Ep. 162 You Have a Choice with Eric Nehrlich

Welcome and hello. I am so glad that you're here today to join me for another VIP episode of the Pauscast. Today I'm here with Eric Nerluch. I saying your name correctly, I should have asked you.

Narelik.

Nearly. Thank you. All right, so let me tell you a little bit about Eric, and then we're going to get into his work on his book called you have a Choice, and some really fun facts around Google and how we met and all this good stuff that I think will be fun, kind of entertaining. So a little bit about Eric. Eric, you're an executive coach who also is a former Googler. You help leaders have more impact by your 3 or 25 years of experience in the tech industry. And you love to identify and challenge mindsets and habits that hold people back from their next level of leadership. Me too. What a coincidence. Before becoming a Coach, you spent 10 years as an engineer and product manager across several startups before joining Google, where you led business strategy and operations for the Google search ads team for six years as chief of staff. You published your first book in 2023, which is right here. You have a choice beyond hard work to meaningful impact. And we're going to talk about some of those principles and mindsets that you wrote in the book so that your clients can flourish and do what they came here to do. And I'm happy to host you today. I know you agreed to host and have us do a pause that you will lead. Are you still up for that?

I am up for that. Rachel, thank you so much for having me on the Pauscast. I love the name. It's great.

We're pausing. We're pausing right here.

Yeah. So let's pause together and slow down for a moment. And I guess the first thing I'd like to all of us to do, the audience included, take a couple deep breaths and slow down to be with what's here right now. And as you're slowing down, start to just pay attention to what's coming up for you. Perhaps there's something top of mind for you, some situation that you're frustrated with, a situation where you feel stuck, you don't know what to do. And I want you to just be with that situation for now. Just kind of let it be there and watch what's happening in your mind around it. I want you to take a moment to consider, not consider, but to feel what you're feeling about it. What are the emotions coming up around that situation? I want to caution people here that when I say feel I mean, feelings. If it's. I feel I should do something about this, if that's not what we're talking about, it's I feel sad, angry, happy, scared, anxious. If it's not one of the emotions from the movie Inside out, it's not. That's kind of what we're looking for here. Just notice what are these emotions coming up? Maybe anger, maybe some anxious, maybe anxiety, maybe shame. And then I want to take. Want you to start to notice. Where does that emotion show up in your physical body? Perhaps you feel it. If it's shame, it might be a heating up of your cheeks. If it's anger, it might be a clenching or tension in your shoulders or your neck. If it's anxiety, it might be a rumbling in your gut. But whatever it is, notice where it's showing up in your body. Just take a moment to notice that what am I feeling and what do I feel in my body? And then one, two more steps. When you notice how you're feeling, when you notice how that feels in your body, what does that remind you of? What's another time in your life you have felt that way? What memories come up when you focus on those feelings and then recognize then shortly to think about. Does the way you're reacting now relate to what you learned from those previous situations? And does that way make sense in this situation? So I'll stop the reflection here. I kind of rushed through it a little bit, went a little bit fast, but hopefully if you need a little longer, just hit the pause button after each of those prompts and take some time to really feel in to what you're feeling, what you feel in your body, what's coming up for you. And I'll turn it back to Rachel.

Your voice is so melodic and soothing, Eric. I feel like you could. You could be like a lullaby and I could fall right asleep. Thank you.

Yeah.

