Episode 199: Reclaim Your Calendar, Rethink Leadership | Christie Garcia | Founder, Mindful Choice Leadership Academy
Leadership is more than managing people. It's managing yourself first. Christie Garcia, founder of Mindful Choice Leadership Academy, breaks down the hidden patterns that block us from being the leaders we want to be. She introduces her three ego types framework, shares how to shift from reactive to intentional leadership, and explains why even your calendar reflects your values. This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating career development, managing teams, or building a life that matches their values. Practical, honest, and deeply motivating.
“Ego energy is scarcity energy. Anyone who’s successful in business knows there’s enough to go around for everyone.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 Leading without ego
01:15 The three ego types and how they affect leadership
03:30 How ego shows up in your calendar and priorities
05:10 Christie's pivot from real estate to coaching
07:00 Why leadership training is broken
09:45 Mindful leadership vs. reactive management
11:30 Tools for communicating hard truths
13:20 Leading your team through uncertainty
15:05 Creating a culture of personal accountability
17:40 Building a business that aligns with your values
20:15 How ego affects female entrepreneurs
22:30 When leadership feels lonely
24:45 Productivity myths that hold leaders back
27:00 What powerful really means
30:00 Letting go of perfectionism
33:00 Advice for new or struggling managers
How do we do this without opening up too much? Once you're confident, now you can get into the yuckiness and get into the mess. They were calling it the muck, and it's no, that's not, it's not muck anymore. When you're comfortable, there's just truth. Truth is powerful. When we're not scared of it, when we're scared of the
truth, it becomes much.
That's Christie Garcia and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Hey guys, I'm Kara Duffy, a business coach and entrepreneur on a mission to help you live your most extraordinary life. By showing you anything truly is possible. People who have mastered freedom, e success, who are living their best and most ridiculous lives and who are making an impact are often people you've never heard of until now.
Today's guest, Chrissy Garcia, and I share one of my biggest pet peeves about corporate America. We do not train or teach people how to go from being an independent contributor. To being a manager or leader. Instead, most companies think they're doing you the employee a favor by giving you a promotion that includes leading people and assume you'll figure it out.
Being a great producer and being a great leader are completely different skillsets. Christie has taken this frustration and created her company, the Mindful Choice Leadership Academy. She's helping managers and leaders of all kinds. Step into the mindset approach and perspective that allow them to be not just great but transformational leaders.
Welcome to The Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you Kara, for having me. I'm so excited to visit with you. I am really excited to hear about you and what you're up to. So let's tell everybody right away your name, where you are in the world, and yeah, what you're up to, what you're doing. My
name is Christie Garcia.
I run a company called Mindful Choice. I live out in sunny California in the central coast, so I'm in small town America here in California. And, I have a niche of ego management, so I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners first line managers, all the way up to executives within fast growing organizations, helping them really maximize the human side of their business and bring that authentic confidence, that realness, that truth back to the table and allowing people to just show up to be them, kind of freedom to stop that ego talk, stop the, I call it ego management within the organization. It's really fun and the world needs so much more of it right now.
I think that's really interesting in the human side and the ego management. I have worked at many corporations where you just wondered who decided that? These were the leaders that you were choosing.
There's, I think you said on your website there's a lot of people who go, who are great in the eye roll, but when it goes to the Let me Lead You role, there's a fall off point. And I think it's such a shame that we aren't preparing people to be managers, directors, leaders. What face traits you most about that pivot point for people and how they're not helped?
You know it. It's such a frustrating thing. That's exactly why I started my business. I was in sales and I got to where my next move was. Leadership. I'm like, everybody fails for at least two to three years. Even if you're an amazing leader, you're gonna fail for two to three years because it's completely different mindset.
And unfortunately, there isn't that training model. That says, okay, you went from, I contribute and I must be the best to now. It's no longer about you and I have to get my entire team to the finish line. And that shift is crazy dramatic. And if you're not taught quickly how to do that, then it is a trial and error process.
So I think my turning point was just recognizing that, if you don't learn it, you're going to. Really waste so much time, lose so many good employees, or just not succeed for a while, which is an ego killer as well. Your confidence is down because you're like, I suck at this.
Yeah. I think what I think is the best part of what I have learned through this process of building this program the leadership Academy. It just helping people fast forward their career path in that three to six weeks saying, Hey, this is who I am, this is what I do. This is where my downsides are, and this is how I shift.
And it's so fun because I believe that is exactly what we all need. Whether you're running your own show, whether you're running a team, you have to know where those weaknesses are, those unconscious behaviors. No one talks about because again, they're unconscious. Usually people are talking about it behind your back because it's where we all suck and it's like everybody knows where we suck, but us ourselves, because again, those unconscious habits just surface in the most.
