E56 Stop People-Pleasing, Get Fear-Optimized, and Finally Set the Boundary You Have Been Avoiding, with Amy Greensmith

Speaker A: I have a treat for you today. Amy Green Smith is with me. Uh, she is amazing. She's an award winning executive leadership coach. She's a master hypnotherapist, a keynote speaker. She's an all around wonderful woman. She helps high achieving women and corporate leaders reclaim their self worth and set powerful boundaries. All doing it while they're communicating with confidence. And what I love about Amy is that she doesn't teach women just to become louder, harsher, or more like someone else in order to be heard. She helps women speak up without bulldozing, set boundaries without guilt, and stop outsourcing their worth to everybody else's approval. Basically, she helps us retire from the unpaid job of keeping everybody else comfortable. And let's be honest, some of us have been working overtime in that area. In today's conversation, we're talking about people pleasing, burnout, fear, self worth, and what it really looks like to use your voice at work and at home. Amy brings a perfect mix of wisdom, humor, truth and practical tools for women who look successful on the outside, but are quietly wondering why everything feels so heavy. I am excited to have you meet Amy. So let's get started. Welcome to the Lead with Spark podcast, the show where real women lead with authenticity, show up with presence, and live out their purpose. I'm Lindsey Moulder, speaker, C suite executive family gal, travel junkie, and a firm believer that your leadership starts from within. Around here, we go beyond the flower. We talk about the real stuff no one teaches you in leadership training. Your values, your superpower, strengths, boundaries to stop burnout, and how to quit being the chaos coordinator of your own life. Whether you're building a business, leading a team, or just trying to stop feeling stuck in the daily grind, this is your space to get clear, get aligned, and finally lead with confidence. So, so let's cut the noise and reconnect with the spark that makes you you. Let's go get our spark on Amy. I am so excited for this conversation because I think there are so many women out there that are listening, that are really going to hear themselves in the conversation. We know that they're successful, they're capable, they're high performing women, and they're leading teams while they're managing their families, building their careers, and taking care of every single thing, uh, around them. Sometimes exhaustion comes in along the way. I mean, you know, we might know a person or two like that and so saying yes becomes that default setting. That's just our society. And honestly, default settings are great for printers and our computers, but not for people. So, um, I love that you are here to talk about this topic. I know it is so important. You and I have had an opportunity to chat. I know some of your tools and the amazing things that you're doing, but I would love for you just to share a little bit with our audience about you, the work that you're doing, and why it's so important.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, so, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to hang out. And so I am a corporate communication coach, and I've been working in the personal development space for, gosh, probably about 20 years now. And really what I help people do is pick up for themselves without being a dick about it. I think a lot of times we think that if we are assertive, if we are powerfully communicating, then we have to be extremely masculine. We kind of have to bulldoze. So we look at it in this duality of I'm either a total doormat or I am sort of the Devil wears Prada, you know, this bulldozer. And I think there's a lot that we're missing there. So my work kind of falls into two major camps. The internal component of believing in your intrinsic worthiness and that you are inherently enough as is. And then the external component of, if I do believe that I matter, that I have value, how then do I communicate that with the outside world? So what. What is the anatomy of a boundary? What. How do you approach a difficult conversation? Ah. How do you say no without being riddled with guilt? And, um, so it's really interesting to kind of dance around this topic of people pleasing, because I do find that a lot of the women that I work with who are extremely high achievers, they're in leadership positions, they don't naturally say, I am a people pleaser. So I think this will be a good conversation to kind of.

Speaker A: Yeah, they might. Might not even realize it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I actually had a conversation with my best friend about it, who I know you've had your bestie on the show. And, uh, so my bestie was telling me. She's like, I don't hear myself in that nomenclature. And so one of my favorite things to do is when somebody says, oh, I don't think I'm a people pleaser. I'll say, well, are you heavily invested in the opinions of other people? And they're like, oh, yeah, absolutely. And I'm like, well, then, welcome to People Please. That's exactly what it is, that we have this connotation of someone who's maybe meek, mild, maybe not in positions of authority, but you can be a, uh, people pleaser and be extremely successful, uh, and in positions of authority and also quite gregarious, loud, outspoken, extroverted. So I think there's a lot to kind of unpack in sort of the holes, the pigeonholes that we put people into.

