#40: Conquering Work Addiction with MaryBeth Hyland

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. So here's an interesting question. Where do our values come from? Particularly when we're talking about how we work, how we sometimes push ourselves and strive to achieve? Like where does that come from? I've done quite a few shows in the past highlighting women who have pushed themselves too far for too long and suffered the consequences. And I mean, that's my story as well. So yeah. Where do these values originate? I think you're going to love the interview that I'm sharing today with Mary Beth Highland. I want you to listen for how she describes her value system and how it was destroying her, where it came from and how the work she does now is all about honoring your values in a more constructive way. The longer I do this work, the more confidently I can tell you that burned out chronically stressed women do not simply become that way in their thirties or forties by magic, right? It's usually something that stems from early on in life, and it's really profound. Take a listen. See what comes up for you.

Michelle:
Hey there, Mary Beth, thank you so much for being on the show today.

MaryBeth:
Oh, it's such a gift to be here. Thanks for having me.

Michelle:
I love sharing stories as awful as some of these experiences have been. I love sharing stories of women who have gone through the process of maybe realizing that they're a little bit of a workaholic and gone through their own challenges there and seeing how they came out the other side. So could you tell us a little bit about, tell us about the worst part? Like when did you know, okay, I'm a work addict and this has to change.

MaryBeth:
Yeah, it was boy. I was certainly denying it for a very long time at the time. This was gosh, maybe seven years ago. And I had a really awesome job. I was community facing. I was leading large events and creating new movements with young professionals and philanthropy. And it was just really, the work was very invigorating. So it led to this natural feeling of there's so much to do. There's so much to do. I can't stop. I have so much more left to do. And because it was with a nonprofit, of course, there was always not enough time and certainly not a budget. And there wasn't the support that was needed to actually do what I was doing as one person and work a regular healthy schedule. And I'm one of these people was like, you don't think this is possible. Let me show ya.

MaryBeth:
You know, that's kind of the way that I operate in many ways, not recognizing how much it was hurting me. And I had gone through this pattern of basically waking up in the morning around six, o'clock working for a couple hours going into the office, having some kind of an event at night, probably till seven, eight coming home, maybe having dinner eight, nine, going back to working some more, um, passing out on the couch because I was working until like 10, 11, waking back up at three, o'clock working some more and then passing back out for a few hours and starting all over again at six. So it was a routine and pattern that I had almost trained my body to feel like that was normal and that that was acceptable. And that's what I needed to do in order to be quote unquote successful.

MaryBeth:
And the moment that I, it changed for me was one day, something in that pattern changed and my husband rolled over in bed and he looked at me and said, it's so nice to see you. And I didn't understand what he was talking about because he saw, I felt like he saw me quite a bit and he's like, no, no, no, it's not that I don't see you. It's just that you're never here in the morning when I wake up, because you either have fallen asleep on the couch or you're already working downstairs or you're on something else. It's very rare that I actually, your, that you get to be the one I see in the morning when I wake up. And it just was one of these moments of like, okay, this is a problem he's being really kind in the way that I'm seeing that this is a problem, but I have no idea what to do. I have no idea how to stop because the only thing I knew was when I was waking up with racing, thoughts of all the things that I had to get done, that I would just do them instead of figuring out how to calm myself down and go back to sleep. And that's when I reached out to get professional support in figuring out what could I do to actually break that pattern and break that habit.

Michelle:
So that is a biggie, this idea of waking up with racing thoughts. I think that, and you said at 3:00 AM, right? Is that when it would happen? Yeah.

MaryBeth:
Yes. 3:00 AM pretty much on the dot anywhere between two 30 and three, that was my window of alarm clock, internal alarm clock. There's too much to do and you don't need to be sleeping now.

Michelle:
Yeah. And that's so super common when we're in sort of a chronically stressed out state that our amygdala is sort of on high alert. And that seems to be the time that women wake up and we wake up and we're thinking, and our brains are turned on and it's so hard to get back to sleep, especially as it creeps closer to 4:00 AM. And then you're like, Oh, let me just get out of bed. Right. Then it talks past Guedes and to this level, now I'm sleep deprived. So I'm more stressed out. And can you tell us a little bit, any other, or even just more about the sleep issues, the other health issues that were going on for you at that time?

