Finding My Way Dealing With Burnout

[00:00:00] Paula: Welcome to “TesseLeads” with your host Tesse Akpeki and co-host Paula Okonneh, that’s me. “TesseLeads” is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space to share your story, to hear stories, and to tell your stories and experiences. Here our top experts and thought leaders are creating opportunities, navigating diverse range of challenges, confronting their dilemmas and shaping their future. Our guest today is Lisa Hammett, and her topic today is “finding my way towards dealing with burnout”. I’ll tell you a bit about Lisa. She’s an author. She’s a TEDx speaker and a success coach. She helps stressed and burntout business owners and executives develop mental fitness, manage stress, manage anxiety, and ultimately get healthy. After 26 years in the corporate retailing industry, she reached a burnout. So she left the corporate sector in 2005 and started her wellness journey and lost 65 pounds in the process. Fastforward to 2021, she completed an intensive global coaching program with high performing coach or HPC. And she’s currently working on her positive intelligence certification. She has a book, she’s an author, and we’ll let her talk about that as I welcome her to “TesseLeads”.

[00:01:55] Lisa: Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be here.

[00:01:59] Tesse: Hi lisa, I am so excited to have you on the show. Thank you for coming along. You know the first time I saw you, I was saying to myself, if we get you on the show, that will be a boon. And when you said yes, I couldn’t contain myself. So thank you for coming. And meeting you again is just so exciting. You know Lisa, what comes to my mind is your journey that led you towards this track of the best life. And you know, I’m curious, and I’m sure Paula is as well and our listeners will be, about your personal journey. What was growing up like? You know, what were the things that, the highlights that led you to this pathway where you are helping others to go towards their best life?

[00:02:49] Lisa: That’s a great question, because I never in a million years thought I would’ve ended up in the coaching space or professional speaking, let alone writing a book. I think all of our life circumstances happen for a reason. And as you mentioned I spent 26 years in the corporate retail sector and I reached burnout. And I felt like I had hit a wall and was miserable and unhealthy. My relationship was challenged, and I left and went through some major personal development. And during that period I realized about myself how a lot of my behavior stemmed from situations with my mother when I was growing up. My parents adopted me older in life, they were from the depression era. And my mother, she was bipolar basically and was never really diagnosed until late in life. And it was more chronic anxiety related. But there were periods in my life growing up where she wouldn’t talk to me for like a week. If I did something to really upset her, she would just completely shut me out. So I developed people pleasing tendencies and hyper achieving tendencies so that I was always pushing myself really hard to get good grades and, you know, doing everything to please her. Because, oh my gosh if I didn’t, you know, she would shut me out. So this manifested in a lot of stress and unnecessary stress that I placed on myself as a young adult and then older in life. And it, you know, transitioned into the workplace, and it was difficult and I realized that that is no way to live. We can’t please everybody. And then it all stemmed you know really from fear, fear of being successful. And I just, I had to do a lot of personal work to get through that. And I think, you know, my personal work and then my experience, reaching burnout has really led me to where I can serve my clients to the best of my ability now, and why I’m so passionate about it. Because I just, I don’t want them to go through what I went through. Because it’s not a good place to be in.

[00:05:14] Paula: Wow. I’m speechless. There’s something that you said that really touched me or jumped out at me. The fear of being successful. You know, we hear a lot more about the fear of failure. That fear of being successful is a big thing. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:05:32] Lisa: Yes, you’re so right. You know, you hear of failure, you know fear of not doing well, but fear of success. Because we’re so used to playing small that it’s hard for us to envision what our life can look like if we really were to be successful, and allow ourselves to be successful. Because we all have that capability within us. We’re all on an equal playing field. We don’t feel that way often, but we all have that within us. And it’s literally our fears that hold us back. And fearing success is basically saying, well I haven’t been really successful before, so what makes me think I could be really successful now? Or maybe you were successful but you had a misguided view of what success really looked like and you attached it to what other people, you know, how they measured success or how you perceived that they were successful. When really, yes, they might be doing well, but in their mind they might not even be fully successful. So it’s all this mind trash that we tell ourselves and this misperceptions that we have of other people and our environment, that just really can create a lot of stress and trauma.

