Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to the balanced perspective podcast, where we're going to be challenging perspectives on what it actually takes to be successful in both business and in life. I'm your host, Terry Ann Richards. And with 16 years as a serial entrepreneur, I've experienced some of life's most epic successes and failures. Join me as we journey on a mission to blow the lid off of some of the best kept secrets to living a life of true success from the inside out.
Speaker 0 00:00:38 Welcome back to the balanced perspective. I am really excited to be here today with my new friend, who is the founder and director of the east west company, Dr. Elizabeth Collins, who was, was a full-time emergency medical technician prior to obtaining her master's degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine. And let's be honest, she has a lot more certifications than that, that I will not talk about all allow her to. And today through her company, she offers functional medicine and coaching with a specialty in burnout recovery coaching, which is where I hope we land today. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 00:01:22 Thank you so much, Terry. And I appreciate it.
Speaker 0 00:01:24 Awesome. So let's dig into just the story of you becoming an entrepreneur. I'm always so curious as to why people make the decision to join the bright side and become an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 00:01:42 Yeah, absolutely. So my entrepreneurial journey, it really initially wasn't something that I had ever envisioned for myself and now having done it for seven years, I'm like I have a, I have a taste for it and I can't go back. So there's just no way back for me. But I spent most of my twenties in this sort of nebulous phase of trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And so I did a lot of different things. I worked as a patient care technician in an oncology unit at a hospital. I really liked doing that. So I became an EMT, but I also bartended and, you know, worked for a financial advisor. I mean, it was just kind of all over the board trying to figure out where I fit in. And when I discovered acupuncture, I remember very clearly in my like interview my pre-interview for the school, um, with one of the professors, they said, you know, what, what do you envision?
Speaker 2 00:02:34 If you get an acupuncture degree, what do you envision doing? And I said, well, I figured I'd go work for somebody else because in a medical field, that's usually what people do is you, you find a practice or you find a mentor or something like that. Acupuncture is a little bit, uh, you know, we're, we're kind of Cowboys in the U S um, and I think sort of westernized world in general is that we don't have that kind of format. Like we're, we're not established the same way in our communities and in the culture. And so I remember the, my professor interviewing me, uh, her name is Marnie. She kind of looked at me with just like the, okay. You know, that can I, I got that motor just like, I don't know anything. Okay. And she said, a lot of people usually go on to establish themselves.
Speaker 2 00:03:19 And at that point, that was super daunting to me. So by the time I got out of school, it became very clear. Like that's pretty much what you do as an acupuncturist on, on occasion. Somebody will be looking to hire, but it depends on where you want to live. It depends on their needs of their practice. Do they have enough patients or overflow at this point or enough of a waiting list to take somebody on? So you're pretty much released into the world and it just off you go grow your business. So I did this in a way of like very much building that bridge, you know, crossing the bridges. I was building it because there, there isn't a massive template for how to do this. And so that's how I got into entrepreneurship. And that's actually how I ended up burning out is because we don't have the structure.
Speaker 2 00:04:05 And I think largely we're not encouraged. And I think this might be the case more so in entrepreneurship in general is, oh, there's a way to do this. If you do, if you take these steps and if you do this thing, you'll be successful. And it does not factor in your wants, needs, preferences, desires, and values as an individual. So when I started building my business, I was building my business against the metric of values and structure that I had been told would create a good business. That's not me that, you know, I don't fall into those boxes. Those are the things that are considered valuable. Those aren't my values. So I started building this business completely out of alignment with who I am as an individual. And it made it a real slog for probably the first three to five years. Wow.
Speaker 0 00:05:02 It's interesting because you hear this so often. I mean, I've been in business for myself for coming on to 17 years. So I started really young and you're right. There are roadmaps that say, this is what you do to become successful. And so there's that hustle culture. If you want it bad enough, you'll sleep and eat it and drink it. Basically like blood, sweat, and
Speaker 2 00:05:25 Tears by the bootstraps.
Speaker 0 00:05:27 Yep. Yep. Pull those big socks up those big bully socks up and get her done. Right. And so that was the mentality that I went into business with. And, you know, back when I was younger, there weren't as many female entrepreneurs. If there was, I don't know where they work, there wasn't a lot of them. So there was just a lot of men. And then me and I was super young, young mum. And if you want it to be successful, if you wanted it hard enough and bad enough, you were willing to put the hours 80, 90 hours a week. And you're so right. None of the books talked about it. None of the books said like, oh, you have a family. Would you, would you like to see them? Oh, you have, you have like a personal side. You, you, you want like self care is, oh, no, none of it talks about that. It just talks about here's how you do business success, but taking it out of the equation, the fact that you are a human, a human being, a person that has all of these other things and you're right. Your values and all of this, you said something. And obviously I knew that that would potentially be the lead in to us talking about this. So you burnt out.
