Rule Book Burnout: Embracing Personal Principles And Rediscovering Your Purpose With Suzanne Monroe

Well, I just gotta say, Adam, love that question, and thanks for having me on. I call it the brilliant bio, right? Like, our bios always sound, oh wow, that sounds so amazing. And I think it's a good question because people do often hear those stories, whether it's your bio or even maybe some of the conversations we're gonna have today. And they say, and I think especially hearing my story, you know, I was in a corporate career and ultimately went on and kind of carved my own path and created success kind of following my passion. And it can look from the outside to people like, wow, like you just did it and it all came together for you. And I think the one thing that's not in my bio is that, you know, first of all, a couple things. One is that I am a risk-averse person. I always say like, I wasn't like some super adventurous person, or when you hear my story, you'll hear like, I, I'm play by the playbook. I like to follow the rules. So for me to go out and kind of go and go a different path and do something out of the norm, out of the box, was not something anyone would've ever thought I've done. So I think keep that in mind for everybody. It's just like, if you wanna do something, you can do it. You don't have to have a certain personality. You don't have to have a certain background or experience or be of a certain type, you can do this. And so, yeah, I think that's kind of what I would say for people as we especially get into the topic today of following your purpose and maybe getting out of a career that's not in alignment with you anymore.

So I'm curious, when you say this wouldn't have been— what you did wouldn't have been sort of what people might have expected of you or what you might have expected of you, you know where I'm going with this already. Why do you think that's the case?

Well, I'll say this. From a very young age, of course, every kid gets asked the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? And of course, I was asked that question, but I really think More than the average kid, I would like really hung onto this. I was always thinking, you know, what do I wanna be when I grow up? What do I wanna be when I grow up? And I actually never really landed on an answer. And I remember it kind of being somewhat stressful for me. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Right. And even as I went into my teen years and young adult years, I never really landed an answer. So because of that, I ended up really following the rules, following the rules that were kind of set out before me by my parents, which many of us do. And the rules that I followed was a formula my parents had, which was You go to a good school, you get good grades, and you go get a good job. And that's the formula to success. That's the path to success. And because I didn't know what I wanted to do, I just followed that formula. And then that kind of landed me in my very first job. I was actually working in Chicago in this corporate consulting firm, and a couple weeks on the job, I realized my coworkers were sleeping under their desks. And even a couple of them happened to bring their pillows along on a weekly basis because they knew they'd be pulling all-nighters at the office and sleeping under their desks, you know, in that little cubby. And I thought, wow, that's strange. Of course, it's my first job out of college. So I'm thinking maybe this is just what you do when you go to work for a company. I even saw my boss wearing his pajama pants, carrying his toothbrush, uh, as he was going off to the bathroom after spending the night at the office. And so this was kind of concerning. I never spent the night at the office, but I did pull a lot of all-nighters at the office. And actually, I had this time when I, I was traveling internationally at the time for the company. I spoke Spanish, fluent Spanish. So that was part of what I was doing. And that might sound glamorous, but actually it made things really challenging because not only were we expected to put in these really long hours, but if you were traveling, that was what you were doing on your own time on the weekends to get to location. So here I am, I'm in Argentina, I'm working with a team on a project, and I think it's like 3 in the morning. And this is after several nights of 3 in the morning. And I finally just put my head down on the desk and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I go back to my hotel room and I'm realizing It's not that I can't just do this project anymore. I really can't do this job anymore or this lifestyle anymore. So even though I had followed the formula to success, followed the rules, right? I was like, I can't do this anymore. And that's, you know, to answer your question, in my mind though, I'm thinking, wait a second, this is what I was supposed to do. Why isn't it working out? Right. And so even though I ultimately left that position because of this sort of rule book mindset, I stayed stuck for many years after that in other jobs where I also continued to experience career burnout. So. It wasn't an overnight fix, but this was the pattern I was following because I was like, you know, gotta play by the rules.