MaryBeth:
Yeah, I mean, sleep was the number one and I was definitely just pretending like that wasn't a big deal. So the not the denial was a huge part of it. I was having lots of issues with not eating, you know, like, not that I was intentionally not eating, but I was working so much that I would just forget to eat. And so my, I wasn't at that time, it was like, what's the fastest thing I can eat. And so I would be putting food in my body that wasn't actually nourishing me, but it was actually making me have more issues with indigestion and acid reflux and all these kinds of things that I was like, Oh, I'll just take a pill for that. Right. Instead of recognize that I'm doing this to myself. So those were the two biggest ones. And I would say that, um, the combo really turned me into somewhat of a walking zombie in putting on a really great game face that I had it all together.

MaryBeth:
But the reality was my body, my mind, my spirit, my heart, there was a huge disconnect in having any sense of wellbeing because I was constantly running off of and striving to be successful, to achieve more, to prove to the world that I could do at all. Um, and that was just creating incredible issues. I also have a, a major car accident that I was in many, many years ago. And so flaring up of those kinds of issues. Like my knees were getting to be really, really sore. I was having issues with my shins and my ankles. And those were all connected to previous issues with that car accident. But mostly because I just wasn't listening to my body, you know, I was just trying to ignore all that and pretend like I wasn't feeling that pain

Michelle:
That makes so much sense. I mean, most of the women that I work with and I'm sure many people listening to this show, you know, we know that when we are constantly striving to do better and do more and take it all on our sleep suffers, digestion suffers. Obviously our food choices suffer, which can sometimes lead to weight gain sometimes because we're so busy to eat. Like you described there's weight loss, but in any case, like our bodies become very uncomfortable. And then other things that have been lurking can kind of come to the surface as well, which it sounds like that's what the pain you described.

MaryBeth:
Yes, totally. So

Michelle:
Tell me this, obviously this was all going on for you, um, you know, while you're working as a grown adult, but can you remember back to when you were younger, maybe even in elementary or high school, like, did you have the same sort of drive to do it all and show them? Yeah.

MaryBeth:
Yes, it's crazy. So when I was a kid, like literally elementary school, I would get really, really, really sick over the holidays. So when there was break between like Christmas and new year during the school system, I would always get extremely sick and it happened every single year. And eventually the doctor said, well, this is classic for people who are just constantly striving, constantly pushing themselves when their body finally knows that it's going to get a break, then it takes on all of these, you know, getting sick, all of the different ways that you can break down are going to happen because it's like, Oh, now you can rest because you don't have anything on your, you don't have any deadlines this week. And so your body's now open to, to get really sick. And I'm happy to say that this has been my eighth Christmas eight holiday season where I have not been sick.

MaryBeth:
And it really took just for a long, long, long, long, long time of just accepting. I just was like, Oh, well, that's just how it is. I'm just going to get sick. Cause that's just what happens to me and being able to say like, no, that, isn't just what happens to me. This is what happens because of choices that I'm making and boundaries that I'm not setting and having inappropriate and unnecessarily internal deadlines and milestones for what it means to be successful or what it means to be accomplished or what it means to make your parents proud or what it means to that you have to do in order to move towards the next milestone in your life that you want to accomplish, which we're all just fake senses of accomplishment versus what was reality.

Michelle:
I know that women are going to resonate with this. They're going to say, when they hear this episode, they're going to say, yes, me too. Even when I was at an elementary school, I was like this. So I know you've done a lot of work since then. And you know, you pulled yourself out of, out of the depths of this sort of workaholic, uh, situation, but looking back like, w do you think that you were just born that way or are some of us just born that way or are there factors at play that push us into becoming overachievers?

MaryBeth:
It's a combo. So in some ways, yes, I think I am. I'm somebody who doesn't need an accountability partner. I've always been that way. If somebody, if I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. I don't need somebody to hold me accountable in order for it to happen, as long as I am. I'm choosing that. So in some ways, yes, I think that is an intrinsic motivation that I have is, is being intentional about where I'm want to go and taking the steps towards that and holding myself to those, those measures and benchmarks. But the other side of it was that my father was extremely intense and very obsessed with having us accomplish certain things so that we looked a certain way. You know, he wanted us to have certain grades so that he could boast that to other people he'd wanted us to have jobs.