Speaker 2 00:06:36 Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't even know that that was happening because the other thing about this sort of entrepreneurial venture that I hate that just, oh God is, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life.
Speaker 0 00:06:53 I'm
Speaker 2 00:06:53 Not sure. Oh my God. Like, no, like that is straight up. Not true. I love what I do. And I've loved acupuncture the whole time. Like in addition to, you know, like you said, I do a variety of things. I've gotten a variety of certifications. I am a hipness certified hypnotist now certified functional medicine practitioner. I love doing all of those things, but I exhausted myself in the process of doing that. That is not enough to feed and sustain you if that's where all of your energy is going and you shouldn't have to kill yourself for the life that you want.
Speaker 0 00:07:25 So, so true. Okay. So talk to me on pack that for me, because, and I'll share a little bit of my burnout story. Cause I burned out when I was 26, 27, but you first, you first. So, so talk to me on pack a cause burn sort of almost this new word right now. And I'd say that flippantly, like it's been around forever, but I know when I burnt out that I didn't call it burnout. Like, I didn't know it was a burnout back then. So talk to me when this happened on pack, the process, what was going on in your life and then how did you make it to the other side?
Speaker 2 00:08:02 Yeah, absolutely. So burnout as, as a word and as a concept was initially kind of came about when they started looking at medical professionals, like doctors and nurses and people who work shifts and people who work, you know, really long residencies and really long hours and things like that. That's sort of where burnout was for people like us in the entrepreneurial world, burnout. Wasn't a word there, there was no template for what burnout looks like for us. So it's very new outside of that kind of framework of just like, oh, we know that it happens in this type of culture. And it's really tough as an entrepreneur because you are your business. So if you're burning out and you're a solo practitioner, like where are the resources? Where is the HR that you can go to to say like that, like, that's what makes it really complicated as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 00:08:54 So I had been working as an acupuncturist for five years. I started my business in 2014 and in July of 2019, I contract with some outside companies who refer patients. And they're very nice referrals versus for me, one of them at one point through no fault of mine stopped referring to outside providers and independent contractors in general. So it wasn't something that just impacted me. It was something that impacted all of that sort of outside providers that they contracted with. But about half of my business at that time was those consisted of those patients. So that gutted my business overnight. And I had worked really hard for it. And I had been doing all of this continuing education in the process of it because courtesy of childhood patterns, I'm a perfectionist and I suffered from not enoughness. So those were things that I addressed in my burnout recovery, but I hit this wall where my business was just, I thought it was dead in the water.
Speaker 2 00:09:52 And I reached out to a colleague of mine who had done kind of something similar to me. She had actually moved to Europe after she had graduated and started a practice from scratch. I didn't move to Europe. I stayed in the United States, but I moved to a city where nobody knew me and where, I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any other connections to sort of prime the pump of that, that patient base. Um, so she had actually started two practices in two independent locations from scratch successfully to the point that she had three month waiting lists. And by the time she moved back to the state, she had seen 30,000 people. They, she was in my mind the picture of success. So I reached out to her and I said, my practice has got it right now. I'm really struggling. I feel like I'm going to have to pack up my cats and move back into my parents' basement.
Speaker 2 00:10:38 I really don't know what to do. You did this twice from scratch in a place where you didn't know anybody. So what's the secret sauce. And she goes, oh yeah, I burned out doing that twice. I was like, what? She says, I burnt out. So we're not going to do that. And she had just started burnout coaching and she said, you're stupid, burnt out. Like, if you're willing to work with me, I will work with you and kind of help you hack where your energy is going and what what's happening here. And I was just like, I will do whatever you tell me to Yoda.
Speaker 2 00:11:13 I just, yes. So I started working with her and that's where we started tackling things like values and boundaries and where my energy was going. That wasn't useful for my business. Where could I redirect it back to myself or direct it more efficiently in my business example of that, um, I am a top shelf introvert and I am like the most introverted introvert ever. And I thought that in order to be successful, I needed to go to networking events. I needed to put myself out there. And I also had a very large friend and acquaintance group. And you know, we always hear it. Like all you, like, you have to have your people go hang out with your people, foster relationships with your people. And I was like texting like five friends a day, multiple times throughout the day. And we all did. Everybody's texting back and forth and chatting and this and that.
Speaker 2 00:12:17 And so the first thing that Kate, my coach had me too, was she goes, do not call or text or email anyone that you don't critically need to speak to for two weeks, three weeks. So it wasn't quite a month. Um, she said, don't put a blast out on Facebook that you're doing a tech detox. No, like if you talk to somebody every single day, let them know that you're not going to be on your tech as much. You're just taking a couple of weeks to recharge, but that's like three people talk to your parents, talk to your patients. If you have a partner, talk to your partner outside of that, nobody, if they are not bleeding or on fire. No. And I did that for like, oh my God, I got done with three weeks. And I was like, can we do three more?