Speaker A: Yeah, I. And when we were, when we did our prep call, there were so many places that I wanted to take this conversation. I actually was looking back going, man, I wish we would have recorded that because we could have just played it.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: But around people pleasing specifically, you talked about the difference between people pleasing to outsource and then your self worth from a, uh, self preservation perspective. So can you kind of unpack the difference just so we get a baseline for people to understand?

Speaker B: Sure. So I think a lot of times in the personal development space, we have these different terms that get branded as, as bad. One is perfectionism. One is people pleasing. And we think, okay, we need to eradicate that in order to stand in our power. But there's a very real place for perfectionism. If I'm going in for brain surgery, you better hope to all help. That person is a perfectionist. There's. It's warranted. And people pleasing is the same. So if you look at our, our, uh, primitive ancestors, the people pleasing, the modern iteration of our fawn response is people pleasing. So if we think about fight, flight, flee, there's also fawn, and they all have modern iterations. So if we think about primitive ancestors and if they were about to be attacked by a lion, we know what that looks like. To fight, to flee, to freeze. But to fawn would be to placate would be to acquiesce to an aggressor, to an a captor, so to say to that mountain lion, hey, here kitty, kitty, kitty. Here's some food. Go over here. And I think most women know what that's like to placate a man in a situation where, you know, maybe in our youth, this hasn't happened for me in decades. But being hit on in a situation where actually being really polite and kind might literally keep you physically safe. So there is a way in which people pleasing is a mechanism for self preservation. There's also a flip side of that, however, when we people please in order to garner our own self worth, as in, I need this person to approve of me in order to have self esteem in order to value who I am. And those are two very different things. But when we're talking about corporate arenas, uh, usually it's conflated. Usually it's a little bit of a hybrid because on one hand, you might need the board to approve of you because you need to stay on the board, or you need funding, or you need something that is directly tied to your financial house. And you might also feel like if you fail, you aren't valuable. You aren't enough. You are an imposter. So there's usually, uh, a place for us to unpack. Am I heavily invested because my livelihood depends on it, or because my safety has something to do with it? Or is it, I don't feel valuable unless this person approves of me?

Speaker A: Yeah, I can personally think of many different situations where I've been in both of those camps. Right. Huh. How does someone tell the difference between, hey, I am, um, I'm choosing this strategically, or I'm actually betraying myself to keep somebody else comfortable. And. And then as soon as you can identify that, what should we be doing?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. So the first, first component is just to simply ask that question of, uh, am I attached to this person's opinion out of self preservation or out of self worth? So just looking at or out of both, is it both things? Um, sometimes it is. Very, very commonly I see this with women in executive positions where the problems that they're having with their co parts are because they remind them of somebody from their childhood or a primary caregiver or a teacher. And so we have this new trauma that kicks up the old trauma. So a lot of times we'll be looking at, ooh, maybe I can please this person as another opportunity because of how I tried to glean that approval from my parent, let's say. So the first question is just to just get curious about that with yourself and to know that, again, we are wired for connection. There was no tribe of one. We had to depend on one another. So it is wired into us to want approval from other people. So there's nothing wrong with you. However, if it is impeding your happiness or your fulfillment, meaning I can't see myself as valuable unless this person approves of me. Now, your worthiness is contingent on somebody else. It's external, and that's an indication. Okay, I need to do a little bit of this work. So I think, what do we do with that? My goodness, how much time do you have? Right. Like, there's so many steps that we can take, but I think a really practical one that ties to speaking up is to ask yourself, who do I chronically complain about And I'm not talking about just simply venting and having a tough day. But most of the time there's an opportunity for us to speak up or advocate for ourselves around somebody that we commonly chronically complain about. And we're usually vocal about it, but we're vocal to the wrong party.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we're pissed at somebody at work and it's our partner who gets the earful. Now if it's just a one off vent, whatever, but if we look at people pleasing, it is directly antithetical to speaking up. Right. We don't speak up because we're so invested in that other person's opinion. So if we are chronically complaining about someone about a grievance that they've had or a grievance you have with them, usually there's an opportunity for a boundary and to grapple with some people pleasing right there. So just take an inventory. Is there anyone that I am habitually complaining about who A, would have no idea I'm complaining about it, or B, to the degree with which I am so upset sometimes people go like, oh yeah, Lindsay doesn't love it that much, but we don't know it's a deal breaker that you might quit.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So. And that the communication thing, so that can start to unpack a little bit. Where might I be people pleasing so much that it's costing me my peace? I'm angry, upset, and that's key that