MaryBeth:
I got my first job when I was 14 and actually got kicked out because they didn't realize I was so young and couldn't legally have me working there because it was the kind of thing where he was like, you're not allowed to come home without a job today. So I was pushed really, really hard from a place that was abusive. It was not healthy the way that he, his techniques and the way that he pushed me and my sister to, to do that. But I will say in, in other ways, it, I certainly think it's a part of why I have really high standards and why I'm able to be an entrepreneur in the way of self motivation and not expecting somebody else to motivate me because he, he came down very, very, very hard on what those expectations were and was it just to be quite blunt, he was cruel about it. So it was ingrained in a deep, deep cellular level.

Michelle:
Thank you so much for sharing about that. Yeah, you're welcome. Because I think that we have stories sometimes like, um, similar to what you described and sometimes stories are more, a little bit the opposite. I wasn't getting attention, or my parents are too wrapped up with something else or there was alcoholism or there was a, is there something else going on in the home? So we were, we weren't receiving the attention. So we needed to achieve in order to get that attention, or maybe in your case to get the good attention.

MaryBeth:
Yeah, it was, it was very much, it was even the kind of thing as I got older, like I wasn't allowed to go out with my friends unless I had read all of the wall street journal and my dad would quiz me so that he knew I actually read the articles and that I had to get 100% on the quiz in order to be allowed, to spend time with my friends. Wow. So it was that, I mean, it was, I'm sure he thought that it was helpful and it was making me a more well-rounded person or whatever, but really looking back it's like, what, like, what was the point of that? You know, why, why was that the metric? Why was that the tool and using guilt and shame as tools for why you have to do this right? Because you're not good enough otherwise. And so I think those messages of you're not good enough and you have to prove something to me in order to get my love. I have to make you like you have to meet these standards in order for you to be worthy of my attention. I think that's probably a story. A lot of people can resonate with as well, because that was very much, very, very much his style of parenting.

Michelle:
And that you're not good enough, I think is what echoes in our bodies. And, and even bluntly just in our mind, we actually can hear those words and carries with us through our early and then straight, straight into our forties. And, you know, whenever the crisis actually happens and for some women, women, it is a physical breakdown. We hear from other episodes, women who have found themselves on the floor in pain, couldn't move. You know, however, that moment happens where you're like, something has to change. So for you, it was actually really sweet the way that your husband turned to you and didn't even say anything harsh. She just said, nice to see you. I love that.

MaryBeth:
Yeah. I mean, talk about the total opposite of my dad, right? Like the total opposite. And it was fascinating to see how much I responded to that level of really just an expression of love versus, well, it's really nice to see you cause I never get to see you, right? No, it was, it was just this pure. It was this pureness to it that really woke me up in a way that in the past I would have thought that it would have taken him sitting me down and having a stern, talking with me about my problem, which is what I was used to growing up.

Michelle:
Oh, that's so beautiful. So tell us, what steps did you take? You said you reached out for some professional help. Um, how did you go from work addict to actually being able to sleep and improving your digestion and improving, hopefully your relationship with your husband? How did that go down?

MaryBeth:
Oh yeah. So it all started with going to a mindfulness based psychodynamic therapist. So that's a very specific type of therapy. And I was so fortunate to get an incredible, incredible therapist. And I say that because I think a lot of times people go to a therapist don't really like it. And they think, Oh, therapy is not for me. Instead of recognizing that you can go find another therapist, you know, you can, you can keep in the same way that you're not going to go to the same hairstylist. If you're not getting the cut that you want, you should be doing the same with finding the right fit for your own therapist. And so she was just, just incredible and helped me immensely. And I'll, I'll never forget. The first beginning of our sessions was very much like, show me how to achieve this. Right?

MaryBeth:
Like show me what is the fastest way that I can get control over these things, because that was the speed that I was working from the lens that I was living through. And it was, she, she really talked to me about time and our relationship to time. And the fact that we only have the present moment, but yet people who are often high achievers, people striving for more feel like there's never enough time. They always feel like they're behind or there's so much to catch up on, which was totally my story. And I still have glimmers of that story popping up. But the experience of teaching me mindfulness practices, like for example, her first challenge to me was when you're walking walk and when you're driving drive. So meaning don't do anything else, just walk, don't be checking emails or taking phone calls or trying to plan something out in your head about what you're going to say.

