Balance - 5 High-Achieving Women Explain What Actually Works | Proof of Practice

0:00today we are talking about balance i think that's one of the funniest words ever put into the mix when they talk about oh people trying to be balanced i think it's an first of all it's an unrealistic goal but part of what we're all doing here i think it would be really important to share the fact that we're all in this space coming from different points of view and how can we collectively come to some inspirations solutions answers learn from one

0:35another and then hopefully maybe make that a little easier for people to muddle through all the information that's out there and i know the the most willing participant was uh was abby she really wanted to get in here and talk a lot but i'm curious as you as somebody who's in the lab you know studying doing experiments and science why do you want to have these conversations yeah i mean let's go back to the balance conversation of when you look at everyone around

1:07me you all got it together and are kicking ass and a lot of times we in our life think about oh how do we do it like they do and then when you find out and have the conversations with all of us is that we're all very real people juggling all of the things trying to do the thing and we all do it differently yet we all make it to to the same point or to the point we want which i think is an important conversation so why did i want to come well you all invited me as the nerdy scientist uh but also to learn i think we all have a different perspective and to build people up in a way that we can share

1:44science that we can have differing opinions but then how do we translate that both science and in life and different perspective which is really important and and you two have come all the way from new zealand to be here i mean this is a real commitment when stacy corralled everyone to get together i'm just wondering from you what you're seeing out there that you want to participate in and at least contributing to the overall message oh i just wanted to get like-minded people in the

2:17room um because we all have the same ethos of trying to lift women up and the people that surround the women and trying to expand the conversations and from all the years of being siloed and feeling like i'm the only person saying something and then finding people who are speaking the same conversation from different points of view really important because i'm i like being surrounded by people i can learn from but also can share conversations and experiences with that come from something

2:50similar so that's why i wanted everyone who's here in the same room having the conversations and what about you because you and i are we're we we come from very different backgrounds than these three um yeah why did you want to be here yeah i'm not a doctor i work in tech i think about lifetime value and how to drive growth and revenue impact in the moment and long term and interestingly i think that applies to the balance conversation with how do we plan for the long term but make sure that the

3:22immediate has impact um but for me personally it's deep curiosity every time i listen to any of the four of you or look at your instagram handles or read your books or watch the ted talks i'm immediately inspired and learn and i do think i work in tech and i live in sport and fitness but it's really hard to find the right balanced information and it's super confusing and if it's confusing for me as somebody who loves data and loves to study and understands business i have to imagine it's very confusing for a lot

3:57of other people and so partly selfishly i want to sit at this table and learn personally different ways of doing things but i really want to make sure friends and other people who listen and tune in can get the right data and can get things that are healthy and safe because we were talking about magazines and instagram handles before this but there's a lot of stuff that's fundamentally wrong and it really scares me i don't want my kids to have misinformation and go and act on that and get hurt i acted on misinformation and got hurt and i'd i'd like all of your four voices amplified a lot

4:32and dr lyon you are extra busy right now you have two small children and a thriving business and a practice and podcasts and books and uh you you're here um i just came for stacy's radio sexy voice that's it that's why i'm here um but i'm excited to be part of the conversation because i do think conversations need to be had together in a collective as opposed to silos here's one person saying one person another person saying another or even in a bi-directional podcast where it's just

5:04two people it's really valuable to have a conversation as a collective and we're certainly not going to all agree some of you guys use deodorant other of us just use hand sanitizer there are things that we're going to agree upon and things that we're going to disagree upon but i think the ultimate through line is is we truly do want to make a difference for our fellow human and how do we do that together yeah i think we also um not to point out that we're all women at the table but i feel like the space right now too is really valuable to lift other women up um which

5:35you mentioned stacy where a lot of times that's not the case not only have we been challenged you and i had talked about you know there's a lot of people that say you shouldn't be here or why you shouldn't do this and then women are also saying it's not good enough so now here we can all come together and say let's use our experiences in our in each other yeah and as somebody who's i've been in the space very differently than all of you and coming first through sport and then being in the communication space um since the early 90s um and just being curious about how other people get it done what i am interested in is best in class you guys are all best in class but then how do we make

6:10that actionable for people who are really busy they're overwhelmed they don't you know they have unlimited resources because what happens is is now especially with access to all this amount of information is people almost do less because they think well i i watch i listen to a podcast or i saw this one here so i know what to do but they're actually not going back inside and saying what does that look like for me personally and so for me on this one of the main drivers is to also encourage

6:41people the way each of us do it your own way have enough curiosity about your own practice and put it invest enough time to notice how you're feeling after you eat a meal or when you do a certain exercise or when you take a certain supplement to go what works at the end for myself or for myself and my family because none of us here can say to somebody do it this way and by the way that changes so when you hear the word balance i think that was used a lot like in the 2000s right like balance