Speaker A: you just mentioned right now because a lot of people will say, well, I don't complain about others or I'm not know, sharing with my partner, but it's consuming their mind. You're actually complaining to yourself. You can't sleep at night, you're waking up at 3 o' clock in the morning, you get up early with anxiety about having to be in the same room with that pe. That specific person. And so you're in this position where you're going, I wish I would have spoken up or how am I going to speak up? And even thinking about the how gives you that gut ache in the bottom of your stomach that you don't want to move forward with. I want people to realize that it's the consuming piece, whether it's in your conversation with other people or it's just even in your thoughts on what, what do I worry about happening? That's where the work, I think, has to start. When you think about people pleasing, that

Speaker B: is such a great point. I'm really glad you brought that up because I think we have, uh, a degree of entry points and One entry point is emotions, how we are feeling. So if you are noticing a perseveration, constantly thinking about what you should have said, getting really frustrated, getting really angry, but you're stuffing it down and you're just allowing it to run rampant in your mind. That is you suffering. Right?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah.

Speaker B: We have other entry points of behavior. You watch yourself, try to say like, oh no, nothing to see here. We're shutting things down. Or we're turning to a substance. You know what, I just need some cake. You know what I need? I just need some drinks. You know what I need? I just even sometimes what I call noble numbing. Where you. I just need to go for a run. But you're not really processing what needs to change. You're. We're trying to quell emotional feelings with physical feelings. That emotional feeling of discomfort with some kind of physical, um, way to assuage which because we conflate those in our culture. But I love that you, I love that you pointed that out because sometimes it might not be external. It might be that internal rumination that's happening.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think this conversation helps because for women it also takes the shame out of it because we know women a lot of times will get in their career and they're like, wait a minute, what's wrong with me? Why can't I just say no? Why can't I just speak up? Why do I feel guilty about using my voice? But it's really like this whole system of things that's happened behind us. So how, how does uh, the way that a woman was raised or socialized or anything else contribute to that People pleasing and the burnout in leadership. How do we think about that first step to get over that?

Speaker B: This is a huge one because I think that it is both an internal and an external task. So the external piece that we cannot ignore is what I call a systems failure. I don't know about you, but I never consented to the idea that I am quite literally worth less than a man. Dollar wise. I never consented to that.

Speaker A: Me neither.

Speaker B: That's a belief system that I happily adopted. I uh, never consented to the idea that my value was in how much I can take care of someone or my beauty. I never consented to the idea that uh, I am wired to cook and clean and. Right. So we have, we don't have to look much further than the toys we were socialized with. Mine were all about easy bake oven taking care of babies or Barbies, about how beautiful you have to be. I Didn't get the science kits or the dinosaur excavation stuff or the NASA kits. I learned how to take care of other people or be beautiful. And that. That was my currency. And I didn't consent to that. That's not an internal Amy problem or a Lindsay problem. So we can't ignore that. There's that external push. And it's also, uh, like the greatest gaslighting in all of history. Because now when we're in positions of authority, we think we're the problem instead of recognizing no, there is actually a systems failure at play. So it's analogous to giving yourself credence around being wired for people pleasing. We also can't. We can't lean on it as a crutch or as an excuse. But we do need to honor. That's where we change things. In legislation, in political movements, in what we do externally, internally. The only option we have is to believe in ourselves. And so I like to think about self worth, boundaries as being a fierce middle finger to oppression. To say in a world that tells me quite literally, I'm worth less than a man. How brazen. What a big step for the revolution. To say, no, I'm going to demand a seat at the table. I am going to take up as much space. So I think it's one of the fiercest acts of activism that we can do to do this internal work to say, no, I do believe that I matter. I do believe that I am enough. And I am going to interrupt you. If you interrupt me. I'm gonna say, actually, I'm not finished. Right. We're gonna continue to take up space. So I got a little bit sidetracked on that.

Speaker A: No, that is really. I never thought about going all the way back to your toys. I told you, I grew up on. I grew up in a small town farm community like we. My dad is a hard worker. My mom is a hard worker. We were always doing chores and picking the garden. And then we played hard. We rode dirt bikes, we rode horses. I mean, all of that kind of stuff. But there was no difference between what I did and what my brother did. So entering into the corporate world for me, I already felt like I had a seat at the table because that's how my parents raised me. That's how I grew up. I never thought about going back to, uh, what toys did we give our kids and how did we raise them? That is a really interesting concept. I feel myself listening instead of trying to host.