[00:06:59] Tesse: Yeah, I mean there are lots of people, including myself, that would be thinking this fear of success and be able to relate to it. And there are not a lot of sessions like teaching sessions or others that actually go into, as Paula was saying, into the fear of success and what that mean. So I’m rather curious in linking that fear of success with fear of failure and your role as a success coach. What does a success coach do? We’ve heard of life coaching, executive coaching, but success coach, excuse me, what does that mean? Enlighten us Lisa.

[00:07:34] Lisa: Okay, yeah, cause it does encompass a lot of different things. And to your point, success is different to everybody. Your version of success could be vastly different from what I feel success is. Some individuals attach monetary success to their wellbeing, and they want to reach a certain income, and when they’ve reached that certain income, they feel like, okay I’ve finally arrived I’m successful. And for me, I found that being happy, healthy, and fulfilled really to me is successful. And yes there is the monetary component to it, but that’s not the most important piece of it. So when I work with clients it’s really defining for them what does success look like to them. And for them to really visualize what it’s going to feel like when they reach that point in their life. And to realize that just because they lose weight, for example, doesn’t mean that they might be happy, successful, and fulfilled. So it’s not like a destination, it’s really an emotional mindset that needs to be developed over a period of time. So that’s why I love working with clients because it’s a process and it’s different for everybody. And the mind is such a powerful piece in the puzzle.

[00:08:58] Tesse: I love this, you know, kind of the mindset. A few days ago I was on LinkedIn, Paula is at the brunt of my exciting moments. Cause when I see these things, I just send them onto her. And there was something like, there’s a picture of an umbrella and you know, what was happening with that umbrella and asking a different kind of question about, oh, these are the challenges we’re facing. What would success look like and who can help us? And then the other thing was a funnel, and this funnel was actually kind of like towards convergent thinking and saying, oh help we’re getting outta here. So the two different shifts. So over to you Lisa, about what kind of things have you been seeing from your experience as being barriers that can get in the way of that best life? What kind of things? Cause you’re saying these things to me and I’m thinking, yeah, we can do it. I can do it. Paula can do it. But sometimes I think we might sabotage ourselves. So what do those sabotage things, what do they look like? How can we experience those things that create, you know, kind of walls or, you know deep pitfalls for us?

[00:10:00] Lisa: That’s a great question and that’s why I love the mental fitness piece of this, the whole positive intelligence mental fitness piece. Because what it does is, it’s a science between your left brain and your right brain and all of your negative emotions. All those saboteurs that you just alluded to, those reside in your left brain, your left analytical brain. And in the positive intelligence sector you know, some of our saboteurs include, well, first and foremost our judge, which is judgements that we feel about ourselves. How we judge ourselves, but also how we judge others. And that is like the ringleader of all the saboteurs and then the others attached to them. And it can be the controller, it could be the hyper-rational. It could be the hyper-vigilant. It could be the pleaser. It could be the hyper achiever. It could be the stickler. There’s so many different ones. But it’s recognizing where you fall into that and creating awareness and the whole mental fitness piece of it is being able to recognize them when they appear, intercepting them and then shifting to a positive mindset, which we call the sage perspective. And that’s where peace, clarity, calm, reside. And when we are making decisions or having conversations from the sage perspective, we are looking at things from love basically. So the right brain is love and the left brain is fear basically. So when we’re looking at things from love, we have a whole different mindset and we can look at challenges as what is a gift and opportunity in this? Or let’s look at this situation with empathy, you know. Is there somebody who’s really challenging that is triggering us, but being able to say, okay, if I were to put myself in their shoes with what they’re going through, how would I feel? You know, really relating to that. And then learning to look at the big picture and understanding and being curious, you know when your saboteur arises. Huh, why is it doing that? Why am I feeling that way? So it’s just, it’s a fascinating science and you know the actual technique that we use to shift that mindset is very simple and you can do it in the moment. So if you are triggered instead of just automatically responding, which is human nature, it just causes us to pause and engage on actually one of our senses. So it could be sense of sight, touch, hearing, taste. And doing that for like 10 to 15 seconds, so that it takes the focus off of that issue and just kind of puts us into a space of where we’re really not thinking about anything, and then we can respond from the right brain.

