Episode 135: The Myth Of The "Right Way"

In today’s episode, we’re talking about doing things the “Right Way” and—surprise!—how there’s no such thing.

Today, we’re talking about doing things the “Right Way” and—surprise!—how there’s no such thing. 

Unsurprisingly, many of my clients live for “doing it right.” 

For them, there is nothing more amazing as hearing: Yes, you’re doing it right. In fact, one of the most popular phrases I hear from clients is: I did okay, right? They’re always looking for affirmation that they did it right. 

So why is the need to do things the “Right Way” such a common experience of people with High Functioning Anxiety? 

Doing it right, following the rules, and being a good girl keeps us from criticism. And growing up—either in our family of origin or through school and church—we learned that following the rules earns us LOTS of praise. 

Not only that, but it protects us from the anxiety of not knowing what to do next. It keeps us safe—at least that’s what we convince ourselves of. 

What rules have you created for yourself? Let’s explore this together in this week’s episode and find out what we can do about it. 

Listen to the full episode to find out:

• Why there is no such thing as doing things the “right way”

• How the quest for doing things the “right way” leads to judging others

• What we miss out on when we constantly try to do things the “right way”

• How curiosity is key if we’re trying to understand why we’re afraid of getting things wrong

Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:

• Coach In Your Pocket

Transcript:

I remember the first vacation we took after my dad died. When I learned that always believing there is a right way isn't helpful. First, a little background, my dad strongly believed there was a right way and a wrong way to do anything. You name it, he knew it--needing to mow your lawn--wanting to invest in the stock market. He knew the right way. Hoping to grow a wonderful garden--he had it down. Needing to plan a perfect vacation--he knew exactly how to do it. Yes. I realized that objectively his right wasn't necessarily everyone else's right. But in my dad's world, there was a right way and a wrong way, regardless of who you were and what you preferred. Not surprisingly, he passed the need to do it the right way on.

He had a lot of rules for traveling where to eat, what time to eat, how to get there, how early to arrive, what to order on and on and on—a lot of rules. And I being a dutiful daughter, I knew how to follow the rules. Because the praise I received when I followed the rules, was like candy to a baby.

I lived for it. So before he died, I would be the one who made all the reservations, planned the perfect place and time for dinner and lapped up all of his praise.

So back to the first vacation we took without my dad, just me, my mom and my husband. As we're walking along the beach, headed to a new dinner spot, I was sharing what I had researched about the place with my mom and my husband and regaling them with the rest of the week schedule. Unknowingly, I was going through a familiar routine, share all the right things I'd done, and get ready to lap up the praise. Except my mom and my husband, they don't care about eating at the right place or at the right time. They are not rule followers. They are fly by the seat of your pants, people. So they didn't give me any praise. They just said, "Well, that sounds good. I'm sure whatever you pick is going to be great."

I will never forget that moment. As I stood there, the wind blowing on my face, sand beneath my feet. I realized how much energy I had spent on doing it right. How hooked into it I was and how much this value controlled my life. And I started getting curious about it.

You're listening to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith.

When I first realized that I had inherited this need to do it right for my dad. I was sad. I realized no matter how hard I worked to do things the right way, I would never again get the praise from my father. And then, as I got more curious, I could see how this desire to do it the right way infiltrated almost all of my life. On the one hand, doing it the right way gave me peace. And on the other hand, it kept me in check.

This month, we're exploring the unique values of someone with high functioning anxiety. Last week, we talked with Beryl young about the value of creativity, and this week I'm talking about the value of doing it right. Many of my clients live for doing it right. There is nothing as amazing as hearing. Yes, you're doing it right. In fact, one of the most popular phrases I hear from clients is "I did okay. Right?" Or "That's okay. Right?" Looking for affirmation that they did it right.

So why is the need to do things the right way, such a common experience of people with high functioning anxiety? Doing it right, following the rules, being a good girl keeps us from criticism

And bonus growing up, either in a family of origin or through school or church, we learned the following, the rules will get us lots of praise. It protects us from the anxiety of not knowing what to do next. It keeps us safe. At least that's what we convince ourselves. So what rules have you created for yourself?

Do you have rules around travel plans? Do you have rules about how to load the dishwasher? Do you have rules about where to park in a parking lot or how to do the grocery shop? I bet you have rules for just about everything. Here are three things I want to cover about the idea of doing it right.

The first thing is there is no right, way. Not surprisingly, people who are looking for the right way. We tend to be a perfectionist. We rationally know there is no one way to do anything. There is no right way yet we spend our lives looking for it the right way to drive, eat workout, cook, do a project, trim a tree. You name it. We're looking for the right one.

This belief leads us to a life of black and white thinking where there is an absolute right way and an absolute wrong way. In all situations, our monger believes finding the right way will protect us from being attacked or criticized external. Here are a few examples from my own life to show how sneaky these myths can be.

There's a right way to walk the dog. First thing in the morning, before 8:00 AM for 30 minutes, there's a right time to wake up, waking up early, meaning before 7:00 AM bonus points. If I can get up before 6:30am. Yeah. There's a right thing to eat for breakfast. Now I go through phases with this one, but right now, it's oatmeal with fruit.

There's a right order to do the morning tasks. There's a right time to fall asleep. There's a right amount of sleep. Eight to nine hours. That's ideal. There's a right way to work out and a right amount of time to work out. 60 minutes is the amount of time, and it must be cardio with a little bit of weights.

These rules become even more rigid because if you can't do it right, there is no sense in doing it. For example, if I can't work out for 60 minutes, then I won't do it. There's no sense working out if it's not for 60 minutes. Hello, rigidity. When you start to pull apart these right way myths, you start to see the faulty logic.

Well, who decides right when it comes to doing it right? The ironic thing is that right is very subjective. Your definition of right is different from mine because right is based on personal preferences, values, ideology, et cetera. And also, even if we meet our own standards and technically do it right, there will be no celebrating because we can always improve.

We can always do it better. Even after my dad would praise me for picking the right restaurant for dinner, I would spend the rest of the evening scooping out the best table to request the next time we came in, because you can always improve on right.

A great example of this doing it right is efficiency. Efficiency is a right way measure for me. When I go to the grocery store, I have a lot of rules on how to do it right. But even if I accomplished my task in the most efficient way possible, I still beat myself up for something. I just never celebrate the win. Maybe I didn't pack the groceries in the car right. Or I forgot to pick up the soap, or I picked the wrong checkout line. I always fail.

The second thing I want you to know about doing it right. Is the quest for right can lead to more judgment of others by the BFF. She loves to come out and share how others aren't doing it right in order to make you feel better.

Well, they aren't working out right. They didn't pack for their trip, right. If only they knew how to pack correctly. They are running late, a better person would have left early. They walked out of the house in wet hair. What were they thinking? They're smoking. I mean, at least we don't do that. They picked the wrong grocery line.

As I've said before, when your monger is out in full force, that usually means your monger has been out in full force as well. So judgment, especially unnecessarily super petty judgment is time to get curious. Some questions. I ask myself when I noticed the BFF. What am I judging them for?

How do I see that judgment in myself? Am I being a little rigid here? Does this really matter? What's the bigger picture and where do I need to add some kindness for me or for them?

The third thing I want you to know about doing it right. Is duty versus joy. The thing about the quest for the right way is it keeps us stuck in duty.

We miss the joy in life because we're so busy worrying about doing it right. For example, this podcast, I love writing my podcast. Honestly, I just love writing, finding the right words, digging deep for the underlying meaning asking myself, but how do I challenge myself to go deeper?

And yet often, my writing, especially on these podcasts, gets too bogged down for me in doing it right. Writing the right message, using the right language, hitting the deadline. I get so caught up in the duty of it. I miss the joy and acquest to protect myself from criticism. I miss the joy.

This concept of duty versus joy has been a big one for me. The idea of choosing duty over joy makes me sad. I see how it plays out in my life, and I see how it plays out in my clients' lives. We missed the train. Okay. So what can you do about it? There are lots of messages out there about "break the rules." "Stop being a good girl," but this is bigger than just a mindset shift. This requires us to get curious and start picking at the rigidness that surrounds our lives. The part that gets overlooked by the theories that say, well, just stop doing that is that we get something for doing it, right? Whether that be a sense of security praise or less anxiety, when we stop doing it, it feels unsafe.

It feels overwhelmingly scary. That's why we just can't stop doing it. It's too scary, which is why curiosity is so key after you noticed the right way value rearing its ugly head. Get curious, ask yourself, what is this protecting me from? What am I afraid of? Am I choosing duty over joy? Be kind to yourself and loosen up that rigidity.

Our tendency will be to judge ourselves to say, good grief. Here you go again. You're so rigid and judgy too. You know, there is no right way. Come on.

Instead, try. Wow. This is really hard finding the right way is hard-wired. I know it helped me in the past, but let's loosen that up a little. Or it's so hard to feel this tied down to doing it right.

Is this rule really needed? Can we rebel against the rule? Can you find some joy here? Because this line of thinking gets us stuck in absolutes. One way to notice this value playing out in your life is when you make if-then statements. If I don't go to the grocery store on the way home, then I'm a bad one.

If I don't work late, then I will get fired. If I commit to a dinner date, then I will be stuck the whole night. If I don't work out today, then I will be out of shape forever. See how their statements are absolutes of right and wrong. Your monger will never give you the win. You could always have done it better, but in all honesty, there is no right.

There are no absolutes. When you catch yourself engaging in all or nothing if-then statements, challenge yourself to come up with as many options as possible. Even if they seem absurd, get in the practice of expanding your options. Give yourself a checkmark. Every time you choose joy over duty, or every time you notice that if-then statement and loosen it up, aim for three checkmarks a day.

This type of exercise works with the love of checkmarks and accomplishment, but in a positive way. For example, if I don't go to the grocery store tonight, then I can go tomorrow after work, or I can ask my partner to go, or I can bring a cooler to work and grab a few things on my lunch hour and do the big shopping on Saturday.

If I don't work out today, then I can look at my schedule and find the best time to fit in a consistent workout. Maybe it would be best to do it in the morning or at lunch or turn some of my regular work meetings into walking meetings. Practice practice practice recently, a client of mine said, I wish you could just give me the freaking five step approach.

And then poof, I would be healed. Practice. Practice. Practice is annoying. Yep. I hear you. It certainly is. This is one thing I love about my work with clients via Voxer because I can regularly remind them of how they're making progress. It's hard for us to see our own progress. So it is helpful to have friends, family, or a coach there to say, wow, look how far you've come.

This is another form of positive reinforcement and a way to keep us doing this work. The work is more than just changing your mindset. It's really getting in there and changing hardwired patterns of duty praise and worthiness messages that we heard and swallowed for our own protection benefit, or because we had no choice.

And now we know they aren't serving us anymore. So it does take practice, practice, practice, but let's pick joy over duty. Let's be kind to ourselves. Let's remember this takes practice, but most of all, let's remember we got this.

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Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.

Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.

I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most effective and most life-changing work I have ever done. My clients are consistently blown away by how these daily check-ins combined with the monthly face-to-face video meetings create slow, lasting changes that reprogram their High Functioning Anxiety tendencies over time.

Over the course of the three-month program, we meet once a month for a face-to-face session via a secure video chat, and then throughout the entire three months, you have access to me anytime you are feeling anxious, having a Monger attack, celebrating a win, or just need to check-in, and I will respond to you during my office hours (Monday through Friday, 9 am - 6 pm EST). Learn More

Episode 134: How Anxiety and Perfectionism Can Get In The Way Of Creativity

In today’s episode, I am talking with Beryl Young of Momtography a mom, photographer, and teacher, about High Functioning Anxiety and creativity.

Honestly, I have always had a mixed relationship with creativity. 

I have almost always loved it and thought to myself, I want to do that more! And then months, years pass before I actively pursue something creative. Why?

My Monger’s message of perfectionism and practicality always gets in the way:

“She tries but she has no talent”. 

“What are you going to do with it? You are going to have all these art projects and nowhere to put them.”

“You have to drag all the art supplies out and spend MORE money on creative. Get real.”

I get in my own way. 

This is why I wanted to talk to someone who deals with High Functioning Anxiety and is still able to pursue creativity for a living.

Today, I am talking with Beryl Young of Momtography. She is a mom, photographer, teacher, and creator of popular classes to support parents in capturing the life they love. A former elementary school teacher by day, she’s taken her experience in education and photography and brought a message of creativity, resilience, connection, and fulfillment for camera lovers young and old.

Beryl’s work has been featured on The Huffington Post, PicMonkey, Mpix, and Digital Photography School. She’s taught hundreds of moms around the globe how to use their camera to its fullest potential and connect in deeper ways to the people they love most in the world.