Speaker B: Oh, that's really lovely.

Speaker A: We don't even realize when we're running at that pace, but recognizing that, uh, that's the first light bulb I feel like for women to go, wait a minute. That's true. This is the perception that I brought into this particular environment. But it doesn't have to be our truth. It doesn't have to be our reality. Yeah, we get to choose that.

Speaker B: I felt like that a lot in my marriage where, uh, I, uh, always found traditional roles really offensive because I never had an affinity for that. I never wanted children. I've never enjoyed cooking. I wanted to build a business. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to create. And I never have had a caretaking, uh, uh, urge or vibe. I'm not fulfilled in that way. And I'm not saying that it's bad to have that. I'm just saying we're too vast as women to have one option or for somebody to say, this is your lot in life because of your gender. I think that's incredibly myopic and parochial. Like, no, we are way too vast to. To be.

Speaker A: You just hit. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. We are all created uniquely. We all have different things that light us up, that get us excited, and we should never apologize in the direction that we want to move based upon those things that are core to who we are and what are going to make us shine.

Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. So when I. When I got married, you know, we got married in the 90s, and, uh, my partner is eight years my senior, so he had. He had grown up in a family where they owned a restaurant, so he was the one who cooked. And he had been in the military, so he was really vigilant about laundry. And it's very much how it needed to be folded and things. And people would frequently say, when we would mention, oh, he does the cooking, uh, they would be like, oh, how do you feel about that turning to him? Oh, like it was a sacrifice to him to have to adopt this maternal, uh, behavior. And. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. What you need to be asking is, why the hell would I want to cook? No. And to this day, we have a very egalitarian household. He does his own laundry, I do mine. He does his groceries. I do mine. He cooks his food, I cook mine. And we hire somebody to clean. We. Anything that doesn't work in the household, we. We call them Smith systems. We're like, we need a Smith system around this. So everything has been around. How can both people feel honored? Because it just. None of that ever made sense to me. I'm like, why the hell would I want to do laundry just because I have a vagina? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker A: Well, and I think that's key, that we figure out what's going to actually work. And that's, ah, a. It's at home and it's in the office. We need to feel good about speaking up for the things that we're really good at and showing that these are tasks that we can take on that we're really good at. Use our voice to do that. Which actually makes me think about when we talked before, um, there was a phrase that you said that I absolutely love. It was fear optimization. And so I think many women are really waiting to fear, feel fearless before they have those conversations about, here's what I enjoy doing, here's what I'm good at. And in the workplace, it might be asking for the promotion or setting the boundary, making whatever move that is. So I know, um, uh, as we think about that fear optimization, well, maybe first of all, just explain to everybody else so they're on the same page as us, what did that mean to you?

Speaker B: Well, I get a little bee in my bonnet about the word fearless, because it really doesn't exist. There is one, from what I understand, there's one documented case of a woman who existed without a fear response. I believe she's still alive. And it was incredibly detrimental. She, uh, withheld at knifepoint and wasn't even recognizing that she was in danger. She would hold venomous snakes. She would walk in front of traffic.

Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.

Speaker B: There were so many ways in which we need our fear response in order to keep us safe. So this idea that we need to be fearless without fear, it's really quite inhuman. We can't. If we wait to not have fear, we will wait forever. I was just talking about this with a friend of mine yesterday, and she said, I let the fear win. I wanted to go for this position, and I ultimately was too scared. And I told her the difference between people who are, quote, successful and those who are not is not that one of them has cracked the code on eliminating fear, eradicating fear from their life. It is that they confront that fear from a place of courage, which is what I call being fear optimized. So unless we are this one person who exists without fear, we are going to have to rumble with fear over and over and over again. So I coined this term fear optimized because to optimize is to make it as useful and as effective as possible. So if I'm Going to have to rumble with it. I want to make it useful, I want to make it effective. And what that means is behaving from a place of courage. That's really all that it is. And I did a deep dive on imposter complex quite a while ago, and I was looking at a lot of successful women like Maya Angelou, Meryl Streep, Tina Fey. Yeah, Obama. And they have all had these statements about imposter complex feeling like a fraud. And so I started thinking about, well, what differentiates them? They clearly are experiencing fear, but they met that fear from a place of courage. M. Meryl Streep, for example, was told she was too ugly. She would never work in Hollywood, and she is one of the most revered and arguably one of the most talented actors of our time. So it's not because she wasn't afraid or she didn't feel that discomfort of emotion. It's that she saw it, felt it, and still chose to behave from a place of courage to be fear optimized.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of people use those terms together. Oh, well, I'm just not a courageous person. Or, you know, I just. I, uh, let the fear overcome me. And it's really about that confidence and clarity in what you want your next move to be. What's just the next step. And also organizing truth versus fact versus fiction in your brain. Truth versus the lies of letting that take over to tell you, nope, I'm just going to live in the fear versus. Hey, this is actually something that I want to do. And so therefore I'm going to. I'm going to take that one step forward, be courageous. People that are courageous don't. It's not an absence of fear whatsoever. No, just they're, uh, making a decision.