7:11balance and then you start to realize it's probably not realistic right it's probably more like a fly wheel like for you today you're putting out work fires and dealing with that okay maybe the kids get a little less maybe yesterday was sunday the family got more right i think we're always spinning the fly wheel and trying to put the chips in where they need to go how do you when you're navigating this concept of balance this unrealistic unattainable notion of balance i always say you can have it all

7:42but you just can't have it all at the same time i'd be curious to know some things that you put in place to just help you sort of go oh my wings are a little bit off i need to pull up here if you have things that you do in practice that have really helped you deal with work self-care relationships and parenting i've got some thoughts on this so i i it's funny because i love the topic of balance but then when people say that they want and i hope this doesn't come back and kick my face in but when they say they want work-life balance i think oh shit that person's going to turn off at five

8:15and if there's a fire drill nothing's going to happen and i really like the notion of synergy where they all go together the emails are going to come in you're going to get the calls you're going to get the whatsapps and the things i think about so i'm a wife a mom an executive and i'm trying my best to stay healthy for life because i want to feel good and to your point i want to i want to work out to live i want to be able to walk when i'm 90 i want to be able to my kids are six feet tall i can't lift them up anymore but i think about the notion of um balls not men's balls but

8:49i mean that's part of the equation and what it has to be balanced but i i think of you're juggling all these things and there are glass balls and plastic balls and bubbles and it's important to know which are which and for me my kids and my husband are my glass balls i can't i don't want to break them and i'm going to protect them sometimes i kind of have to let them hover a little bit because they're not with me here in texas they're not on all of the travels but those are

9:20the most important ones in my life and my health is a glass ball and then there are some things that are the plastic ones that i know i need to keep juggling but if it falls it's kind of okay and then there's the bubbles and i'm fine if they pop like it'll suck a little bit in the moment because i want to achieve with all of them but so i i try to think about in the synergy i love the flywheel too what kind of ball is it what about you stace how do you because you're doing a lot and traveling and family and just teaching and constantly doing how do you and then creating that space of fun

9:57because you're i feel like of everyone sitting at the table you're the one who needs the envelope a little more for that fun and adventure yeah i do because i like having fun and doing adventures um i mean truth be known i can't do it alone like there's no way i could do it alone so i have a very and this sounds very archaic as i say it out loud but it's not i have a very supportive husband both in work and he takes the brunt of child care so i feel like we might have reverse roles in the traditional sense but it works for our family it's not that i'm out front doing all these things and

10:31he's behind we have equality in the house there's not this is your job this is my job it's a notice and do but i know that he's taking the bulk of all the home stuff when i'm out traveling and talking and that kind of stuff if i have late meetings or really early meetings but it it works because i have someone who has my back and i wouldn't be able to be out doing all this stuff and being in this room if i was worried about what my daughter was doing and would my husband care because he he and

11:01i both know that this is my time where i'm out doing stuff and then i'll come home and then he has things planned so it works yeah and it for you did you have to learn as you go or did you oh absolutely was there yeah i mean i i told this story on a recent podcast and i don't think i've ever talked about when we first moved back to new zealand i was in a really bad state like at pt or postpartum depression and that was not diagnosed and it was a point where i you know ended up having to rebuild

11:37everything and reset the steps and so steven my husband and i worked really hard on what are my triggers how do i prevent those from being triggered and what are the steps we have to rebuild so over the past six years it's been a process of relearning how to integrate and what i need to be able to maintain a certain more aquarium of of balance in my head so it's like i get up and i know that i need to have quiet time and i need to do some training because then i can get on with the rest of

12:11the day and i can deal with all the other stuff that happens so it's been a complete learning experience over the past few years and it's always going to be yeah gabrielle um balance is a funny word definitely don't think it exists i i have um thought a lot about this and i have a three and a five-year-old and a husband who is not deployed which is wonderful so he was in the military and now

12:43he's a surgical resident which means even the beginning of our relationship um he was still active duty so i was pregnant alone living in new york city uh which is hilarious and then now as a second year resident he's working i probably shouldn't say this but probably close to 120 hours and i want to have my kids with me so i travel with them i bring them and they are very little and every time i do it i think it's a terrible idea and i still continue to do it but i try to instead

13:15of parsing out these separate entities i might get into one yeah not sure i recommend it but you do it yeah and then abby you have two kids and you're working and getting it all done how do how do you make the space not just for all the things to happen but i'm also curious how you make the space for yourself yeah not so good at that but i do think um well one summary point that i'll agree with i think your support system is really important and my my family is supportive but also my lab team so while

13:52i'm here we have a slew of data going on and it's it's building a family at work in my case a small running lab business which is really important um and so surrounding yourself by the right people helps and then this is probably an unpopular opinion but i honestly take it one day at a time um i can't think too far in advance because it's overwhelming but in the moment trying to make the right decision um and you know trying to um take time for myself as exercise uh and then there's i i feel

14:24like balance doesn't exist and it's really always i battle a lot with i know they say guilt is not a a real thing but this idea of if i'm choosing one thing over another um and and prioritizing and i think the reality is when my kids are a little bit older but harder now because they say where are you going and why um but really making sure that the decision is right um and there was a time where i didn't travel as much uh and that's hard in the moment because a lot of times then you miss