Yeah. I mean, that really resonates with me. And I think, you know, today, obviously, we're in a very dynamic environment. I don't think it's hyperbolic to call it like a, you know, a VUCA environment or a BLASTIC. I mean, there's a lot of words being, you know, used for it, but it's just, it's constant change. It's constant disruption. I remember when my parents would get frustrated, mostly my mother would say this. My dad had other, other things when he got frustrated, but my mother would say, just, you know, like, I can't even think. I can't even hear myself think. She would say, I don't know if your parents ever, you ever caught them saying something like that, but it's like in the environment we're in, even our basic thinking is disrupted on a routine basis, especially if we're on our phones and everybody is literally on their phones to the point where it's practically an appendage. It could be like a third hand or something. And, and I'm not going to rail against the phone. But I absolutely feel as though it is, we have to personally decide to what extent is this a tool that we use or a tool that uses us. And I think there's the fundamental question we have to all come to answer about that. So how you start your day, when you actually pick up the thing, when you put it down, is it in bed with you at night? Like so many people go to sleep and people who are listening to this right now go, oh geez, I can't believe he's going to do this. But yeah, I mean, it's not a joke anymore. Like, it's not bullshit. People actually sleep with their phone. They engage with it. The last thing they do before they go to bed, before they close their eyes and go to sleep, and it's the first thing they engage with it before they do anything else in the morning. You know, we could talk a little bit about what the causes of the burnout that you're referring to are. What you describe is something I can personally relate to, having been an attorney for 18 years and pivoting and writing a book about pivoting out of the law. Yeah, I slept in the office. It wasn't a routine thing at all, and nobody put a gun to my head to do it. But yet there was a sort of unspoken rule, to use your word, a rule book that said, you want to win, this is how you win. You win at all costs. And I grew up in an environment where, you know, at least I won't digress on that, but it was just like, win, you know, win at all costs is what you do.

Yeah.

Like if you want to win or otherwise you lose. But that's a BS story. Right? Isn't it? Because there's more than one way to win. And the way you were playing by the rules to win really wasn't working for you, was it, Suzanne?

It definitely wasn't. And, you know, I think what's kind of interesting about all this is that, first of all, this was like 20 years ago, my first career burnout story. So I don't even think— no, I did not have a cell phone then. Right? So I can't even imagine what people are going through today because technology has changed so much. And, you know, really to that point, like, I think our minds were thinking like, oh, we have more technology, it's going to make life easier. But as you're saying, like, no, it's just like added to the stress. And added to people like caring so much and being in overwhelm and ultimately leading to burnout. But I think there comes a point in everybody's life where they're, they have these moments that happen to them. I call them reevaluation moments. Right. And we either kind of like skirt around them or we actually pause and pivot. We actually pause and we say, okay, what is going on here? What is the opportunity here? Right. And so for me, yeah, there was the career burnout going on, but I actually had this other thing going on in my life where my husband at the time, was diagnosed with an incurable illness. Again, almost 20 years ago, the path was pretty much like, hey, take a pill. There's not much you can do about it. Life is going downhill from here. So when that didn't work, we're like, wow, we gotta start looking into other things, right? So we started exploring like holistic health and wellness and all these things, which actually ended up becoming my passion because what we found was this actually worked. We found a path forward and, you know, again, 20 years later, he's doing fine. But the point is, it was a reevaluation moment. It was a wake-up moment for me, and I could have said, This is horrible. This is, you know, challenging. And yes, it was all of those things, but I dove in headfirst and I allowed it to kind of ignite this passion in me, which ultimately helped me to make that pivot. Right. And so I think people are going through so many challenges today. And of course, as you know, you know, we've over the last couple of years, it's just amplified. Right. And then we've got, of course, the great resignation and then everyone's leaving their jobs. I think it was like 4.5 million people in one month alone last year said, I'm going. And you know what the interesting thing is, Adam, they surveyed those people. And then they had 2 reasons why they were getting out of the path. And one was that they were burned out and the other was that they were unsupported. So to me, this is the perfect storm for, okay, I need to exit. I need to pivot because I'm not only burned out, but the support isn't there for me to make a change, to do something a little bit differently, even within my current position. So, and now where are we today? People are being called back to work, right? After having a little bit more freedom and flexibility of designing their life a little bit, or maybe just not doing the commute. Mm-hmm. and having a little bit more time for themselves to create a little bit more balance. But now we're taking that away and people are not thrilled about this, right? So I think we're going to see another reevaluation moment coming here.

People are not thrilled about this. Yeah, I think that is literally a classic understatement.

Yeah.

Yeah. So let's dive into this a bit more because I have millennial— I don't know how old— do you have kids?

Yes, I do. I have a 12-year-old son. So

Got it. Okay, cool. So he's— I don't know what generation that is.

He's in the one after that, I think. Yeah.

The one that comes after Z, which I don't know, we're not talking.