Speaker B: And, uh, you know, to your point, fear will show up whether the threat is real or imagined.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So whether you are actually in danger or you just think you're in danger, that fear response is gonna kick up. So, for example, years ago, I used to do community theater, and prior to going into an audition, my body would act as though we were about to be attacked by a mountain lion. Right. I would. I, uh, my fear response would go into effect. Sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, dry mouth, can't focus. And so one of the things that I would do is I would talk to my fear response. And clearly, I'm not about to be attacked. I'm not actually in legitimate physical harm. So I would say, thank you so much. Thank you for coming to my rescue. Thank you for being prepared, uh, because fear will show up when we're actually in danger. And also when something is just new, if we have never experienced it before, the brain goes. And then subsequently, the inner critic goes, are you sure, Lindsay? Are you sure? We've never spoken for ourselves before. Are you sure we can do this? We've never advocated for ourselves in this type of an arena. Are you sure that it's safe? Are you sure? And so one of my favorite questions to ask, to kind of excavate behind that, is, am I actually in danger? Or is this just new? And that can help you discern, because there are some times when maybe you are in a toxic environment where you might actually be in danger of losing a job or, you know, some sort of ramification. But most of the time, I find that it's just new. We've never spoken up for ourselves before. We have never spoken on this public forum before. And that's how confidence is built. You aren't imbued with confidence just out of nowhere, right?

Speaker A: You don't wake up with it. It doesn't just show up one morning all of a sudden.

Speaker B: And forged through that rumble with fear from a place of courage.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And even as you talk about that, I want our friends listening to know it's in little movements like, okay, I've never managed a project of, uh, this size before. And we can be appreciative that we get the opportunity. We can be excited and push past that fear zone that you're talk and go, okay, this is an opportunity. This is a stretch goal. The courage is just accepting the assignment. So it can be in those tiny little things, but it's really built through action is what you're saying.

Speaker B: That's exactly right. That is exactly right. And, uh, so talking to that fear part of yourself going, oh, cool, you're kicking in because we haven't done this before. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for always wanting to protect me. This is just new. We're actually not in danger. And then now what you're doing is you're distracting your mental focus. Yes. Instead of perseverating about, what if I fail? What if this falls through? What if I don't get the funding? What if instead of doing that, uh, you're talking to yourself in a way that's honoring how your body is naturally trying to protect you and anchoring in. We can do this. We've done this before. And remembering, remember when you never knew how to do that spreadsheet? Remember when you never knew how to ask for funding? Remember when you didn't understand AI and you learned that, or going to school, going to getting a degree, riding a bike, driving a car. I mean, having a kid. Remember when you thought bringing the kid home and you were like, I'm, um, I have to keep this alive? And you figured that out, right? Yeah. Remember, I've been in this place before. I've been in a newness place before where I had no idea what I was chewing. And I have evidence to support that I can surmount this.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That.

Speaker A: I want to restate that because what you said is really powerful. You are talking the evidence to yourself. We all have a BS meter in our brain, you know, So I, for some people, affirmation statements and things like that don't work because they put it so far in the future that it is not real. And so their brain goes, yeah, bs, I'm calling you on that one. But what you're talking about is when you're in that spot where the fear has bubbled up, you know, you need to be courageous with that next action step. Now you're going back to the evidence before. You've taken on new projects before and you've been extremely successful. You've used your voice before and people have listened. And so when the BS meter goes off, it's like, yep, you are absolutely right. We have done this before and we can be successful. Uh, that, that is powerful. As women, that is a powerful move that we can make to start to train our brain to speak that truth to ourselves. I love that.

