Processing ALL Your Emotions

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman.

I wanted to come on today to just start dialogue, conversation, and connection for all of us, because when we're in uncertain times If we're listening to our thinking, we will start to convince ourselves that we're alone in this, and we will think what we're craving is certainty or structure or routine or answers or plans. We think our craving is all about something external, and our craving really is pretty simple. It's connection. And When I'm in a really aligned practice for myself, I am really managing three connections: connection with myself, connection with others, and connection with whatever you consider your higher power or or or God in your life. And when we start to panic or get fear, it's because we've disconnected from our authentic self, or we're disconnecting from others, or we're disconnecting from. source. Disconnection, separation, the illusion of being separate really is at the core of everything that, that brings us some suffering. So Tracy, I love this. Tracy is saying, you know, doesn't it feel great to have time? It was so much needed for so many of us. And I find people having said when I coach them, you know, sigh, I don't really have time for that, or I, you know, the thing people crave is the luxury of time. And yet when we got all this time. I heard people get into scarcity. They're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm stuck at home. It's like, well, no, you're safe at home and we have the luxury of time. Now, some people want to take that time and fill it up with more busyness. They want to replace the external busyness with internal busyness at home. And that's awesome if you get time and you feel inspired to curate your closet or to learn to play the guitar, or I'm working on learning Spanish That's awesome if you feel true inspiration. But I want you to check in if you feel like you replace a have-to with a have-to, if you replace a must with a must, if you are shaming and guilting yourself as much at home in these times that call for a lot of care and compassion. If you're just replicating what wasn't fulfilling on the outside with stuff that's not fulfilling inside your home and inside yourself. So we do have the luxury of time. And here's the, the, the, uh, the tidbit I want you to take away: we always have had the luxury of time. We've always had the luxury of time. Today you're being served because a lot of the things that just became second nature that you did on autopilot without question have been removed. And so now with this reset, you get to get intentional and make conscious choices. How are you gonna spend your time today? So Tracy, make sure and tell Caitlin hi and hug, hug all those babies. They aren't babies anymore. Becky's coming in with something I want to talk about because every one of us is going through this experience differently. My dear girlfriend Pam is home with 6-year-old twins who are having a virtual birthday today. Shout out to them. And a 10-year-old, and she's an employment attorney. So her business has skyrocketed, and almost within the first couple of days, the people she counted on the most were not really following good protocol, and they were going to many places. They weren't socially isolating. So she had to make the tough decision to really limit who comes into her home. And so, Becky, it's so good to see you on. Hi, Becky. and Becky's feeling like, I feel like I've lost even more time. And for many of us, we are wearing multiple hats. So for me, I feel like I've won the lottery, but I also have some survivor's guilt because, as my girlfriend Carson said, Sy, you're choosing to go through this isolated home as a monk, not a prisoner. But my kids are grown, we can FaceTime. I worry about them, but worrying's just a behavior. But I don't have the many hats to juggle like many of you do, figuring out how to lead teams virtually, figuring out how to work from home virtually, having kids home, homeschooling, having spouses or partners— for those of you that are in relationships— home. Bam! Like, a lot going on, plus just the extra consideration, like who had time to wash their groceries? Before? Who had time to figure out, like, you know, planning for 3 weeks of food for folks? Who, who really, you know, cooked this much, perhaps? So for many of you, this is our lesson. And for my healthcare workers out there who are literally living in tents on their yard not to infect their families, or in hotel rooms, or for those of you on the, the front line, our grocery clerks, our first responders, our delivery people, like, everybody's going through this differently. So I do I don't want to— I want to invite you to really suspend judgment because not only are we going through things differently, but every one of us has different triggers. Like, some people maybe are newly separated and they have a trigger of abandonment, and now they're isolated in place by themselves thinking, if I'm ever going to meet somebody, it's probably not going to be sitting at home in my living room. Like, Pure compassion is so important. Now, for those of you that feel like you've lost even more time, one of the techniques I'm hearing a lot about is get a routine and get structure. And what I'm hearing from a lot of people is that actually is adding more stress. One of my staff members is home a lot of times alone with 2 kids while working for us, while bringing you FaceTime lives. And she was sharing, she's like, you know what, I see I see other people online and they go make a lesson plan for your