Stressful and transitional times of our life, which is when we need to be the most grounded. So I dunno if that answered your question. Sorry. I might have just gone off on a tangent. A tangent. Totally. No, it was perfect
because it makes me think about how so many of my clients, when they're trying to even just clarify their messaging about their own business i, we have to do an exercise of who are you? And who are you afraid to tell people you are? Because yeah there's power in knowing our blind spots and our neurosis and, my, my team will laugh at me with how honest I am with them sometimes about. I, you know what? I just don't wanna do this task.
Or Yeah. This is bothering me for this reason. I know it's probably silly, but this is what I'm dealing with. So how do we figure it out together? And, but there's, I'm glad I've had that training 'cause there's power behind it for Absolutely. You. It's what I love about leadership training is when it shows you how to be honest.
And vulnerable and know that's not gonna take your power away.
I love that you're using the word power, right? Because the ego hates the word power. It's either a power struggle with yourself and you're overpowered. You're over controlling to have a power, or you are. So worried about being too powerful that you downplay your power, right?
And the reality is that's all an ego tactic. And so being able to just be confident Hey, this is where I'm really good and this empowers me to empower you to be better. Or, giving yourself permiss to say, I just don't wanna do that today. And there's someone better at it. Like again, that's all power.
Power to choose, power to lead, power to delegate. And I think too many people question, transparency and authenticity and vulnerability. And when is it good and when is it bad? I was just on the call this morning with three of my clients who are executive and we were leading team workshops for them this morning and yesterday.
And it was really interesting. They have a story that they need to tell. They need to clear some space and call out some elephants in the room. And we've been doing this work for years and one of the questions was, how do we do this without, up too. It's open it up once you're confident, now you can get into the yuckiness and get into the mess.
And they were calling it the muck and it's no, that's not, it's not muck anymore. When you're comfortable, there's just truth. Truth is powerful. When we're not scared of it, when we're scared of the truth, it becomes. It becomes the yucky dirt. It comes, the sticky stuff that no one wants to embrace, the elephant in the room, whatever you wanna call it.
And it's avoid that. It's just truth. Truth has no power unless you give it power. And that's really what ego management is recognizing the truth, owning the truth, and then walking forward through it with confidence that you can handle the mess that it might create because you can't get to the other side without going through it.
It speaks to the common kind of PR tactic. Of own it if you say it. Yeah. And that's it. And you don't add significance to it. What? They don't have it. There's nothing to hold over you.
And I think that's huge, right? You're in the branding world. So the power of media right now, and the image people can create from one statement, someone says sometimes the biggest mess you get in yourself, try to justify why you said it.
Like just own it. Own it. Stand by it and validate your stance and. Or if you really truly are apologetic for it, then apologize authentically, not because the world is saying you were wrong. Because that's mostly an ego tactic, right? And it's just so incredibly powerful when someone can stand by their truth.
Because truth is truth and people, it's very hard to judge truth. People judge opinions. They judge, character flaws. They judge that stuff, but that's not true. That is just opinion. And I think that's. The difference. When you start to recognize and own your own ego, you start to learn what the ego noise is out there, and it no longer matters what other people think.
You just get to stand in your own proud moment of This is me. Good, bad, and ugly.
It's hard. You don't slow down either when you're in that space. And I think that we spend so much time worrying about what people are gonna think or worrying how they're gonna take information, whether they're our employees or they're above us.
Yeah. Or they're client. Like whatever the relationship is, we spend so much time. Trying to control and navigate something instead of just saying it and moving on. Yes. And when we look at where our time is spent, it's is that really what you, how you wanna have spent your day? There's no fun in that
at all.
Oh my goodness. Isn't that the truth? The worry about things we can't control? Or the worry about, how someone's gonna respond or react? How many times do we just sit for hours and make ourselves. Sick over a conversation we have to have. And then you have it and you feel so much better and you're like, oh, it went better than I expected.
It's of course. And it always does nine outta 10 times. Yeah. It's amazing how that ego will just take over our entire life and focus our attention on things that just really don't matter.
I'm curious, if you go back to 8-year-old self, would she have imagined that this is your life today?
Both where you live, what you're doing, and how you're spending your days?
No. My eight year self wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. So yeah, I was gonna be a kindergarten teacher up till about 23, and I finished college and I was like, oh no, this isn't what I wanna do. No, I, 8-year-old self was definitely living the simple life. I think where I live and the family and personal life I've created absolutely this is what I wanted. But I think on the professional side, that has taken me on such an amazing journey from, being able to travel around the world, being in sales, living in multiple cities, and now building a business that just helps to really maximize people's success in a way that I never thought I would be able to create, which is so fun.
There's such great I think joy and peace when you are using your natural skills to help other people achieve something. How has stepping into that space for you shifted how you view yourself, but also how you're interacting in other spaces of your life?
Ah, that's such a great question. One, I think I feel so incredibly.
Lucky and blessed to be able to learn these skills. I don't know why, God put these skills in my path and said, this is gonna be the business you create. But he definitely made it very loud and clear. I had a fall when I was 30. I don't know if you have heard that in my story along the road, but when I was 30, I was gonna start my business for about two years.