Speaker B: There's another little hack that I love, um, and it's a term that I created called progressive language. So instead of that affirmation of, uh, let's say I deserve to take up space instead of something that's affirmative, which in the brain, uh, get into the whole way that the subconscious works. But if for most of us, the kickback from the inner critic is so intense that we can't stick with affirmations because then you feel like a bold faced lie.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So if you use something progressive attached to the beginning as a preface, like, I am exploring what it looks like to take up space, or I am, I am entertaining the idea of establishing boundaries. I'm, um, re engineering my, my relationship with self trust. It gives a little workaround. It's almost like if that inner critic was a little guard dog and you're giving it a little treat, like, it's like, all right, I'll allow it, I'll allow it. Instead of being like, get out of here. No, you can't speak up for yourself. Uh, no, you're not enough. It's kind of like, okay, it's palatable. You can also use disclaimers like, and I. I encourage people to use this at the beginning of the statement. Like, even though this feels silly, Yes, I can speak up for myself. Even though this hasn't fully taken hold, I believe that I can take up space. Right. So disclaimer it. Use progressive language. Those are ways to kind of circumvent, uh, the inner critic from kicking back those affirmations.

Speaker A: Yeah, I always tell people when I'm working with people on that same thing. We're not moving from like a number two or three where you feel like you are today to a 10. When we're using statements like that, we're using, we're moving from two or three to four. We're making those incremental steps because if we try to jump all the way to the end, our brain goes off right away and says, not possible, not possible. And it gets scared. So when we're moving incrementally, it allows our mind to be able to go, yeah, I can do this. I can test it. I can try. I can figure out those steps. I love that. Okay, we have to talk about burnout, because this has been something you and I share a lot of the same perspective on. And we know. I constantly hear this from women that I'm working with. Um, many of them aren't telling me I'm burnt out. They're saying more things like, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, but I know everybody's tired. Or you hear when you ask, you know, how are you doing? You hear, oh, I'm busy, busy. I just got to get through this season. We know you and I know that's burnout. That's what happens. And if it's not today that it happens, it's going to be coming forward. And one of the things that you shared with me was the different forms of, uh, burnout. So can you share that? Because that's powerful. I want people to understand that.

Speaker B: I started noticing with a lot of my very high achieving clients that there were definitive markers and some telltale signs that they were headed towards burnout. And as we know, burnout is not a medical diagnosis. So it's not something we can take a test for and go, okay, you are officially in burnout. Because it's really a soul level exhaustion. So I divide it into two camps and it's kind of like burnout and then burnout light. So the first step is engagement burnout. And engagement burnout is when we have started to lose touch with engagement, with life. So the things, maybe the hobbies that we used to really love, like maybe we used to read all the time or paint, or maybe it was that we spent a, uh, decent amount of time physical wellness, it was, it was paramount. We actually stretched or worked out or we cared about our sustenance and that's kind of let go. Or maybe it's community. I used to really make sure that I was communing with, uh, people of the same faith, or I met with my best friends or, you know, I

Speaker A: had vacation volunteering all the time.

Speaker B: Yeah, there were things that I was thriving in my engagement with life. And the overall feeling in this phase is one of Groundhog Day, of you wake up and you're like, it's just the grind. Like here you're on autopilot, you're going again and you are, you're. Oftentimes your nervous system is in what I call a sympathetic sprint where you are in your sympathetic nervous system. Because anytime we are going fast, we're making the coffee, we're getting the kids off to school, we're doing, doing, doing, doing. We're putting out fires at work, we're getting home, we're checking off the boxes, and then what do we do? We drink wine, right? Like we give ourselves some sort of sedative to calm down. We scroll mindlessly on social to try to decompress. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's your body actually saying, I'm trying to get reprieve. The problem is in the hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. So pay attention because if you haven't seen your bestie for a while, if you don't have a hobby that you genuinely love, if we were to remove your work world from you, who would you be?

Speaker A: Mhm. That's a big question, right?

Speaker B: If and if you go, God, not much of anything. If you're waking up going, is this all there is? If it's dread, an emotion of dread, then you're probably in engagement burnout. And then if we don't tend to that, those are some of the warning signs, then we will dovetail into systemic burnout. And that is when it starts to affect the systems of the body. That's when you start to see sleep disorders, that's when you see heart issues, autoimmune stuff, anxiety, depression, uh, sometimes substance and addiction issues. It starts to manifest physically. And then what do we do? Thanks to western medicine, we just Treat the symptoms right, like, give me a pill. And those aren't the actual issues. It is the volume, um, of things that we're saying yes to, and subsequently the things we're not saying no to in order to assuage some of that burnout.