Wow. Something so simple, I think is. Can I reflect a little bit on that? Cause I think it's important to kind of process it. And we can all do this in your own way for whatever came up for you, but for me, you know, I was kind of not sure what to feel at first. And I love your distinction. Like, it's a feeling. It's. It's not. I feel like I should do the mow the lawn. That's so helpful. And the inside out reference is great. And. And I think I started out feeling some joy, but then it shifted into sadness. And then like, to me it's a relatively new skill to feel it in My body, to actually locate it, and I felt it right in my chest. And. And then the next step, which was memories, putting it into context, I started feeling alone. And like, to me, it was like being a little girl, being by myself, and that was the sadness. So literally just closing my eyes brought me there. Isn't that amazing? Like, I just. I just got that in a. Like a flash of a moment, and I was like, oh, that's why. And then it made sense. I'm like, oh, yeah. I spent a lot of time alone as a little girl, and now I feel like I'm back there in my own darkness and just closing my eyes. But here I'm with you, and it's different, but I got that connection, and that made so much sense to me. So thank you.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. And it's. So having done this work for a little while now. Yeah. Most of the time, when people go through that exercise, they come up with something from childhood. They learned a pattern of reaction, a learned behavior in their childhood of how to handle it. These emotions that felt very big and overpowering. Like the loneliness you felt as a little girl and you're like, okay, well, this is how I become not alone. I'm going to do this and this. I'm going to show up. I don't know, I'm going to guess here. I'm going to show up as the happy person and smile a lot and, like, bring the energy. Bring the energy. And it's like, it's something you learn to do to counteract the loneliness. I will always be welcome if I bring the happiness. Right.

If I show up as perky, happy Rachel, then I don't need to be alone. And no one's even going to ask me about that. That's totally uncomfortable and scary, too. So. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks for connecting the dots on that and. And how it's okay to feel. Like that's the other part. And I think what you and I have in common is this whole thread of emotional intelligence and really harnessing emotions in the somatic way, like literally feeling it in your body, but also, like, knowing this is a. This is a key towards your leadership. Like, if you are keyed in to. To know how you feel, it's like this whole field of data that can be available to make decisions, to show up in a different way that's really serving not just you, but your whole team or the company and things like that. And you're beyond the work stuff, just even personally.

Yeah, it's so important for leadership because when we show up with these childhood behavior patterns, it's not always appropriate to the situation we're in today.

Can't tell people I'm sad like I was when I was seven.

I mean, you can, but I think what I'm more about, I was going to go the other way. If you show up as Rachel, the perky, happy person, no matter what, then people who are going through sadness, who feel like they're struggling are like, well, I can't share that with Rachel. Rachel's happy. She's not going to get that. She's not going to get that.

Yeah, like, totally not going to relate. Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, and like, wow. I just got this whole, like, vision of thinking and talking more about how we, like, how we basically show up. We show up in these ways where we're conditioned because of patterns like that. And then our whole leadership sphere is influenced in ways that we don't even intend to. Like, we're now, all of a sudden, people have painted me as the happy Pollyanna and they won't take me seriously and never give me a promotion because I'm not one to, like, counter or challenge or be in a space that feels like it can be something else otherwise. And, like, that's where we were going with this. Right. So you and I both worked at Google. I know we didn't know each other at Google. We met and so we met. We were just talking about this before we hit the record button. We met February 2020, before the incredible lockdown of multiple years. And we were at an Airstream camping ground outside of Yosemite called Auto Camp. And my dear friend Silvana Roche invited me there. I know she worked with you. And we had this experience with all these CEOs and entrepreneurs there. It was incredible. And who knew the world would be shutting down and we'd be forced into our lockdown and, like, out of the Google sphere for a while, even in the office and things like that.

Yeah. It's so interesting in retrospect. We had this amazing experience in nature, surrounded by trees and forests, amazing bonding in these Airstream trailers. And then, yeah, the last strangers I would see for, like, two years.

So anyone who wants to go, I believe it's still around Auto Camp outside of Yosemite. And it's actually a multiple chains you can go to. I think different ones across the country, but phenomenal place for a retreat or just a weekend away with your family or anything like that. And then I realized you and I got into A chat on the picnic table about what we were doing and you were coaching at Google and engineer, and then we didn't know each other then, but I felt like we had so much in common then. And here we are four years later doing a podcast. And your book came out since then, too. So tell us a little bit about you have a choice. What is that all about? And why did you write that book?

Yeah, so you have a choice. It's designed for people who don't think about it.

You have a choice to write it. Did you? Just kidding.