Before that, I was in sales and it was really comfortable and I was living a really good life. And it was just so hard to walk away, the penthouse life. And he made me fall actually next week will be my I think 11th anniversary. Holy moly. When it happened, and, I fell 30 foot and it was just this moment of okay, this is your life.
Do you really wanna do this? And that's really when I learned about my ego, how it truly creates such an unconscious life. We go through the motions. We think we're happy. At the end of the day, I was happy. I, that fast pace energy that you're talking about. Once I had to stop, then I had to sit and look at how my life was designed, and I realized that I had amazing people in my life, but I was so incredibly.
Protective over my own feelings and emotions that I controlled every situation. So they got to know how much, I would let them know about me. I was always good. I was fine. I was great. Always had a smile on my face, always busy, always doing something. And now I was forced to have to slow down for a few weeks and it was like, whoa, I actually have feelings.
This is crazy. I think that was the real powerful thing. So one, I've done the work that I'm teaching. I have learned that if you don't stop, you are gonna wake up one day and this is not the life you wanna live. I was 30 I wanted a family. I hadn't dated seriously in probably 10 years.
So I wasn't living and building space. 10 years from now, I've got the kids, I've got the.
Walk the halls of the hospitals and my, one of my favorite pastimes was to go talk to patients who were by themselves and be like, why are you here by yourself? I don't get it. And it was really shocking because most of 'em just, I worked really hard and I didn't prioritize my family or, because I, wanted to provide for them.
I wasn't home and I, I missed all the other things that were important. And for me, it wasn't that I was missing out on the family, I wasn't creating space for it. And I think that left such a big hole in my heart to realize I was gonna be one of those people. As I did the work, I started to realize 90% of working women are now gonna be those people.
Or most of the people I was seeing in this hustle were men. And that was really heartbreaking for me. 'cause that scares me as a culture for our families, right? If both dad and moms are now working these lives that are crazy and unconscious, what do we have 20, 30 years from here and what's it all look like?
So that was really, I think where it was powerful. And now that I've got the business and I've got these skills. I just love when I hear people are spending more time with their families. They aren't stressed out anymore. They are going to work with confidence and they're not trying to prove themselves because that's really all the ego does because you have to work longer hours because your competitor's gonna beat you.
You've gotta work longer hours or someone, the promotion for you, you gotta work this and you gotta do this and you gotta miss that on this and order to justify this. And it's no you don't. You can do all of it. And it's just a choice and you have to be confident enough to say. When is enough and when is it a choice to be successful at home and at business?
And I think that's the real balance in life and being able to offer that is probably one of the be biggest blessings in my life. And thank God for it. It's something that's helped me in my marriage. It's my husband and I just or in the process of adopting two kiddos and, it's helping us create balance there.
Yes. Thank you. So I think it's just I just feel so incredibly lucky that I have been given these tools. I needed them and being able to share it with people that have already needed them or, are in the, that place of losing things.
Yeah. I hope that as we're having this, what seems like a relatively large shift in awakening as a culture right now, that part of what we're getting is that.
We don't need to have scarcity at all, let alone in all these layers. There's, yeah, the financial scarcity, there's the job security, scarcity, there's the options or promotion, scarcity, there's this ingrained, there's not enough for all of us feeling. Yeah. That keeps showing up at deeper and deeper layers, and when I'm working with people to create or optimize their businesses.
That's where we spend so much of the time. There's so many of these programmed things that they have absorbed from usually the corporate spaces where I'm like to have your personal business making even half a million dollars a year, do you don't need to worry that everyone's gonna steal your clients?
'cause how many do you really need? Isn't that the truth? I love that.
We live in a world where people truly think we're all gonna starve to death. And let's go back to the pandemic. We lost toilet paper. Yes. Come on. There are resources in the world that are just so fictional and manmade and it's, I think that's that ego energy that we're feeling, that ego energy that's created around panic scarcity, if you don't use that word right.
It's really just. Worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about, things we can't truly control instead of just taking ownership of our own world, our own life, our own family, our own choices, which empowers every single one of us to have enough of everything, right? If we just really look at it from that simple level.
Yeah. And business. I think anybody who. Successful in business knows that there's enough business for all of us at the simplest level, right? If you really wanna ask yourself consciously and intentionally, your best self knows there's enough business for you and your competitors and everybody else.
And if you want it all you can't even possibly do that. Yeah. Like it's not even realistic. Yeah. Such an unrealistic expectation.
And I think the other part that probably leads into how you talk to people about leadership is that we can't do it by ourselves. And I think that mindset of the I produce results versus now I'm responsible for you producing results.
It, that's a big shift in perspective. And it's alm it's like going from having to, it's that everything with, that any good student hated in school with the group projects. Yes. And you're like such good life lessons. Yeah. And no one ever taught us how, like no one was teaching how to enroll or lead people in that space either.