kids and have all this curriculum and homeschool and these programs and have activities set up for them while you do your work. And, and it's like that for some of you is going to be even more stressful. I believe in times like this, the place to start is to take everything you can away and go radically simple. I want you guys to radically simplify. Get up, brush your teeth. I think it's important. Wash your hands a lot during the day, but radically simplify. What are the do-or-die things that need to happen today? Start there. And for me, that radical simplification— I have said no to so many invitations to come on other people's podcasts, to jump in really quick, to put out a daily briefing for all of you guys, to share all the updates. I Just went right down to— for the whole first week, like, what do I need to do today to settle in? So radical simplification is what I want you to focus on. And then, unless structure and routine and a hefty schedule is really important to you and it helps, I want you to notice your energy. What do you try after radical simplification, after you're down to the bare minimum? I'm talking about if you have kids, I would take all the clothes except for like 3 outfits out of their possession so that they aren't like going through a million sets of clothes. I would keep things so simple right now and really get to that place where you've stripped away anything. And then as you try things, I want you to notice your energy because so much of this time for us is managing our energy and our emotions. Not managing our day or managing our kids. So after radical simplification, I want you then to really look at what helps. Now I'm gonna tell you what I do. I have a few things in my day because it's my time to connect with people. So I'm here on my own, haven't really been in the physical presence of somebody now for 3 weeks. As an introvert, I kind of like it. But there's 2 women in my neighborhood that we socially distance, but we go for a walk together every day. So that's the only thing I schedule is 11 o'clock. I know that's when we can go for a walk together. The other thing that I do is I put not commitments, not a list of to-dos— that feels like I have to— I put dedications down. I call them that, things I want to dedicate energy to just for today. And so that energy I dedicate, for me, if I look at my list today, I have down meditation, and I do it twice a day. I don't care about what time, I just check it. I have vitamins, medicine. Okay, I have walk on the beach, yoga practice, and I have a couple of projects I need to tend to today. This is one. I have some legal things I need to tend to for our business. I have, um, a couple of things I owe my staff, and I don't schedule them in. I just Dedicate. So if you're homeschooling a child, just put outdoor time. If you put, I will teach my children how to throw a baseball correctly, you have just added expectations, attachment to outcome, and you have added disappointment. I guarantee you by the end of the day you will have failed this thing. I want you to just put down dedications, and every day I just lay out things that I want to dedicate time to today. A big one for me is learning Spanish. I'm also super into some great books and poetry right now. David Whyte's poetry is so healing. If you haven't discovered David Whyte, he has some amazing things. Pema Chödrön has some amazing books on tape. Glennon Doyle's Untamed just came out. It's phenomenal. It talks to us about all the ways we've been domesticated and how to get very disobedient. These are all things that feed me. So here's what happens for me. I know what to do to make myself feel better, but I can't recall it in the moment. Even me, I start to get anxious. I go down the wormhole of Instagram leads me to NBC News leads me to how many deaths there have been in Nebraska leads me to thinking about all my incredible friends at Nebraska Med and CHI and crazy innovative work that they're doing. And then all of a sudden I'm super anxious and the time is clicking by and it's not good for me. So I don't have to think right away what to do. I just check my list and I look at my options. It's like pulling something out of the cookie jar and I just go, what could I dedicate myself to that would be self-care, not self-soothing. There's a big difference. Self-soothing leads us into anxiety or numbing. Numbing is just putting off anxiety. It's just procrastinating anxiety. What is self-care? What is something I could do that's a habit of discipline and dedication? I look down at it and it's like, oh, yoga practice. And then my mind jumps in, it's like, that would take a whole hour. And it's like 15 minutes. Downward Dog right now has yoga practices all for free and until May 1st. And you just go there and you can pick 10 minutes, you can pick— if you're a beginner, you can pick what music you want, what instructor. It is a re-reminding of me when I need to center. I just go, wait a minute, what do I want to dedicate myself to? And then at the end of the day, if I simply have some check marks on here I know I've done some really good things in my life. And don't forget to make sure it's body, mind, and spirit, and that you're connecting in with yourself, whether it's meditation or a walk. You're doing something for your body, um, and you're definitely doing something for your mind. Now, connection is what we're all craving, and so I just want to really make sure you guys really focused on connection. And 30 years ago, I went to a retreat with Sister Jose Habde, and I think that the nation she belonged to was Cherokee. I'm not sure, it's been so many years ago. Crazy enough, I remember so much of what she taught me. In her tradition, she believes that your spirit leaves your body when you sleep And it goes out to visit all other spirits in a very blissful way. And when you wake up, you need to pause in bed and basically hum your spirit home, like sing your spirit home. And it's a practice. When you wake up, just take 2 minutes. 