Listen to the full episode to find out:

• When Beryl realized that she had High Functioning Anxiety and how it shows up in her life

• How she got around the perfectionism that can get in the way of creativity and gave herself permission to create

• How creativity helps her manage her anxiety

• What self-care looks like to her

Resources mentioned:

• Momtogtraphy

• Free Capture What Matters Workshop

• Instagram: @momtographyceo

• Understanding Girls With AD/HD by Kathleen G. Nadeau

• Coach In Your Pocket

+ Read the Transcript

Beryl: When I was faced with a blank canvas. I was like, oh, I don't want to mess it up. So yeah. What do I do with this? Which is funny because my mom is an artist and she's a mixed media artist and she has high functioning anxiety. So it shows up differently for different people too.

Nancy: Honestly, I've always had a mixed relationship with creativity.

I've rarely engaged in a creative pursuit and thought that was awful. I've almost always loved it and thought to myself, I'm going to do that more. And then months, years past before I actively pursue something creative. Why? In short, my monger, her message of perfectionism and practicality always gets in the way I can hear my fifth grade art teacher telling my mom.

She tries well, but she just has no talent. Or my Monger says, what are you going to do with it? You're going to have all these art projects and nowhere to put them, or you have to drag all the art supplies out and spend more money on creative crap. Come on.

I get in my own way when I can get past all those messages and engage my creativity, whether that be painting creative writing or practicing embroidery.

I absolutely love it. This is why I wanted to talk to Beryl Young of Momtography someone who deals with high functioning anxiety and teaches creativity for a living.

Your listening to the happier approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith.

Beryl Young photo mom and mentor is a mom photographer, teacher and creator of popular classes to support parents and capturing the life they love. A former elementary school teacher by day she takes her experience in education and photography and has written a story of creativity, resilience, connection, and fulfillment for camera levers, young and old barrels work has been featured on the Huffington post PicMonkey M pics and digital photography.

She's taught hundreds of moms around the globe, how to use their camera to its fullest, potential as a tool to connect them in a deeper way to the people they love most in the world. Beryl and I talk about mongers and creativity and how they go together. I love Beryl’s, honest down to earth approach. We also discussed realizing she had high-functioning anxiety and how it shows up in her life. What self care looks like to her, how creativity helps her anxiety. How she got around her perfectionism that can get in the way of creativity, giving yourself permission to create and how you get past the message of what am I going to do with it? Once it's done.

Okay. I'm so excited today. We are going to be talking with Beryl Young about high functioning anxiety and creativity and the intersection of them, which I'm super fascinated to find out.

Welcome Beryl.

Beryl: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here today.

Nancy: Thanks for showing up. Okay, so I just want to jump right in and ask, because I know you have an interesting story. How does high-functioning anxiety show up for you? Yeah.

Beryl: In so many ways that I really didn't realize, I don't think until I started my own business, like I'm a creative business owner.

And as I was building my business, I would realize that I would set these expectations for myself on what I wanted my business to look like, what I wanted my life to look like. And when that expectation and reality didn't intersect. I would beat myself up. I don't consider myself like depressed, but I would go into these depressed states where I just couldn't get motivation to do anything.

And then I also have those perfectionistic traits to control oh, I can do all of this. I'm just going to do it myself. So I tend to go into that realm as well. And if I don't think I'm going to be good at something, I just won't do it at all, especially, and that link between creativity and anxiety, I.

My main modality for creativity is a camera. And I think I chose photography because I was like, oh, there's no blank page. Like I can just go out and take a photo of something. And it's right there. When I was faced with a blank canvas, I was like, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to mess it up.

So what do I do with this?

Nancy: WAY more pressure Totally

Beryl: Totally WAY more pressure. Which is funny because my mom is an artist and she's a mixed media artist and she has high functioning anxiety. So it shows up differently for different people too. But I get the same way, like even with writing, like I enjoy creative writing too all by all sorts of pretty journals.

Because they're pretty and I want pretty things, but then. I'm like, oh, I don't want to write in it because what if I mess up?

Nancy: amen. To that. I have so many empty journals for that. Very reason. Yeah. Yeah.

Beryl: Or if I use this, then I'm going to use the whole thing. Like I, I also, I don't know if this goes along with the high functioning anxiety you'll know better than I do, but just I'm great at starting points.

As a creative it's oh, I have an idea. Let me start it. But then the follow through and finishing is very hard to,

Nancy: yeah. We call that being an 80 percenter in our house. We do 80%. And then the last 20% you don't have to do because you might do it wrong. And so if you only do the 80%, then you know that still open to perfect it.

Beryl: yep, that’s me. (Laughter) So here I am

Nancy: Before we hopped on, you were talking about how you figured this out because it was, it wasn't like you've known the high functioning anxiety and ADHD is another component of this for you. Tell me how you figured out. Have you the journey you went on to get to the,

Beryl: So we have to backtrack about four years ago.

First I went to the doctor just for like my annual checkup. And as the doctor and I were talking, I mentioned that I had been feeling anxious for a certain period of time. And as doctors sometimes are willing to do, he's oh, here's some medicine. Why don't you try taking some anxiety medicine? And so I did and I felt better.

And so that was the first inclination where I was like, oh, maybe I have anxiety symptoms. Because I started to take the medication and I did feel like, oh, some of my heart palpitations went away. Like I didn't realize I was experiencing certain physical symptoms of anxiety and I went for that doctor's appointment.

And then that paired with the fact that I'm a mom, I have a nine-year-old daughter and it was around the time that she was in kindergarten, that we started to just see how things were going with her in school. And I was like, I think she had. ADHD. And I said this to a couple of my mom, friends, and, it was always an even like the school, they would blow it off.

Oh, she's, it's just developmental. But she was always this busy kid that would never sit still. We did a, like one of my dearest neighbor friends. We would like exchange babysitting. So they would go on a date night and then my husband and I would go on a date night and she came over one night and she basically said my daughter, she won't sit still to do anything. And I'm like, okay, finally, someone else besides me and we had this like catch 22 because she was a birthday where she was like one of the youngest in her class. She made the birthday cutoff by four days. So some of what was going on in school was very much developed by them.

Some of it. I was like, ah, I don't know that this is, and so I really had to turn into this advocate of like really starting to learn about what ADHD looks like and how it can manifest in different ways that it's not just the boy that won't sit still in class that has this constant motor and. As I was doing that research by the time she got to second grade, we were still coming up against some of the same challenges that were happening in kindergarten.

And so we went to the doctor to get her evaluated and she was diagnosed with ADHD and, being her advocate and doing all of that research I started to just. Read blogs and listen to podcasts and look into books. And I came across this amazing book called Understanding Girls With ADHD. And that was when, like all the light bulbs.

Some of the high functioning anxiety traits were also very much traits that were talking about in this book. And so I then had to turn around and start educating the school. My daughter has high functioning anxiety as well. It doesn't manifest at school. We would go through TSA and she would hide behind me at age seven.

Like not willing to talk to the TSA agent because she was afraid she wasn't going to say the right thing and that they were going to they were giving her an angry look. But at school she's comfortable with her teachers. She's comfortable with her friends. That speaks volumes for the school that she goes to, but they're like she doesn't have anxiety.

She doesn't have ADHD. She's fine. She's adjusted, she's doing this, that and the other And then I would shine the light on myself and my own, like insecurities in my business, in my life, in my upbringing. And I was like, oh, you know that saying the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree, right?

Be like apple first. And then I was like, oh, hello, tree me. I think I need to explore this for myself too. And I didn't go through the full psychological evaluation as an adult. The doctor was like, oh, let's just do a little bit of a self evaluation. But I was essentially diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago.

Went, huh? I don't think I actually had anxiety. I think I had high functioning anxiety that went along with the ADHD that I've probably had my entire life. Yeah. So yeah. That's my story.

Nancy: I think it's fascinating. Because I think two things are fascinating. One just the combination of ADHD and high functioning anxiety and how that we use those coping skills.

I mean it's similar coping skills. I always say we have anxiety and to quiet the anxiety, we do these unhealthy coping skills, perfectionism people, pleasing, et cetera, et cetera, worrying about doing it wrong and the critic and all that stuff. But the same time, it's hard to pull apart.

We do the same thing with ADHD symptoms and we don't want anyone to see. So we're trying to keep it hidden that we have these, this zaniness in her head for lack of a better way. We develop these unhealthy coping mechanism, isms around us. So I think that's fascinating that, that shows up in both of those areas.

And I think it's fascinating that so often, like that's one of the main reasons I, my mom, clients come in to see me is they're like, I see this in my kids. And I'm trying to get myself under control so that I can help them.

Beryl: Totally. Yeah, no. And I was like, I have to be a good role model for my daughter.

And what does that look like? And it's also interesting to go, oh, the way it manifests in her is different than the way it manifests in me. I got a lot of my perfectionistic, like people pleasing. That my mom has, and we were both very hard workers that enjoyed school. Part of the ADHD executive functioning traits are that like, when you have diagnosed ADHD, you can hyper focus on the things that you really enjoy, but then the things that are difficult or mentally taxing you avoid.

I was avoiding a lot of things in my business, but I never avoided school. I actually enjoyed reading and I was good at school. So my anxiety never surfaced. My daughter likes socializing. She likes people. She likes the social aspects and the connection of going to school, but she's not as motivated.

But learning new things or, and the areas that are difficult for her, she can't necessarily hyper focus on. And it's very interesting to be parents seeing a child going, wait a second. Why don't you enjoy school more? I loved school, right? But you want to be able to support them. And so we have had to put a mirror, not just on her, but on me too, to go, okay how can I relate to her in this way?

Nancy: Yeah. Because I think that would be, because I don't have kids and I think that would be so hard to not put your stuff in general, not put your stuff on them but also the idea that. How can you not like school? It served me. It was a place for me to channel and get good grades and, like to really be an encouraging the apple, to be the tree and to recognize no, that's a separate being.

Beryl: Totally. Yeah, no, that separation of okay, this is her life and her expense. But also, still being the mom.

Nancy: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah,

Beryl: because her high functioning anxiety also shows up and my mom just told me I could do school. I'm not good at school.

I can't lean into those perfectionistic qualities with school. And so there is this like messy emotional roller coaster of okay, I know you don't like school because of certain structures or you don't enjoy these things. And unlike me. She doesn't have as many of the people-pleasing qualities that I do.

Yes. She has other traits of high functioning anxiety, people pleasing. Isn't one of them. So she doesn't care who she offends in the process. That's not to say she wants her teachers to like her. She's not going to work hard on an assignment if she doesn't enjoy it

Nancy: solely to get the good praise from the teacher.

Beryl: Correct. She'll find other ways, but then she'll come home from school. Her high functioning anxiety, which I see in myself too, is the teacher doesn't like me, because I didn't do this work. Or I don't know how to do this. Or, she has a hard time finding her personal confidence and as do I, especially in the area when you don't feel like you can show up as your best self, where you can't have the perfect byproduct of whatever it is you're working on, right?

Nancy: Yeah. It's interesting. Because growing up, my mom also high functioning anxiety. And so she gave me a lot of like tips for how to survive the real world.

So she would walk me through This is how you make friends. And this is what you, this is the game you need to play. And these are the people that, if you suck up to these people, you'll have it easier. And just gave me these backdoor approaches to stuff, which was, I look at some point in my life, I was like, I'm so glad she gave that to me.

Because she really gave me like a, how to model, which was helpful. Because that's what she wanted. And so she gave it to me, but I never got to figure it out for myself. I was always figuring out what was her go-to, I was following the rules that she had given me, and that's how I set up my life to follow those rules rather than figuring it out for myself.

Beryl: So I know my mom did that for us too. That really resonates with me because I feel like for a long time, her model was passed down to me. You work hard. And not everyone's going to like you, and this is, we just stick to yourself and not, instead of trying to be friends with everybody, like some of her people pleasing stuff, she recognized it, but it's also interesting.

Because one of her favorite sayings was kill them with kindness. And I'm like that might've been a little bit of the people pleasing too. I also agree with that methodology as an adult too, though. But there were certain things and I can't think of a specific example right now that at some point I'm like, oh, this model of what she's passed down to me is not working for me right. In my life. And I had to reconcile that for myself.

Nancy: yeah. Yeah. And I think picking that apart is hard, and then also then I'm assuming could be triggering. Are, am I passing that down? How do I not do that to my kid? How do I not. Not that it was all terrible.

Like I think, the intention of my mom was so good. Like she was really trying to make life easier for me, but she didn't leave any room for me to figure it out for, for me to ask, is this helping? Is this how I want to do it? Especially as I got older, it would have been cool to have that be a conversation, a

Beryl: That’s a struggle for all moms How do I not mess my kind up?

Nancy: Totally. Yeah. And how do I be kind to myself when I know I have, like totally, like I just had a client recently who was like, who told me she had I just had a really bad mom moment. And she told me, the moment. And I said then you just practice Brené Brown and you circle back and you explain what happened.