Speaker 2 00:13:03 Can we do three months? Because it's, can this be the rest of my life? Because I had so much time and energy to focus on myself and my needs when I wasn't like, Hey girl, what are you up to? Like, how did that thing go? You okay. Because I was also getting into my friends shit. Like I don't need to be there. If they're struggling, I endeavor to be a good friend and an empathetic friend and they know where to find me. They can always call me, but it's like going into somebody else's garden and you like to grow vegetables and they want a flower garden and you start planting tomatoes. We're like, what the hell are you doing? You fucked up my gardenias.
Speaker 0 00:13:46 Totally, totally. So, so here's the thing. And this is, this is such a frustrating thought. And I've mowed this through my mind a few times, but there are a lot of books out there, right? There's a lot of books out there. And one of the struggles of going into business is you don't go in it to fail. You go in it to succeed, right. And you go into it and you at all costs, you want to succeed. And there's a lot of books out there that don't know you. Right? And the books say, you got to go to all the networking functions that you got to follow up. You know, the power of seven. Then you got to send a bunch of Facebook messenger messages, you know, 10, a day, 20 a day. There's literally a book that back up, anything I'm saying right now, cause I've probably read them. And that's where they're all coming from. The struggle really comes down to. And I think this is what I'm hearing from you. And I've experienced myself is I think nobody has business going into business until they have from roots on who they are and what they stand for. And that becomes the foundation that the house is built on. The businesses built on. Not you trying to fit you into a business that you're struggling to make successful, right? Because if you try to do that, you're not fitting through.
Speaker 2 00:15:10 Yeah. And that's where values come in. A values. Exercise can be really important because it lets, you know, what's important to you because a lot of times, by the time you get to that point of like starting a business and I have to do this and I've got to read this book and I have to follow the advice that that person said, you are divorced from what actually works for you. So one of the things that I do with almost all of my burnout clients, pretty much all of them is a values exercise that my coach developed. I use a lot of my coaches tools because I'm not interested in reinventing the wheel. And so you're actually going to hear me talk about Kate a lot because she's done, she's paved the way she's written a book she's made these tools and they're super effective.
Speaker 2 00:15:48 So I'll make sure that you have the links and access to that. But understanding what's most important to you is how you will create the alignment that brings business to you so that you don't have to go find it. We'll create a structure that gives you boundaries and gives you thought points so that you tend not to spiral. So when I first did this exercise, one of the values and it's still one of my important values, I usually do the exercise maybe every six months to a year because values change as we change. You know, we're not static individuals. So this isn't one of the values that I currently have on my little list that I look at. But it is one that I no longer need to keep on that list because I think of it enough that it's just kind of ingrained embrace curiosity.
Speaker 2 00:16:39 You know, it's not just the curiosity as a value. There's an action statement associated with these values in this exercise. And mine was embraced curiosity. So I'm a perfectionist. I'm like if I don't get it right the first time it sucks. I suck. I really internalized that when I first started out in practice, I, you know, if a treatment didn't take, I immediately internalize that it was my fault that I did something wrong that I picked the wrong acupuncture points that I'm not diagnosing it correctly. I see these people for an hour once a week, if I'm lucky, you know, sometimes it's an hour once a month, what are they eating? What kind of exercise are they doing or not? You know, are they doing the exercises that I told them to take home? And do you know, we've got Chinese medicine, physical therapy exercises in the form of like Tai Chi and Qigong and things like that.
Speaker 2 00:17:27 If I give somebody the exercises and say, okay, I'm not going to see you for two, two weeks. So you need to do this regularly so that when you come back, you know, the treatments that I do will continue to take and be better. They would come back in and be like, it's not better. And I would immediately think that I failed now. I'm like, okay, did you eat the stuff I told you not to eat? Did you do your exercises? What else is playing into this? That is so much bigger than me and my stupid ass ego. You know, whether or not I'm succeeding or failing because it's not about me. And so curiosity was instrumental to my recovery because it applied to so many places in my life. If I get into an argument with my partner, embrace curiosity, where's this coming from? Are they actually mad at me? Is this their vulnerability? Is this their baggage popping up? Cause we all have that. We unpack our baggage on other people, whether we want to or not.
Speaker 0 00:18:23 So talk to me about how, because this is somebody somebody's nodding their head right now with what you're saying, but there's also an internal battle happening because there's this thing called FOMO, right? If I don't grow really wildly successful this year, that my competitor will beat me there. That if I don't give it my all and work the extra 10, 20, 30 hours this week, if you're not working this many hours, if you're not up at 5:00 AM, then you don't want it bad enough. And that is constantly a, an internal struggle. People know like they know that what you're saying is correct, but the internal struggle is, but if I don't do it, somebody else is going to beat me to it. Or if I don't do it, I must not want it that enough. How did you handle that?