[00:13:07] Paula: I’m just loving this Lisa. You know one of my mantras or my daily mantra is, I learn something new every day. And I love that I’ve learned today that the right brain is love and the left brain is fear. I need to figure out which one I am.

[00:13:32] Tesse: Paula, I know from what I’ve seen of you, you have so much love going on. That’s

[00:13:46] Paula: So Lisa, we live in the age where we have so much information at our fingertips and you know there’s so many things, new things to learn. I knew I’m a baby bloomer, so let me just say this. But I wanted to learn things. When growing up I had to go to the library, probably look for an encyclopedeia, you know, and spend some time there. Now we do not have to do all of that. I mean, we can, that’s one of our options rather than our only choices. And so listening to you talk about your early life. You had a mom who was bipolar and how it affected you. If you were to talk with your mom or if you could talk to your younger self, what would you say to yourself now that you know what you know?

[00:14:29] Lisa: I would say to myself that she’s doing the best she can, and that it is the illness and it’s not her, and that she loves me. And I know that now, and I knew that to a point, but I would get so angry and resentful and then would just retreat. And then, you know, it took me years to really feel comfortable to communicate in a more intimate way, you know, with someone in conversation. Because I was so afraid of being vulnerable and being judged. So it’s really using more empathy as opposed to judgment and blame. And just, you know, say she’s doing the best she can and give her some grace.

[00:15:23] Paula: What you just said is important because as I said, we know now what we didn’t know. And so I still come across young people who have been parented by parents who didn’t know what we know now. And that’s a great thing for people to know that they did the best that they could with what they knew. That’s very helpful. It’s healing almost, you know? Cause then you know, we don’t spend a lot of time, as you said, with the mindtrash, you know, in second guessing ourselves or second guessing somebody else’s motive when we understand that they did the best that they could with what they had.

[00:16:04] Tesse: That’s so beautiful. So beautiful, Lisa. You know, you’ve given us such a gift from your heart. And I can really feel hearts coming through. And you know, what’s coming into my mind is back to that best life. And for you, you know, if you were to do like three words for your best life, for Lisa. Now it’s you. I’m encouraging you, we are inviting you to be selfish and tell us your three best words for your best life, what would they be?

[00:16:33] Lisa: My three words for living my best life would be, “Pause”. The word “Limitless” comes to mind, and it was actually my word during the pandemic. And it really resonated with me because we all have so many possibilities in our life and so many opportunities. They are truly limitless. And we often get so buried in the weeds that we don’t see those. So to recognize that life is full of limitless possibilities. So I guess pausing first so that you can recognize that. And “Grateful”. Practice gratitude. Because studies have shown that when we practice gratitude consistently, we are happier and healthier, and we can better impact the lives of others. And I truly believe that is why we were put on this Earth, is to impact others in our own unique way. And when we can express gratitude, we’re better able to do that.

[00:17:53] Tesse: It is just swan like. Beautiful.

[00:17:59] Lisa: Thank you.

[00:18:00] Paula: So beautiful. I love all that you’ve pause, so that you can think of your limitless possiblities. You’ve sumed it up.

[00:18:16] Lisa: Thank you. That was a great question.

[00:18:19] Tesse: That’s the umbrella. That’s the umbrella, Lisa. It’s not the funnel. Not the funnel.

[00:18:25] Lisa: Agreed. Agreed.

[00:18:29] Paula: I was gonna ask for highlights, but you sumed it up perfectly. Pause, Limitless Possibilities and Gratitude. So we’ll close out by saying, your precious stories and lives matter. And to our listeners, we say continue to share them with us. This also applies to our guests. Others are supported, encouraged, and nurtured when they know that they’re never alone. And so we ask our listeners to continue to head over to “Apple Podcast”, to “Google Podcast”, “Spotify”, or anywhere you listen to podcast, click subscribe, share it with your friends. And if you have found “TesseLeads” helpful, please let us know in your reviews. Again, if you have any topics or questions you’d like us to cover, send us a note. And if you’d like to be a guest on our show, “TesseLeads”, head over to our new website, which is “www.tesseleads” to our contact page and apply.