That's all you could do, yeah. For sure is having that kindness. But yeah. Because I think a lot of times we want to, as adults, then we want to blame our parents, for, but to recognize they did the best they could with what they had the same as we're doing the best we can with what we,

Beryl: Mom and I just had that conversation back at Thanksgiving.

I think I had to do a lot of self inner work just around who I wanted to be. And my fears of letting my parents down when I walked the path that was different than how they had raised me, not wildly different. It wasn't like I was going out and doing terrible things, but even like getting tattoos and dying my hair pink is this image that my family.

Expects of me. I had a lot of fear wrapped in that, which was like, I was like in my early thirties, I'm like, I am in my early thirties. I should not care what my parents think. If I get tattoos and dye my hair pink and it was a thing, but it was shocking to hear. I always felt like getting. Body art. I thought my parents were not going to approve of that just because of like the portrayal of who you are.

Because we're people pleasers in our family, right? As this, the daughter that I want to showcase to my friends, when my mom and I actually had a conversation about it, it was her own high-functioning anxiety. Around like medical stuff is the tattoo parlor clean. Are you going to get some disease from going and getting this done?

She could care less about the artistic aspects. So it was interesting to see my fear. Yes, work completely different manifestation of what her fears were. But we were sitting down and just talking about some of those things about, ways, her anxiety surfaced when we were younger. And she actually said to me I hope, when you realize now that you're an adult, that we were just doing the best we could with what we had.

And what a beautiful, like self-awareness on her part to have that. Yeah,

Nancy: absolutely. Yeah. That's such a gift. Yeah. Yeah, because when I sometimes I'll think back and be like, oh my gosh, like how old was I? When my mom was my age meant to be like, oh, like in my mind she had it altogether. And then to think, oh, she felt like I feel right now, which is not having it all together.

That is an interesting that's just an interesting place to go that whole generational surviving. Totally interesting. Okay. So that went down a turn that I wasn't expecting which is why I love having these conversations. I want to take it back to creativity because for a lot of people, and you've mentioned this with the blank page and the, that I'm not, I can't even, maybe not for a lot of people, but for me, creativity is hard.

That is the ultimate trigger. And it is something that really helps when I can bust through all the crappy messages. And I can even remember, it was a couple of years ago, my husband and I took a painting class. My husband is loves to be creative. He took a painting, we took a painting class and I have the typical story of art class and the art teacher took my mom aside and was like, yeah, she does not have it. Like just, let her slide on through, because she's not going to, and we did this painting and I loved it. Like it was so relaxing and I loved it and it was like, wow, you have that old message that you suck at art, but that's, and that's the only message you're hearing when there are a lot of messages potentially there.

I know I'm not alone in that thought, because I've heard it a thousand times, but speak to all of that. Totally.

Beryl: That's a big question, but we actually have in our company. My business is called momtography Moms and photography blended together. And I hear this a lot. Because of some of the things that I said before oh, I don't feel creative or the creative things I used to do. I can't find time to do as a mom.

And so creativity just feels hard. And I don't know if you're a Liz Gilbert follower. I love the book big magic. And so a lot of our methodologies at momtographer. Yeah. We're inspired by her work. And

Nancy: I have to say briefly to interrupt you quickly. It's so funny. I did not like that book initially because I was like, oh, this is too Woo, woo. The idea that the creative ideas out there and at finds you blah, blah, blah. But I swear to God. Writing my book was a big magic thing. That was downloaded to me from someplace else. Like I know, like I I'm a believer in that concept since I wrote my book, because it totally was.

Beryl: So I have some thoughts about that.

Okay. The first thought I want to I'll share at least share a methodology, and then I'll share my thought on your book and how it connects to high functioning anxiety, because. The first piece of our kind of creative coaching methodology at momtographer is to get curious. And what I loved from big magic is that was Gilbert said, if you're having trouble anchoring into your creativity to think of it as curiosity, instead of creativity.

Yeah, and that's not a direct quote, but that's just my interpretation of it, but I know she uses the word curiosity, and I was like, I love that for every mom that is struggling to be creative or anchor into that. If you ask, what are you curious about today? Usually a mom can come up with an answer that we work with like pretty quickly. I want to take a picture of my kid, or I want to take a picture of the flowers or I'm just curious about getting the dishes done in my sink. Like sometimes it has nothing to do with the creative experience. And what I realized for me, because I had some similar reactions to you about that.

Like the woo-woo sides of big magic, even though I do tend to go down the woo-woo path a little bit, but, waiting for that train to come through and you got to catch it before it runs away. Some of that is true. And some of it is just, another piece of our methodology is consistency.

Sometimes you just got to sit down and do it, but at some point, if you are creative and writing is a creative experience. And I have found in writing some of our programs or in, yeah, there are those kinds of just big magic type modes. Where I'm like, oh, that thing I just said to a coaching client, I don't know where it came from.

It came from somewhere else, but it was the right thing to say in that moment. And it was because I let my guard down and let my anxiety I just in the words of Elsa, let it go little bit. Yeah. And I think sometimes we can't listen to our inner voice and our inner intuition, when our levels of high-functioning anxiety are constantly like, what are people going to think of this or that when that inner critic is getting really loud, it's harder for those things to get in.

I tried to find strategies for myself and for our students to get around some of those perfectionistic tendencies.

Nancy: Okay. Because there's, I think the idea of a couple of things, I like the idea of the consistency in the sense of. But what bugged me about the Elizabeth Gilbert was like, it was just seemed like obviously the title of the book is big magic, but it seemed like I could sit down and get an idea and just write it.

And it would be amazing, but it, that consistency piece, the curiosity piece and the consistency piece are also because that those were big factors in writing my book. Like that I had been writing for years that I had a lot of curiosity about the subject that it wasn't just like all of a sudden, I just woke up and got inspired to write something about chemistry.

When I hadn't done anything in chemistry ever, it was, this is something that inspires me. Let me write about it. Something I'm curious about, let me write about it. So I like that idea because that's what lets your guard down. Totally those two steps.

Beryl: other two, because it's our creative coaching methodology is four CS.

So curiosity is that first one. And then we talk about commitment, curious, and you write all those ideas down. What are you curious about? Which one are you willing to commit to? Because sometimes our moms come forward and the camera's the way in, but they're like, wait, what really? What I want to be doing creatively?

This, I want to build this business, or I want to write this book or I want to do this other thing. That was a surprising thing for me, because I started my business out of this traumatic experience and how photography helped me heal from it. And I think I was surprised. I was like, no, I'm a photography teacher, but then all these women would come in and they pick up their camera and go, but no, wait, there's these other creative things that I love to do.

And so I think that commitment piece. Especially, when you have high functioning anxiety, your head just swirls with ideas, like the overthinking is insane. And so I'm like, all right, you got to pluck one of those out of your brain and just try it, let it be an experiment.

Nancy: It's hardest part.

Giving yourself that permission.

Beryl: I know. I say it like it's so easy. Let it be an experiment. Yeah. Easier said than done. So it's curiosity, commitment, and then connection. How are you going to connect to that idea? Because you can't get to a place of being consistent until you figure out how you're going to connect it.

Yeah. So I'm sure for you writing your book, it was like, do you need a specific place to write your book? I know when I've written my online courses, I had the one coffee shop where it was like a ritual. What was my ritual? I would go to the coffee shop when my daughter was napping and I would write there, and that turned into a habit that I could do consistently.

Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, that brings the methodology full circle. Those are the four c’s that we go over

Nancy: So curiosity, commitment, connection. Consistency. Nice. I like that because it was funny that the commitment piece and the experiment piece, I wanted to say I always trying to find the perfect, even though I say there is no perfect system, I'm still trying to find the perfect organizational system constantly.

It's like my personal quest. And finally somebody said to me, pick one and stick to it. Pick one instructor for a year. And I was like, whoa, like that seemed, that's a big commitment. And so I decided to pick one in, but what it opened up my mind to was like, there is no right answer here. All there. It's not like I'm constantly afraid to pick one.

Because I might pick the wrong one. That's what I get stuck in. But then I'm like, you will know what's the wrong one until you. Commit to it and do it for a while. Yeah. So I gave myself, so I picked, I was, I picked us to do paper and I gave myself six months, and then I, and I've been tweaking it as I go.

And, it's been hit or miss, but the, that was the first time when somebody said to me that's why, like how you have commitment and it's an experiment that I can say, okay, every day I'm going to show up and, photograph blah. But that's my commitment and it doesn't matter if there's no right way.

Beryl: I have this story from our mom tography community when I started teaching and there's a lot floating around and photography spaces of do a 365 project, which is taking a photo a day for a tire year or do a project 52, or here are these photo prompts for the month that you should photograph.

I didn't want to do those in my head. For a very long time, like it just made my skin crawl and I started to ask myself why it was totally because of my high functioning anxiety. I would start a 365 project and then I'd miss a day and I beat myself up for missing a day. How am I going to make this day up?

How can this project still be perfect? It's not perfect anymore. So I finally, then actually my husband got in on it. He's if you can't do it, I'll do it. So he did a 365 project when our daughter was a year old and he actually finished, he did all 365 days with his phone. Look, I did it. I'm like great.

Nancy: And he didn't miss a day. He did it perfectly.

Beryl: He probably, he doesn't, he has other stuff, but he doesn't have necessarily high functioning anxiety. He falls under another flavor of anxiety. But he probably missed the day, but didn’t care. He just took a picture the next morning or made up for it and didn't beat himself up over it.

But I finally finished one. I was trying to do it like my big fancy professional DSLR camera. I decided to do one with my phone because my phone was always with me. The pressure was taken off immensely. Oh, I can take imperfect photos and still finish this. But like any photo project always felt very constrictive to me.

I don't even know if that's a word constricting. Just because I was like, oh, like it triggered all of them. Perfectionistic piece. Now I have to do this and I'm going to fail if I don't do it the right way. But we have noticed that like our community does need motivation. I've let go of some of my like, oh, I hate photo projects. They're terrible. We do them more now. At momtographer, but we also share, because we have a lot of creatives have high-functioning anxiety, even if they don't know, they have it I'm sure that they exist and would self-identify. And we've shown other ways to embrace photo projects, which is choose a subject you're interested in and see how many different ways you can photograph that subject.

Maybe like you set the parameters, are you going to do it daily? Are you going to do it weekly and do it until it doesn't feel that anymore? And then switch to something else?. I took 30 days. Photos, 30 ish days of photos of like my morning cup of coffee. I called it the, my daily cup project and I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do with these, it was fun.

Because I would collect mugs from different places or I'd take photos while I was traveling and eating or drinking a cup of coffee at a restaurant. I took a picture of my smoothie one day, because I didn't have coffee and I did it until I was like, okay, I'm done. Like this doesn't feel inspiring anymore.

I'm not curious about this anymore. And I got to be in control and call the shots around the project.

Nancy: Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, there's a woman. I follow on Instagram for no reason. But every morning she does a story about her coffee, about the French press. And it's just her doing the French press and pouring the coffee and I watch it every morning.

And she said that she gets so many comments from people that are just like, I enjoy seeing this ritual. And so like when you said that about the coffee, like that's just a cool. Ritual. Yeah. Until it's not. And then you stopped doing it.

Beryl: And I did that, the project when my daughter got older. Because I realized like the things that inspired me about photography in the beginning and becoming a mom and the changes of like your child in those first many years of their upbringing, I was like, oh, there's no more firsts.

And she's at school all day. What am I photographing now? And so I needed to find something just to keep me inspired and motivated to shoot. And that was how that project came to be. It was through that coaching process of what am I curious about right now?

Nancy: And is that just, was that just on your phone or was that with the camera?

Beryl: It was probably a little bit of. Okay. Yeah, I think I just allowed it to be what it needed to be. I know when I was traveling, I didn't really take my big camera with me but I'm sure some days at home, I took photos with the DSLR also.

Nancy: Yeah, that's cool. What so here's a weird question for you because I know you do photography, but one of my big things, that one reason I'm not more creative or do creative projects is because my Monger will tell me it's impractical. What are we going to do with that? Where are we going to put it? Ooh, that's a big one. And so it is, I know for photography that isn't, but I'm just curious your take on

Beryl: Our moms struggle with that too. And I think I struggled with that personally because do, I say that to myself sometimes too.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to pick up my camera today because. Yeah. What is this? What's the purpose?

Nancy: Yeah.

Beryl: We talk a lot about setting an intention for your photography or for your creativity in our community. And that intention can be as big. I want to get good at taking pictures because I want to be able to take my baby's newborn photo and hang it up on a big canvas on my wall.

That was my like initial big personal goal. I want to have a baby. I want to take that photo of myself and I want to not have to hire a newborn photographer essentially. And the moms that are really like interested in photography, that's a lot of their main motivation in the beginning, but that motivation can also be, I just want this snapshot so I can send it to the ground.