2 minutes. For me, I just lay there and I literally hum my spirit home. And there's no way you can get up with a smile not on your face when you started out singing, right? And then she taught me a 3-step prayer that I like to start with. It just sets intentions. So as you get out of bed, the first step— being mindful and intentional— the first step is stepping into yourself, your relationship with yourself, your connection with yourself. One step, 2 seconds. Just step in and just remarkable— notice how remarkable you are and make a commitment to yourself to be kind and compassionate and your own best friend today. And know you're gonna screw up so much today, be entertained by it. It is— this is all new. The second step is into step with connection and relationship with others. So make sure that as you step forward that you're setting intentions that I will value the people over the task. I will value the person over the deadline. I will get vulnerable. If I've got kids, you may see them pop in right now, and I'm just gonna say, let me introduce you to somebody who evidently needs a little bit more love right now. Love wins. I've been wearing this shirt like almost every day, you guys. Tend to the people first. Set some intentions. If you have argued with somebody, go back, take some time with that, and just confess that you're scared Pardon my language, shitless. And that part of the way you deal with fear is anger. And part of what you do is you find the person you trust most who won't leave you, and then you get angry with them. So go back to them and let them know— thank them for being the person you trust the most, and thank you for being the receiving end of that. And apologize and make amends and commit to evolve together, right? And And then the 3rd step is step into the mystery, that relationship with the unknown, that faith that you have. And notice that step. That's a big one. It feels like you're stepping off. But what I'm here to tell you, if you evolve during this pandemic in any way— and I could choose it for you— I want you to cultivate This adult skill most of us don't have, which is the willingness to form a relationship, a love affair with uncertainty, without having to name something too soon, without having to know what it is, without having to be like, oh, I can plan my way through this. In those little glimpses, if you can stay curious just one minute longer, if you can just be open to all the things we don't know, It's important. And so connection and that 3-step prayer is, is amazing. Kimberly says that what has been powerful for her is how leaving the present moment makes you anxious. And language is so important. Language is everything. And I might be going a little, you know, crazy where, you know, Tom Hanks had the The, the ball Wilson, because I have had to use language and talk out loud to myself when I get anxious. I actually have to use the word sigh. For now, all of your kids are fine. Well, I don't know when I'm gonna leave, and now they just shut down the borders for 30 days, and I get all up like, oh my gosh, what if I can't serve my clients? And I have to go, for today, everyone is served. For right now, I have everything I need. And I just have to keep saying today and now and in this moment. Really start to use those things to calm people down. You cannot promise your children and your loved ones the future will be okay. This will all turn out okay. You guys, we can be okay with how it turns out, but I don't know that this will turn out Okay, for some of us because I just I heard this morning someone I love dearly is in ICU with the virus, and you know it that's not okay with me. It's not. I can't pretend to you that that didn't bring tears to me. That thinking of all my healthcare peeps out there, you know, doing what they can, it's not okay. And when we get into the future and we promise people it's gonna be okay, they know we are lying. Because there's no way we can do that. What we can promise is right now we're okay. 10 minutes later, dang, we still got this. And it's that centering that will be calming for the people around you. If you're leaders, for your team, let's look at today. Now some people say, but don't we need to plan? I do think that you need to set intentions and some conscious dedications. But the minute you are really planning and scheduling, you're setting yourself up for disappointment because you're attaching expectations and connection to that outcome, and you're doomed before you start. The other thing I worry about when we use our knowing to just muscle our way through this thing as if it's temporary— our knowing will keep us from knowing what we could be learning. We've got to get back in beginner's mind. I've been radically simplifying to the point where I now have a window of looking at what I want to add back into my life. It's kind of like when you detox your diet and you go off everything, and then you start to add things back in, and you get to experience how that feels, and you get to make an intentional choice about what you can do with that. Mm-hmm. And it's so important for you to not put that on your schedule. And I just want you to do the most simple thing