Yeah, I keep forgetting. I'm like, what are you again? Oh,

yeah. Z+ or something. Maybe it's A. Maybe it starts with A again, or ZZ or something. But we have Gen Z and millennial kids, and our oldest millennial child, she wants a certain feeling out of her life. I mean, she's now a mom. She's got another one on the way. She's a brilliant writer, communicator, marketer, and in demand, you know, and all that kind of thing. But the marketplace is the marketplace. And so money is important, but it's not the only thing that's important. She has really been careful to find an environment that meets her where she is. And for a period where she was just really unhappy, it was because there were, you know, so many demands on her, on her time. unforgiving demands, not, you know, or let's say demands that don't take into account the fact that you're a mom or that you've got responsibilities outside of work or passions and desires and interests and things outside of the launch, you know, and the launch numbers and the results and the KPIs and whatever other thing she's being asked to obsess about without equity. Of course, you know, it's different distinction when you own something and you have equity interest in it and there's a, an exit that's possible, 7-figure, 8-figure exit, you've got a different equation to weigh, right? But when you're an employee with talent and you're deploying your talent for hire, people are paying you for that talent. You're not a slave despite the fact that when we often in the mindset of leaders today, and not just today, but for very long periods of time leading up to today, we've kind of looked at our human resources, at our talent as like a commodity. Well, you know what? I'm making that statement. I'll get off my soapbox and ask you, Suzanne, How do you feel about that? Do you think that the employees have been seen and looked at as, as sort of commodities in the past? Do you agree with that or, or am I off base?

You know, it's interesting as we think about corporations, right? Because again, I've been out of the corporate world for a while, but I know a lot of people who have transitioned, right? We train and certify coaches and many of them are coming from corporate burnout positions and then saying, hey, I wanna do something my own. I wanna create my own path and, and really share my own message. Right? And so I hear from a lot of these people and they're like, listen, Corporations have come a long way. I mean, we used to have very light information on health and wellness, and now they have more wellness programs and there's more benefits in that aspect. But I still think we have a really long way to go because my understanding is a lot of it's just fluff. Okay, we'll do a wellness program, lunch and learn, or, you know, you got— you can call into a coach if you want or whatever it is. But the culture itself, the mindset itself, like you're talking about, hasn't really shifted, right? So people— I spoke with one person who had all these great benefits in wellness, but the way the company was being run just led her to complete burnout. And ultimately she had to leave and go on a mental health leave. So, I think it's just the mindset. And, you know, you look at other countries. I was talking to a podcast host a few weeks ago who lives in France, and he's like, you know, the story I'm telling doesn't resonate as much because over there, yes, people work hard, but there is a focus on this idea of balance. There's a focus on, hey, you are a whole person. Yes, you're an employee here. Yes, we're committed to the results of this company, but you're also a mother, you're a father, you have other interests, and we get that that is a part of well-being. And if you're creating balance over there, you're actually going to show up more powerfully over here. But something about our culture hasn't quite gotten that yet.

And I think culture is the right word to use there too, Suzanne, and being literally not in the, in the sort of corporate culture, even though that's its own thing we can talk about for sure. I mean, just mean even culturally, as in North America versus Europe or elsewhere in the world where these things are seen differently. So just to close the loop on that story with my daughter, she found another employer that was willing to meet her where she is, which is just amazing. Like, so she's getting compensation that makes sense for her, but she's also getting 4 weeks of paid leave for her when she has her child. And that's a big deal. I have another daughter that works for a major media company that's doing the same thing, that 4 weeks of paid leave is a part of their standard practice as well for people having babies. So, I mean, that's a big deal. I think there are a lot of companies that don't meet people in that one micro conversation. There are many companies that don't look at it that way. Maybe thinking and hearing me say this, go, I can't afford that. What are you talking about? We're not rich, or this company's not like a billion-dollar organization, so I can't afford that. It doesn't have to be that specific thing, but I think what you pointed out is really key, which is that it's a paradigm. It's a shift in paradigm in terms of what creates organizational resilience. In our language, we talk about how you operationalize resilience so that organization can go through anything. We just, like in our relationships, we can go through— the best relationships know that it's not always a sunny day. You're not always going to agree. There are going to be things, even tragic things that occur. And the best relationships don't just weather those things. They come out on the other side stronger. So we don't bounce back. We, on some level, bounce forward. We bounce back stronger than we were before. And for sure, that takes a change in philosophy. The paradigm has to shift there. That's— I wanted to have you on the show because I think you've already long ago, I would say, dialed into that, that fact that a paradigm must shift and you chose to shift it for yourself. And now, as I understand it, your work in the world in ways is helping people to shift their personal paradigm, even if the company they work for isn't ready to shift. I mean, the work that we do in the world that our company does is called WorkWell. We help organizations create that shift, that paradigm shift, that cultural change. to meet their people where they are and, and really focus on, on, as you said earlier, that harmony, not even a balance, but that harmony between work and not work. Your work is with individuals that are coming to that realization themselves. Is that right?