Or, and I think that intention becomes very important. I want to take these photos today because I know I feel good and I feel creative and I feel like I've unlocked something bigger inside of me when I do it. And sometimes we will. Give our students, the guidance of go on a photo walk today, take whatever camera you want to take, whatever pictures inspire you and then come home and delete them.

Like the magic of digital photography is that you don't have to do anything right. You haven't wasted any money on film. So there doesn't have to be a purpose. And I see a lot of parents especially struggle with that. Because, the magic of digital photography is that we can take photos upon photos, but then you have 30,000 photos sitting on your phone or on your computer.

And it's what do I do with these? I resisted it. Printing photo books for a long time because of my mom, they're going you have to do this perfectly. You have to use all the photos. How are you going to use them? I didn't have the struggles. Some of our community will come forward and say, I don't even want to open this folder because how can I delete photos of my kids.

Nancy: OH, wow. Yeah.

Beryl: There's a lot of guilt and anxiety and throwing photos away. And we've tried to take on the Marie Kondo methodology of photo spark. Do you really need, do you really need 15 photos of your child making similar poses? No. Like it's okay to delete those, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that there's like a right answer, but I know that setting a personal intention helps.

Nancy: Yeah. That makes sense. Because I think you, because that's what my husband will say. We don't need another painting hanging on the wall.

That's just crappy. My office is covered with paintings that he's done. That I just think are amazing. Because I think just doing the creativity is amazing. But I, but the intention, and when I think about me sitting there doing that painting that I loved when we took that class, then I can tap into that intention oh, that was worth it.

Beryl: It's funny that you say that because I don't go to a lot of the paints. Because I'm like, where am I going to put this thing? Once I paint it, I have no idea where it will go. But there is something about the practice and the act of doing it too. And how that's yeah. And how you feel when you go do it.

Nancy: I think it expands. It's a bypass. The creativity is a bypass around all of that perfectionism and people pleasing. Like when you can get into the zone of, concentrating on taking a photo, that's interesting to you for no other reason, then that's just bypass it. It's training your brain to do it differently than it has to be perfect.

And, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that crap that the monger spews forth. Totally. Which is yeah. Which is awesome. Ah, this has been so cool. Thank you so much.

Beryl: I feel like you, and I could just keep going and go. I know for hours, we won't make your listeners that

Nancy: no, but I, because I just feel like we just dabbled and hit a lot of topics that I have not hit yet on the podcast, as far as parenting and the generational stuff. And then also just tapping into that creativity, which I think is such an important part, but it is helpful to talk to someone who knows how hard that is to do and who is still figuring out ways to do it.

Tell me how people can find you and what you're working on over.

Beryl: Totally. Can I issue a challenge to your listeners? That'd be fun. Okay. So we have a project it's our signature project at momtography, it's called the a hundred steps project. And this project stemmed out of my own like perfectionism and lack of motivation to go photograph.

And I was like, all right, I can get up off my couch. I can take a hundred steps. And I can find joy and appreciation and like right now and shift my perspective. And so I tell our community, go stand at your front door or wherever you can pick a starting point wherever you want it to be walk a hundred steps, find a way to make a photograph in the place that you're standing.

Wow. Yeah, because it, you have that like, all right, I have the guidelines, it's a hundred steps, to do that. But I think it also forces you to think creatively and to get out of your head and you don't have to do anything with that photo besides just we would love to see it. So if you go find us on Instagram, it's momtography CEO.

That's how you can follow me on Instagram when you can tag me and hashtag momtography and then our website is momtography.club.

Nancy: Awesome. I really like that. Because like you said, it has rules. And a challenge. Like it's a mix of both.

Beryl: Yeah. So hopefully it'll help some of your listeners go for your listeners that are moms.

It's really fun to do with your kids too. If you can get them to go with you. Oh yeah.

Nancy: That's a great idea. I love that. Thank you for just that. I'm going to do that. When we hang up on my way down to get the laundry, I'm going my steps and see where I left

Beryl: it.

Nancy: Awesome. Okay. We will link to it, that stuff in the show notes, we're also going to link to the book that you mentioned about the ADHD that changed everything for you. And thank you for taking the time to do this. Thanks for having me.

For the record, I did practice the 100 hundred step challenge and have practiced it multiple times since so often I hear these challenges, but I never put them into practice, but I did.

As soon as I hung up from our interview, I tried it and I've done it a few times when I've been stuck or feeling particularly Mongery, it's a fun way to get out of your head. See the world differently. I challenge you to try it.

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Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.

Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.

I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most effective and most life-changing work I have ever done. My clients are consistently blown away by how these daily check-ins combined with the monthly face-to-face video meetings create slow, lasting changes that reprogram their High Functioning Anxiety tendencies over time.

Over the course of the three-month program, we meet once a month for a face-to-face session via a secure video chat, and then throughout the entire three months, you have access to me anytime you are feeling anxious, having a Monger attack, celebrating a win, or just need to check-in, and I will respond to you during my office hours (Monday through Friday, 9 am - 6 pm EST).

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Episode 103: Achiever Fever–How To Quit The Need to Succeed Without Losing Your Edge With Claire Booth

In today’s episode, I discuss with Claire Booth, author of The Achiever Fever Cure: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy, what it takes to start flourishing without being a high achiever.

You’ve heard that winning isn’t everything but deep down you know that isn’t true. Striving to be the best is how you keep your edge.

In the last episode, I discussed the self-help industry’s positive thinking problem. In today’s episode of the Happier Approach, I discuss with Clair Booth, author of The Achiever Fever Cure: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy, what it takes to start flourishing without being a high achiever.

Claire was a successful but stressed-out market research entrepreneur and executive suffering from what she calls "achiever fever"—constant striving coupled with chronic feelings of inadequacy. Sick and tired of feeling miserable--but ever the self-help skeptic--Claire decided to try anything that might bring relief, from mindfulness to martial arts, from spending ten days in silence to "smiling" at her spleen. At first, Claire was fearful that slowing down and softening up will mean losing her professional edge. 

Instead, she discovered a more joyful and purposeful life, one that also turns out to be good for business. 

Listen to the full episode to find out:

• What Achiever Fever is and how to know if we have it

• The dark side of being a high achiever

• Identifying and naming our inner judge

• Meditation and the life-changing act of chopping vegetables

• The connection between alcohol and anxiety

• Living life as opposed to just logging life

• And what we gain when we give up the Achiever Fever

• Find out more about Claire Booth and the Achiever Fever at claireboothauthor.com. 

Research and resources mentioned:

• The Achiever Fever Cure: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy by Claire Booth

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

• The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray

• Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington

• My books on living with High Functioning Anxiety

• And how you can work with me one-on-one

+ Read the Transcript

Claire: And he said, you’re basically logging. I don’t know if this is his words are my words. They’re good—either way. You’re logging time as opposed to living time. You’re just trying to get through it as opposed to get from it. The joy is in the learning. And I thought, no wonder I haven’t had any joy in my life because looking back, of course, I’ve learned all sorts of things, but I didn’t luxuriate in the learning.

It’s only as a result of doing this inner work and where I am now that learning for the sake of learning is one of the most pleasurable things in life. And I went through years of my life with that and understanding.

Nancy: Self-help books make it sound so easy. Take a big old mess of a person, implement a proven system. And then voila transformation. The system has magically fixed and healed all the messy, broken bits. Self-help books rarely show the during. The messy, middle, the part where things go wrong, expectations are unmet frustration and boredom set in.

But my guest today did just that with full honesty and integrity. You’re listening to the happier approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. And I’m your host, Nancy Jane. My guest today is Claire Booth.

Claire is the author of the book Achiever Fever: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy. Claire was a successful but stressed-out market research, entrepreneur, and executive suffering from what she calls achiever fever, constant striving, coupled with chronic feelings of inadequacy. Sick and tired of feeling miserable, but ever the self-help skeptic, Claire decided to try anything that might bring relief from mindfulness to martial arts, from spending ten days in silence to smiling at her spleen. At first, Claire was fearful that slowing down and softening up will mean losing her professional edge. Instead, she discovered a more joyful and purposeful life. One that also turns out to be good for business. In the Achiever Fever Cure, Claire shares her struggle, how she recognized the struggle, and how she worked through the struggle. And most importantly, how that struggle is ongoing, even confessing her secret hope to be in a car accident so she could stop writing the high functioning anxiety roller coaster.

I wanted to ask Claire about how she knew she had achiever fever and that it was a problem? How did she ask for help? And what her journey has been quiet her achiever fever? It definitely was non-linear. I love my conversation with Claire, and I know you will get a lot.

Nancy: Claire, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for showing up and sharing your story.

Claire: Absolutely. It’s my pleasure.

Nancy: So I just want to say thank you so much because there are so many self-help books out there that make it sound so easy. As if you can just poof, you’re healed as long as you meditate so many times a day and do so many things.

And I really appreciated your honesty throughout this entire book about how you struggled and how you recognize the struggle, and how you work through the struggle. Your integrity and honesty were incredible.

Claire: Thank you

Nancy: Okay, so let’s back up a little bit. What is Achiever Fever, and how did you know you had it?

Claire: So, Achiever Fever is the dark side of achieving. And I’ll say right up front there’s nothing wrong with achieving. There’s nothing wrong with having goals. There’s nothing wrong with feeling good about working hard, working towards something accomplishments. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Where it does go wrong is where we start tying our identity, our happiness, our self-worth to our achievements. And we find ourselves saying things like, I’ll be happy when. Or I’ll be a success when and it forces us into this future state so that we end up living our lives in a constant hurry or worry state of mind. And we completely forget the fact that our lives are happening right here, right now.

How did I realize I had it? The hurrying and the worrying had been my normal state for as long as I can remember. Ever since probably middle of junior high, I think, when I started tying my identity to getting good grades and then started tying my identity to getting into the right school and doing the right degrees and that type of thing.

All it takes is somebody to say, Hey, you’re really good at this. And it just adds wind to the sails. And so I just glommed onto this. Oh, I’m an achiever. Okay. No, I’m not just an achiever. I’m a high achiever. And so that became my identity, and I had to protect it at all. Because it’s who I was, who I thought I was.

So I lived my life in that way with all of the accompanying constant anxiety and worry and rushing and box-ticking. And list-making until it got too big to bear. And the way that came about for me was I stopped sleeping. I got really bad insomnia. It was a number of things that, that came into my life at one.

The majority of it was, I was working for a large global corporation. I had moved to Seattle. I was opening their Seattle office, building it, building the team, getting the clients. And I was the face of it. I was responsible for it. And so, for an achiever, it’s just a platform to excel and to prove how good I am, look like, check me out, look what I can do.

And I put so much pressure on myself that I would lie awake. And think those thoughts around what if this happens? What if I can handle this? What if that falls through? The what-if scenarios and get bigger and bigger. And before I knew it was three o’clock in the morning, then four, then five. And that happened for a number of nights. I knew something was very wrong when I started fantasizing about getting into a car accident.

Nancy: That’s my favorite part of the book

Claire: I can laugh about it now, but back then, I was. Desperate to just get into a car accident.

Nothing too brutal. I didn’t want to be maimed, and I didn’t want my insurance rates to go up. I just wanted something that would not impact my car too much but would send me into a coma. I just wanted to be in a coma. I wanted to be in a hospital bed, pumped full of drugs, and just left to finally sleep for four days because I was doing so well at work.

But I wasn’t able to do the basic human function of sleep. And I remember being constantly envious and jealous, just looking at other people when I was on my way to work or when I was anything from a drug store to a grocery store and just looking at everyone else and thinking, how do you guys do this?

How do you sleep? Why am I such a bad human being? How can I not do this? When I finally did get into a car accident? That was a major wake-up call for me, my very first wake-up call. It wasn’t actually enough to really wake me up, but it got me on to sleeping medication. And as soon as I was on sleeping medication, my goal became to get off the sleeping medication.

It was about five or six years later when I started my own company. I started getting insomnia again. And it was, yeah, it was about five years into running my company. And again, everything was going really well. We were successful. I was building this business, but I just couldn’t find any happiness for enjoyment in it because I, again, that anxiety and the insomnia were back. It was a comment that an employee gave me.

That was the real wake-up call.

Nancy: So tell us about that. Because it’s hard to break the addiction to achieving, so what was the comment that started that?

Claire: The comment was I thought that I was doing a good job hiding all of this anxiety and insomnia and depression, for that matter. I thought I was doing a great job hiding it. I would be on at work.

And then I would take it home and worry and cry and drink a bunch of wine and try to find something on Netflix that I that would hold my focus, which of course didn’t exist because my mind would just go off in a thousand directions. I did have my employees each year do a review of all the senior leaders.