MaryBeth:
And the next thing that you have to do, just walk and see what you notice on your walk, be present with every step you take, be present with the smell in the air, be present with everything you're taking in visually everything you're hearing and doing that for my walking. Cause I was working downtown and walking to a lot of my clients to the offices. And then also when I was driving, I mean, it's, it's embarrassing to even admit this, but I was responding to emails. Red lights were so exciting. Cause it was like, how many emails can I respond to during this red light? Um, which is so dangerous. Right? It's so dangerous. And so that was her beginning was like, let's just take these commute quote, unquote like commute times and make them about being present instead about how much more can I fit in.

MaryBeth:
And then it slowly started to peel back all of the stories I was telling myself around why I had to be so punctual with, I had a story in my head that I had to respond to someone's email within the hour in order for them to feel like I recognize and acknowledge them. Like that is just something I totally made up. I was nobody in my office told me to do that. I had, just to me, it was like that equals people feeling like you care about them and that you're available and that they matter. And so she started helping me to identify what were all of my other stories around those kinds of really just inappropriate deadlines that I was creating for myself. Um, and so in just that example with the email, she was like, let's try first responding within a half of a day, give yourself a half a day to respond and see if they change.

MaryBeth:
See if their response back to you is different than if you respond in an hour. I was sure, you know, they wouldn't like me as much or they wouldn't think I was as ambitious as I was or whatever. And then she said, all right, let's see if you can do it in 24. And then 48 was my max. I wasn't willing to go past 48 of the response time. And she just showed me slowly but surely that those were all stories I made up in my head and not a single person was upset or disappointed or angry or judgmental of me for not responding within that timeframe. And also recognizing that just because somebody is available today at three o'clock doesn't mean that I need to rearrange everything in my life to make myself available for them to, and those kinds of slowly, but surely taking one aspect of my intense measures of success and peeling them away to see those aren't actually necessary.

MaryBeth:
I made those up. Those aren't real. And I get to now redefine what those are and adjust as I do sort of these social experiments, like she taught me. She's like, you think that that's not possible, but let's just see if anybody changes their response. And she was right. Nobody, there was no change. And so slowly but surely doing that in all different areas of the work was incredibly helpful. And then eventually adding on pieces like meditation and breath work and just having intentions for the day, really grounding myself in my values, making choices based off of my sense of wellbeing so that I could give the best to others. And that did not happen overnight. That didn't happen in a couple of sessions. That was a four year journey of being very, very intentional and choosing myself every single day because there were certainly days during that process where I felt like I back slid completely. And there was no hope for me, but then I just needed the reminder that this day is another chance to choose differently.

Michelle:
That's so powerful. How did it impact your mealtimes?

MaryBeth:
Oh my gosh. I had dinner with my husband on our regular basis. Um, I made a point to have lunch. I was the kind of thing that I was like, I actually have a lunch break and I can meet with people that I love that aren't associated to work over the lunch break. I can be more intentional about packing food in the morning. Uh, this is back way back when we used to go into offices for work, but it's still to this day now is the type of thing that during that retraining of myself now, when I'm making choices and I look at my day and I know that the day is going to be really packed, I will be very intentional about all right. Well, why don't I premake that meal that I want to have? That's not going to make me feel horrible afterwards, but it's going to give me more energy. I can make that earlier in the day when I have this free window. So it's ready for myself in the, in the afternoon versus like getting to a point where you're just hangry and feeling so overwhelmed that you're just gonna do whatever's fastest, quickest, and ultimately gonna leave me feeling bad after I eat it.

Michelle:
Yeah, that's excellent. Okay, good. I was so hoping that it went beyond the walking and the driving and also into the eating because eating well. I also have a very, I'm very, very, very fortunate

MaryBeth:
Husband is essentially an amateur chef and he's also a wellness coach. So I'm very privileged in that. He makes sure that I'm have easy accessible things. And that when I am in a place of hyper mode, he's actually pre and advanced planning my meals for me so that he knows I'm going to get what I need during those windows of time. So we have a wonderful partnership that way.

Michelle:
What a guy? Yeah. Does he have a brother?