Speaker A: So what do I do if people are right now listening and they're like, oh, my goodness, you're right. I used to love to garden. I used to go out with my girlfriends once a week. I'm not doing any of that anymore. What do we. What's the first move?

Speaker B: Well, this is one of the reasons why I feel like one of the massive solutions here is, uh, boundaries. Because I'm sure you see this too. There are very few women that I see where their job is so demanding that there's no room for a boundary. Almost always it's things that they've said yes to that they didn't have capacity for. It is volunteering, saying, I'll take that on because no one else raised their hand in the meeting, which just look down and don't volunteer, girl. Most of the time we can stop and say, where have I not actually advocated for myself? One I see consistently is not taking your actual time off. That is part of your package. That is part of your compensation. You would not have somebody hand you money and you just throw it away. We are not going to do that with our vacation either. So if. Stop rolling it, Stop rolling. Take it and take it.

Speaker A: Take it. As a brain break, if nothing else.

Speaker B: Uh, that is part of your payment, right? That is part of your compensation. You wouldn't throw money away. So a lot of times we can look at those elements of what am I habitually saying yes to. And a lot of times I see people leaning on other people's personality as, uh, the reason why they can't establish a boundary. And I'm like, no, no, no. That person's just louder. And so you have. It's not that you can't, it's that you won't. So it's about gathering those skills, learning how to have tough conversations to say to somebody. This is no longer tenable. As far as workload, I had, um, I have a client of mine who we went through this, and this is kind of full circle to what we were talking about at the top. She's extremely gregarious. She is a very successful nurse practitioner in a very busy oncology ward, and she's loud and animated and in, uh, you know, spearheading all these projects. And so then when her boss would say, oh, can you take on this or that? She would be vocal, but not in a way she could be heard. She would be very passive aggressive. Oh, sure, Give it to Jenna. Jenna will take it. No, no worries. I'll take. No problem. And the rationale on the other side is, I'm sure if it was that big of a deal, she would be serious or she would tell me. They don't. So if you present it as passive aggression or present it as the joke, expect it to be taken as a joke. So we talked about it a lot. We developed a whole plan. She went in and talked to her boss, and she was really forthright, and she said, I'd like to m. I would like to make it seem like I can carry all of this. The truth is, this is not tenable. And she rolled in with a bunch of solutions. I say that we try to manage this through this means I'm requesting this. And she got really serious and intentional about it. And he could actually hear her because she said she owned her part of the matter. Which is one of the pieces that I talk about as entering into a difficult conversation, saying, I've been really, really unhappy. And you would have really no idea, because I have not said it in a way where you could really hear me. And that's not fair.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And immediately his guard is down. Immediately he's able to hear what she's saying. And then. And I kid you not, since that happened, it's been a couple of years now. It changed from all of our conversations being about how awful her workplace was and how awful her boss was to now we're always talking about her partner, her vacation, or what. What the next thing she's gonna do. And work has been harmonious. It was not the workload. It was the boundary. So that's why I think it's so incredibly important that we learn this skill and we don't just say, my boss sucks, my team sucks. No. It's likely that there's a skill set that you need to adopt in order to establish those boundaries.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so many women get caught up in, uh, I don't have time to slow down. There's just too much going on with my job. I don't have time. If I. If I don't do it, everything's gonna fall apart. But in reality, you're gonna fall apart. In reality, you're the one who. You and your family are the one who are going to suffer. You don't have to carry on that stress and that workload. It's really pausing to make sure that we can normalize it so that everybody can be successful. Yeah. I love how you encourage that recognition of self ownership first. And the other piece of that is just making sure you're having it with the right person in the right setting in that situation. It was their leader, one on one. That's not something that all of a sudden we do in a group setting with everyone around. We make sure that we, uh, fully prepare for it and then have it with the right person in the right setting.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's good. Yes, I know. One of the things that you are giving all of our listeners is a very special private podcast series just for them that's on Burnout over. Oh, uh, no, it's on Boundaries over Burnout. I just said it backwards. Boundaries over Burnout. And so I'm going to put that in the show notes for everybody to be able to grab and listen to you. This is one of the things is probably we get asked the most about and it's not specifically those words that they're using, but all of the symptoms of their life are showing that they need to create those boundaries to be able to help be more successful and be happier in the things that they're doing. So thank you for giving that to everybody. That's amazing.