It was a bunch of individual contributors and someone had to contribute more to put it together. Correct. So how do you approach, leadership in regards to like stopping to think about that? There's no way that we can do it by ourselves.
I think that's the first thing that we do in the program that I work on is awareness and ownership.
So you, you can't change anything but yourself, right? Like you can try your hardest to change everybody on your team, but the only person you can change is yourself. And the beauty in that is though, once you learn to manage your own ego, once you learn to change your own approach, you can now inspire, empower others to do the same.
And I think that. Such a great concept when you're talking about a leader. One, it takes so much pressure off you, don't worry about your team. If you worry about you and you shift the way you communicate. If you worry about you and you shift the way you react, if you worry about you and you shift how you show up and you walk through that door.
You have now naturally changed how everyone else is gonna follow suit. And that is the easiest way to lead by example and to lead with confidence. And I think that's where we start self-awareness. So once we do self-awareness and your own approach, you know where your weaknesses are, you know where your ego's taking over.
'cause most of the time when it comes to delegating, when it comes to collaborating. The reasons we don't do that is because we don't think we're valuable enough. The ego wants to tell you if you can't do that yourself, then you're not valuable. If you put that on someone else, you're wasting their time.
If have to teach them, then they're not good enough. And the reality is that none of that's true. None of that's true. That's you saying I'm more valuable and I'm more important, and if I can do this task and someone else can't, then I have more value within my organization. As a leader, that's bs.
Right? Like at the end of the day, if you're not teaching people how to do what, if you're not teaching people how to be smarter than you, you're gonna always be stuck at your level. You're never gonna be able to improve. You're never gonna bring a team that is amazing and, powerful.
That got you got to where you're at because you're good at your job. But if you don't ever learn to teach it and you don't ever give it away, you've maxed out. As good as you're gonna get and everybody's going to pass you by. And I think that's that scarcity model. It's the irony of the ego, right? It sabotages our success by holding us where we're at out of fear.
And when we can face that through self-awareness and ownership. Then you can start to realize, why don't I delegate? What's the belief system around that? Why don't I collaborate more or get a power partner or, find those power affiliates. Why don't I do this or that? That gets me to that next level.
And most likely, because if you really dig deeper, there's something about worsen value. And if you can shift that now you've got authentic confidence about what you bring to the table. You have authentic confidence of how to lead. And most importantly, you are now going to truly make people better around you.
And I think that's what really great leadership is when you're not scared to make your team better than you. When you are scared to have better team members, you are not leading, you're trying to prove yourself still. And that's really what holds most of us back in our growth opportunities as leadership.
Because you can't be focused on the future if you're defending your turf and your space. Yeah. And most
leaders, especially if we're talking about, first level man I wouldn't even say that I worked with just the executives who are still doing tasks they did five, 10 years ago.
And the reality is they're doing it out of habit, out of routine. Out simplicity because it takes time to have to train people. It takes time to have to, learn how to train someone what you do, because most of the stuff we do is just on autopilot at this point. And a lot of times we don't even know what we do, so we don't even know how to communicate it.
We just know someone else isn't doing as good as us. So we complain about their, work habits and make them a bad employee versus saying, why are they a bad employee and why aren't they doing it how I do it, when ultimately that comes back to your training habits. And so I think through that self-awareness ownership, you really get to see, where are you dropping the ball when it comes to your team, and then how can you empower them?
Because I think once you can recognize how to give that stuff away, you buy back more time. The number one excuse I hear why people don't delegate is just, I don't have time to do it. That's your ego telling. You don't have time and you're never gonna have time to maximize your success. Or just step into leadership and say, you know what?
I wanna work that five hour week because I've done it and I've got an amazing team underneath who can run this show. If you're not training your team to do what you do. Then you're gonna be that leader that if you rock out the, heaven and forbid you get hit by a bus and you don't go to work tomorrow, your team just failed.
Your business just failed, and you're gonna be now known as the boss that didn't teach anybody. So it's do you wanna leave a legacy that you were the boss that made everybody better? Or are you gonna leave a legacy that, you know what, they were great, you liked working for them, but they didn't necessarily improve me.
I also think I, I see a lot of leaders and business owners who. Know that they wanna delegate for the sake of having some of their time back. But another reason that they don't do it as fast as they could or should is because they don't even know what tasks they should be paying attention to.
Absolutely. And it's, I think that we only worry about what we know, not like what else should I be doing? What else? Yeah. What am I not doing that I'm supposed to in this new role? Because there's always more to be. Doing, looking at learning, meeting with if any, when people are afraid of, I won't have any work to do, I laugh because it doesn't stop.
Right? There's always something to do. That is true. And if you don't, I always tell people, if you want to be conscious of your time, if you truly want to delegate. You have to manage or you have to track your time for at least a week, like track it moment to moment, where are you spending it? What I love about it is that you always keeps you busy.