MaryBeth:
He does not. And he's definitely one of a kind because it's, I mean, his it's just incredible. It's incredible. And that's just one of thousands of reasons why he's what a guy

Speaker 3:
[inaudible]

Michelle:
Join. Mary Beth story. I am breaking in here because it's my show. I can do that. I want to give a quick shout out to, I'm a listener, funny iTunes named there who left this five star review on Apple podcasts and she wrote a must listen to show. I'm so glad I came across the show. Michelle is awesome. Thank you. And I love the topics that she speaks on. She's all about dreaming big and really embracing the you inside you. I'm a listener. Thank you so much for that super sweet review. If you could please send your mailing address to support at she's got power.com because we have a little thank you gift. I want to send your way. And for everyone, this is the final episode of season three of the podcast. I'm looking forward to bringing you season four in just a little while, but in the meantime, it would be awesome of you to go ahead and write a review and tell others why you listened to this show, what you've gotten from it. Thanks in advance for that. And you know, maybe I'll read your review on a season four episode. All right, let's get back to Mary Beth's story.

Speaker 3:
[inaudible]

Michelle:
You have been able to extract yourself from the Gogo. What is the difference in like the number of hours that you work in the day?

MaryBeth:
Ooh, well, gosh, I need, if, if, if before I was working, let's say 15 hours in a day now I would say I'm working almost completely based on my energy. So one of the things that's, that's really acute difference is I work for myself now, right? And so I have a significantly more flexibility with how I make my schedule and I'm not going into an office every day. No, one's expecting me to be there at a specific time. Right. And so that has made a huge, uh, dramatic. So it's, it's Monday, today. And this morning I woke up and I had a ton of time on my schedule this morning and I took an hour long bath and did a hair scalp treatment. Like that's how I started my Monday this week, because later in the week it's going to get a lot busier. And I knew that I needed to optimize on the downtime I had so that I would have the energy later in the week when I have more of a going on in my schedule.

MaryBeth:
But now I have also a window where I only take a certain amount of meetings a day. So I won't take more than four meetings a day. Whereas in the past it was like, however many I can cram in there I will take. And I'm also being really intentional around if I'm working over the weekend for some event or a interview or a workshop or something like that, I'm going to make sure that I'm taking off a weekend during the week so that I get, I recover that time. But I wouldn't say that I have a certain number of hours that I'm necessarily working, but, and that's the other thing too, I think about being an entrepreneur it's like your brain is always finding new ideas and creating new opportunities. So I don't even know, like, do you count that towards the hours that you're working, but I, one of the big, big, big, big changes that I made during this pandemic actually has been that I wasn't getting enough regular exercise in because I couldn't find an exercise that I enjoyed.

MaryBeth:
Like I was forcing myself to do a bunch of things that I didn't get pleasure out of afterwards. And one of my girlfriends, like you love horseback riding. Why aren't you just doing that more frequently? And I had told myself this story that, well, I can't horseback ride regularly because it takes 45 minutes to get out there to the farm. And then it's an hour lesson and then 45 minutes back. And then, you know, I have to go through all of the processing of, of getting ready for the day after that. So there's no way I can do that and have my business. And I'm proud to say, like, I've committed to Wednesday mornings I ride. And so I don't do any meetings Wednesday mornings anymore because that is part of my ability to serve my clients better, to serve my relationships better, to be more creative, to have the energy that I need in order to feel a connection to my mind, body and spirit.

MaryBeth:
And it has been so incredible to realize almost like these social experiments I did before when I first started this journey that they're never ending because I had told myself a story that this wasn't possible, but it most certainly is. And in fact, my clients love it and they always want me to talk to them about it. So it's shocking that not only were they supportive of letting them know, you know, Wednesday mornings are, are no longer an time when I'm available. They, they thought it was amazing. And they were grateful that I was taking care of myself.

Michelle:
I love to hear that because that's part of the story. We tell ourselves that other people are going to be angry at us, much like your email response time and the turns out, usually people really respect it and wish that they could do the same for themselves. You can be an inspiration. And what I was thinking, when I asked you the question of how have your hours changed? I guess what I was driving at is do you feel you are more or less, uh, effective, powerful, impactful in the world. Now when you're taking a bath and going horseback riding for half the day or before, when you were working around the clock, when you [inaudible], but isn't that so incredibly counter intuitive,

MaryBeth:
It is, it really is. And I, and that is just the, this crazy poison that we keep feeding each other in our society that we have to this idea of like, you have to hustle, it's a constant hustle. If you're not working, someone's working harder than you and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, yes, I work very hard. There's nobody who could deny that I work very hard. It's not like I'm just sitting around, going on picnics and horseback riding and taking baths all day long. Those are the things that I prioritize in order to be able to work and dedicate myself to my purpose. And I really am very fortunate that I feel that the work I do is directly connected to my purpose. And so to be able to then activate myself from a place of centeredness and alignment, that's the only way that I can help other people do that in their own lives.