Speaker 2 00:19:20 That's a really good question. And a lot of it comes down to alignment because ultimately at the end of the day, whatever you're offering, nobody will offer it like you do.
Speaker 0 00:19:28 Hmm.
Speaker 2 00:19:30 No one is you. So if you get more clear on your first of all, get off social media and screw those people because those people don't know you either so true. The more clear you are about who you are and what you want, you will go after what you want and what is in most alignment with you. You don't need to align yourself to other people. You need to align yourself with yourself. The people that resonate with that will find you,
Speaker 0 00:20:05 And you have nothing to prove when you can get to a place where you truly understand the value you bring in your business, nobody shows up like you and nobody serves like you. And so if you can understand the value you bring the gifts you have to share with the world, you also have nothing to prove to those folks on the social medias who say, you need to give it your all. It's like, no, I don't. This is me giving it my all in all areas of my life, not just one.
Speaker 2 00:20:35 And there's a lot of grace in the process of burnout recovery. We hold a lot of, as my coach says, space for grace because we are human. It's normal to feel these things. You, I have the very good fortune of being surrounded by and knowing, and being friends with some of the best smartest, brightest, highest achievers in every facet of my life in acupuncture, in functional medicine, in hypnosis, in burnout, recovery coaching. Those people are not the people for everyone looking for those services. My coach just hired another coach for her practice because my coach and I have very similar, very forward upfront. Like I'm not going to be S you kind of style. Like we're going to have hard conversations and I'm going to hold space for you. And I'm not going to judge you. Judgment goes out the window with burnout recovery. I'm not going to judge you for how you cope.
Speaker 2 00:21:40 I'm not going to judge you for the mistakes that you make because I'm human. And I make them too. This is a space exclusively to hold space for that. But the coach that she just hired is more geared to work with people who need a not quite sledgehammer approach. So Sarah that just got hired with Kate is a highly sensitive person. She's an HSP. She's very empathetic. She's been described as love, personified by people. Like she has a depth and a warmth and a, an ability to hold space. You just feel it when you talk to her, just talking to her is just like, it brings your parasympathetic nervous system online, you know, and it's really incredible. And it's a completely different approach from what I do from what Kate does. What
Speaker 0 00:22:25 I love. What you're saying though, is it's when you go out and do whatever it is you do in your business and your leadership realm, you're not for everybody is what I'm hearing. So you're not for everybody, which is AOK, but you are for the certain group of individuals that need your jam, that needs what you do. And, and it's okay. And so that means you get to do you, you get to show up at a hundred percent. You authentically you doing it your way. So talk to me a little bit about your process. Have they already gone through burnout? Do they not even know they're in burnout? Like at what point are you meeting these individuals? And then what, how do you help them recover?
Speaker 2 00:23:11 Yeah. So usually people either have an instance where they're just like, oh my God, this is that I'm burnt out. Like, it's funny, like it's the straw that breaks the camel's back or like me, I didn't know. I was burnt out. My coach told me I was burnt out when I first talked to her. So that's also very common. Those two situations are actually pretty common. And in those instances, the way that I work because of the background that I have with the functional medicine and the hypnosis and Eastern medicine, I actually have a very comprehensive approach. So where my coach, who is an acupuncturist and burnout coach will focus on the coaching and she'll outsource for people like functional medicine. I can actually do all of that. So I'm still not, you know, fully one-stop shopping because I believe in therapy, I'll often refer coaching patients to therapy as well, because if people have a history of trauma that needs to be assessed and treated in a specific way by a specific person, but for somebody who comes to me, we're going to look at kind of what got you here.
Speaker 2 00:24:13 What are your patterns? Where did those come from? And then I use a combination of hypnosis functional medicine and coaching to address the biological and the behavioral. One of the other pieces of burnout that I think is often very under assessed is the physical component of that. So you may have a vitamin D deficiency that was a really scorching problem for me. And that affects your energy levels. It affects your ability to think and focus. So I was super foggy headed. I didn't have enough energy to like make dinner for myself most nights. So I was eating takeout. And I don't, if you think you might be vitamin D deficient, those are very broad symptoms. Don't just go out and get vitamin D. That is my PSA for the day, because you do need to be monitored with those cells, but it can be a vitamin deficiency, a mineral deficiency.
Speaker 2 00:25:09 You could have anemia and not realize it. I had some gut issues. So I had small intestine, bacterial overgrowth and leaky gut. So even if I was eating good, healthy food, I wasn't extracting and receiving the nutrients from that. All of that plays in to the physical and psychological and emotional symptoms associated with burnout. So we're going to take a look at your biology, and then we're going to take a look at some of the coping mechanisms and patterns that kind of got you there. And we're going to look over your values. We're going to assess, where is your energy going? What do you have to put energy into right now? That's a big thing for me, because I want to get all the things done. The question that I'll ask myself, if I'm starting to feel that kind of ancy anxiety of, I got to get stuff done, is, does this need to be done right now?
