestion asleep, anxiety, weight, like these are some of the typical things that I hear from women about. Yeah.

Renia:
Yes. So the two main things for me is I did start putting on weight in my late twenties and it took a long time for me to figure out that that was related to stress. I don't know why. And also I got breast cancer when I was 30. So that's not something that you expect at 30. It does not. It's something you expect at 30 that I now at the time I would not have correlated the two, but I now think was probably partially related to the stress and the exile and the pace that I was constantly trying to keep. Because when you are like, my kids will still joke that I have two, I have two switches on and sleeping.

Michelle:
Is it true? Yeah, that's funny. And I bet, you know, the way most people think about those two things, gaining weight and certainly a cancer diagnosis is either it's bad luck or it's genetic, or of course, with weight that, or even with cancer, that it's your fault. You know, you ate too much, didn't exercise enough or you, you know, had bad habits or things like that. But it's so interesting that now in retrospect, you can say, Oh no, all of these things very closely tied to the pace at which we're living life.

Renia:
Yeah. And the thing that it's, it's interesting because I was rewarded a lot for living life at that pace. I was from an outside perspective, very, very successful, very young, but I was tremendously unhappy. I think also just now paying some of the consequences for living at that pace for so many years, because now in my, you know, mid, late thirties, I'm starting to see that, like, there are a lot of things that I probably too fast, too long that now I have to take bigger spaces to replenish. Then maybe I would have to, if I hadn't done things that way.

Michelle:
Well, I'm glad that you're doing that. And tell us, how are you managing these overworking tendencies now that you've recognized them?

Renia:
Well, first I want to say that I am not always managing them. I am much, much better to be, but I still fall into them. Sometimes what I do notice is that I catch myself faster. So instead of working, you know, 14 hour days for three weeks in a row, I'll do it for three or four days and I'll realize, Oh, this, what are you doing? Take a step back, reassess reevaluate. What's what's happening here. And one of the things that really started to move that for me is I found out about lunar cycle or, or reproductive cycle planning, depending on if you, if you're a woman who bleeds, it's considered like with your cycle, if you're not a woman who bleeds, it's lunar planning. Because what I found out is that women, I guess women's hormones. The way I understand it is that women's hormones cycle throughout the 28 days or whatever of the month, whereas men's hormone cycle every day.

Renia:
And so the business day is set up for a cycle of a man's hormones. The easiest example of this is like, we're supposed to do things first thing in the morning, do your big thing, first thing in the morning and get it done. Well, that's when testosterone is the highest for a man, but that not, may not be the best time for me as a woman to do this thing. And so I started noticing that there were certain times of the month where I could do a million things and it felt easy and that there were other times that I just wanted to rest or go deep into one project or something like that. And I started structuring my schedule that way. Like I'm looking at my calendars on my wall right now. And my whole team basically knows when my cycle is because it's on all my calendars and we structure my big projects around that hormonal cycle. And it made things easier so that I could start to take more breaks.

Michelle:
I have absolutely heard about this. I think it is fascinating. And as a business owner myself, I know that there are time periods when I'm like gangbusters on everything. Boom, boom, boom, getting it all done. Like it's nothing like crossing it off my to-do list. And other times where I'm just like, ah, I can't do this right now. I need to do something more freeform, but I have not taken the time to map it to my cycle. Are there any other details that you can give our listeners about? Like what time of the month you do certain projects? Sure.

Renia:
Or so, and there's, I didn't first learn about it from her, but in the last year or so Kate Northrup put out a book called do less, that that really outlined lines, this cycle really beautifully, but it's so I always start from when I'm actually bleeding. So when I'm actually bleeding, that's usually a time and has traditionally been a time for women to go inward. And it's not a great time to try to do things like heavy exercise or give big presentations or create, you know, your new product offering. Instead, I use that time to rest and reflect and maybe some tweak things and we don't schedule heavy appointments. So I do a lot of like, I record podcasts for my show. I do a lot of in-person meetings or now they're all zoom meetings, but of course we do. We make sure that that stuff isn't scheduled during that time.

Renia:
And then right after you bleed, you're usually starting to really be more productive and want to, I call it staging. So you want to stage things. So I use that time for planning. I use that time for kicking off new projects. I use that time for trying to work on new relationships. And then when you get into the oscillation cycle where you would be so traditionally where you would be the most fertile, you are also the most literally hormonally attractive to other people. So that's the time where I want to do my big presentations. If I can, where I want to do sales pitches, where I will record most of my podcasts, where I will do anything, where, uh, being on in front of people is the thing that is called for. And then the longest phase of the cycle after that, the, I believe it's called the luteal phase.

Renia:
The longest phase of the cycle is when you are post oscillation before you bleed again. And it's literally like the nesting phase. So it's a great time in business to wrap up projects, to get things done, to cross all those little things off of your to-do list. And your body literally wants you to do that. It like wants you as a woman to complete things and finish things and nest into your work or into your home at that time. And so it's the easiest time to get all the little things done and cross all the things off. And it's, I would say like 50 to 60% of my time is on that cycle now it's by no means perfect. But since I did that, I've become more and more relaxed because I don't feel like I'm pushing myself to do things I'm not in the mood for.

Michelle:
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I feel that so hard and we don't have that luxury, but I assume that just by checking in with that idea, you might have that, that quote unquote luxury more often than you think.

Renia:
Yeah, absolutely. And when I first started, like, you know, when I first started this, it was some very small things. Just like giving myself the ability to not have to give huge important presentations when I was bleeding. That was the first thing I started with. And it just brought down the temperature for me so much that it sounds like such a little thing, but it was such a big thing to just give myself permission that these five days I don't give huge pitches.