I did. I mean, but I guess where it came from is like. So there's a lot of people, even high achievers, even people at Google that feel stuck. They're like, I can't do anything differently. This is just my life. I don't have any options. I have to do what I'm doing even though I'm miserable. And I know I can say this with authority because I was one of those people. Yeah, I know. It's very, very common at Google because we have all these high achievers that feel they have to exceed every expectation, deliver on whatever they're asked to do. And it turns out at Google, they can ask more of you to do than is actually physically possible. How do I know? Because I tried it. Two or three years of working 8am to midnight every day, including weekends, eventually has a cost, and I burned out pretty badly. The thing that really kept me stuck, though, was I had to earn a promotion and I had to do whatever my manager told me to do because that was how I was going to earn the promotion. And under those conditions, I didn't have any choices. I was like, well, I just have to do this. I have to do all the work. I have to keep pushing myself past all my boundaries of physical and mental health and for whatever reason, and I wish I'd understood why. When I actually did finally collapse and was in bed for a week, something changed for me. And I said, what if I didn't go after the promotion? What if I said no instead? And I went back. After I went back to work, I went to a manager, like, I'm not working that hard anymore. And my manager's like, you literally said

that to your manager?

I did. I said. And they're like, what do you mean? I said, I'm not working that hard anymore. I can't do that anymore. This is too much. Her response, naturally, was, if you can't handle the work, I'm going to find somebody that can. Okay? And, yeah, you're not getting that promotion because you're not meeting expectations. Understood. And that's what happened. She took away half my team, slashed my performance rating, and I had failed for the first time in my life in that kind of really explicit way where I had not met expectations. And I got my life back. Turned out working 40 hours a week instead of 80 or 90 or 100 hours a week is very different on that.

So when you, when you burned out, like, how long did it take you? Was that like a weekend where you're like, I got to do something different? Was it like a multiple week kind of span? What was your process?

Well, so I literally was in bed for a week. We had just pushed through. I pushed through Q4, gotten a Christmas break, and instead of going to sleep, I woke up on Christmas morning with 103 degree fever and was basically in bed for a week. I didn't have time, I didn't go see my family. It was like all the things I'd planned to do just didn't happen. And I'd been looking forward to that break for a long time. And instead I was just miserable. I'm like, basically I was like, what am I doing? And so, yeah, it was like one week in bed and then another week to work on my nerve. And then, yeah, my first one on one in January, I was like, yeah, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. And I had hoped, some part of me had hoped like, oh, my manager's going to be supportive. But no, I did not get that response. I didn't get fired. There was a risk of that too, but it was definitely a, you, we're going to take that. We're going to change the situation for you. And I genuinely think my manager was trying to help. She was like, if you are working too hard, I will take work away from you.

That makes sense.

It makes sense. She was trying to be supportive of what I had told her I wanted. And in the end it did work out because obviously our relationship at that point was a little bit fractured. Started looking around Google, and later that year is actually when I got the chief of staff job with the Search Ads team, which turned out to be one of the best jobs of my. Well, not one of the best job of my career in terms of influence, in terms of recognition, in terms of status. But part of the reason that job worked out so well for me is I had developed this amazing thing called boundaries. I was like, this is what I'm willing to do. This is what I'm not willing to do. I learned how to say no and really focus on what was most important. By focusing on the most important work. I was more effective, I was more impactful. So I'm still working around why I wrote the book. But that realization for myself was transformational. It was life changing. And since then I've transitioned to becoming an executive coach and I started leading other leaders through this of recognizing they do have a choice. They can say no. They can figure out what's important to them, what's meaningful to them and focus on that and it will lead to being more impactful and effective because they're putting their energy in places where they can have more impact. And after doing that for three or four years, I was like, I realized I was saying a lot of the same stories, a lot of the same principles to a lot of different people. Like, I wonder if I can put it into book four. So that's where the book came from.