Speaker 2 00:25:56 Is this an emergency? Is this on fire? Is it actively on fire? No, it's not. Is it going to grate on my nerves a little bit? Sure. Have I been as good about doing my dishes and emptying the dishwasher the last couple of days? No. I had other shit to deal with and it does great on my nerves. I don't like looking at it, but it's not critical. So we teach you how to triage. What is the most critical thing right now? What can you leave just long enough to make sure that it doesn't overwhelm your system and we get you back in touch with your body. We teach you how to breathe. So
Speaker 0 00:26:30 If somebody is sitting there and they're trying to figure out, okay, am I, am I not in a burnout? And if someone's trying to Google or self themselves before making the decision to approach someone like yourself, how do they know? I'll share really quickly? I think of myself when I was in my mid twenties and went through a burnout, not knowing what burnout was, but I was in the hustle culture. I had a very successful retail store, quickly expanded it to two. I had a wellness center before wellness centers were cool, expanded into a publishing house. I was in my mid twenties. I had two young kids. I was working 80 something hours a week. I have no idea when I look back how I did it all. But I did, although I didn't do any self care and I wasn't eating really healthy and I didn't make it to the gym or go for walks or hanging out with friends because all I did was work and then it hit me first.
Speaker 0 00:27:28 My eyesight started to get really blurry. I had really foggy brain. I don't think my intelligence is here anymore. And then I actually couldn't. I actually lost vision altogether. End up with severe vertigo was in the hospital for two weeks, took me six months to recover. I couldn't stand straight, kept falling over. And that was my experience. And then what they called it back then was the buildup of chronic stress over time. Not dealing with things as they came. Just sort of, yeah, I'll deal with that later. I'll deal with that one later, which came from childhood trauma. But now knowing what burnout is, I also realized that a lot of people still don't know what it is. And so I feel like there's a lot of people that are just walking around, not knowing that their body and their mind is starting to shut down and they're blaming it on something else. So talk to me about how does somebody start to discover that maybe they are there
Speaker 2 00:28:29 Few different things come to mind with that question? One of the things that I think is really important, it was important for me. And I've found that that's the case for some other people, is that if you are living a life that is sub optimal, doesn't have to be trashed. Doesn't have to be in the toilet. You don't even have to be unhappy with the majority of it, but if it's not what you want it to be, if it's not what it could be. One of the things that I say to people is if this is your life every day for the rest of your life, not, are you happy? Are you satisfied? Are you grateful? Like, does that resonate with you? Does that, do you feel that in your body? So that's one place that I ask people to look. The other thing that is very understated that my coach loves is resentment. Are you feeling resentment in, but it doesn't have to be big places, but you just, the email pings. And you're just like, like, you know, do you have a full day of clients? Or you're just like, oh my God, just, just like two of you just cancel.
Speaker 2 00:29:40 If you're feeling resentment in places, that's usually a place that a boundary needs to be. And usually a place that your energy is going, that it probably doesn't have to, or it can go more efficiently. And I, my favorite example from my own life, so I have cats and I'm, I am a crazy cat lady and I'm perfectly happy with that. And I love it. But in the worst of my burnout, you know, cats are like furry toddlers. They rely entirely on you. They have needs, they yell at you. And I would come home and I was so crispy from work and they just wanted food. They're just Kathleen cats and said, they'd be like, you know, my, my old male. And I would be like, what do you want? I'm feeling resentful towards a cat, which I also hate. Cause I love my cats. And I just want to like smoosh your face and love you. If you'll let me,
Speaker 0 00:30:30 It's such a powerful perspective because if I think back in my mid twenties to young kids and just on the top of my game, folks, sure. I couldn't have been bothered by just about anything. If the phone rang, I want it to, this is back when I still had like a phone on the ball. I wanted to rip it off the wall. Like who's calling at this time at night. It's like seven o'clock at night, right? The clock at night, everything just jarred on my nerves. And I think a really good question that I go back cause I'm big into introspection of was, was I happy with the person I was being on it? If I met me, what I liked me and the answer was a hill, no, I would not have liked me. I would've thought that girl was a, B a T C H cause I was folks. I was not kind and kindness is one of my core values. So I was not in alignment with my own values because I was so stressed from everything that was going on. And in my life, I feel like 98% of the people can say right now, not satisfied in living their life this way, every day for the rest of their life, not feeling grateful, looking at everything that's going wrong. So what did they do?
Speaker 2 00:31:52 Honestly, the best place to start I would say is the values exercise. That is one of the most impactful things that you can do because it gives you a framework for not just who you are, but how to respond in alignment with those values. So like one of my top value right now is essentially doing whatever I need to for my health that does not always look like what you think it looks like because I factor in physical, emotional, and spiritual health. So a few weeks ago, and I had probably six weeks ago now was exhausted. Then one night when I got home from work, I had time to clean out my refrigerator, which was necessary because I'm virtually certain that I had penicillin growing in the back of it. Like it had been like a month since I had cleaned it out or I could cook dinner.