MaryBeth:
So if I was going around talking to people about how they, you live in their values, but I wasn't living in my own values, I have no right to even begin that conversation with anybody else. At least that's what I believe when it comes to this kind of work, when you're coaching others to do that, you need to, you need to take your own medicine first and you need to be honest about the fact that it's challenging. It doesn't, it doesn't just happen because you say, so you're gonna have backslides. You're going to have times when you don't want to do it anymore. You're going to have times when it feels easier to just give into the old ways. And so being able to honor yourself, the messages that your body is sending you, right? You talked about a lot of that earlier. So our, our bodies, aren't constantly giving us messages about whether or not we need to take a break or to keep going.

MaryBeth:
Cause we're an incredible state of flow. And that has been one of the greatest gifts of this new mindful Mary Beth has been. When I, when my body sends me a message, whether it's a stomach ache or a headache, or my neck's getting really tight or that space in between my shoulders is feeling like somebody digging in that is an immediate message. Time to take a break, time to take a break. You are pushing yourself too hard. Whereas in the past I would pop a pill, maybe pour myself some wine and numb myself through it because there wasn't any other way. At least that's what I told myself. And now that I can just say, Oh, okay, body. I hear you. I got that. All right, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to go meditate. Okay. I'm going to go spend some time in nature. Uh, got, got the message. I hear you. I'm listening to you. All right. I'm not going to put that thing in you again, right? So like almost like talk to my talk to my body is the keeper of my soul because it's constantly giving me messages around what I need to do. And the minute that I choose to stop listening is exactly the same time where I've decided that the messages that my heart, the messages that my soul are giving me are not important anymore.

Michelle:
Let's talk a little bit more about the work that you do. You mentioned, uh, you mentioned it. I know you go into corporations and help with their company culture. And tell us more about how you do that.

MaryBeth:
Yeah, so I help individuals and organizations to understand what their values are and then learn how to live in alignment with those values. So with individuals as creating a sense of purpose, having greater sense of energy, happiness, fulfillment, and then with organizations, that's all about creating a culture where people can thrive. So for example, if your company had the value of, let's say growth, is this a company that's actually behaving in a way where people have opportunities to grow, where they're encouraged to grow, where there's a budget around helping people to be able to grow, where there are meetings that celebrate growth, meaning that they have to celebrate failure, right? Cause you can't grow without failure. And a lot of times values are just something that companies have a really nice poster or they have them on the website. So a company's vision is their why, why they do that work.

MaryBeth:
Their mission is what, what they actually do. And then values are how, how you get the work accomplished. And so if you're using your value, simply as a check, we have that as marketing collateral, you're not harnessing them for the greater good of your people. Because as humans, we are all walking, talking, living, breathing, set of values and our companies are too. But when we don't take the time to really know what they are, own them as unique to that specific organization and then actually live them in the way we behave every day, that's all just a bunch of nice ideas and actually has no power or weight in the culture that you're trying to create. So I'm really fortunate that I get to go into companies and help them either define for the first time or perhaps redefine what they currently have and then helping them to look at various aspects of their organizations to see how they are working with and perhaps against those values and where changes can be made. So

Michelle:
What about how doing that for yourself can be so powerful, but what are some of the results you see working within an entire corporation to sort of live their values?

MaryBeth:
Oh my gosh. It's so it's one of the most empowering experiences because the values give us a language to have very intentional conversations with ourselves and very intentional conversations with others. Right? So people often ask me like, Oh, you're so passionate about values. Your Sergeant gets a passionate about values. And the reality is I don't, I'm not actually as passionate about values as much as I am as the language they create for all of us, because I could easily say, um, all right, we have a value of, I just use gross. So let's say, um, innovation and be able to have an incredible conversation with anybody there and saying, what does innovation mean to you? When's the last time you were innovative here? How do you think we could be more innovative around here holding you back from being able to be innovative? What conversations do you think need to be had in order for us to truly be innovative here?

