58: High-Achieving AND Laid-Back? How to nail both.

Hello friends, and welcome to Grief Guts and Green Smoothies. I am your host, Melissa Dugalecki, and I am so excited to be here with you all to chat about ways in which we can all get through different adversities, challenges and loss and how getting outside of our comfort zone and maybe having a green smoothie or two can help us do so. We will cover different topics ranging from interviews to recipes, to sharing my own stories of my grief journey and the loss of my daughter Layden. And I'm honored to be able to share her light in hopes of helping you spread yours. Now let's dive in. Today I am diving into one of the topics I get asked about the most and it's can you be high achieving and laid back? Or rather, how can you be high achieving and laid back? And this is something that I really struggled with for a long time as I speak about. I'm recovering, type A control freak. And you know, I joke about being recovering. That's a part of us, right? That's a part of how we're wired and we can rewire, but there are parts that are going to carry. And what I have found is when I can integrate and balance out that laid back energy, right, that energy of flow, I actually achieve so much more, which is the exact opposite of what I always believed. So today I'm sharing just how we do that. Let's dive in. So of all the people that I work with and I coach, you know, in the one on one setting, they're honestly, they're all very high achieving people. They are looking to level up in different parts of their life and they are looking to essentially find more growth, right? There is this desire for growth and achievement. And quite often people I've worked with, one on one, whether it's move nighty day or just in conversations in general, have this topic, this question, this doubt around can I be high achievement and be laid back? Essentially, if I loosen my grip on trying to control things, doesn't that mean I'm not trying so hard? If I don't go to the point of burnout and exhaustion, am I really earning something? Am I really deserving it? And this is, you know, like everything I share, something I really learned in my grief journey. Prior to losing Layden, I was a, you know, burn both ends of the candle. If I wasn't absolutely exhausted, I wasn't working hard enough, I would set goals and go after them. And it was figure out a way, force a way, make it happen. And that was how I, you know, found success. In my own ways. But it was also how I found exhaustion, burnout, and in hindsight, how I was really out of alignment in different places. And when we're out of alignment in different places, we don't grow right. We can blow stuff up. Our energy is off and that's gonna manifest, it's gonna show in different aspects of our life. And we are not, we are getting there. I really feel like our society is becoming more spiritually, energetically aware, you know, whatever resonates with you in terms of thinking of it being spiritual or energetic or universe or source or whatever it may be. But I think there's a more common trend in our society towards understanding, you know, how energy presents and how it manifests and how it impacts everything. And this was something I really began to study in my grief journey because I couldn't actually force and run and go as hard as I had before. When I was grieving, I was so exhausted. I tried, I tried doing that fight or flight. I tried fighting my grief, right? I went to every parent group, I flew out of the country. I reached out to people I was I need to do to get through this grief. And what I discovered was that I wasn't going to quote, unquote, beat grief. I couldn't control it. I couldn't force it to manifest in a certain way. So it taught me really quickly to insert this energy of flow, right? And I think energy of flow can be associated with the quote, unquote, laid back style. And so I essentially, I was forced to integrate this energy of flow, this acceptance, this surrender, this release of trying to control everything, let go of all that. And it was actually in doing that that I began to find so much more growth, so much more opportunity. Now, I want to be clear when we talk about this, it isn't just saying, like, I'm just going to close my eyes and cross my fingers and hope everything magically works out. That's not what I coach, that's not what I believe. I believe it's truly a balance of showing up powerfully for what we can control. I'll say that again. Showing up powerfully for what we can control, and that is truly only our own energy. So understanding our own energy, taking full responsibility for ourselves, taking full responsibility for our choices, our words, our thoughts, our time usages, our money usages, taking full responsibility and owning things. And that doesn't mean, like so often we associate responsibility or owning things with blame or fault. No, it's like opportunity. I was giving away my power left and right in all these other places and these attempts to try to control or people please or get conditional validation of worthiness, to get validation or, you know, conditional feelings of success or achievement. And so doing all of that, in my attempts to kind of control, I was giving away my power. And when we insert this energy of flow and we connect to only trying to control what we can actually control, which is our energy and how we show up each and every day, we're actually taking back our power. And this is widely misunderstood. And I get it because I misunderstood it. And beautiful lesson from my daughter Layden was that in order for me to achieve at my highest level, I had to let go. I learned first in grief, in order to achieve at my highest level in grief to as much as I possibly could and continue to do so in my grief, I have to let go of control. And the same holds true for us in our own lives. And quite often, what stops us or hinders us from letting go, from inserting this energy of flow is our fear that then we won't find success, our fear that we look lazy, our fear that people think we don't want it or we're not trying. And so the first thing we need to do is first become aware of these places we're holding on, right? We've got this, like, grip, this tight, tight, tight grip and squeeze in certain aspects of our lives. Maybe it's people, relationships, situations, outcome. And then we want to let go. We want to notice what is it that's getting in our way of letting it go. Is it fear? Is it struggle? Is it worthiness? And start really digging in there. And then how can we replace it with trust, Replace it with an attachment to identifying ourselves, our needs, our wants, validating ourselves and our worthiness. Becoming clear on what feels good and listening to that voice when there's resistance, getting curious about resistance and not just forcing threat by honoring our needs. And sometimes we have to lean into the resistance and push, and sometimes it's feedback that that's not where we're meant to go. That's not where we're meant to grow. One of the really tangible ways that I coach and teach this is inserting both goal setting and manifesting. So in manifesting, what we're doing is we're stepping into an energetic space. We're drawing on the law of attraction. We're connecting more deeply to that area of flow. And in goal setting, we're setting really tangible, measurable objectives and goals right now. Remember, these need to be things that are within our own energy. Our own realm of control. And so every single day, if you can find this balance, this dance, this yin and yang of setting tangible, measurable goals that are going to help your growth and inserting and aligning with the energy that you want to manifest, that you want to invite in, that you want to begin, like that's in my experience, where the magic happens. And so it is so possible to be high achieving and laid back. Because when we are laid back, essentially we're just experts with our energy. This isn't like laid back of just I don't care. It's that I am so in control of my energy. I know how to pick my battles. I know where to put my energy. I know where not to put my energy. I know how to things I can't control. I know how not to impose on somebody else's journey or story and let them figure it out for themselves. And I am just over here doing me, doing my thing and showing up powerfully for myself and the people I love and the people I'm responsible to. That is to me what laid back is. And when you do that, you reduce so much angst, so much energy that's just burned in ways that doesn't serve us well. And while we are afraid this will make us less achieving, I promise you, when you can practice this, when you can insert it, just start a little bit at a time and you will find that you achieve at an even level. And I want to know, I want to know if you have questions on this because this is a tough one, right? There is a lot. I have some PDFs I can send you about goal setting, about manifesting, reach out. I would love to chat with you and support you in doing this because it really will change your life. So as always, thank you so much for joining me as we chat about all these lessons from Laid, who just continues to shine her light in ways where I'm constantly inspired to learn and so grateful to share with all of you. Do not take it for granted. I know you have a lot of options for where you want to listen and where you want to put your energy. So thank you for showing up with me. And if you are inspired by this work and you want to help spread Leyden's light, really simple, just take a second rate your view on itunes, on Spotify. You know, I'm not into the numbers for the sake of the numbers. You guys all know that. But it's those types of things that allow this work to get out there and hopefully help more lives. So that's what I'm interested in. And I'm grateful for your help in doing so. I'll see you soon.