Yeah. Absolutely. I just wanna pick up on where you left off with your daughter there for a minute because I think it's really interesting because when I made this shift, you know, almost 20 years ago now, it was, I mean, I got the raised eyebrow look. Right? People were like, what the heck are you doing leaving this steady, secure day job that you've Got all this education for, and you know, what could you— this is gonna fail, right? And I think people are still gonna get that today from concerned family members and friends. But what we're seeing with this generation is that exactly like what happened to your daughter, first of all, they're not willing to say, well, that's okay. She was willing to look elsewhere to see what other things were available. And I think we're also seeing this generation saying, what really matters to me, right? Because what helped me to make the shift was that I had to get really clear on what I call my personal principles. You know, I mean, We spend like 90,000 hours, I think, over a lifetime working, which is a huge number, right? So if those hours aren't tied to what we deeply care about, which are our personal principles, then, you know, that's a pretty big waste of a lifetime. So just to give an example of personal principles, cuz I do think we're seeing more and more people saying, I need to do what really matters for me. I need to, at least if I'm gonna be on this corporate path or this career path or whatever it is, it better as heck be in alignment. With who I am as a person, right? So personal principles can be different for everybody. For example, some of mine are wellness, family, and another one is freedom. Now, these kind of might sound like values and like core values. Yes, they are. But I think where they become more personal is that we, we take a deep dive into them. For example, freedom really has evolved for me over the years to become what I call self-sovereignty, right? You think of sovereignty, it's like kings and queens have this rulership or authority over people. Well, this is rulership and authority over yourself, right? And self-sovereign to me is about being willing to listen really to that inner voice to guide you to make those kind of decisions, just like your daughter made, right? She could have gotten caught up in the, oh no, the company says no, or here's what everyone else is saying, or whatever. If we can listen to our own inner truth, I truly believe it's gonna continue to guide us on the path where we're supposed to go. And it's something really important too, because there's so many voices out there today, right? Especially with social media. We were talking about the phones. Earlier, it's so much coming at us. So it's even more, more important that we kind of tap into that inner voice to say, okay, what am I meant to do here? What's next? And I think when we start looking at our personal principles for younger generations, but really for anybody who's stuck right now in a path that they're like, this is not all there is to life. This is not what I'm really meant to do. Take some time to really craft out those personal principles and say, okay, does this really align with the work I'm doing? Maybe you find that in the current career you're in. That maybe what you're doing actually does align with your personal principles, but maybe it's just the wrong organization because of the culture, as we said before. So you could make a shift, maybe just like she did, or maybe you're like, wow, what I'm doing here actually doesn't align at all with my personal principles and I need to do like a complete career change. So yes, today I'm fortunate enough to be supporting a lot of people in making that shift, making that pivot over to really, you know, tapping into what their purpose is and going out and sharing that message with other people. And carving their own paths. And many of them kind of go on the entrepreneurial path, but still other people work within teams and communities and organizations and do it differently. So.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, And even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. The millennials get a, and Gen Zs get a fairly bad rap or, or have done so from people who are, people who are older, frankly, and don't understand. Don't just, I mean, I'm not saying that there isn't some level of truth. I mean, almost always you can find some aspect of something, even broad generalizations that are true. I mean, that's the slippery slope with it, right? Because you go, well, there's some aspect that's true, but that's where you get— you slide down what my law professor used to call the trapdoor, because it's not always true. And just because some kernel of truth exists does not make even the entirety of the theory viable or accurate, truthful, useful, any of that. So my feeling is, yeah, are there some lazy millennials? Are there some self-absorbed millennials? Of course there are. Just like there are some lazy and self-absorbed Gen Zs and baby boomers, and even the greatest generation had its share of people that were not, were not the best. So it's more like what's really true, and I think you were just expressing it, that younger people today are looking at the rule book, back to what you said, and calling BS on the rule book. On some level they go, hey, listen, nobody's promising me a pension the way they promised my grandfather or grandmother, right? So there's no pension that's being promised. thankfully, that bit of a, of a shell game is not on the table anymore. There's not really much loyalty either. So they're just calling things out for what they are, which is that I need to find an environment where I could be nurtured, where I can feel good, where I can get up in the morning and feel in alignment with what my purpose might be or what makes me feel good and, and all those kinds of things. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that because those people that are in your organization that do feel aligned and purpose-driven are gonna be the people who stay. They're gonna be the people who perform. They're gonna be the people you just wanna, you wanna be around. And those that are not in that position really do have to go anyhow. It's like, it's a good thing if that's the case. But you can't, in running those organizations, being a leader, you have to ask yourself the question, well, if people are leaving, is it because they're not the right fit or the environment that we've created here doesn't actually cultivate retaining those folks and attracting more people that will feel, to use a term of art today, psychologically safe to push back, to say what's on their mind, to object in a respect— you know, like healthy but respectful way so that we don't just abide by the status quo bias that exists, you know, that creates mediocrity in any system. So I literally could not agree with you more, Suzanne. And it's agency, right? Use that— how it is that we think about our personal autonomy. That word today, I think, is agency, which is a great word. You know, people wanna feel that. So your personal principles are really helpful, as are mine. I would love to know, what are your thoughts on the future of what work is? Do you think that organizations are gonna learn their lessons? Or as you kind of hinted at, the pandemic is over. It's sort of in the rearview mirror. 5 years from now, it'll be in the rearview mirror. You think it'll be back to business as usual where they're requiring people to be in the office more? I'm not saying more than the company wants. I get it that the company thinks they want people back in the office. I get that and I understand it too. And I'm not saying that's even wrong on some level, but what if the company wants people back more than the people themselves want to be back?