So it's gonna always fill your time with stuff. And right now we've got stuff and we have fire drills, and we have urgency, and we have emails and we have voicemails, and we have social media, and we have all these things that can suck up our day so quickly. And most of the time we go through our days and it's I have no idea what I did.
I was busy all day, right? Busy all day. But I don't feel productive. And so I think when someone can track their time, and you just can be as simple as in an Excel sheet, you can do it on your computer. It doesn't matter how you track it, just track it, write it down. I actually do pen and paper just so I remember to do it.
And that shows you where you're spending your time. I've had clients literally buy back 20 hours in their week because they realize that. They were having, one of them was having there was a employee that was coming to their office every day, almost the exact same time, and twice a day. And they would have 15 to 20 minute conversations.
Just in that they started having a 15 minute in the morning. Bought back the rest of the day. They didn't have any, they didn't hear from them the rest of the day. And just little things like that. Like you can buy back time so quickly when you start to see the patterns in your routine, you can buy back time when you start to see what are those tedious little tasks that I do, just because.
I've been doing 'em and I don't even realize I'm doing, 'cause it's autopilot. What can I delegate off? So once you go through your task list, then you can see, okay, this needs to be delegated. This is highest priority. This should never have been on my list. Why is it there? Or where's the expert? And I think that is something that you have to be conscious.
You have to be intentional with that stuff. The ego is an unconscious. Part of our brain that just shows up and goes through the motions, and unfortunately, 99% of the time we're unconsciously going through the motions of our day. That means 99% of the time, your ego is making your decision. So if you could just even 1% more every single day, imagine how much time you'd have back.
Imagine how much more intentional you would be, not just as a leader, but as a parent, as a friend, as a community member, as a spouse as a boss, you know that. It's just so incredible when you can put intention behind why you're doing what you do and not just doing it because it's on your to-do.
And I'm hoping that the structural shifts that are happening now with expectations of working remote or working in person are, there's a lot of looking at time and efficiencies.
You and I have both been in. Like meeting hell before. Yeah. Of like guys like I like you. We do not need to hang out for eight hours a day. Let's actually put points on the board. And so I think, I'm curious to see how that's starting to shift and if more traditional entrepreneurial approaches to things are gonna start weeding themselves back into corporate life.
'cause there's so many people in that autopilot space and. I know, when people ask me like, how do I have, how do I honor my half day Friday summers? Or how do I stop working at, whatever time they want to, I go, you have to make cool plans. You will not ditch something fun. So go have, build your fun life and then you'll figure out pretty quickly how to do all the other things.
You have to much faster. Yeah. It's like when parents, when you become a parent, two, I have friends that both are entrepreneurs. They used to work from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM and now they work five hours. Yeah, absolutely. Same. Same job. Same. Same everything. And they're like, Nope, we just didn't have a choice.
It was, that was the only option we had, so we made it work.
You learned to prioritize the real priorities, right? I think it goes back to again, how we use our time, that ego, unconscious mindset. We'll fill your day. It will make you busy all day long. Whether you give yourself 12 hours or whether you give yourself two productivity looks so different when you're prioritizing the real priorities and when life changes, whether you throw kids into the mix or health issues or whatever the situation is, things happen that you have to change those life or those situations.
I have to tell people do it before you have to, because if you do it before you have to. You just get to enjoy your life more and you're less stressed. You work is more enjoyable, your life is more enjoyable, and you're using time wisely, and you're consciously going through the motions versus, unconsciously doing it and hoping for the best because hoping for the best.
So much more drama.
What does it mean to you to be a powerful lady and does power shift? The definition of it shift when it's next to the word. Ladies for you.
You know it's funny, I get a little ego thing around the whole lady part, right? Businesswoman, boss, woman. I think at the end of the day, sometimes the lady part downplays what our power is.
I think as humans we're powerful and I think part of ego management is not having to justify whether I'm a lady or I'm a man that makes me powerful. Like I'm a powerful business woman. I will own that. I'll take it to my grave, but I don't think it would matter if I'm a woman or a man. If I was, doing what I'm doing, then I'm kicking ass in the world.
I'm super excited about it. And I think the powerful part for me. Does look different professionally than it does personally. But powerful for me is just confidence. When you're authentically confident in what you're doing, whether you are, a janitor at school, or you are executive at a Fortune 500 company, or you are just, doing you in the small entrepreneur space you're in, like at the end, if you're confident in what you're doing, then just own that.
That's power. Go to bed happy, make it a choice. Be intentional. I think that to me is where power really shows up and that's when we're happy. I think giving ourselves the power to choose recognizing that everything we're doing is a choice. Whether it's our career, whether it's our life, whether it's our family, whether it's our friends, like that's all a choice.
And if we're intentionally choosing those choices give us power, and that's where. A powerful lady, a powerful business person, a powerful individual in the world. That I think is where I stand behind that word.
I see a lot of people who are stepping into their power and doing the personal development work, doing the leadership work, really digging into.