of all: notice. If you do nothing else during a day, if you scream at your dog, just notice. You don't have to fix it yet. Just notice. And when you notice something, notice what triggered you, what you're feeling, where you're going with this. And notice And follow that up with compassion, that this isn't about you being a flawed human being. This is something you can notice and have compassion and just know that that is something, for whatever reason in this lifetime, your spirit, um, gets to work through. And the only way you're going to work through it is apply major amounts of love to that wound. The only way you're going to do this. And while I'm on the topic of feelings, I really want you guys to to notice that we're having a lot of feelings that are related to the change or disruption in our reliance on the illusion of certainty. Like, a lot of people are like, Sai, you don't understand, I went from knowing what my life would be to not knowing anything. And I want you to just entertain the thought that, that knowing what your life was going to be every day was just an illusion. How do we know that? Look at today. You didn't know. You just had the illusion of knowing. And this is giving you the opportunity to practice in your relationship, which sometimes is a love-hate relationship with uncertainty, so that you can get more skilled, so you can get better at it. But I want to tell you that a lot of the feelings that you have coming up have nothing to do— well, they have something to do with the pandemic, but they aren't about the, the the perceived danger at hand. They are feelings that you have been numbing and covering up with busyness, serving others, all the have-tos in your life, all the I don't have time, all of the activity, all of the doing everything you can to numb, to self-soothe, all the things that are chaos that you take vacations of and then come back to with all these commitments that you don't live up to. Like A lot of what you're feeling right now and unpacking is because of the quiet in your life, if you have some of that. And I want you to, if you can, dedicate yourself to some solitude every day, some quiet. And I've had little kids. Sometimes that quiet is in the bathroom with little fingers coming under the door trying to get to you. Like, I Get it. But curate your life in a way that you get up even a half hour earlier. Solitude is amazing. I don't know if you've ever had this experience. When I had little, little kids, I would— we would take them all to church and we'd be sitting up in the front en masse. And I thought like I was having some major mental health struggles because the minute it would get quiet, the tears would just start coming for me. And it wasn't that I had big stuff going on. It was that in all my busyness, I hadn't allowed my body to just release the tension. And I really believe that feelings need to be breathed into. They have a right to live. You just don't want your feelings to become your thinking, right? Because when our thinking is our feelings, that's where the other anxiety comes from. But for a lot of you, it is time to journal. If you're not a journaler, Just voice memo and Siri transcribe. Like, look at what's there that you haven't looked at. About 6 months ago during Dry October, Alex and I— I hope I'm not outing Alex— in solidarity with, um, Anna, who gave birth to beautiful little Archie, um, into this mess. He was born, I think, February 27th. I can't remember. But, um, we decided to stop drinking, and we were just gonna do it till October. And then all of a sudden I realized, as I got what they call sober curious— if you're at all interested in this, look up sober curious on like Instagram. Even if you are still consuming alcohol, there's this whole movement, mostly women out there, that are blowing my mind with really great ways to to understand how your mind works and how the world works and give you great techniques. But we stopped consuming alcohol, and I realized that how I was numbing a lot of things and how it was alcohol that helped me tolerate some things in my life that weren't tolerable to me. That I, as long as I just drank a couple of glasses of wine on the plane at night, I could numb and procrastinate. And all of a sudden I decided I wanted to be wide awake for this. And so it's been 6 months, and as the pandemic hit, I'm in Mexico on my own and I have a cabinet full of margarita stuff, and I'm like, this could be a blast. And I made the conscious decision, I want to be wide awake for this. I want to get what I came for. I want to, for me, go deep in this. And that's not without expectation, but great expectancy. Kurt, I'm gonna put you up. So one of the things Kurt has learned is trusting that staff will do the right thing. How many of you have realized how overmanaged you have— your staff has been? How fear has driven your behavior rather than love and trust? How we've stifled the incredible blossoming of our employees? And I just saw in this— oh my gosh, in this whole thing happening where it's like my team saw like business go from, you know, we're gonna have a record-breaking year to we are not gonna have any year, to their boss being stranded, to them going home with kids, to some of my staff having just had a brand new baby, to— but my reality-based dream team, one, we've been doing online learning forever. It's not new to us. We've been trying to get you guys to adopt things like this for a long, long time, and I'm so grateful that now people have been forced into getting those skills. But it's like they have pivoted on a dime. They have supported