MaryBeth:
And it always is that opening to be able to have deeper, more difficult, um, very much emotionally intelligence based conversations around what's working and what needs to shift, where most of the time people are uncomfortable. Having those conversations, it's easier to kind of just hope things might change and maybe gossip to somebody else about what's wrong. Versus being able to say, Michelle, we're really not innovative here. And here are the things that are holding me back from doing that. And these are things that I think are holding the team back from doing that. Where can we make some changes so we can actually live this value. And when you go through that process with an entire team of folks, it creates this even playing field of, okay, we have, we understand what this means. We have permission to have these conversations. And then when I am, I get to work with companies, I typically work with companies for three years in these kinds of values, um, partnerships.

MaryBeth:
And after that process, then we go into a lot of training and coaching around all those soft skills because it doesn't help anyone when you're going around telling everybody else about the problem, except for the person you're having the problem with. And so teaching people how to have accountability conversations from a place of loving kindness for the greater good of everyone involved is unfortunately not something we learn in school and most people do not have that skillset in general. They're mostly scared because they don't know what's going to happen to them if they do that. And they're not even sure how to articulate what's coming up, because again, they've never been trained or understand that it's possible to have that conversation and end up in a better place instead of somebody using that against you later on. So the work is really expansive and empowering people and giving them ownership over the fact that every single one of their behavior is going to either make the company's culture stronger or take away from it. And so being able to start by looking in the mirror first and seeing what opportunities exist within yourself first, and then learning to have these loving conversations has been totally like a significant change in entire organizations because they never felt permission to be human before that. And they finally feel like they have that permission because somebody has told them that they do. And they've seen the CEO and all the leaders in the same meetings and the same conversations saying, okay, they're doing it. So I am allowed to do it.

Michelle:
That is super cool. What I took away from that the most was, you know, if you're asking, I have an organization, but also of yourself, like how can we be better? Or like, how could I make my life better? How come anything? And you just use the word better. That's that's okay. But to be able to say, okay, one of my values is innovation. Well, how can I be more innovative? Now that's going to spark a lot better responses from those within an organization or just within your own life. Like if you have a, whatever your value is for yourself, right. You can ask those same questions. Yeah.

MaryBeth:
And if anybody who's listening is interested in doing a little bit of self exploration around your values, I would highly recommend that you ask yourself three questions. So let's just say you, you know, that one of your, one of your core values is authenticity. So I would, I would want you to first define what authenticity means to you as a value, and then reflect on where did this come from? You know, who instilled this value in me for better or worse, meaning you don't always get your values because of rainbows and sunshine. Sometimes you get them because you didn't receive that thing you had wanted to receive, or someone behaved in a way that was the opposite of what you knew to be right for you. So, so the first question, where did that come from? Who instilled this in you, and then ask yourself in the present. You know, when, when have I recently activated this value, what did that look like? Who was there? What did it feel like? You know, and then finally, what would be possible if I was more intentional about activating this value on a regular basis,

Michelle:
Those are good questions. I was just jotting those all down. I'll be listened to get them to get all of the specifics. I was just taking quick notes, thinking, Oh, I own this recording. I can listen back. Thank you so much, Barry, Beth, I think this has been a super gnarly, interesting story, but like just really empowering. Like I know like I want to go answer those questions now and I hope everybody listening will do the same. I can't thank you enough for sharing your expertise with, Oh, you're so

MaryBeth:
Welcome. I am grateful to be a part of your community here and that you're interested in this amazing, all this amazing stuff, because I think especially as women, we need to hear that there's nothing wrong with us, right? Like we need to know we're not alone. Like there's nothing wrong. If, if, if you have suffered in this way, because there is, there's a new chance, there's a new opportunity every moment to make another choice. And to know that it, it can be possible for you also

Michelle:
Every moment. That is fantastic. Thanks so much for being here today.

Speaker 3:
My pleasure [inaudible]

Michelle:
I would love to be inside your brain when Mary Beth started talking about her father. I mean, I am willing to bet that all of us have a story kind of like that, like the thing that pushes us for better or for worse, the thing that sort of turned on our tendency towards stress and burnout unpacking this that's part of healing. It's how we take our weakness and turn it into a superpower like Mary Beth has done. So listen, it's going to be quiet for a little bit here on the podcast. As we get into producing season four, which I'm super excited about, but in the meantime, I am always active on Instagram. So come say, hello, I'm at, she's got power. Add, I have a free quiz on my website that I think you should go check out because it's going to help you determine if you're feeling normal stress or if you're really in burnout mode and what steps to take next. And you can get that for free at she's got power.com/free. I'll see you soon.