Themselves to be just free so that they can do, make more of the impact they want in the world. Yeah. I see that there are challenges when that's a big commitment that they have and either their partner doesn't have it at in business, their partner in life doesn't have it or doesn't see it yet.
Yeah. Or they're surrounded by people who just aren't interested in taking that on. What advice do you have for people who are committed to growth and. They're worried or frustrated that they're not seeing that in the key players in their life or business as well?
That's a tough one, and I think anybody who does personal development or professional development, experiences that for myself personally, again, going back to the ego is the one that judges the ego is the one that critiques ego, the one that times.
The ego kind of shifts, right? We're no longer judging ourself, we're now judging others. Why aren't they fixing themselves? Why aren't they doing it right? And so you're technically doing the same thing that you were doing before. It's now externally pushing it out. So I always, for myself and offer advice when people go through this work, learn about those ego beliefs.
Like where are you judging someone because they're not doing what you're doing? People grow and change at their different paces. And I think when you start judging someone, you're looking down on them and you now are putting yourself in a better than box. And that makes someone not want to grow because now you're just being ugly about your own growth, whether it's conscious or unconscious.
And so I think it's one of the things where you have to just lead by example. If you want someone to, grow and develop with you. Bring it up in a way that's not telling them that they're bad or they're doing something wrong. Because usually that's how it comes across. Oh, I've learned that I've done this and you should do too.
Or, oh, you're doing that thing that I used to do and it's not good. And it comes across as that better than, and so people feel belittled or they feel judged, and that doesn't make want, make anybody wanna change. That just makes them want to return the favor and judge you back, right? And so I think in that place, it's having grace.
It's trusting other people. I always tell people, not everyone's gonna do this work. They're just not. And that's okay. Love them for where they're at. You have them in your life for a reason, and it is a choice to keep them there. And it's a choice for you to accept them for where they're at.
And there's gonna be people you choose not to do that with. But hopefully you don't choose to get rid of a lot of people. I think unfortunately, a lot of people. They're judger judges people too hard, and it becomes a distant thing. And they do divorce people and walk away from people. And I divorce you, not necessarily spouses.
It could be work partners, it could be family members. And they judge them so much that they can't just appreciate and love them and realize that they're part of your journey. Without them, you would not be who you are. Without them, you wouldn't have your growth. You wouldn't be in this place to say, Hey, you know what, I'm better.
So my opinion is just. Find the rea. Love them for who they are. Love them for the values they bring, not for the weaknesses that you judge or that you despise, or that learn to dislike. Encourage them, validate them, educate them, and train them in a way that is inspiring. Not in a place of judgment though.
What are you doing to allow yourself to be full so that you can support everyone that you're working with in the way that you do. Oh,
that's such a good question. Especially now that we have two little toddlers in our house for the last few weeks. I think for me, I have learned how to be selfish with my time.
And I use the word selfish because I think a lot of people think self-care is selfish. And so I confidently use that word, and I am okay with that word because sometimes you have to put yourself first, and if you don't, you'll run dry. Especially if you're in a leadership role or you are in a advisor role, or you're in a parenting role and you're going to work every day, you're pushing so much fuel out.
And if you don't refuel, you're not good to anybody. I always tell people, you could play Supermom, you could play Super Dad, you can play superhero at work. At the end of the day, if you're running on empty, you're grumpy and you probably don't even know it. You're tired of making errors and you probably don't even know it.
You're not your best self. Everybody around you knows it and you're not. And I think, I think reminding yourself, if you are not taking care of you first, you are going to burnout. And some people can go two or three months before they have their mental breakdown or their emotional breakdown and they need to shut down.
Some people can go two or three days and really encouraging people to just recognize those signs. When do you start, getting a little more edgy. When do you need to take an afternoon off? When do you need to give your self permission? Especially right now in the holiday season, when do you need to stay?
I don't have it in me to go to this party and I'm not gonna feel obligated. I think so often we feel guilty that which again is an ego tactic to feel guilty or feel bad for someone or feel, you're gonna hurt someone's feelings if you say no. We live in a world that how often when someone cancels on you, you have a little bit of relief.
Honestly, we all, it's oh, you can't make it tonight. Oh, I'm really bummed. And most time we're a little bummed, but sometimes we're like. No problem. I am really crazy busy too. And I think too often we think people are gonna take it personal when we say, Hey, I'm really tired. I'm not gonna be my best self.
No one wants to sit at the table with you if you're tired and you're not gonna be good company, right? Go home, throw your feet up, let them do the same. So you know, that's I think where people just have to, again, go back to ownership of that. Good, bad, and ugly that we talked about at the beginning.
When you're tired, honor it. Take care of yourself. People will respect it. And if they won't, then that's their own stuff and they need to learn how to manage their ego too, because that's their ego judging it, not their best self.
I saw a post on Instagram recently that said cosmo growing up made me think that there'd be a lot more day night looks than I've ever had a need for in my life.