Speaker 2 00:32:40 I knew that I did not have the wherewithal to do both of those things. And so I sat down and I said, which of my health, physical, mental, or spiritual, which category of that is the most important right now. And without a doubt, I was like mental prioritize my mental health prioritizing my mental health meant I ordered a gluten-free pizza from Domino's and I cleaned out my fridge. So I still made the best choice that I could for my physical health, because I do have a gluten sensitivity, but I didn't shit on myself for having pizza that night. And I took care of what was most important. And that was not a difficult decision to make because I had a value in place that said, this is what I need to do. My number one priority is prioritizing my health. My number one value right now is prioritizing my health in whatever form that looks like.
Speaker 2 00:33:26 So I've got three options, which option takes precedence. This option takes precedence. That's my decision. There's no ruminating. There's nothing that has to go into that. If family is one of your values and you decide that four nights a week, you want to have dinner as a family around the table and your partner's like, I love it. Let's do it. That's your thing. If you get four invites that week, one of them, you don't have to be like, oh God, you know, if the fourth one comes in, it's just like, oh, I'm supposed to have dinner with my feeling that night. But I haven't seen, you know, oh, you know what? We've got family dinners planned, but what are you doing next week? I'd love to see you. Like it, it takes all of that rumination in that wheel spinning off of the table. So if you really don't know where to start and you're just like, oh my God, start with your values.
Speaker 0 00:34:11 You know what I really, really like about this is it gives people permission to decide for them. It is so often and you see friendship circles do this a lot. Well, what do you do? And so people are always taking their orders from other people's lives, but that's not taking into play you and your priorities. And what health is to me is not necessarily what health is to my BFF. And if you were to post it on Facebook and be like, guys, do I clean the fridge? Or do I make supper? You're going to have a bunch of people to say makes up, are you gonna have a bunch of people that say clean the fridge, you're gonna have a bunch of people give you advice that you didn't ask for.
Speaker 2 00:34:51 Yeah. If they're going to be like, well, have you done your laundry? I'm like, stop talking. Don't ask me right now. Yeah. And so I like, how dare you?
Speaker 0 00:35:00 Okay. Deleting my message. But I think that there's so much power in what you're saying. And it's so simple. It's stupid. And that's the problem. It's like, it's so simple, but it's actually really complicated for people to make a decision that doesn't involve anybody but them and what they prioritize. And what's important to them. I think like guys, if you're, if you're just listening, if you're driving, pull over and write this down, your values have to be at the forefront of the decisions you're making on a day-to-day basis. Because really when you think about it, you only have one life to live. And I am living, breathing proof that your businesses can come and go. I've had eight of them, right? Every one of them was the best one and I loved it and I was never going to leave it or sell it. And then they're not here anymore, but I am. And the one thing that's constant is you and what's important to you. And it's really easy to lose. What's important to you when you don't put energy and time away for it. I eat your health, your relationships and all of that. So I just, I think it's super important what you're saying. And so what would you say to somebody that disagrees with the fact that we'll know, but if I don't do the 60, 70, 80 hours a week, my business won't succeed and you're asking me to fail, what would you say to that person?
Speaker 2 00:36:31 I'm not asking you to do anything, not asking you to fail. I wouldn't want that for you. I don't want that for anybody. First of all, getting into a business are going to fail. You are going to, in some capacity, it doesn't mean the business will fail. But you as an individual in the process of doing that are going to fail. It's one of the things that I love about Brenae brown. She talks about, if you're in the arena, you're going to fail. It's not that you risk being willing to fail. You are going to fail. So that's okay. There are a bunch of us out there currently doing that. I still do it sometimes daily. At this point, I find it charming because I'm like, what other choice do I have? This is, this is the track I decided to take. So that's how I choose to look at,
Speaker 0 00:37:08 You know, a side note. It does become easier to fail failure now is just like, oh, okay. I guess,
Speaker 2 00:37:16 But I'm not asking you to fail. I'm asking you to examine yourself. And that is I think a much harder and much more painful and much more challenging thing than asking you to work 80 hours a week. So
Speaker 0 00:37:36 Again, true. Go deep folks going inward is scary. Cause sometimes you realize that everything you stand for, you also stand against.