Michelle:
I think it's a great idea. I mean, if for no other reason you don't have to be worried about anything leaking or running to the bathroom or anything like that while you're giving a presentation. But beyond that energetically, what I understand is you're just in a better space for it.

Renia:
Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's fun. Like my project management, my project manager, she, she chuckles at me sometimes because she tags all of the tasks in our project management tool based on the cycles so that I can literally just pull them up based on the tags. And it just it's quirky I guess, but it makes me feel good. And it's also, I sort of like subverting the system a little bit because this space that I'm in is hyper-masculine um, and it's kind of cool to be like, yeah, w we run this digital marketing agency on a woman's reproductive cycle.

Michelle:
I love it. I love it. It makes so much sense. I mean, and even if it was on a random cycle, just the idea that you were taking time to have downtime, and then you were having the time when you're up and you're doing all the things and then you're resting again. I mean, even just that alone must do wonders for keeping you more on an even keel.

Renia:
Yes, it does. And it's, you know, in this world, there's no end to things. There are lots of beginnings, but every your, any project you work on, if you're good at it, you're probably constantly tweaking it. You're doing something new to it. There's no like concrete endings often. And so using this cycling process, it puts some Indians into pieces of things that are really satisfying. It's sort of, I compare digital marketing sometimes to like, it's like doing the dishes, you do them, you complete them. And then there are more dishes that need to be done that, you know, an hour later and the cycling process really helps you embrace. I think the nature of this work too.

Michelle:
So what else are you doing? Um, maybe something that you've learned through Iris Veda, um, how else are you taking care of your body to keep yourself balanced?

Renia:
Well, the most recent thing and the most, perhaps the most difficult thing I have done in my adult life is I've quit caffeine. Mm. I love coffee. Sometimes I used to joke. I love coffee as much as I love life.

Michelle:
That sounds about in line with what I hear from my clients. Yes. Go on.

Renia:
And, but I was learned, I've been learning, like I said, about air Veda and my, I have very high Pitta as highly driven women often do. And all that coffee does is like exasperated more. And my adrenals don't love Kathy, even if I do, and this energy is finite. And so I, it, at least in a narrow beta, they believe that this type of energy is finite. And so if you use it all by the time you're 40, you're going to struggle for the rest of your life. So I am, I have begrudgingly, although I'm finally starting to get used to it, eliminated caffeine and replaced it with rasa, which is like an adaptogenic or blend. And it really is helping me understand, once you take the crutch of caffeine away, then you have to grapple with where is your energy actually coming from or not.

Michelle:
Yeah. You know what, it's almost like taking away your credit cards and then you really know how much money you have or not because getting energy from caffeine is like getting energy on credit and you're going to pay it back with interest. Yes,

Renia:
Exactly. And I was a pot to a pot and half a day, coffee drinker plus drinking green tea because green tea is healthy. Right. But when you're drinking it for the caffeine

Michelle:
On top of the coffee, yeah. That's amazing. Well, good for you. And how long did that take for you to ween? Hopefully you weaned off of the caffeine.

Renia:
No, I did not. When I went cold Turkey because I'm not, so there are Gretchen Rubin. We'll talk about, they're like abstainers and moderators. I am not a very good moderator. That is the struggle of my life. I can either do a thing or not do a thing. So I just went off at cold Turkey, but I did take magnesium supplements for the first couple of weeks, happy magnesium supplements to help with the headaches. And other than the headaches, the first four or five days, it was really missing the flavor and the mouth feel of coffee. That was the hardest for me.

Michelle:
Right. Well, do you do decaf because I know everybody's thinking that

Renia:
I do not in Arivale it's not just the caffeine of coffee. That is the problem. It's the acidity levels of coffee for people with high Pitta. So I don't do coffee at all anymore. And you made

Michelle:
It and you survived. You're here to tell the tale

Renia:
I'm here, where I were like five months at, which is the longest I've ever been able to go without coffee. And we also took out all the grass in our backyard and now have a garden, a vegetable garden instead. So that's like everything we eat, come, not everything we eat, but all our vegetables come out of our own backyard. And it's a place for me to relax. And so I have to maintain the garden. Therefore I have to go out there and relax and get some sunshine and get my hands dirty and get grounded. So those two things have been big.

Michelle:
Wow. You've made some major changes and this has just been such a fascinating interview. I'm curious if you could go back in time and talk to, you know, Rena at say 25 years old, what would you have told her? And do you think she would have listened?

Renia:
I'm quite sure that she wouldn't have listened. She was a super, no at all, but I would have wanted to tell her that there isn't enough time to get it all done, but there is enough time to do what's important.

Michelle:
That just made me exhale, like a huge relief. I go, can you just say that one more time? Yeah.

Renia:
There isn't enough time to get it all done, but there is enough time to do what is important.

Michelle:
I love it. I love it. Rena, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. You've been through a lot, but I feel like you've been able to come up with these tools and these techniques for yourself that all our listeners are going to benefit from.

Michelle:
Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

Michelle:
I just about fell off my chair. When Renia was talking about growing up in poverty and her many accomplishments by a young age, punctuated by several different health issues, including breast cancer. It's just, it's so typical, unfortunately. And I thought the way that she's now managing with lunar cycling and getting off caffeine was super inspiring. Like we can do the things, right. Reena continues to run her business. We don't have to opt out of life or opt out of our big goals, but we have to manage our energy for it to be sustainable. And I hope that's the spirit that we can all bring into 2021. Again, my Lyft program is open for registration. If you want to start with the habits to fuel your big goals, join us at she's got power.com/lyft 2021.