And one of the comments that I read in my review, this is all done anonymously. One of the comments was I know what kind of day it’s going to be as soon as Claire walks in the front door.

Nancy: Wow.

Claire: And that was my holy shit. They see this. They see what’s happening. And I thought, for sure, I was hiding it. And so that realization, that recognition that my mask was slipping, was so humiliating for me.

It was embarrassing. It was humbling. And the big thing was I realized that I was going to become a liability to my own company if I couldn’t do something. So yeah, that, that was where I finally held my hand up. No more. I enough, I can’t live my life like this anymore,

Nancy: Which is interesting because that is the complexity I think is that you gain so much with everyone saying nice job and way to go, and I can always count on you and, and then ticking all the boxes of achieving.

You get so much. And then yeah, I paid the price with this anxiety, and I pay the price with not sleeping. Yeah. But I get all this stuff that I’ve been told I should want. And then to recognize now, wait a minute, my mask is slipping, so I’m not going to get all the positives anymore if I don’t get this under control.

Claire: Yeah. And those highs that elation that I used to feel when I did achieve something like we got this great big new client, or we hit this particular target or something that I would do. I’m a climber and a swimmer. So I swam a particular time, or I climbed a certain grade that elation would last anywhere from 30 seconds to maybe a couple of hours, and maybe I could extend it with a bottle of wine into the evening, but the next morning I’d wake up and think, okay, what’s next? What’s bigger. What’s better? What’s faster? What’s next? This idea that I had, that there was a finish line, just got moved a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further.

And I thought, wait a second, this doesn’t make sense. All these things that I think are going to make me happy, all they end up doing is making me miserable. Like this doesn’t make sense.

Nancy: And that becomes the breaking point. Light can come in to be like, okay, what do I need to do next?

Claire: Yeah, it’s that intuitive, experiential recognition of knowing deeply, knowing that reaching a particular something or getting a particular something, or making a certain amount that intuitive understanding that it’s not going to make a difference and you need to be able to see the pattern. I think you need to live long enough to see the pattern. This happened to me when I was in my early forties. I guess in my world, that was what it took for me to finally see that there was a pattern here that was not serving me.

Nancy: Because I was just going to ask you, do you think it’s an age thing?

Claire: I think that because more people are talking about vulnerability, especially millennials are being more vocal about their feelings and emotions. We, I’m a gen X-er. We didn’t talk about this sort of stuff ever. I wanted to portray myself as a confident, strong person.

I wouldn’t dream of telling anybody that I felt like an imposter. I didn’t feel like I was strong enough or that I had this insomnia or anxiety. That’s the thing. But millennials now are so much more vocal about it. While I do think some lived experiences required the awareness of achieving not being the meaning of life, it doesn’t require you to hit 40 to figure it out. There are so many self-aware 20 somethings that I’ve read, or that I’ve felt that I’ve read books. God, how have you figured this out already? Good on you. Yes. Yeah. And then I’ll find myself going down what was wrong with me and doing it again. Here we go.

Nancy: Exactly. (Laughter)

Claire: How are you so much better than me? (Laughter)

Nancy: Because I do. I know in my practice. That most of my clients are in their thirties and forties. And when I start getting clients up in their fifties and sixties, the path is so well-worn to be an achiever that they have a harder time unhooking it, because it just isn’t worth the effort. And in their thirties, they’re a little more like this isn’t something’s off and we can talk about it and they could be like, oh yeah, I can flip this.

And it still takes work. And I’m not saying woo, it’s done, but it’s a little less ingrained gen X mentality that we were taught.

Claire: For all the good, the internet has done. It’s also led to this five quick fixes and the hack and the five steps and doing the inner work.

It’s work. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes a lot of strength. It takes strength that I didn’t know. I actually had, I thought strength was a physical thing. And I used to think the stronger I got physically, the more confident I would be, the more strong I would feel mentally. And now I realize it’s actually exactly the opposite.

Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I loved is that you shared, you started working with Ian and, he agreed to help you. And right after you said yes to him, you immediately, as you’re walking away thought, no, I can’t do this, I have to keep achieving this as self-indulgent and this’ll take too much time. So I loved that you admitted that. Sometimes I’ll have a potential client call me and then they’ll they want my help and then they’ll be like, yeah, no, nevermind, I can handle it. So tell me about that process for you about Ian.

Claire: So there are so many people out there that are equipped to help people that are struggling with anxiety and depression and insomnia, for whatever reason, but until you are ready, it doesn’t matter how good that therapist or counselor coach is until you are ready to face the music, nothing is going to happen. Ian was my climbing coach. And one day this is just a few weeks after I’d realized, like I’m done living my life like this sucks. I hate this. I want to change this, but I didn’t know how, I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what book to read. And I remember I used to go to bookstores and I would go to the business section and look through the books, trying to find something that would.

And that’s the way I used to think about it. I just want to be fixed. I want it to problem gone. And I pick up these books and they, in the business section, they all tended to have the same theme, which is like work 150% and strive, and they just ended up stressing me out. And I thought this is not the way.

And I was too scared to go to the self-help section because I had this perception of well, people that are in the self-help section, there are a completely lost. Like anyone that’s going to go to that section, they are crazy beings into crystals and Woohoo and hippies and yeah, that’s just so not for me.

And had, I just gone into that goddamn self-help section from the beginning, but I wasn’t ready. You have to evolve in the way that things are going to evolve. You can’t get ahead of your own evolution. As somebody once said, I had this desire. Like I knew I wanted to change. I had this desire, my mind, I still just didn’t know how it was going to happen.

And then one day when I was in my in a climbing class, I overheard my climbing coach talk to a fellow classmate. And he was talking about this new program that he was thinking of offering called the transformation program. And it was for people that were stuck and wanted to change something.

And I think he was talking to this fellow classmate about his or her weight. This person wanted to change their weight. And I remember hearing him say the word transformation and I don’t think I’d ever really heard that word properly before, but when I had the awareness that I wanted something and I was searching for something, even though I didn’t know how to do that or where to go. And then he said transformation. It was just like a magnet. Like I was just straight to him. I actually know the way it actually worked was he said it and I under my breath, I said, yeah, God transformation. Wouldn’t that be great?

Like, it just fell out of my mouth. And in that life-changing moment, he heard me. Wow. And he came to me and said, What is it that you want to change? And I just said everything. I want to change everything. And I remember getting so emotional and worked up just finally saying I want to do everything.

I hate so much about my life. And that’s where we started. Wow. It just takes that one person. Sometimes the person that wants to change needs to be ready and needs to hold up their hand and say, yes, I want to change. Once that happens the way the world seems to work, call it the universe, call it awareness, call it whatever you will find your person, it’s when you’re ready.

The teacher appears.

Nancy Yes. Yes. I agree.

Claire: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s the case for anybody that is looking to change. They just have to say it. I want to change and the right thing or book or personal, whatever it is will come into their life. And I don’t think that’s magic at all. I think that’s just once you’ve got it in your awareness, you see the world in a different way.

Like you’ve got a new filter. You’re searching, you’re looking, you’re more attune to people and books and things that may help you.

Nancy: Yes, I totally agree with that. So one thing Ian worked with you on was hearing your inner judge. That is the work.

And it’s also one of the hardest things to do is start paying attention to that voice. You call it the judge, I call it the monger, but paying attention to that voice. That is for so many of us. That’s your voice. There is no separation between the two. So how did you start separating?

Claire: So the voice just like my state of normal was the state of being in a hurry or worrying.

My other state of normal was having this really nasty voice in my head that would just yell at me and scream at me and tell me I was doing things wrong or tell me the thing that said most often was you should be better. You should try harder. That was the big one. And you try harder each time.

And that voice had been with me for long as I can remember. And there’s a story that I tell in the book about when I was seven years old on the playground and I was standing by the swings. I was on my own, it was a school play ground. And I remember the voice in my head saying something like the reason you’re here on your own is because you’re boring and the other people, the other kids don’t like you.

Nancy: Wow.

Claire: That was the earliest memory I can. That I can remember of that before the voice. And it’s been with me ever since, and I just listened to it on autopilot. That voice is it’s our ego. It’s our protector. It’s the thing that pushes us. But it also is so dominant that we can’t hear those other voices as well, but the voices of creativity and wonder, and love and gratitude.

When we’ve got such a loud inner critic, it’s just, it just dominates the conversation. And so it had been so dominant for so long that I didn’t even know to question. And I didn’t even, the voice was a part of me just like my hand was a part of me and my leg was a part of me. And Ian drew my attention to it.

When I did this climb, it was the very first time Ian and I met. But I was doing this climb and I fell halfway through the class. I remember getting really angry about it. And I think I said out loud God damn it. And he lowered me down and he’s wow, what was that? And I said, every time I do this climb, I fall on this one spot and I’m never going to get it right.

And I just yell at myself and I hate myself and I hate climbing and I hate everything. And this is the way my life seems to go. And he’s oh, okay. I think we’ve got something here we can work with. And he said for you, he asked me, first of all, to name that voice, that to me, it was just like a what are you talking?

What voice? This is me. I don’t understand. Yeah. I never ever thought about this before. I didn’t have to think about it that long. I’m like the judge just judges me all the time. Tell him what the judge would say, like you’re bad, you should try harder. You should be better. You should be faster.

You’re not as good as everyone else, that’s sort of stuff. And I said I feel like I have the world’s loudest inner critic. Nobody has a voice as powerful and as mean, and as nasty as mine, surely nobody does. And I honestly believe. I really did. I honestly believed that.

And I said that and he’s there’s actually a lot of people with a voice just and I remember feeling a mixture of two things. My first reaction was complete and utter relief. Like I remember feeling floaty, like weightless, I can’t possibly be as, as, almost as soon as I had that, lovely, wonderful oh, the second thought was like a competitiveness.

Nope. Nope. Mine. Mine’s bigger. Mine. Mine’s just different. (laughter)

Nancy: You’re going to win on that one too. (laughter)

Claire: I’m going to win on mine. Mine’s much louder, much nastier than anybody in the entire.

Nancy: . I can so relate to that too.

Claire: That’s where it all began. It was taking that inner nasty voice and people have different names for it.

Like you say, yours is the Monger mine’s the judge. But until we name it, we don’t really know how to look at it. And by naming it, it became a character in my life as opposed to my life. And I was able to watch. This voice is a character called the judge and was able to uncouple who I was my larger self.

And I had no kind of spiritual understanding of self at that time, like I do now, but I was able to uncouple, myself from this character called the judge. And once we can separate ourselves that way and observe those thoughts that’s the game changer. That’s the game changer. Yeah, that is the game-changing.

And then the work really begins..

Nancy: I just had a client this past week who was so excited Because she could recognize her judge. She was like, there it is. That’s my judge. And then and then later we were talking and I was like, I, most of my work is helping people recognize the judge.

But the work that really begins once you recognize it. And she’s no, you’re kidding. (Laughter)

Claire: There’s more!?!? (Laughter)

Nancy: She was so excited. I’m like, you shouldn’t be, this is exciting. And there is more

Claire: well, here’s what I thought would happen in that gym that day. When I named the judge and I realized, wait a second, this isn’t me.

This is just a part of me. The gym that day feeling positively giddy. Like I had fixed myself and I went home and I felt on top of the world and I was like, blaring my music and I was so excited. And then I was brushing my teeth. And my eyes traveled down to my stomach and the judge just there, it was, I was like, what?

No, I’m supposed to be fixed. What’s going on?!?. But what happened in that moment? Yeah. I caught the judge and that’s the work is to catch the judge, catch the thoughts, catch what it’s saying. And then and then start writing them down, which isn’t as difficult an exercise as it might sound because our judge tends to say the same things to us over and over again.

And there’s a, in the survey that I did of other achievers, one of the questions that I asked them was on a scale of one to 10, how strong is your inner critic with one being like what inner critic? I don’t know what you’re talking about. And a 10 being this thing won’t shut up. And the average score among achievers was a seven out of seven. It was an eight and a half for women slightly less than a 7.5 for men. I think I’ve got that. But I then asked if you feel comfortable on the survey was completely anonymous. Please write down a couple of thoughts that your inner critic tends to tell you one.

I was so gratified to see the responses. Like people actually took the time to write down what their inner critic said. Wow. And some of them, and I write about it in my book. I put some of them in the book. Some of them are so dark, so bleak. My eyes just filled with tears, reading what people say to themselves and they tend to be along a couple of different themes.

The first being I’m not enough. I’m not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, as good as this person, as good as my sister is good as whatever the case is. That’s the first theme. Another theme is I’m an imposter. People are gonna see that. I don’t know what I’m talking about. People are going to see that I’m making this up.

People are going to see that I’m not nearly as good as I want them to think that I am. Those are two key themes and certainly themes that my judge would run on repeat.