each other. They have supported me. It's really amazing how you can realize that life can get effortless, not when you dump on other people, but when you allow other people to really blossom and So much of what you do is rework or diminishing work where you step in with some control. And I don't think any of us has seen the potentiality of the humans that we work with. And if you don't believe that, I'll give you permission for a few minutes to turn on the news and just watch, you know, the people on the front lines right now. So, Kurt, I love that you're thinking about trusting your staff. Oh, I love this, Crystal, is that she doesn't need to live her life like she's on fire. So many of us have things to tend to, and yet we take what we have to tend to and we add on frenzy and busyness and craziness And it's what we add on that brings our stress, not actually what we're called to do in a day. And it's so important. As I worked in healthcare, I would see nurses, they would be like, it's crazy. Now, this was long before they really have some crazy situations going on. And I would say, is it busy because we're at full census, or is it crazy? And they'd had some of my training, and they were like, Sai, I know what you would say. You would say it's busy. Mm-hmm. And I would say, yeah, that's our reality. We're at 98% capacity. Is— where'd the crazy come from? And people would be like, I added that. And I'm like, is it helpful? There's 2 ways to go through what you have put on your dedication list today to tend to. There's 2 ways to go through that— joy or misery, your choice. And that choice isn't involved what you have to do. It involves the the way in which you perceive you need to move through it. And, you know, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught us Transcendental Meditation, said as you move into higher levels of consciousness, you will find that your work at hand gets more and more effortless. And it's not that suddenly you have superpowers, but it's that you can move through the world more effortlessly The same task, instead of feeling like you're swimming through mud, feels like you're just walking through air. Same task. But what it has to do is when we're moving through the world with higher levels of consciousness, we have dropped the, the story. We are seeing reality more for what it really is. We're seeing it toggled up from this whole different level. Oh my gosh, I love this Becky's insight is that her work life isn't as important as we have made it. Let that one sink in. How many times have we traded the transactional, where we can feel useful in the world, with the transformational, where we can be who we're meant to be in the world? And this is a big one for me. I grew up in a family, 6 brothers and sisters, Some of my relatives are online. You can attest that you got rewarded first for what you did. My dad loved you getting crap done, and especially the crap he told you to get done, and getting it done right. He would inspect it. But for me growing up, it was like I got to be the girl who kept the peace and the girl who kept all the owly figures kind of in check and who was the good girl. And I really learned to believe that the reason I was loved was for how good I was, how little trouble I caused, for how little I needed from other people. Like, in my family, adding one more thing on that I need was like— I was the 6th of 7 kids. But I also learned a lot too, that, that I was loved for what I did. And I, I had to really work on that in my career when my career really took off and you guys started like returning the love is when I just stopped worrying about what I did or how many followers I have and just started focusing on loving others and being approachable and trying to bring you what's in my heart. And it still is my go-to position where it's like, who are you, Cy? And I start with all my identified roles. I'm an author, I'm and I'm a speaker and I'm a founder and I'm a business owner. All of those identities in a time like this really fall away. And what you're left with is, who are you? And who I am is somebody keenly interested in making people sure about one thing: that they're loved and that together we got this. Like, we don't have to know what to do We need to be connected enough to enough incredible souls because together we'll know what to do. It's the ego that says, I know how to get through this and I'm gonna hunker down. That's all ego. Resilience is not about being creative or being innovative on your own or being a MacGyver or being smarter than the rest of us or having more resilience. God forbid you guys try and get through this on own power. In our research, we found the most resilient people are the people that had the largest network of positive relationships. So if you want to curate something in your life, curate your relationships while you're in this pandemic. Figure out what that inner circle really needs to look like for you and what builds your energy up and what depletes your energy, right? Look at the 10 courageous decisions you haven't been making in your life. And you don't have to make them now. You're vulnerable. Make a list of them. We'll get back to that later. But really, the resilient people are the ones who had that network of positive relationships. And positive relationships aren't just that people owe you, it's that they live a life that they're also a seeker and a screwer-upper. Like, they're vulnerable and willing to be vulnerable around you and not armored up, as Brené Brown talks about. But not only that, you have this cool network of positive relationships. The