And now it is available for all of us to get and have. And what a great story though. Like a comeback, right where you realized this doesn't have to be the way it is. Super similar to mine, by the way, but very different. But also similar in that I just took this break. You know, for me, I left. I left for three months, which was very fortunate, very privileged and kind of had to figure stuff out because I didn't know. I guess I didn't know about the boundaries role yet. I hadn't done any training either. And so I learned that as I kind of took that break, but did go back into another role. And very similar. Yeah, to you. Where it was the best job I had after that because I got. I was working for me on my terms and I didn't, I didn't go for the promotion. I kind of thought it'd be great, but I'm like, you know, no, like I'm okay. And I had to figure out what I was going to do and then I left after that. But yeah, we all have a choice. And what an important way to say that. And I also think a lot of times, especially high performers, high achievers like you and everyone that listening on Googlers and the world and everything and is that we don't we think we have to do what. And this is what I thought too is I thought I had to be on this prescription of what the world expected of me. My mom, my family, the achieving people in my world who were pretty accomplished. I felt the pressure and I felt like, well, why wouldn't I not do that? I can but it ended up. And I think a lot of people are in this predicament. I'm curious what you think where this idea of choicing this is like the existential part. I wanted to talk about where choicing is. We forget we have the choice. And to me, that's. That is sad and hard because we. We always have the choice. We have the choice to not do anything either. Right. Like, that's the choice we make, but it's the opposite.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's. I guess what I'll say is, like, it actually comes from a. I think it comes from a good place, it almost even a noble place. Like, if I can do something that could help somebody else, I should do it. Like, why wouldn't I do it? I can do it and I have the capability I should do it. The paradox of that for high achievers is they can do a lot of things and they get asked to do a lot of things, especially as they show they can do things. And that's where it gets really tricky because it's like, well, I can do that and I can do that, and each individual thing, I can do it. But in aggregate, how do you decide

what to put your energy in if you can do everything? I think this is a big dilemma.

That is exactly where I was going. That's the dilemma. It's like, how do I choose. How do I choose what to do? In the early part of our careers, it's easy. You just do what your manager tells you. Yeah. In school, you do what the teacher tells you to do. In your first part of your career, you do what your manager tells you to do. You just outsource that decision. And at a certain point in your career, 10 to 20 years in your career, you reach the point where it's like your manager's too busy to actually manage your work anymore. So it's up to you to manage it. And then you face this existential choice. How am I going to spend my time? And if your first principle is, I have to do, if I can do it, I should do it, and I have to keep everybody happy, boy, you're going to get to burnout very, very quickly. And that's what happens to a lot of my clients, because they're used to being able to satisfy everybody. That was me for first 15 years of my career. I kept everybody happy. I was able to do it. I could do it all, literally do it all, until I could. That was a sobering moment for me. I mean, I didn't realize it Until I was out of. In bed for a week. But, you know, a little bit slow.

Yeah. And I think we all have that point. I don't want to call it a breaking point, but it's like a point of reckoning, of knowing, okay, what got me here won't get me there. And it happens across the board in different years. And, you know, for everyone, it's different, but there, I think we all go through that in some way, and some of us can anticipate it and go with it and shift it, but I do think most of us, for the unfortunate part, we need to kind of so course correct. And it's. It can be a little too late. A little too little too late, like burning out or being in bed feeling physically sick because you cannot get up again for another day. And I know a lot of people like that. It's not the way we should be in the world. And, like, you know, I think for us, it's about how do we get more leaders on board to be aware of what to do differently and. And show up in ways that really, really serve them for boundaries. Right. So. So I want to hear a little bit more about what the book talks about. Like, how do we do this?

Yeah. There's one point I want to make quickly. It's like, you're like, oh, most of us are like that. And I actually think one of the challenges here is a lot of leaders are not. There are people, and I'm going to say most of them are white and most of them are male that feel perfectly comfortable saying, no, I don't want to do that. And we call them entitled because they feel entitled to control their own time. And instead of saying they shouldn't be entitled, I think I would like to flip it and say, why can't we all feel that way? But we can't, because whether you want to call it privilege, patriarchy, there's a lot of systems in place to say, like certain people, their job is to support others, and there's others that are designed to receive support. And there's a mismatch there that we have to be or I endeavor to be aware of. So I wanted to just acknowledge that it is not as easy to say no if you are a black woman than if you look like me.