Well, and I think this ties into the story of like what you're talking about with millennials, right? Because I think it's really easy for older generations to point the finger at the younger generation and say they're being selfish, like you said. But is it selfish or is it selfless? Because when we really do get in alignment, we can actually make a bigger impact, which points to what you're saying. We can actually show up in a better way for the organizations and companies we work with, or maybe we go out and do something else that makes a bigger impact on the world, right? So I think if we can start to have that shift, that's gonna be really important. I think from a company perspective, We're probably going to see some sort of shift where some companies start to evolve, and then there's always the older ones that don't, right? So we may see sort of a hybrid model for a while. I don't know what's going to happen in the immediate near future, but I do believe more and more people are like, hey, I need to have that balance, right? As we talk about even like the wellness piece, like, this is really important. Or you're going to see people exiting, you're going to see companies struggling, and so they're going to have to make that shift. I think on an individual level though, it's like, okay, how do I get to this place of really being in alignment? Right. And for me, like we said, you know, I was following the rulebook. Ultimately, there's— everyone gets a formula or rulebook passed down to them, either from their parents or society or whoever is kind of guiding them on their path. And we have to be willing to look at that and say, okay, what is the new formula I'm going to follow? It isn't just about all about me, right? But I have to look at myself to determine what that is. And for me, I had to kind of create a new formula. So now I call this more my alignment formula, right? Before I had the Go to a good school, get good grades, and get the good job. And this is really 3 other components. And these 3 components are a combination of, of adding up your natural talents with your passion, with your story, right? And I think more that people can do this, we're gonna show up differently in the workplace and we're gonna be able to kind of create these better environments. So what are these 3 components? Well, your natural talents, you know, this is what everybody says you're really good at. They're like, Adam, you're amazing at interviewing people, or whatever it is you're good at, right? And you know, the funny thing about natural talents, I'll say this, is that sometimes we don't even know what our natural talents are because it just comes so easy to us, right? It's just like, oh, I thought everybody was good at that. Oh no, that's something you're good at, right? So we got our natural talents, then we gotta combine that with our passion, right? Which we're seeing a lot of the younger generation do. Like, I have to do something that really is meaningful to me. What is your passion? Maybe you don't know what it is, or maybe you do, but oftentimes it's a thing that you can just kind of spend hours doing, getting lost with, and 4 or 5 hours go by and you're like, what the heck just happened? Right? So where can you get lost? And there's even a famous quote, or not famous, I don't know if it's— I just saw this quote out there by someone named Kristin Mertz, and she says that your passion is basically where you can pass hours away doing something and you lose yourself in the things you love, but you also find yourself there too. And I love that, right? You get lost, but you get found at the same time. And then the big piece of this formula is your personal story. This is what really adds the greater meaning. This is what gets you fully in alignment. This is where You put it all together and you're like, wow, this is really like the path I meant to go on. This is kind of like why I'm here as a person. Okay. If we kind of think of it on a bigger scale, and I'll just give you a quick example because I think sometimes people hear those 3 things and they're like, yeah, that sounds good, Suzanne. How does this play out? My natural talents, and I always like to say I have, I have many of them, but one of my natural talents is creating systems out of a bunch of information. Sounds kind of weird, but like taking a lot of information, somehow process it in the brain and then like create a system that people can actually use and apply. I have no idea where this came from. Okay. And then my passion. Well, my passion really became about holistic wellness, right? Because I went on this journey with my husband at the time. We saw how it was so life-changing. It transformed our lives. I could spend hours researching books. I just dove into this for years, right? This became a really big part of my life. And then my story. Well, what was my story about? My story really became about kind of what we're talking about today, but being willing to break the rules, even though I was risk-averse, being willing to carve my own path and actually seeing that it was safe and it was better to do it. Yeah. Right? And so when you combine all those 3 things together, today I'm actually the founder of the International Association of Wellness Professionals, where basically we support people to follow their passion for holistic wellness, carve their own path. And how do they do it? Using our systems so they can create success. Okay. I share all this because you're like, wait, those things actually all came together. And so I think for people who are either facing career burnout or, you know, like your daughter and they're trying to find the right path, or Anybody who's working for organizations where they feel things are out of balance, following this formula to see, okay, where do I really line up, is really powerful. And the other thing is, it may not all come together in some light bulb moment right away. You might have to play with these things for a few weeks, a few months, maybe even a year. But if you start kind of bringing them forward, I truly believe the opportunity for these 3 things to line up for you is possible. And oftentimes it gives you, what is that next step for me?