Oh, it's so true. Yeah. There's not a lot of that. Absolutely. And I think, that being in lockdown was good for a lot of people in the sense that it gave it like you, we had that reset to say, what do we want our social life to look like? There's not enough pausing to really. Go back to being intentional and choosing, like you were saying before.
Yeah. And I almost feel like there's been this fast forward energy since all that, I think coming out everybody was in their introvert like, yeah, this is cool. I'm gonna stay home now. And I feel like in the last 12 months we've gotten back to just like full speed ahead. And people are busy and things are crazy, and energy is fast.
Time is fast. And it's not that we're not all happy and maybe we're all a little more intentional, if you really stop and think about your week, I bet there's things in there that you're not enjoying and you're just doing it because you've committed to it. So I always tell people, check in with yourself every month, first of every month, look at your schedule and say, what actually do I enjoy and what don't I enjoy?
What am I doing out of obligation or out of, image, what I'm supposed to be doing? And stop that stuff. Stop that stuff. This is your life. This is how people have heart attacks when they're in their fifties because they have worked themselves ragged. Stop it. So yeah, I think checking in with yourself, be intentional and you're gonna do your kids a favor.
So many times I look at these families that are just on the go all the time and they think they're doing it for their kids, right? It's oh, I just, I wanna make sure they get to do all this stuff. And they're only young kids once like they are, but the things that they're gonna miss isn't dance class.
The things that they're gonna miss isn't gymnastics. It's not piano lessons. Yes, all that's great and it does add character. And don't get me wrong, skills are awesome. But the things that we remember from our childhood are times with our family are times when we got to do something special, with someone we loved.
And I think those are the things that people are too busy for right now. And that I think is gonna be the next culture shift that we have to go through. That human side, we're missing it. Connection. Going back to how people are balancing that virtual, remote work. I think there is this need that it's going to have to be a hybrid because human connection is falling short because people are just going through the motions.
So even when we're with a lot of people, we're not connecting. We're just in space with a lot of people. And so people are always feeling a little empty and worn out and drained because we're not refueling and we refuel by those meaningful connections by those simple connections. And I really believe that.
That is, it's whatever's gonna shift our culture to that. Hopefully it's not some real tragic thing, but I think it's learning how to just be with the people, whether it's at work or whether it's at home, not feeling like we have to, have space. I was, there was an Instagram post, I was reading about parenting the other day.
Like boredom is actually one of the greatest skills you could teach your kid because we don't let our kids get bored anymore. Boredom is where we learn how to be creative. It's where we learn how to entertain ourself. It's where we learn how to self care. It's where we learn how to take how to fit and be okay in the quiet.
And there's too many adults that are not okay with those skills. And so we're imposing them onto that next generation. And I just think that ego is one that needs to be managed big time
when there's the best, most successful people that. I know and follow. They always have a time block in their day that is just think.
Yeah. And it can be going for a walk and thinking it can be going to a museum and like you need room to, to process thoughts and to Yeah. Actually brainstorm versus force brainstorming, which we often set meetings at force. So I do think it's really interesting. I also think kinda what you were speaking to earlier about.
It came up actually in a women's meetup that I, that was in person a couple years ago of women feeling guilty saying that there was an impact in women becoming part of the workforce, even though they would never wanna give up their careers 'cause they love them. But we just weren't responsible as a society for one, acknowledging all the things that women were doing when they weren't, quote unquote working.
But resetting that balance of. How do we, like the task force hasn't gone away, so how are we as a family, as a community, as a neighborhood, as whatever next tier of group there is, how are we gonna make sure that the things that matter are still happening? And I just it comes back to, I think we were talking about earlier that was so important of how we use our day.
Most of us do not need to be like, working 20 hours a week. We can actually be very effective. Yeah. And all the studies coming out of Sweden and other Nordic countries are proving it. I think they're even now challenging, like a 25 hour corporate work week, so we can still make all the money we need to in 25 hours.
What would you do at that time back? It's, yeah. It's a really fun game to think about it that way.
Absolutely. And if you're one I have a lot of clients they'd like working 40, 50 hour weeks and that's okay. And they're parents and I actually, I admire those parents because I could never do that.
I think it's one of those things where. We all have different wants and needs. We all have a different level of what balance looks like. One, we have to stop judging it, and two, I think most importantly, we have to stop judging it on ourself. We impose expectations on ourself, that creates that guilt.
Whether we're working too much, we're working too little, which then imposes how we self-care. And I think that is the biggest thing is going back to ego management. When you recognize those beliefs and unconscious behaviors that are fueling those thoughts. Now you can actually learn, okay, what is healthy for me and what does self-care look like for me?
Because what self-care looks like for me does not look like for, a couple of my girlfriends that are badass women in the world, right? And so it's I think being able to truly recognize if you are a 40 hour or 50 hour work woman and you have two or three kids at home. You have a partner that helps support that's amazing.