Speaker B: Of course, of course. Yeah, you obviously you can find it in the show notes or if you go to amygreensmith.com free, you'll see that it's available there for you. And there's a, there's a corresponding workbook. It really is like a mini course. Uh, but there's sort of the chronology, some of the stuff that we've talked about today, but it's a much more deeper dive on how do you actually approach a difficult conversation? What, what's the, what are the logistics of it? How to set yourself up for success. But then actual scripts and phrases to help help get your needs met as best as possible. We can't control the other person, but we can set up the system and the container to most likely yield the best results.

Speaker A: Yeah. And in looking at that, I want people to know these are things you can use for the rest of your life. And it's at work and it's at home. It's tactical strategies that you can take away immediately. And the first time you do it gonna be super uncomfortable. You're not going to enjoy it, you're gonna feel awkward and then you're going to realize it works and then you're going to keep using it. In various situations.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Amy. As we wrap up today, I want to bring this home for every woman who's listening. Because people pleasing, ignoring burnout, those are all signs that we really need to dive into ourselves and the. The things that are important. So what's the first step that you want everybody to take after listening to this episode?

Speaker B: I think I would say start with your complaint inventory and whether that is external and you're actually being vocal to someone in your life, or if it's the internal perseveration where you're just, uh, so frustrated internally. Look at when it is habitual and chronic and it's about one specific person or grievance and ask yourself, do they have any idea I'm upset about this? And secondly, do they have any idea the intensity of how big of a deal this is for me? And that will give you the first entry point of, okay, there's an opportunity for me to start advocating for myself.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I love that. Just recognizing that people pleasing might have prevented. Protected you in the past. Fear gives you the information that you need, and burnout is kind of sending you those signs that, ah, you're. Something's wrong, your body's going to tell you. And that's a great place to start because that helps you to recognize and see what needs to happen to make this a little bit differently.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: I think that's where people talking to you. Yeah. I think that's why people get their spark back right there.

Speaker B: Yay.

Speaker A: Before we leave, I have to ask everybody on my show. I am building my new personal bucket. It was, um, I love to travel, and so I ask everybody, where's one place that you think we should travel? And more importantly, what should we do when we get there?

Speaker B: I think every. Everyone needs at least once in their life to experience Vegas. And it's one of those things now that I used, uh, to live in Southern California. I now live in North Carolina. And I have met so many people who've never experienced that. And when I was in California, we just drove there every so often. I had a friend who lived there, and so it was common that we would go and escape there, but I've seen that so many people haven't experienced it. And it is so monolithic, uh, larger than life. It's like nothing, I guess. Nashville's kind of like a mini Vegas a little bit in some ways on the Strip, but everyone needs to experience that at some point in their life. And the shows, I would say, look at whatever the cirque. Du Soleil show is. That's available. And see a Cirque show. Um, if you have a Cirque show that comes to your community, that they travel now quite a bit, see a Cirque show. It's. It's, again, it is athleticism that we just don't confront or see very frequently. So that's my suggestion.

Speaker A: Very fun. I know that I haven't been to Vegas for years, but people think about the gambling, but it's not. It's the shows. It's, um, it's the pool scene. All of the things. It's so much fun. Um, I. I need to go back because it has been forever. So that's fun. And when you talked about. Make sure you're taking your ptl, ladies. You just got a spot to, uh, add, uh, to your bucket list. Get your girlfriends, because some of the spas are amazing in Las Vegas. It's a. That is a great place to be able to go and spend that pto. Amy, thank you so much for being here. I know you light a spark with everybody that you work with and teach them how to leave the spark. And so I just appreciate you doing that and sharing wisdom with all of these ladies to help take them into tomorrow.

Speaker B: Oh, Lindsay, I've had such a blast. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Absolutely. All right, ladies and listeners, we will be here next week. Until then, be sure to go out and grab your free podcast series and actually course on Boundaries Over Burnout. And we will talk to you next week. Keep leading with spark. Well, that's it for today. Thanks for being here and for doing the work to lead yourself first. If this episode sparks something for you, take a second to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with another woman who's ready to own her leadership. And remember, the way you lead your life is the way you lead everything else. If you or your organization are looking for a speaker, an impactful workshop, or an executive coach, head over to LindseyMoulder.com and let's connect. Keep showing up. Keep leading with Spark. You got this. I'll see you next time.