Yeah, that makes sense to me. And You know, I go back to the time when you made this brave— I think it was a brave decision. It probably was quite counterintuitive. As you said, people must have looked at you like you were out of your mind, you know, for having kind of gotten the brass ring or in the hunt for it. And then you stopped and changed direction, you pivot, et cetera. My question is, what did resilience look like for you then? And what does it look like for you today, including potentially You know, what are some of the things that you do? And I, I think as we, as we wrap things up here in our conversation, it's great to come back to the fact that from a definitional standpoint, our philosophy is that resilience is how you recover. It's not about how you endure. And the older paradigm of resilience was all about grind. And there are a lot of grinders out there, and I'm a pretty good grinder myself. And you live in the Midwest, and that's grinder central. I mean, like, culturally speaking, People in the Midwest, farm stock and people that have worked hard and they just know how to work hard. So grinding and grit has a great societal value. And I'm not denying that that's not true. That's a, to me, in work terms, that's a 20th century philosophy. Today, I think what we have to understand is that resilience is born out of recovery. It's born out of wellness. It's not born out of how much juice can you squeeze out of the lemon or out of the orange or whatever. So, so my question is, what did resilience look like for you when you were making this very important and difficult life change back then? And what does it look like for you today in terms of maybe the rituals that you have for recovery?

It's a great question. And I think exactly, I don't think I understood what resilience was from the empowered perspective that you're sharing. Right? I had definitely the old mindset, which is why I stayed stuck for so many years. Right? I was carrying a narrative which was passed down to me from my dad, which was you never risk a lot for a little, right? And in my young mind, that meant, well, you certainly wouldn't leave your day job to go out and do something different, right? So back then, it was like resilience meant hanging in there, staying the course. And it wasn't until I was willing to look at those narratives and realize that these narratives that we all carry are just stories that kind of get passed down to us And then we just like lead 'em and we carry 'em like badges of honor, right? They're just like phrases we say, right? I was probably saying, never risk a lot for little in my mind all the time, but they're almost like unconscious thinking that informs what we end up doing. And we have to ultimately replace those narratives with the narratives we really want. And that might sound kind of cliché, but the truth is our narratives basically inform the choices that we make, which then inform our behaviors, and then it ultimately adds up to the life that we're living, right? So I had to start to replace those narratives. And I think resilience is a big part of that, is saying, hey, What do I want my life to look like? And now today, fast forward, it's like, okay, um, it doesn't mean that I'm not faced with challenges. It doesn't mean that I don't have hard times. Like that's never going away, right? For anybody. It's really a perspective in how you look at things and how you just choose to do things a little bit differently. And we have a saying in our community, which is life is happening for you, not to you. And that's kind of how I think about resilience in a way, because if we feel like everything's happening to us, everything seems overwhelming. We're stuck in fear, we're stuck in challenges. We never make those pivots, right? But if we see that life is happening for us, it means that every moment is here for us. It's a choice. Just like when I found out my husband was diagnosed with the incurable illness, right? It was a, actually became an opportunity, actually become one of the greatest things that happened in my life. So how can we see how life is happening for us? And I think from that we can say, wow, I can be resilient because I can look at this challenge differently.