My question to you is, what does your self care look like? How do you get to sustain your partnership with your spouse? Making sure that you're consciously, intentionally building that in because it's possible. People do it all the time. Again, just goes back to that intentional prioritizing realities where you have to say no sometimes are you saying no where you need to and saying yes when you want to.
And one of the easiest exercises I do with my clients. When I say yes to this, I say no to that. That naturally is an intentional thought. So if you say, okay, I'm gonna say yes to, this meeting that's gonna happen between seven and 9:00 PM that means I'm saying no to having family dinner or putting my kids to bed.
That's okay. And it's okay to say yes to that. Just be conscious, right? Consciously choosing that versus just saying, oh, I just have a meeting. And that I think is where you, again, when you give yourself choices, now you have power. And so when you constantly choose, you're making a powerful decision to say, no, this is a higher priority than this tonight.
And I'm choosing this and I'm confident. Now you can go without guilt and you get to go with confidence and you get to go enjoy yourself. Otherwise, if you've been. Usually an unconscious thought. Now it's oh, I feel so bad. I've gotta go to this meeting. And you know it. And again, it brings a different energy.
So I think whatever your B balance is and make sure that you're actually, consciously choosing it. And that powerful lady choice now is out there in the world.
I love that. We ask everyone on the podcast where they put themselves on the Powerful Lady scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady possible, where would you rank yourself today and on average?
Wow. That's a hard question. I would say where I'm at right now, I'm in major transition. Like I said, eight weeks ago, we got. A two and a 4-year-old into my house. So I went from running my own business and taking care of dogs and, loving my husband and having girlfriends and family life. So that's not happening anymore.
I did just get daycare though, so I'll say I'm probably in the seven to eight, really learning what it looks like to be a mom and how to run a business all at the same time. Yeah, I think this transition is probably in that seven to eight, like definitely not the most powerful woman in the world.
But I feel pretty damn confident that I'll get back to where I was. I'm happy where I'm at and I'm, I, I'm in that weird transition mindset, but it's starting to feel good again. You're in
growth. Yep. Very much
growth. Every day is a learning moment. Yeah.
Yeah. An overnight family of four has quite the exciting challenges that come with it.
Absolutely. And then on that, is there any advice you would give to people who are considering
adoption?
Oh, goodness.
That's a great question. It will be one of the hardest and most rewarding things you can do. It's taken us a long time. We've been in this journey for a little over a year and a half and, we've had lots of heartbreaks, lots and lots of heartbreaks. But I will say, on that journey we've had to go through therapy together.
My husband and I, we've had to learn about our own attachments. We've had to learn about our own self and how we show up and the things that hold us back, and the things that trigger us. And we've learned some amazing ways to communicate with each other and how to grieve together. So that is all, it was exhausting, exhausting year and a half of our life.
But now that we've got the kiddos, it was so worth it. It's almost like dating, right? Yeah. It's gonna suck for a little while, but when you find the one, it's so good. Yeah. So yeah, I would say the biggest thing I would say is find an agency. If we didn't have our agency and our amazing caseworker who supported us through it and gave us the resources, I don't know if we would've made it through.
So I would say find an agency that offers the real support and truly gives you the partnership that you need. And good luck. Yeah, it's incredible. Reach out if you need a, need, someone to support you, because I can definitely say we were lucky to have a lot of support and that makes a big difference.
Perfect. It's a lonely process.
It has been such a pleasure to have you here today, and for everyone who wants to get into your leadership program, connect with you, meet with you, maybe as a question about adoption, where can they find you, follow you, and support you?
Yes, actually I'm enrolling into a new mastermind group.
So if anyone's interested in new group for next year, it's gonna be super exciting. But they can find me at mindful choice. coaching.com or mindful choice academy.com. Feel free to email me, Christie, C-H-R-I-S-T, ie@mindfulchoicecoaching.com, or even my cell phone, (415) 971-9535. Love to live, actually have live conversations easily accessible and would love to connect anyway, if someone wants to.
Perfect.
And then we've also been asking everyone this year what do you need? How can we help you? How can we be a contribution? This is a powerful listening group and guest list. I love that. What's on your wishlist? I just love that
you're one calling out the powerful ladies. I said I got my ego thing around that, but I think there's also a huge, tremendous value in that support as well.
I think you're nailing it with the community you're building. So I think that in itself, I look forward to joining your guys' platforms and being a part of that community. As far as support, I think it's just organically building a relationship with you and seeing where it goes and seeing what happens with your community.
I love that. It's always great to meet people who are on parallel paths of coaching and helping people transform and getting people from wherever they are to the greatness that they can step into. Yeah, it always, gives me relief and peace of mind knowing that there's many of us moving in that direction and together we're making a much bigger impact than we already are on our own.
So thank you for being with us people. Absolutely. We are all one big army, that's
for sure. We are
all the links to connect with Christie and Mindful Choice Leadership Academy are in our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. They're critical for podcast visibility. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, please visit kara duffy.com or Instagram at Kara Duffy.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then. I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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