Speaker 2 00:37:45 Yeah. And the thing that I like about the values exercise is there, there are so many options. It's a list of 80 to a hundred words, make a game out of it, pour yourself out of tea. Or if you fancy one, a glass of wine and make it fun, make sure. And you might have to do it a couple of times because there are going to be peoples someone sitting on your left shoulder going, this is what you should tell you. No, fuck that person. Yeah. Value what you value, but you can kind of make a game out of it. But yeah, going inward is tricky work I've been in and out of therapy on and off. I should say for 20 years, I love going in word. Now I love shadow work. I love finding the junk and the muck. And I'm just like, yup. Let's let's do it. I actually enjoy therapy to the point that I'm like sometimes therapists. I don't think you need to be here. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:38:31 I want to be
Speaker 2 00:38:33 With you. I don't want to graduate. Um, but yeah, it, especially if you were not encouraged to do that work or if you've not been supported in the process of doing that work, it can be especially scary because the other thing about burnout recovery is that depending on where you are in your life and the relationships that you have, people are not going to appreciate the fact that you are changing.
Speaker 0 00:38:54 Nope, you are right about that one.
Speaker 2 00:38:56 So it's very important to find a supportive community. If that means finding a therapist, you know, if you can afford a coach because coaches aren't usually covered by health insurance, if you have it, if you can't afford a coach, find a good therapist, find somebody who resonates with you. You may have to try a couple of different therapists before you find a modality that you like, whether it's cognitive behavioral therapy, somatic experiencing transpersonal work, internal family systems, as I'm saying these, feel free to rewind and Google all of those things because they are all very useful modalities, but not each one is appropriate for each person at a given time. You're so right.
Speaker 0 00:39:27 And I think the add on to that, that, that there will be people in your life that are not okay or not happy with the fact that you're changing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't change. I know when I was recovering from my burnout and I went deep into introspection and there was a lot of, a lot of online learning and learning to be a different person. The first person to get pissed off at me was my husband. We are no longer married, not saying that y'all going to get a divorce, but my change and my improving myself, scared the bejesus out of anybody who was around me. And a lot of people were like, you've changed. And all of a sudden, when people change in your circles, it also makes everybody around them question whether they need to change too. And so it's almost like you're holding up a mirror to other people.
Speaker 0 00:40:22 And sometimes they don't like what they see. And so for me, there were a few relationships that did not last the change, which in hindsight was the right thing to happen, which is okay. But I remember the feeling of all the pressure from people. Like I should not have been making the changes. And if I would have listened to them, I probably would still be living in that hustle culture today and not have the life or the relationships I have today. So if you are making the decision to go down the road of recovery, understand that there will be people that potentially are not okay with your change. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't.
Speaker 2 00:41:01 Yeah, absolutely. And again, this is that space for grace. And so if somebody is used to you being a certain way, give them a few chances. So it's very difficult if you've never had a boundary in a place and now you're like, this is my boundary and you need to respect it. They're just like, oh, holy shit. There's a wall here. Now in the middle of the living room that was not here before I need a doorway. What's going on with you. We're literally like knocking down and putting up walls and rearranging the foundation of your house. Somebody is going to need time to adjust to that. They're going to get up in the middle of the night to pee. And they're going to walk into a wall emotionally or metaphorically speaking. It's important to, as long as this person, isn't actively trying to derail you give them the opportunity to adjust around that and maybe say, that makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 00:41:44 But like, this is what I can do with my own boundaries. It's an opportunity for growth in either direction together or apart. And those are conversations that need to happen. And there's going to be a little patience on your part of like, okay, I know this boundary now I need to give this person time to adjust. If they choose not to adjust, or if they actively disrespected, that's a different story. But them just kind of being like, ah, crap. I forgot. You know, I'm still learning, but they should, they shouldn't be learning for 30 years, but a few times to give them the opportunity to adjust with you and to show you that grace and that, that courtesy and that love, I think, can be useful. Labeling them as immediately, you know, anybody who doesn't immediately adjust your boundaries as you're a toxic person and you need to go like, no, that's, that's not useful either.
Speaker 0 00:42:32 I probably won't work out. Right. Yeah. Okay. So where can people hang with you?
Speaker 2 00:42:40 So I am minimally active, but primarily active on Instagram. Again, introvert. I'm not a huge social media person, but if you want to find me, that's the place that you can find me. I do have a couple of meditations on insight timer. One of which is a one-minute meditation for releasing anxiety. And it's a sematic process as well. So you can find me under the name, Elizabeth Collins under the teacher's. Awesome.
Speaker 0 00:43:03 Um, all right, so I've got some rapid fire questions, but before I go there, I'm going to ask you my signature question. What does perspective shifting mean to you?
Speaker 2 00:43:14 I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is the ability to be curious without judgment, which is hard. It's hard in the society that we live in. It's hard in the age that we live in. And so I think when you try and force perspective shift yours or someone else's, you're going to get a lot more resistance. If you approach it with curiosity, more curiosity, less judgment. That is where that space happens. There's a little bit of breath there and a little bit of ease that takes the strain and the discomfort of that off the table. When it's not like I have to see things a certain way. It's like, could I see this a certain way?
Speaker 0 00:44:00 I like that. That was a good answer. A good one. Alright. Some lightening speed.