Yeah, it's the, it's a reframing tool. It's a really, and it's a wonderful one. I think it, it was Viktor Frankl who wrote Life's Search for Meaning. And that was born out of his experience as a prisoner in a concentration camp in World War II. I mean, where he was literally surrounded by death, and it's a miracle he survived and lived beyond that. But part of what he did while he was in that literally unthinkable situation was to think about what he would teach people, how he would share what he learned out of, from that when he was liberated and would have his freedom back, which ultimately he did gain his freedom again. Wrote and taught for years and literally transformed the lives of millions of people with his meaning therapy. So that's a fundamental resilience skill, a marker of resilience. I wrote a book last year called Change Proof, which talks about these markers of resilience. That's, that is clearly one of them. What is something that you do today on a ritual basis in terms of your routine that is building your personal professional resilience?

I always like to say pressing pause. Pressing pause is really big for me, and it's kind of playing out in a couple different ways right now. First of all, we all need to press pause to kind of get into whatever that stillness, whatever that space is, because to me, that's where the clarity comes. So again, if you're stuck in career burnout or if you're having other challenges in your life and you're just the hamster in the wheel or running the rat race and just pushing, pushing, pushing on to the point of burnout, like, you're never going to really get that clarity, right? So we have to Be willing to press the pause button. And it might even just be 5 minutes a day. Like, for me, I love to start my morning by pressing pause before really even getting into anything. And to me, that means getting outside, getting in nature, connecting. Um, it'll be movement, it'll be some meditation. Every day looks a little bit different, right? So that's the pause. But there's also this pressing pause for me that I'm really trying to incorporate now, which is not just carving out those times at the beginning or the end of the day, but actually throughout the day. And pressing pause looks like just noticing the little moments, right? Like, there's magic in every moment, right? But when we're just going such a high speed and we've got that phone tied to us, we miss out on those little moments. And isn't that really what life is all about, right? So like, I'm noticing now, oh, just my son was laughing at a TV show that was so funny, and just noticing his laughter, right? Instead of just, you know, I was really busy doing something. So bringing this sort of mindfulness into this pause is, I think, really been transformative throughout my life. But even now, Even more so as I continue to look for these little magical moments.

Oh my God. Well, it's just a perfect way to bring us in for a landing because, I mean, we started a little bit talking about the phone.

Yeah.

And how the phone is such a wonderful tool, and it's also a tool that depletes us, especially when we don't take a pause from it. And so it's really wonderful that you put that because the pause is powerful in so many respects. And I don't think I would even state it half as well. I love what you said earlier. This is what life is about. If you don't pause and, you know, the old expression, smell the roses, what have you got at the end of your lifetime? I'm not sure you want to go down that road and try to figure out what that's going to look like. I think it's a bit of a zero-sum game. And you don't want to wait till you're at that point where you realize, have that difficult realization that you haven't actually paused to live. So with that, that is just such sage advice, Suzanne, and thank you for it. And also, thank you for making the time to be on the Change Proof Show today. We appreciate you very, very much.

Thanks so much for having me, Adam. It was wonderful connecting with you and your audience.