Nancy: Because it is interesting when you think about, when I hear achieving, I automatically assume corporate business owner, entrepreneur achieving, sometimes the achieving is just being the best mom, it’s that, it’s back to that finish line keeps moving.

It doesn’t have to be, I have all this great success. I could just, I just have to keep achieving in my own life. Whatever that definition is for me.

Claire: Oh, absolutely. It can be, I have a cleaner car than anybody else’s parking lot. Yeah. It’s that mentality being an achiever. And I, this insight dawned on me at the end of a 10 day silent retreat was being an achiever, isolates you from other people as an achiever.

You have to see yourself as an individual. And when you’re an achiever, you need the underachiever. So you need to make sure that there are enough people around you that aren’t achieving as well as you are so that you can keep yourself on top. Yes. Yeah. So you’re being in that world in a very competitive comparative mindset.

And we all think relatively that’s how we operate as human beings. But when you call yourself an achiever it’s like that next level you have. You have to tell yourself, you have to hold yourself up to a higher standard, which means you need to see everyone else’s either as threats or not as good as, and it’s a miserable way to go through life miserable.

Yeah. And that’s why I, that’s why I called it a fever because it’s a delusion. It’s a delusional state, when you’re suffering from a fever and you’ve got these weird hallucinations and you don’t know if it’s day or night or if you’re hot or you’re cold to me, that’s what happens when you are in this achiever fever.

You, you just lose perspective of what’s real and what’s happening and who people are and who you actually are. And yeah you’re just in a weird fever state.

Nancy: When you were in the middle of the year of you, as you called it, you had, and I loved this phrase. You had the fever to get over the fever, and then you went skiing and Ian talked to you about, I don’t know if that went together, but it was in the same chapter in the book

Claire: Yep, they definitely go together.

Nancy: And then Ian talked to you about learning for the sake of learning. And I loved that. So tell us about that lesson

Claire: Because I did this year long program, I found that as the months went by. And I was learning more and more, and my world was expanding and I would wake up in the morning with a smile on my face, thinking like, what am I going to learn today?

Everything just felt new, but at the same time there was that nagging thought oh, you’ve only got six more months.

So yeah, I got the Achiever fever about getting rid of the achiever fever. And then yeah, so I went skiing. And skiing was not part of my childhood at all. So I learned to ski in my thirties and my partner, Chris, and all of his friends are excellent elite skiers really good skiers. And so when I joined them to start skiing, I was such a beginner, but struggling to be one of the group.

And so I wanted to get from complete novice to elite level skiing as fast as I possibly could. And I would push myself as fast as I could. And as hard as I could to get to where I wanted to be. And there was one day where we were back country skiing, and I was so far behind the group and just getting angrier and angry with myself.

And my inner judge was just screaming at me. Like you’re a loser, you’re an idiot. What are you doing out here? You suck. And I fell into deep powder and I couldn’t get myself out and of course I’m flailing around and I just hit that point where I’m just like screw it. I hate this. I’m done. I, this is where I die.

This is where my life ends in this deep snow. I tried my best and I give up, I went in, I obviously didn’t die because here I am. And I went into go and see Ian the next day. And I told them about the story. And he said, how long have you been skiing for? And I said at that point it was a few years.

It’s like, how long has Chris and his friends been skiing for him? Their entire lives. And he just looks at me like, do you see what I’m getting at here? And he said, You’re basically logging. I don’t know if this has his words or my words, but they’re good. Either way. You’re logging time as opposed to living time.

You’re just trying to get through it as opposed to get from. And the joy is in the learning. And I thought no wonder I haven’t had any joy in my life. Because I, looking back, of course I’ve learned all sorts of things, but I didn’t luxuriate in the learning. I tried to get it done as fast as I possibly could.

When I was doing my PhD, I tried to get all the coursework that would take people two years. I tried to get a done in a year, like just push through as fast as I could. And. It’s only as a result of doing this in our work. And where I am at now, that learning for the sake of learning is one of the most pleasurable things in life.

And I went through years of my life with that and understanding that.

Nancy: And I think that is almost, I don’t know, but I think that’s almost as pivotal. That lesson is almost as pivotal as recognizing the judge.

Claire: Yeah. And they all go like stepping stones, right? Like just stand the judge in order to rise down the next thing.

And then I needed to learn how to meditate in order to understand the next thing and off it went from there.

Nancy: Speaking of meditating, I love how you talked about being present, how you were so judgmental of the phrases being present and being in the moment because I just so related to that.

You talked about chopping the vegetables that was, life-changing tell us about that.

Claire: To this day. That is one of the most memorable moments of my life. All my life like you said, I would hear people say it’s all about being present. You just got to be in the moment.

And I would think who has time to be present? That’s so stupid. The more that I was reading because I was working with Ian, but I was also reading a lot because I was so interested in all of this. I’m a deeply curious person under all that achiever fever. I still had a very deep curiosity.

And I was like into the self-help section at this point too, that was a whole new world for me as well. Like I walked in I’m like, where have you been all my life, all this stuff. So I started reading all of these things and every book, every podcast, every documentary. I was with them until they all started to say the same thing, which was and was meditation.

It would bring up meditation. And I thought I really enjoy reading about meditation, but I don’t want to. I have no interest in doing this because I thought I was going to be bad at it. And I only wanted to do things I was going to be good at. And I was going to be terrible at meditation. I thought also, I didn’t want to do it because I was too scared of what I might learn.

Like all these weird, horrible thoughts that I made. Kept down for so many years and all of a sudden they start bubbling up and what if it’s too much? And also it just looked really boring. I couldn’t imagine anything more boring and unproductive and I have work to do and workouts to do and friends to hang out with and Netflix to watch.

Like who wants to meditate. It got to the point where all the books were saying the same thing and it, I couldn’t not see it anymore. I go, okay fine. And I did, like a couple of minutes and then I extended it to five minutes and then I extended it to 10 minutes and it was excruciating. It was full on excruciating until it wasn’t, something just shifted for me.

And I think it was I attended a meditation group and I remember being there and thinking Other people do this too. And everyone here looks totally normal. It’s almost like it took my achiever a fever to meditate because while they were meditating, I wanted to be like, I wanted to do what they were doing.

I wanted to, and I wanted to do it well. So I had to take it seriously. Then I started to be able to meditate for longer periods. And to this day, I only meditate for 20 minutes at a time. Like I don’t need to sit there for hours and hours. Although I’ve done silent retreats where I have sat there for hours and hours.

That’s a different thing, but it was the meditation that helped me understand how to observe my thoughts and to help me understand that we are not our thoughts. We can, we just watch the thoughts. And I used to think meditation was about stopping the thoughts. Yes. I think a lot of. I think that, from what I understand, that people that I’ve talked to, and of course you can’t stop your thoughts.

So people try it and think that was a waste of time because I wasn’t able to start, like nobody can stop their thoughts right. For extended periods of time. So yeah, once I was able to start observing my thoughts, I started to see how many of them there were and the way that Ian described it to me is think of your thoughts as boxcars on a train.

And you just watch the thoughts go by because soon as you have a thought, there’s another one right behind it. And another one right behind it. And another one right behind it, you can’t really hold onto one for too long because there’s another one coming right behind it. And so I watched my thoughts and saw yeah, he’s absolutely right.

And sometimes you’ll jump on those box cars. Honestly, You’ll ride it to the next station, and 10 minutes go by because you’ve been in this state of worry or panic or anxiety or regret or whatever the case is, where you’re just mulling over this thought over and over and over and over again.

And then I started to become aware of when I was doing. And started saying to myself up, you’ve jumped on a box par again. Okay. You can jump off. There’s another one coming by shortly.

Nancy: I love that analogy.

Claire: And then eventually Ian said, you’ll start to be able to experience the gap between the box cars. So that short, very short minute period where there’s no thought

And Eckerd totally talks about this a lot in the power of now as he calls it, and I won’t get into that, but I write about it in the book. So as I started doing a little more meditation and started to learn what being present actually was, and that I was capable of being present and what that felt like there was a, it was about a month after I started doing this and I was chopping vegetables because I’ve always liked to chop a bunch of vegetables on the Sunday for meal prep.

And that day I was listening my playlist on Spotify or something, and I was chopping cabbage and kale and carrots. And all of a sudden I just got this really weird feeling that I’d never had before. And it was like, my heart just filled up to wanting to burst this feeling of.

What I now understand was just enormous love and gratitude. Just watched it washed over me and I had to steady myself on my kitchen island because I was so overwhelmed by this feeling. I’m like, what? Oh my God, what is this? I was crying and cry, like sobbing. My body was wracked with sobs and as I was sobbing, I saw that I wasn’t sobbing because I was sad or I was angry.

I was frustrated. I’m like what? I’m trying to intellectually understand it, knowing that there’s nothing to understand. Like I intuitively got that this was one of those moments where I was a hundred percent present. And in those moments, that power of now that I could totally talks about that is what life actually feels like.

I mean that, that is open for us to experience whenever we can be truly purely present and let our thoughts go, that space exists. And that was a very tiny taste. My very first taste, at least that I’m aware of experiencing that space. And unless you’ve been through something like that, it’s very hard to describe it.

But I think maybe people that have a spiritual background, people that have, have a very strong relationship with God, perhaps can, they know what I’m talking about. And I’m way out of my league here on this sort of stuff, but I. That feeling is something I never experienced before.

And no, no achievement had ever felt anything like that.

Nancy: Nicely said that’s what I love about the book is you really do lay out. I just thought of this as you were talking. Because that’s another stepping stone. In this process is having that realization because I remember the first time I read the power of now and I was like, what?

Just what are you talking about? Like I just could not get it. And then after I’d done a few of these stepping stones in your process, I was, I would read it again and be like, oh, this, I get it. On another level. I was able to get the power of now. In a different way. Like it’s like it that’s one of those books that just keeps revealing itself.

Each time I read it in a different level.

Claire: I read that book 20 years ago and I remember reading it in my office with the door closed because. I’m supposed to be working, right? This is what the large global corporation I was supposed to be working, but I would sneak this book out of my desk and read it because I was absolutely riveted by it.

I cannot recommend that book, highly enough, different books, land for people in different ways. Boy that book. Yeah. That landed. That really landed. Yeah.

Nancy: I’ve had a number of people say that to me, that book was a life-changer for them.

Claire: There’s a reason. It’s a, it’s such a huge bestseller. There’s something to this one.

Nancy: So something you talk about. And you mentioned it today and you mentioned it in our interview. You talk about it in the book is and a lot of my clients have talked about this wine and achieving and. And that they go together. So can you talk about your journey, how wine has played a role in all this?

Claire: So I used to use emphasis on use wine as my as my stress management tool. So I would get home at the end of the day would be, I don’t know, maybe 6 30, 7, 7 30, whatever time I worked. And the first thing I would do was come upstairs, open my fridge and grab my bottle of wine and I’d pour myself an enormous glass.

And I would be thinking about this glass of wine, some about 3:00 PM. And halfway through the glass, the world would finally start melting away and the judge would become a little quieter. That’s really what the wine was there to do was to quiet the judge and then I’d have my dinner and then I’d have another glass of wine.

And then I think if I leave the bottle, it’ll just go off. I should drink it. And all the other excuses that I told myself, I. I would maybe go through a couple of bottles a week, but it wasn’t the quantity. It was how I was using it. So once I started to understand how our minds work through this process, I started to see that I was using wine. And so I thought, okay, I’ll try something and I’ll take all the wine out of my fridge and I’ll replace it with something else, because I knew that was my habit. That was my default behavior was to open the fridge, grab a bottle of something. So I thought, okay, I take the wine out. I will go in and grab something else.

Let’s see if this makes any difference. And it wasn’t actually as difficult as I thought it was going to be. So the wine started coming down and then in November, 2018. So that was 10 months ago or something? Eight, eight months ago. I was in Japan, my partner and I were in Japan. We went there for three weeks and we drank every single night.

And we would say to each other in the restaurant, do you want to drink tonight? And one of us say, no, not really. Like we had a drink last night when I another one tonight. And then we’ll say we’re on vacation. Oh, I realized at the end of the 24 nights that we’ve been in Japan, we’d had a drink every single night, even nights, we didn’t even want one.

And I woke up one morning after I’d had that realization and this voice in my head, not the judge, some other. The voice reason said stop drinking and it was so clear and I thought, wow, that’s, when you just hear those voices from, they just make all the sense. Yeah. I heard it. I realized like this is an important thing I need to pay attention to.

And then I immediately talked myself out of it. I’m not going to stop drinking. I love drinking. I love going out with my friends and having a bottle of wine. Of course, I’m not going to stop drinking, but the. The power of the stop drinking didn’t go away. And I often do a dry January, so I thought, okay I’ll do a dry January.