second part of the most resilient people are the ones that ask for help most often. You know, I'm taking this time— I already was in the process of writing a personal book called Life's Messy, Live Happy. And so I'm really hunkered down here working with Maren Shakir, who's my like-minded editor. She takes All my crazy thoughts and puts it into a fabulous book you can read that sounds just like me because she's a genius. But one of the, the things I was reminded of as I'm looking at stories from my life so that I can tell you how I learned what I learned, I was reminded of a story where I was at a retreat and we had been spoiled. We're at this luscious place, we got all this scrumptious food. It was like 5-star organic, like unbelievable. I'm kind of a foodie. I was having a blast. And I showed up for breakfast expecting this incredible breakfast, all these fresh berries and stuff, and all I got on my plate was a little note that said, there'll be no breakfast today. Write down your thoughts and process those. Process how you react when your expectations aren't met. And I'm like, oh, okay, I got this. I have more stamina than anybody I know. I processed the emotions, aced the test, got through the assignment. I get it. I got the lesson. Showed up for lunch starving. No lunch. Showed up for dinner starving. No dinner. And then my ego kicked in. I'm like, hey, game on, boyfriends and girlfriends. I win at this stuff. I can outlast you. I will be the last girl standing here. And boy, did my ego come playing hard. I was self-righteous. I lost all compassion for other whiners who— people go without food for a long time. This is one day. I became a horrendously ego-driven person, and I just was watching the movie. Day 2, we still got no food. Then we were loaded on the bus. And they're like, I'm thinking they're gonna take us out to end this retreat with this fantastic dinner, sunset on the beach. No, they dropped us off in a place and we got 2 questions. All we could do, we couldn't talk. They dropped us off amidst a bunch of strangers and we could ask them, may I join you? And would you feed me? That was it. And you know what I learned when I finally got the courage up to quit trying to do it myself? I tried myself. One guy threw birdseed out. He's feeding the pigeons. And after he left, I picked up some of the birdseed. I'm like, I can get through this as a scrounger scavenger. I finally went up and I asked, may I join you? And I sat down with some women that were in hijabs. I'm like, they're my safest bet here in this world of strangers. They're like these kind women who are gathered together and their kids are playing. And I said, will you feed me? And I was given a feast of hummus and pita bread and some turmeric dish I'd never even heard of and shawarma. And it was like all my favorite food, all my favorite food was there just for the asking. And what I learned is the universe is so kind. You will always get what you need unless you forget to reach out and ask. So the most resilient people are the ones that are curating their network towards positivity, towards seekers. This pandemic will separate us out even more, and, and this separation I want you to use to your favor of the seekers and the complainers. And I want you to get really pure about not isolating your compassion from other people, but your inner circle. I want you to get really intentional about that inner circle, because if you feel like you can't get vulnerable and ask for help, if you can't lose it and they're just like, girl, you're having a human moment, then you got the wrong people in your inner circle. And so I just look forward to you guys doing that. And the lesson in this is really understanding How much of your activities, even at work, you have identified too much with, you've attached too much. Becky, I love, love, love, love that insight. I'll get to this one because this is from somebody on my team, so I have different advice for them. Alex's anxiousness is he's not being productive enough. And I want to joke and say, as his boss, you're not being productive enough, right? But you are, because you have to question what is productive. I have so many people write me and they're like, how do I keep my teams productive? And my answer is change your view of what productivity looks like. Because productive is, you know, did you write 10 pages today? Sigh. The other side of productive, when those 10 pages come effortlessly, is when I've been productive where I've stayed curious one moment longer, where I have been willing to watch my life completely fall apart and stay in that moment, that the kernel of what's being born is in that moment. And it's a future that I can't see yet, and I just need to have patience. The most productive moments are the harvest of a lot of intentional work that doesn't look like work. And so for my team, I really resisted the urge to say, let's pivot immediately. We did want to immediately take care of our clients because they were struggling to make a lot of changes. We wanted to tend to our people, but I didn't do like, let's drive forward. And in fact, I kind of got into a tussle with a guy on a webinar. So we're both speakers And his whole message in this mastermind group that I jumped on to see if there's some things I might not be thinking of and I should be doing for my business and my team. So I jumped on, and his whole thing is, my team, they have not lost a beat. We got everything set up at home and we are thriving in this change and we are driving forward and we will not miss one moment. We will do everything we were doing but