Well, speaking of our audience, I'm going to speak directly to them right now to say there'll be show notes. So you'll find out more about Suzanne's work in the world, her company, and how she helps people. to navigate that, some of those difficult decisions, personal decisions about their career path, et cetera. I'm sure pausing and finding your personal principles and really laying out a roadmap for the future is part of her work. I could pretty much bet my, bet something on it. But in any event, that those show notes will have a lot more about that there. If you've got questions for Suzanne, for myself, you can go to adamarkel.com/podcast, leave a question or a comment. And I will get those questions. Our team will get those questions to Suzanne, and we will answer them. We would love it, of course, if this is an episode that resonated with you, or you think, and/or you think there's somebody else in your life, friend, family member, colleague, that would benefit from hearing some of the wonderful things that Suzanne shared with us today. We'd love it, as always, that you share this episode with them. It's how we not only grow our listenership, but it helps when you rate the show. So if whatever your— the platform is that you're consuming this right now, if you can give it a 5-star rating or whatever rating makes sense to you, it's super helpful. The algorithm does the rest. We know how that works, or we don't know how that works, but we are trusting how that works. And we, we want to be good citizens in that respect as well. So thank you as well for your time and for just the support that we feel from all of you. We know this is a growing community, a loving community. And we want you to be able to be, be well, work well, live well, harmonize those 2 things. That's our goal for all of you. For now, I would just say ciao. Ah, I love that conversation with Suzanne, man. She has a, a story that I think probably resonates with so many people. Just this idea of how we are brought up and programmed even, I'd say, to follow certain rules. And we get those rules from our parents or grandparents or society at large, et cetera. But she had rulebook burnout. She didn't call it that explicitly, but I was taking notes in my discussion with her and I thought, man, that's a really interesting turn of phrase, rulebook burnout. And I know what that's like. I think we all can understand when we don't feel as though we have agency over our lives, we don't feel freedom. And as a value, that is probably one of my highest values personally and in terms of the world around me, just that freedom is so important. So she called them personal principles, how it is that we dial into what that is, how that she was called, had her personal principles called into question due to a family illness. Her husband got very, very ill, life-threateningly. So the good news is, as you know, he's okay. But 20 years later, he probably The thought was he might not be around very long, and he's still here and doing well. And what she learned in that journey about holistic wellness, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual resilience is maybe how I would phrase it for myself. She learned what she needed to learn to be able to walk away from what was no longer working for her, from that rulebook that wasn't the rulebook or the playbook for her successful living, ultimately a life that she could love, that she wasn't doing it that way, and then learned what she needed to learn to be able to pivot and make some minor adjustments so that she could get on the path to loving her life, the whole of it, her career life, her work life, her personal life, et cetera. She gave us a quote that I think is really a great one, which is, life is happening for you, not to you. So often it is, we do get caught up in our personal narrative. The quote unquote story where we can feel victim in some respects or feel as though things are at a state of chaos or uncertainty or being out of control. And I know I can resonate, I can relate to that so well that seeking control, seeking control, being almost like a control freak or not even almost, but being a sort of a recovering control freak that the shift, the reframe there is to look at, at where life is actually happening for you. What is the creative opportunity in the moment, as my wife would say? She also talked about as her own personal ritual for resilience, how you— she presses the pause button, and not just at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day, but various points throughout the day to pause, to look around, to be present, to appreciate, to just experience life. And again, that's just a profound message that the pause from the standpoint of resiliency is about recharging ourselves. It's about how we restore our energy that is being constantly drawn upon, depleted by the work in the world that we do, by the people that we lead or the people that we are answering to. Both even by social media, by news, by our responsibilities all around, including to family. So we must have breaks and pressing pause even for a few seconds intentionally throughout the day will pay massive dividends in terms of your resilience bank account. At the end of the day, it keeps us more perpetually in surplus as opposed to being in deficit where so many people live and reside these days. We got to talk about some personal things to do with career path and career decisions, including a recent one that occurred in my family with our oldest daughter. So it was a really wonderful conversation. I felt enlivened by it. I hope you did as well. And I will say, if you did gain something from it, please share the episode with somebody else that you might think would gain something as well. Also, In terms of your own resiliency, how well do you feel you are aligned? To go back to Susan's content, how much alignment do you feel on the inside at a value level between what you're doing in the world and what is most important to you? And is there that sense that you are in the right livelihood? That's a question that comes up in our Resilient Leader Assessment. And you can take that assessment for free. It is 3 minutes. That is it. Might even be between 2 and 3 minutes. More often than not, it's closer to 2 minutes because it's just 16 questions that you answer in rapid-fire succession, and you get a snapshot in 4 specific zones of resilience, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. And all you need to do is go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com to take your free resilience assessment. And one of those questions is gonna give you clarity. about that question that Suzanne brought to the table in today's conversation. So again, thank you so much for being a part of our wonderful community, and I will see you soon. I hope— feel your energy in the form of your comments, your questions. The way in which you interact with us is really vital. We're here for you. And for now, just wish you a wonderful, resilient day.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.