And I got to the end of January and realized I hadn’t missed it. I didn’t, I wasn’t jonesing for a glass of wine. I wasn’t chosen for any alcohol at all. And I thought why put it back into my life? I’m not missing it. So I did a dry February and then I did a dry March. I haven’t drunk since December.

And what I’ve realized is that the awareness that I gain from being sober is so much more interesting to me than then the detachment that I used to feel from being drunk. Yeah. And I enjoy that state of awareness that I’m now experiencing. So much, I don’t want to let it go. I don’t know if this is a forever thing by any stretch, but it’s just a, it’s something in my life that I’m enjoying so much.

And I’m there’s books out there called the joy of being sober for sober, curious, more millennials are cutting way back on their alcohol. And if I miss the alcohol because of the taste, I would drink it. But I’ve noticed the only times that I want. Is when I’m with friends and I’m afraid of being judged for not drinking.

Yeah. And that is not a good enough reason for me to drink at all. It’s just an interesting thing to notice like, oh, I’m feeling.

Nancy: That’s awesome. Yeah, because I am I’m going to devote an episode of this podcast to this drinking idea, because it is such a common thread. And I did a similar stop drinking a couple of years ago.

Because almost exact same story you just told. And I was at the time Brooke Castillo, who had a stop over drinking program. The heart of the program was that you had to decide 24 hours in advance if you were going to have a drink and how many you were going to have.

I put so much pressure on myself to drink in social situations. And so it was, it took a year. I did it for a year and it was like how you’re doing it. Like I just kept re-upping every day doing it. And and now it’s so freeing that I, now I have a choice. Yeah,

Claire: that’s good.

Nancy: When in the past, I didn’t feel like I did, I had to drink because it would have been, I would have been judging myself so much.

Just exactly, as you said, because I had judged so many people for not drinking. And so it released me of all of that. Like I made it through a Christmas and that Thanksgiving and new year’s and my birthday and I didn’t drink and it was fine. So I can do anything was where I got, crazy empowering

Claire: Isn’t it?!?. I never thought I’d be able to say. I don’t drink and I’m proud of it and I don’t miss it and be truthful about that.

Nancy: And it takes your anxiety through the roof

Claire:. It really did. Yeah. Oh boy. I used to wake up and think, oh, why did I say that was so dumb? Yeah. It’s so much more about what you gain than about what you lose.

And I used to think I used to get so fixed it and I was like I’ll lose this. I lose the social, lose that that, but I never thought about what I might gain.

Nancy: Yes. Yeah. That’s very well said. Yeah. Okay. One last question. I, so I really encourage, like I said, I encourage people to buy the book and I don’t want to give away all of the experiences because I know there’s so many more ahas than we’ve covered in this book, but I’m curious, have you.

Have you lost your edge? How has losing the fever helped or even hurt you’re achieving ways as they say.

Claire: That is such a good question. I’m worry about using the word achieving. I don’t want to use that word anymore, but I don’t know a better word for it other than maybe flourishing.

There are a few things in my life that have happened as a result of this book where I can honestly say, now I am flourishing. My business is flourishing. So as a result of all of this work, all this inner work, a few things have happened. One, my business has doubled in size. Wow. So I have, stats to show that all this work there’s a business case for it.

I, am in the best physical shape of my life, because when you get rid of your achiever fever, you also get rid of those constant self doubts and the worries. And so I’m able to perform at a level of physical. That I wasn’t able to before, because I don’t have the doubt and the worry holding me back. So I watch myself now, whether it’s swimming, climbing, lifting, weights, whatever the case is, and I realized that I could not have ever have done what I’m doing now.

As an achiever, huh? Yeah, there’s, it’s opened up so much more for me. My relationship with my partner and my family is so much more fulfilling and I’m so much more open and we have deeper conversations. I sleep like I don’t have insomnia. I haven’t had insomnia in years. Wow.

Okay. Occasionally I’ll have a bad night’s sleep. And that’s my cue that okay. Something’s off. Something needs to be looked at what’s, what’s going on here? I’m just a truly happier person who no longer worries. I don’t. And just to be able to say that to me is still so shocking.

Given, given how many hours I used to devote to worrying and now, a warrior will come in and I’ll be like, oh, there you are. I see you. There’s nothing I can do about you right now. Thanks. Thanks for coming in. You’re not helping me at all and it’ll go away. It’ll just leave. Wow. Be able to be that much more focused on present on whatever it is that I’m doing.

So I would say, as a result of all this work, I am flourishing and edge is an interesting word. If we take it in its truest form, an edge is a sharpness. And I have much more of a laser focused than I used to have because I’m able to be so much more present. But what I think I have more than that is, is as like a softness that I didn’t use to have before, like a much more of an open house.

I don’t look at every person I meet anymore as a possible business opportunity. I look at them as a possible friend. Yeah, my mindset’s just completely shifted.

Nancy: Because it’s interesting because the answer is have you lost your edge? The answer is, yes, but it doesn’t matter.

I’m not looking for that anymore. So it doesn’t matter

Claire: Or I’ve lost the edge, but I gained I’ve gained heart. Yeah. I guess is really the only way I can put it. I’ve gained gratitude. I’ve gained love. I’ve gained. I didn’t like myself. Let alone love myself. I love myself. Now. I’ve gained. And it’s only when we can love ourselves that we can love others.

So I’ve gained the ability to truly love and cherish people in my life.

Nancy: Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much for agreeing to chat here and share your experience and your wisdom and it’s, the achiever fever cure people. You need to go read this book. Thank you so much, Claire.

Claire: Oh, thank you so much

Nancy: More about Claire Booth and the achiever fever at ClaireBoothauthor.com.

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Episode 054: You are Going to Do it Wrong

A new way of looking at your Inner Critics favorite phrase "you are going to do it wrong."

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Hey there, so glad to be back chatting with y'all. Today I want to talk about a jarring statement, the phrase "you're going to do it wrong," and how that phrase changed my perspective on a lot of things. Recently I was out with a friend; we were at happy hour chatting about live happier stuff and how to be better people (which is the geeky stuff that my friends and I do.) And she said to me it changed everything for me when I started thinking the phrase "you're just going to do it wrong." At first, it was jarring to me to be like, "What, do it wrong? Why would you be telling yourself you're going to do it wrong" and then I realized she's saying it in a let me take the expectation that it's going to go 100% right, let me take that expectation off the table.

Instead of the idea of your inner critic saying, "you're going to do it wrong." Say to yourself, "This is probably not going to go well. It's probably going to go wrong; I'm going to make the wrong choice because I don't know what's going to happen next." "I might say the wrong thing. I might pick the wrong baby step. I'm shooting in the dark here, so I don't the correct way, so I'm just going to pick something, and it might be wrong."

When you can give yourself permission that whatever you pick next might be wrong, and that's okay because at least you're picking something. You're making a move. You're taking a baby step. So often, our inner critics convince us we have to pick the perfect next step. That whatever we do next has to be right on target, the perfect plan, the perfect thing to say, the perfect phrase.

Instead of saying the perfect thing (because there is no such thing as perfect), we tend to do nothing. It shows up a lot in our lives when we're going to try something new, or we're meeting a new friend, or we're branching out in some way, and we'll convince ourselves not to do anything rather than do it wrong.

I think that's just such a fascinating way of looking at it, that if you can tell yourself, "I'm going to do this wrong, but I'm going to take a step anyway. I'm going to have a good intention of getting all the facts I possibly can and making the most informed decision moving forward, and when I do it wrong, I'm going to make a new step. I'm going to go a new way; I'm going to do it differently. "

That idea that if I can embrace the fact that I'm going to do it wrong anyway, I might as well try something, we get a little further.

If you're in a spot in your life where you're feeling stuck, and the inner critic, the monger as I call it. It's very wily, and it convinces us not to make a move until it's perfect, not to do anything until it's perfect. That is why procrastination is one of the big signs that you are being infiltrated and overrun by the monger. If you are feeling procrastination and you're waiting for the perfect time, or you're waiting for the perfect thought or the perfect voice or the perfect words, you'll never make any moves at all.

It shows up in little tiny ways, this idea of oh my gosh, I have to do it perfectly, and I can't do it wrong. It shows up in conversations we have with our loved ones; it shows up in projects we have at work; it shows up in creative projects that we want to engage in, in our free time.

It shows up all the time that we silently convince ourselves we can't move forward; we can't do that because we might do it wrong. When you notice yourself saying one thing but not taking action on it, so you say, "I want to be doing more art."

Or

"I want to be connecting differently with my spouse." Or

"I want to be at work fully engaged, and showing up, and putting my hat into the ring and entering in the work arena 100%."

And you notice yourself saying those things or thinking those things and not acting on those things that usually means you have been attacked by your inner monger who's convincing you that you have to do it perfectly right before you do anything.

That's where that phrase of "Oh my gosh, I'm going to do it wrong, I'm going to do it wrong," and that's okay. I'm going to do it wrong and make a new choice. It's not, oh my gosh, you're going to do it wrong, and you're a terrible person, it's I'm going to do it wrong, and then I'm going to figure out how to do it differently after that. I'm going to move on. It's taking back the phrase "I'm going to do it wrong" and taking it back in an empowering way to say, "Yup, you go it I'm going to do this wrong, and because I'm going to do it wrong, I'm going to figure out the best way to do it."

To make any steps, make any changes, and engage in anything, we have to embrace the fact that it might not go well right off the bat, and that's okay. We're still going to be okay because it's okay if we do it wrong because we have control and can take it back. When that message plays there over and over and over again, you're going to do it wrong, you're going to do it wrong, you're going to do it wrong, and we don't take it back in an empowering way it keeps us stuck. It keeps us in procrastination mode. It keeps us from making and little, tiny changes in our lives, and that is why we have to challenge that monger voice that tells us you're going to do it wrong and say yes I am, and then I'm going to figure out how to do it even better.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Wiggle

I know it sounds crazy!! Stay with me. When I hear my Monger (inner critic) chiming at me, I will wiggle my body to remind myself to get some wiggle room. Our Monger tends to think in black and white, right and wrong, and life is gray. So to get some wiggle room, I wiggle my body and ask, What Would My Biggest Fan say?

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Episode 053: Asking for Help...Why is it so Hard?

One of the ways to decrease overwhelm is to ask for help, and yet we are SO resistant to it. In this episode, I explore that resistance and what to do about it.

+ Read the Transcript

Hey, everyone. Welcome. I'm so excited to be here. It's a beautiful sunny day in my corner of the world. Today I want to talk about asking for help. Why is it so hard? This has been a theme that's come up in my world lately, and it was triggered by a conversation with my cousin. We were talking about just asking for help and why we struggle so much with it. So I want to cover a couple of reasons why I think we struggle. And encourage you to get curious as to why you struggle, if you struggle with asking for help, why you struggle and busting out of that mold. Because what happens is, we are so overwhelmed. We're overwhelmed and stressed out because there's too much on our plate. If there's too much on our plate, there are two things you can do about it. One, take some stuff off. Learning how to say no. Learning how to set boundaries. And two, asking for help; asking someone to take a little bit off your plate. Today we're just going to be talking about option two, the asking for help piece, because there's so much resistance to that.

One of the reasons I have come up with is the myth of being strong. Many women believe that we're strong and independent and we don't need anyone, so we're not going to ask anyone for help because we're strong and independent. But, when you get curious about what's underneath that strength, and I know this is true for me and many of my friends, we're afraid of taking up too much space in the world. We're afraid of being too demanding, too in charge, too large and in charge, too out of control. So we learn that we need to be "strong," and we take on this myth of strength to handle it. We've got it all taken care of; it's all fine. Underneath that strength is a huge fear that no one cares. No one's going to show up, so if I take care of everything, then I don't have to worry about getting hurt when people say no to me or when people let me down, or when people don't do it the way I want them to. Paying attention to what's underneath that myth of strong, if that's something you can relate to.

Another piece of that is wanting to do it right. I hear this all the time, "I can't ask my husband to do the dishes because he won't do them right," or, "I can't ask them to go to the grocery store because they won't do it right." I hear that. Trust me; I totally hear that. But the idea that there's a right way to do everything let's get a little curiosity around that. Like, what's that about? That we think there's only one way to do everything. So, that idea of perfectionism and that inner critic chiming in that there's a black and white way to do everything in the world. And so, your husband may load the dishwasher differently than you, and that's okay. He may go to the grocery store and forget some stuff. That's okay. It's figuring out ways around that and allowing room for the gray and the mess-ups and the mistakes, rather than just jumping in and trying to fix everything in the perfectionistic inner critic way.