virtual. And we'll be coming up with new programs and we'll be pushing those out and we will be continuing to sell. And everything in me felt like that didn't apply for me and my team. I'm like, you know, we can work so hard to have impact that we lose the magic of being impacted I'm not talking traumatized, but impacted by what's going on. And it's just like when people travel. I traveled with a woman, and when we got there, she started unpacking, and she was like— I'm like, what's that? She's like, it's hot chocolate. I have this hot chocolate I love every morning, and we're gonna be here for 2 weeks, so I brought 14 packets, and I'm glad to share if you want. And I'm like, what's that? And she's like, well, I didn't know if I could find the allergy medicine I like, and so I brought that. And I go, do you have allergies? And she goes, no, but I could. And as she unpacked, she brought everything with her so that she wouldn't have really— she could not be impacted by anything we would. She had something for everything. And if you travel that way and it brings you calmness, God love you. What I noticed for me is that when I travel, a whole lot of going into a whole new world is is because I want to be changed by that experience. And if I'm focusing on not being impacted, if I'm focusing on kind of driving my way through an experience and just recreating everything we've always done but harder, different, faster, virtually, at home, decentralized— whatever that is doesn't bring new value to me and my team. I wanted to the first week take care of the emergencies and just everybody settle in, love your people. Alex had the brand new baby. What being productive is? Holding that baby, letting that baby know for certain you are loved in the world. And we are so excited to see what wisdom you bring, um, from your last life to this one. Like, cannot wait to watch as he moves through the world awake. Like Let's just take care of each other. Let's recenter. I didn't come out right away with a lot of advice because you already had the practices, you know how to use them. I came out slowly because it's just my way of saying I need to let this soak in a little bit. I am so willing to not know and to just allow myself to be impacted by this experience. May my definition of productivity change. May my relationship with uncertainty change. May my habits and dedications change. I want to say, and I don't mean this to sound insensitive because many things can be true, we can be suffering and rejoicing at the same time, but don't waste a good pandemic. Don't waste a good timeout. Don't waste— do not move through this thriving and driving so much so that you aren't changed by this experience. Just like in travel, I like to be changed by the experience. If I don't bring my favorite hot chocolate with me, I may discover chai on the street. And by the way, you can consume street things and not die. Maybe that goes back to growing up in a big family, but I want to have a healthy tension. I think where our enlightenment meets the world is when we have a healthy intention by bringing forth what we can to help while allowing ourselves to be helped and changed. I think that's where the messiness is, and that's what I'm writing the book about, because I can go away by the water and get enlightened in many ways, get re-reminded of what I knew, or learn a message only deeper. But unless I go back out into the world, into the messiness, do I actually get to be vulnerable and screw it up and re-remember and understand that this isn't a test you can pass? And I like passing tests. Life isn't like that. Life is what happens on the edge between your intentions and the world that's constantly changing you. And it really is that relationship with uncertainty. And so if you're feeling stressed by a thought, I should be more productive, work that thought one direction is I shouldn't be more productive. Another thought is working it to reframe what does productivity actually mean, because Some of my most productive times have been sitting on my butt in chair, not writing. Why is it productive? Because my discipline—if I show up every day willing—I'll actually be in the chair when the muse passes by and be an open vessel to connect with that. So those moments of furious writing where I just feel inspired, I didn't manufacture those. I did what I could in that lack of productivity to. Show up and allow those. Jillian, I adore you, out of Boulder, Colorado. And she says that she feels inspired to discover what could be next without attachment. Practice being in that place. I'm kind of in a place, and you guys will learn more about that, where like every part of my life has completely fallen away, like completely. And I am girl walking on beach with Like, not much going on today and no idea what the future holds, but I'm so excited to see it unfold. It's coming time to close. Really want your feedback on what was helpful, and I love you guys. I can't— I get all verklempt thinking about how much I love you guys. You know, there are so much— so many situations where we got nothing in healthcare. There's so many times I know these people are out there They got nothing, but we always have big love, and big love is always something. If you got nothing to give to a situation, you got no answers, you got no certainty. Some of you don't have PPE. Like, I get it can suck. And while you're embracing the suck, when you got nothing, respond with love. That's— that we got big love.

This is the No Ego Podcast. Where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your workplace. I'm Sai Wakeman.