Yeah, absolutely. Really good point.

You will experience more consequences. And that's actually something I mentioned in the book. I actually have privilege checks throughout the book. I'm like, okay, this is what worked for me. And I recognize this will not work for everybody. So let's talk about what's going to work for you. So the book first of all starts by like literally the first line of the book is, are you satisfied with your life? If you are, this book isn't for you. Keep doing what you're doing.

Go for it.

Yeah, yeah. You don't need this book. And if you're not, then it's like, okay, let's look at this. The first part of the book is. Well, the first chapter of the book is Aim. What is success for me? What do I want my life to look like? Because you can't get to someplace without actually knowing where, without having a way to navigate. So that's kind of step one, and then step two is notice how you're getting in your own way. So the way I ask it in the book is, how are you the problem? How are you holding yourself stuck? And that's why the first pause offering is so important. It's like, what are the experiences I've had that make me act this way? In my case, I have to keep everybody happy. I have to do what my manager says. I always have to get to the next level. Those are my rules. They're not laws of physics. They were all in my own head. That was what was keeping me stuck. That was the way I didn't think I had a choice. And. And as soon as I changed those rules, my whole life changed. So the next couple chapters are trying to identify these rules that are holding us in place that are not actually rules, but they're just self imposed constraints based on our often childhood experiences. And then after that, then we can start playing with the rules. And so that's the chapter called Experiment. Like normally I would do this. Let me try that. And that's where we start to say what would happen. Well, how would the world be different if I showed up this way instead of that one?

Yes. All the power to the experiments. I love that.

Yeah. And then from there, then I kind of address some common blockers and give some tips on how to stay on this path. But that's the outline of the book. And I know it works because that's what worked for me. It works for my clients and it's worked for a lot of the readers that have written back. It's like, I see now. Yeah. That question, how are you the problem? People who have read the book are like, I ask that of myself all the time.

Such a great, reflective question, like, how am I the problem? Even the way you phrase it is so objective. Right. Because it's not like, what did I do wrong? Or why am I a loser? Those are the thoughts, I think, that default sometimes. And then if I could just make it more objective and say, how am I the problem? It becomes this whole exploration that can be way more eye opening and not so criticizing and not so harsh upon ourselves.

And it's also empowering because if I mean, I think I say, how are you part of the problem? Because there's other things that are real. Yes, you're dealing with a boss that's not respecting your boundaries, or you're dealing with a jerk that's sexist or racist or whatever. Those are real constraints. So I'm not saying you're the whole problem in asking a question, but there is something. You're contributing. You're staying in this situation. You're reacting in certain ways. And that if you recognize the way in which you're contributing to the situation, that's what you have control over. You can change your own behavior. That's empowering because if you say, like, there's nothing I can do about I have to wait for my manager to change, all you can do is suffer and be miserable.

Actually, like, this whole, what's in your control? I know I've worked with clients who are just feeling that stuckness, and it's like, because their manager is incapable of doing things effectively. And so they just feel like, what am I? Why am I here spinning my wheels? So it's like, well, what else could you be doing? But I think about it like, well, what can you control? And then you can feel way more empowered and more motivated and inspired.

Right.

Like, that's a game changer.

Yeah. I mean, I've had a couple of clients who are like, well, my manager should be supportive of me and they should back me up and they should be looking after my career. And then they get really frustrated. The manager isn't doing that. Like, okay, you can let go of that belief that they're going to be on your side. I literally just got off the phone with another client like, that. I'm like, your manager's not on your side. You have evidence now stop. So do something.

You have a choice. Do something else. And so what would you say, like, for those of us who do have factors that are out of our control. Right. Laid off. Someone get laid off. Right. Like, manager is just incompetent. They shouldn't even be in that role. What do you. I know we should focus on what we can control, but in the meantime, how do we address these things that we just know are not working for us.