Those are two ways. The third way I came up with is just plain old the resistance we get when we change our ways. If you have become a control freak and don't ask for help, and you've set the dynamic in your life that you just do everything when you start to change that, and you start asking for help, it will be a bumpy road. You're going to get some resistance because if you've taken care of everything in your house, suddenly people are going to be like, "What's happening? Why isn't she doing everything?" That resistance sometimes can be challenging, especially if you're dealing with perfectionism and that inner critic because you want to jump in and fix it. To pay attention to how much, instead of sitting in the resistance and allowing time for your family to catch on or your coworkers to catch on that they are going to have to pick up some slack here, you jump in and fix it. Or that they may not do it the way you think they should, or the way they may flail and flop around and not know what they're doing. That's all part of the process. Allowing room for growth, from you and the people that you're used to helping, or you're used to doing everything for, I should say, allowing that space.

Those are the three main things I came up with of why it is so hard. One is the myth of strength. Two is perfectionism; they won't do it right. And the third one is resistance. I encourage you to get curious about what comes up for you around this, asking for help. Maybe those three don't pertain to you, and you have a different one. That's cool. The idea here is to kind of start getting underneath, "What is this? Why is this so hard for me? Why am I struggling with this asking for help?"

Okay, so taking those reasons that we've come up with, I came up with some reasons why, how to get around that. You know, what can we do? Yeah, I know I don't like asking for help. I know I'm resistant to it. So, what do I do about it? Well, the first thing I would say is to embrace the gray. It isn't black and white. There's no right way and wrong way to do stuff, so when you ask for help, it is challenging your sense of a thousand ways to do something. You may ask your kids to take out the trash, and they may not do it the way you would. My husband, one of his jobs is to take out the trash, and he inevitably, every time, does not put a new trash bag in. Like, he just doesn't do it. He forgets. He takes the trash out and then moves on to the next thing. And so, that has become my job to put the new trash bag in. Now it's become kind of a joke between us. It was a major annoyance at the beginning.

But to recognize, you know, it just isn't on his radar screen to put the trash bag back in, and that's okay. I can do that piece because I'm grateful that he takes the trash out, to begin with. Instead of jumping all over, like, "I'm gonna do the whole thing and take the trash out because he doesn't do it right." No, he just misses this one little step, and I can pick up that slack. Recognizing that they don't have to do it perfectly right every time, they're easing the burden, and that's what this is all about.

The other thing is, when we ask, we're changing the pattern, and we're asking for help, and it's a relatively new thing. We might ask once, and if it doesn't go the way we think it should, we quit. That's a challenge there, too. Again, with the embracing the gray, that you're going to have to ask multiple times, and it's going to get bumpy, and it's going to get lucky. So, recognizing that this is a process, asking for help is when you haven't been asking for help. Learning how to ask once, and then maybe you'll need to remind them again. That's okay. It's getting the new pattern built. It doesn't mean it's failing or you're doing it wrong. That's the inner critic. It just means that this is a process. So, embracing that gray.

Then the question to ask yourself is, "What's the priority here?" If your goal is to decrease your plate, pick the tasks that you can ask for help on. Probably are going to be pretty low-priority tasks for you. They're not going to have as much importance. To pick the low priority tasks, like taking out the trash for me, and to recognize, "Okay, it's okay if he doesn't do it perfectly correctly." You know, loading the dishwasher. My husband and I have very different ways of loading the dishwasher, but I don't want to load the dishwasher. That's a low priority for me. The fact that he doesn't do it the way I want him to, that's okay. Recognizing what's the priority here, the tasks. Going to the grocery store, I want certain food, so even though my husband has offered me multiple times to go, that's my priority to go to the grocery store. I like getting the food. To recognize that's not something I'm going to ask for help around unless I'm desperate.

There are a number of tasks that I have dropped the priority level. This is a challenge. If you're like, "Oh, all my tasks are the same priority," I'm going to ask you to push back on that a little bit and say, "They're probably not." You probably have a variety of levels of priority. We have just told ourselves that everything is super important, and it's not. When you're asking for help, really get clear on what's the priority.

The last one is compassion. Have compassion for yourself that this is a hard process to change. Have compassion for those around you who you are challenging to change, probably against their will, that it's a process. It's going to be hard. It's going to be sticky. You know, really being kind to yourself and others, and being persistent that this will take some time and it takes multiple tries. So really, the idea of embracing that gray, getting out of the black and white because that is your inner critic. Anytime you have a right or wrong thinking, remind yourself, "Where is the gray here? Where can I see some fuzzy lines?" And then prioritizing. What's the priority here? What can I get rid of, and it won't make a difference? And then having some compassion with yourself and those around you who are trying to change.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Doing a Chore? Be Fully Present

From laundry to doing dishes, we all have "chores" we HAVE to do. Because we are basically stuck doing these activities, this is a great time to practice being mindful. This week as you do your chores, bring yourself fully in the moment. Take some deep breaths and ask yourself, What do I feel? What do I see? What do I smell? What do I hear? Put on some good music and fully embrace being present.

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Episode 052: Own It Part 2...Now What?

I received some pushback from last week's episode. I love pushback because it allows me to clarify these concepts. Talking about getting stuck and feeling selfish when we own it.

+ Read the Transcript

Today, I want to do a part two. It wasn't in the plans, but I've gotten a lot of feedback from part one, last week's episode 51 called Own It, and so this is part two called Now What? Because a lot of people push back a little bit on just owning it. I thought I might get some pushback because, although it sounds awesome and something we all strive to, just owning it and putting that pause into whatever it is we're feeling is challenging.

So to do a quick refresher, if you want to hear the whole episode, go back to episode 51, but a quick refresher. Last week, I talked about the idea of really owning it and just owning whatever it is you're feeling. So often, we rush past the feeling to get to the other side, so we're feeling sad. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel sad, we rush past it. We're feeling tired. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel tired or own that we're tried, we rush past it. Sometimes we even beat ourselves up for being tired, or we'll excuse it away instead of just really embracing and owning that we're tried.

The own-it piece is just a small part, a small but mighty, and I think it's a piece that goes missing a lot because, as I said, we rush past it. We want to get into fixing it mode before we've experienced it. So this idea of just owning it is triggering for a lot of people and extremely, extremely challenging because I think the idea of owning it makes us feel powerless.

The feedback I got this week, both in my session and from people who had listened to the podcast, was two main pushbacks. One of them was "I feel selfish if I do this," and the other one was, "I don't want to get stuck in whatever it is I'm owning." I want to talk about the selfish piece first because I think that is a huge message that many women have. What if I own whatever it is I'm feeling, and I'm not happy 100% of the time. Or I'm not on it 100% of the time, or I'm not doing for others 100%. So if I admit that I need help, or admit that I'm sad, or admit that I'm tired, then I'm selfish.

I wanted to go to Google to dictionary.com to say the definition of selfish, and selfish means devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's interests, benefits, welfare, et cetera, regardless of others.

The idea that you are selfish if you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, "I'm tired, and I need to get a nap in at some point, a 20-minute nap, two-hour nap. I don't care. I got to get a nap in, or the very least I got to go to bed early tonight because I'm too tired and I can't keep doing this." Nowhere in that, you being tired and trying to decide how you're going to fit in a little extra sleep does that make you devoted to or caring only for yourself regardless of others. That makes you tired. That's all. But, we have piled on all this, meaning that if I'm sad or not 100% of what everyone else thinks I should be, then I'm selfish.

99% of the people that are listening to this podcast, you could be more selfish. You are without self. Meaning you are devoted to others beyond what you are devoted to yourself tenfold. If there is one way to decrease overwhelm, stress and anxiety, it is to take back a little bit of that devotion that you're putting on others back to yourself.

It's recognizing, wow, when I own something and I admit that I'm tired, or I'm not feeling it, or I'm stressed today, that the minute you do that, the Monger is going to come rushing in that's going to tell you you're selfish. And that is when your biggest fan needs to chime up and say, "No, no, no. I am not more devoted to myself than something else. This is not me saying that my way is the best. This is me saying, 'You know what? Right now, I'm tired.'" That's all it's saying.

We put all of this stuff on top of it, but all we're saying is I'm not feeling it 100%, and that's okay. Pay attention to how often that "selfish" word comes in and put that definition on a sticky note on your mirror to remind you of what selfish is and how far you are from being selfish.

The next one that I got a lot was feeling stuck. I don't want to feel stuck, so if I do this owning-it thing you speak of, I will be stuck in this sadness. I'm going to get stuck in this stress. I'm going to be stuck. So I need to figure a way out of this, not be owning it.

There are two things I want to say about that. One is the owning it piece is so tiny. I'm not saying you need to own it for days on end or own it even for an hour, but you at least need to acknowledge that it's happening, so it's at least saying, "You know what? I'm tired." We spend all day pretending that we're not tired. We drink a ton of caffeine. We jump from thing to thing to thing. We immediately get up and get on social media to help ourselves up. We do all these things to artificially pretend that we're not tired. Instead of owning, "You know what? I'm tired."

When we can own that we're tired, then we can do something about that. Then we can take action. When we own that we're tired, we can decide: Do I want to take a nap? Do I want to have more coffee? What do I want to do? Tired is an easy example.

One of the more challenging ones, the ones that we get afraid of getting stuck in, is sadness, or anger, or depression. If I own that, I'm sad, I'm going to get stuck there, and you're not. You're not going to get stuck there. You might be there longer than you want to be, but you're not going to get stuck there. If you are practicing the ideas of owning it, and awareness, and acknowledgment, then you'll constantly be checking in with yourself to see where you are in trying to move past it, or through it, or around it, whatever.

Let's say you wake up one morning and you're feeling sad, and you don't know why it's unexplainable. Unexplainable sadness is the worst because there's no logical reason, and we love logical reasons. You're unexplainably sad, and so if you follow this happiness hack, you're like, "Okay. I'm going to own it. I'm going to own that. I'm sad." Owning it. I'm sad. I feel sad today.

Okay. What do you do with that? Well, first of all, you just feel sad. That's it. You go through your day. You get the kids breakfast. You go to work. You drink your coffee. You have your breakfast. You do whatever it is you're going to do, and you just have this little piece of sadness in the back of your brain. Maybe you cry after you drop the kids off at school between school and work, or maybe you listen to a sad song, or maybe you call a friend, and you say, "Gosh, I'm just sad, and I don't know why." Maybe you do some journaling, and you just own it that you're sad. That's it. That's all I'm saying. It's just owning it. It's just acknowledging that the sadness is there.

But what happens when we don't own it is we wake up, and we feel sad, and we immediately say to ourselves, "You shouldn't feel sad. There's nothing to feel sad about. Stop feeling sad." And so, we pour on more coffee. We rush the kids out of the house. We jam the music the whole way there. We rush to school. We rush to work. We pour ourselves into work, and we're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed. The sadness is still there, but we're pretending it's not because we don't want to feel that because we shouldn't be feeling that. It doesn't make any sense to feel that. That's a silly thing to feel.

We rush through our day piling all this stuff on, and the sadness is still there, unacknowledged. It's still there. We get to work, and it might dissipate because we have stuff happening or whatever, and we lose track of it. But, by the time we get home, we are so stressed and overwhelmed because we've been running so hard from that sadness that we are grouchy with the kids. We snap at our husband. We lose it. That is why it's so important to acknowledge it way back at the beginning. That acknowledgment piece that happened at the very point when you woke up eliminates all that drama and that conflict that happens when we ignore what we're feeling. When we pretend it isn't there, when our inner critic takes over and tells us that we're stupid, or idiots, or wasting our time by feeling something.

It's okay to feel the sadness. We don't have to get stuck there. We don't have to call all of our friends and tell them how sad we are, that it's a terrible day and drama, drama, drama. No, we just have to own that it's there and move on. Those were the two pushbacks I got: selfish, and am I going to get stuck in it? You're not going to get stuck in it if you acknowledge it and then just take a small action to express it: journaling, talking to a friend, listening to some music, dancing, working out, something that brings it to light. If you're angry about something, figure out do I need to have a conversation with someone? Is there someone that I need to forgive? Is there something that needs to happen here that will release the anger? The idea of exploring it a little bit more.

I think the myth that we can control our feelings by thinking our way out of them is not valid. Our feelings are there. We can choose to get stuck in them. We can choose to ignore them, or we can choose to let them flow.

It's the idea that our feelings are like the ball that bounces on top of the water, and it just bounces there all day long different feelings. We just need to own that they're happening rather than continually try to force them down underwater. This is the idea the more pressure I put on the ball to force it under the water, the more the feelings will bounce back, and we've wasted all of our energy keeping that sadness at bay rather than letting it bounce along the water as we go through our day. Or, we try to cheer ourselves up and get rid of the ball. Move the ball away. Move the ball away. No, the ball is part of life. We just need to learn how to own it and acknowledge it and move forward.

Those were the two things: getting stuck, feeling selfish, and addressing owning it.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Smile

Smiling can fire up the 'happiness centers' in your brain. It is also a great way to move you out of your mind and into your body because it naturally changes your perspective. Not to mention that it makes other people feel awesome too! So this week, when you are feeling stressed take a second and smile.

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