Speaker 2 00:44:05 That's for, you know, God, I'm terrible at this. I think too much.
Speaker 0 00:44:10 What's your favorite book and why
Speaker 2 00:44:12 Fiction or nonfiction?
Speaker 0 00:44:15 Let's go with
Speaker 2 00:44:15 Nonfiction. I actually just read Atlas of the heart by Bernay brown. I've got a wicked girl crush on her and I went through a bunch of them. And I think this is absolutely critical reading for just about everybody. It just came out and I snapped it up and it basically is her going through a lot of, you know, the years and years of research that they've done and they created loose definitions. They're not hard definition, but loose definitions around the types of emotions that we feel, why we feel them, why it's important to engage with them, how we can engage with our emotions more effectively and talk so that we're heard and that we hear other people. I think it's absolutely critical reading. If you are interested in knowing yourself and having meaningful relationships with other people, I learned a lot about myself in the process of reading it. It calls you out in a very like supportive and gentle way. And it's just like, oh, but yeah, I love it.
Speaker 0 00:45:10 Did you watch her Netflix special?
Speaker 2 00:45:13 I watched that usually about once a month because I got something new from it every time. Okay, cool.
Speaker 0 00:45:17 I watch it like twice a year. I thought I was weird for doing that, but it's so good. Best self care routine.
Speaker 2 00:45:26 I think that's very individual. And I think that my oh, my self care routine, it's been a very different with the pandemic for me. Self-care is something that's still evolving for me. So one of the things that I've really liked doing when I have the opportunity is there's a place up here in Providence called the Bodhi spa and they have this thing called a water journey and you go into a couple of different salt baths and they've got saunas and then they have a 55 degree cold plunge, and it's meant to soften and then awaken and then soften your nervous system. It's very good for nervous system regulation. So that is one of the primary things that I found if I have the opportunity and I feel like it's safe enough for me to do so. I'll try and do that like once a month, once to twice a month. Um, if I can do that, day-to-day self care routine. What I honestly say to myself is like, bitch, stop what you're doing. What do you need right now? What
Speaker 0 00:46:21 Do you need to do? What you need
Speaker 2 00:46:23 Now? What do you need right now? Not even, what do you need to do? What do you need right now? I need to sit down and like, you know, one of my cats wants attention. Can I get to whatever I was doing in five minutes and like show love and affection to an animal and get, you know, endorphins off of that. Cause that's what animals are. They're just like little packages of endorphins for you.
Speaker 0 00:46:44 Oh, I love it. What's the one app you can't live without in your business.
Speaker 2 00:46:49 So the one app that I can't live without in my business is honestly, probably my EHR. What am I like? H my electronic health record. It is the most like essential thing that keeps the wheels on the vehicle. It's automated. It takes care of a bunch of my stuff. For me. It's really easy. There's, there's no way I can do anything without it
Speaker 0 00:47:11 Went down the rabbit hole last week of trying to figure out which CRM I'm going to switch to. And by the end of that day, I was so exhausted. You think you found the one and then it went down the next one. So we got like seven trials. You got to play with them just enough to know it was exhausting. I finally figured out which one I want, but Mo once you figure it, it's like, I am, I am married to you. I'm keeping
Speaker 2 00:47:33 For life. Yeah, no, I'm getting this tattooed on my body. I'm done
Speaker 0 00:47:38 Getting the t-shirt. All right. Last one. Best piece of advice you have been given in life or in business.
Speaker 2 00:47:46 I know a lot of really brilliant people, so that's tough, but I honestly, I would say it's from my dad. And it's that question that I asked it in a very different context. If you woke up every day and this is your life for the rest of your life, can you do it? And I modified it to, are you satisfied? That has been critical in all aspects of my life.
Speaker 0 00:48:07 It's a very powerful question. I plan on asking myself that a few more times. I'm pretty darn satisfied right now, but I think it's something you need to go back to that question on a little bit more of a regular basis because shit changes.
Speaker 2 00:48:22 Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's the thing I think too, with the entrepreneurial, that hustle kind of a thing, it's just, we get in that rat race and it's just, the wheels are moving. And so we don't want to pull a brake or do anything like that. And so that, it's a really nice in hypnosis. We call it a pattern interrupt. If somebody is just like, I kind of do this thing and I can't read it out. Okay. If this was your life every day for the rest of your life, can you do it? And it makes like you see people sit back and just be like,
Speaker 0 00:48:50 Not doing that. Yeah. Awesome. Well, this has been freaking amazing. I really appreciate you taking the time today and I hope you have an amazing year.
Speaker 2 00:49:00 Oh, thank you so much, Marianne. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think what you're doing is
Speaker 0 00:49:04 Thank you so much for tuning in to the balanced perspective podcast. Listen, if you liked what you heard, can you give me a review? Maybe even a five-star alright. Have an awesome day.