We recognize. I mean, I guess the thing is, one other point I make in the book is, yes, you have a choice, but sometimes it's not an easy choice. And I think that's the situation that we're talking about here. It's like, yeah, I have a manager that's ineffective or I just got laid off. Okay, I'm laid off now. Well, that means I'm not getting my salary anymore. That means my mortgage is going to be hard to pay. Oh, that's not a great choice. Do I let go of the house? Do I rush to find another job? Do I take a job that I don't really want because I got to pay my mortgage? Those are not easy choices. They have consequences. I mean, even my example from when I burned out was I had. There are consequences to me not working as much. I lost to fit. I lost my performance rating. It was not an easy choice. And I think people are like, oh, there must be an easy choice where everything works out in my favor. It's like, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying look at the actual choices available to you from wherever you are, and then make a choice. One of my common things. Every day you show up to work, you're making a choice. You could not show up to work. Well, then I lose my income. Yes, there would be consequences, and, yes, you would have to find another job. You have to find a way to lower your costs. Those are consequences. Yeah, but you're still making a choice when you show up to work, which

is empowering in itself, actually. Yeah, when we think of it like that. So what a good reminder. Powerful reminder that you always have a choice, even if it's hard. That counts. And it is in your control of how you choose to show up. So that's really, really powerful and empowering, I think, too. Anything else you want to add, Eric, in terms of tidbits or insights on, you know, how do we navigate right now in our times for, you know, it's a little uncertain and, you know, we're maybe not sure how to put those boundaries in place or set ourselves up for success. What do we do?

Yeah.

Not an easy question. I know. Sorry.

Yeah, I mean, it's not an easy question, but I guess I think first there's. Let's. Well, I'm on the pause cast. I'm going to say first we pause, we assess what's actually happening. We accept this is my present reality. This is the constraints I'm working Under this is what. This is my starting point. And we get honest about it. Because my example with the manager, that's not supportive. It's like until you accept the manager's not supportive, you are not working with the reality that you're in. So you really have to get clear. This is the reality. What would a third party observe here? If I was a scientist studying the situation, what are the observations? I could write down and be very objective about it. That's the first step. What's the situation we're facing? And then get clear on, as I said, where are we trying to go? And then it's like, okay, let's try to take some steps in that direction. And maybe they're not the right steps, but let's see what seems to move things in the right direction. And that could be in your career, it could be with your family. It's trying different things, trying different actions and reactions and responses to get to a new place.

The experiments, right?

Yep. That's the experiments.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, this has been such an engaging conversation and I know I could talk for hours with you on these kinds of things, but I know we'll try to wrap it up here. Where is folks, find more out about you, Eric, and is there anything else you'd like to share?

Yeah, I mean, people can find me. My coaching site is toomanytrees.com for those that are wondering about that. It doesn't mean I want to cut down trees, but it just. There's a saying that you can't see the forest for the trees. It's hard to see the big picture when you're down in the forest. And my job as a coach is to try to help people get out of the trees into the forest, see the big picture. And, yeah, that's the best place to find me. You can also find me on LinkedIn if you can spell my name. But the link to it, I think I'll ask Rachel to put in the show notes.

Info in the show notes. Yeah. So too many trees and your book link and everything. Where can we find your book on your site?

It's on Amazon. It's on bookshop. You can order it from your local library, probably. Yeah. Anywhere you can find books, you should be able to find them.

Yeah. Okay, so the book is you have a Choice by Eric Nerlik, and you can get it at the link we'll have in the show notes on Amazon as well. Eric, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your gifts and your talents and just so honored to have this conversation with you. I'm excited for more people to get unstuck.

Thanks, Rachel. I really appreciate what you're doing here with the pause cast. I think the power of pause is so amazing and underrated. We are so in a rush to go, go, go, do more, do more, do more. We don't stop to pause and assess what's actually happening. So I appreciate the work you're doing. Thank you for doing this.

Glad you paused today with me. Thank you.

Thanks.

Awesome.