14:55opportunities but it is surrounding yourself with people that that will be there regardless and and know that yeah i think when you have little kids i to your point about taking it at where you're at when you have little kids it's one dynamic as they get older more independent you get a different dynamic and i think what's important is they don't teach especially women i feel like when we go to college if you go to college i don't think it's necessary unless you have to have the degree but let's say you go there and someone goes i want to be a ceo that we don't have these conversations or

15:26a doctor with them and say okay well that's great you can do that easily and or if you're thinking that maybe you might want to have a family here's some of the things you might have to navigate they don't tell you that they just go like oh they're and why it's not fair you can't have it all it's like that's not how it works because we were discussing it earlier that if you handed me a new child one of my girls and said simultaneously you get to be the big boss you're going to work 12 hour days you're going to be on the road 12 15 days a month i would have said and they said the truck's going to come

16:00they'll dump the money the titles all the things i would have said no thank you because at that moment that's what my priority was if it was now my youngest is a senior i would be like let's go so i think it's also the conversation of being realistic wherever you're at versus twin 15 year olds and older kids versus little kids i think they don't teach you to understand hey you're gonna have to make choices because that's the other thing when you're when you're dealing when you're in the shit show and it's all happening you're traveling with your kids the next voice behind that should

16:32be and yes i chose this yeah yeah right and so i think what they exercise why i'm so i'm so happy to be a cheerleader for physical fortification therefore mental spiritual and emotional fortification is so that you can say i'm going to choose this it's going to be hard it's i don't know how to do it but i'm going to try to figure it out wouldn't you say exercise gives you that i mean i know for me like as a former collegiate runner that resilience it taught me i would have never made it an academic

17:06to where i'm at because you have to learn how to grind and to do the thing and to be uncomfortable and exercise gives you a lot of that it definitely does what are amber you might know the stats of women who are in the c-suite that are professional or collegiate athletes yeah i don't remember the actual number we should find it and put it in the in the show notes maybe but i do know that the vast majority of women who are executives participated in team sport growing up yeah and participated in

17:37any sport but specifically team sport um by and large male executives too but more for the feet there's fewer top female executives but almost all of them participated in sport yeah because it does teach you that you have to put yourself into that uncomfortable situation and you have to find a way to navigate it and resilience and trusting yourself and if you're on a team trusting a team and being a real team another fun stat is female-led businesses are more profitable than male-led and i think some

18:09of that's the balance or synergy or the dynamic they're all good leaders no most of them are good leaders um there are some really interesting stats around that what about you know we're we were sold in my day you were sold magazines and maybe tv shows i i didn't look i was sharing that with you earlier because of my physical size and i grew up in the caribbean i sort of stayed outside of that a lot i'd look at it and think okay well that has nothing to do with me i will never be that size

18:40no matter what even if i was the skinniest me i could be probably the smallest i'm going to be as a size eight right so i i let go of that and and didn't worry about that so much but we live in these worlds and now it's accentuated with social media of this is here's the standard you're supposed to throw the perfect birthday party and then figure out your you know interior design and then your butt's supposed to be perfect and your skin and your relationship and you know your holidays and it seems to be ratcheting up but conversely when i meet all high achieving very successful people

19:17they will say i don't know i'm going to show up every day and give it a go i'm going to learn from my mistakes and it is messy and i know that is not a sexy message but i've for me personally every most interesting successful dynamic person i know will say that to you so when did you when you realized because you're very hard charging type a let's go we're going to schedule push let's here we do it when when you faced oh wait a second my kids aren't going to get in the car quite as

19:52quickly as i need them to every time what do you mean if so when you're when you're faced with these new lessons yeah because you could will it study it push it so what what where does the learning go how do you learn to adapt and be create a bigger envelope for the mess and the lack of control this is my unsolicited parent advice if you think you can do it in five minutes it will probably take nine years so if i know we have to be somewhere at 11 all right guys we're leaving at 10

20:24one kid's not flushing the toilet the other one is peeing on the wall it's just a whole we plan for it plan for as much as we can we plan for the known challenges and we anticipate that there will be unknown challenges but we do the best we can to plan for the known but all bets are off do you have a practice so like you know those chaos moments someone's flying off the wall god forbid there was birthday cake involved so you're tired you haven't connected with your partner a while and you know how that lives in your brain you're like oh we need alone time we need to spend

20:57time we're getting out of whack when that's squeezing you do you have a go-to or anything you do in the moment to recenter yourself it's a really good question um i don't have a great answer i can tell you what i say to myself i give myself 15 minutes i can bitch i can complain i can be upset but i get 15 minutes and then i have to move on after those 15 minutes are over then i have to be able to come up

21:29with a game plan it might not be perfect it might not be right but what i do know is that if you perpetuate this kind of negativity and you perpetuate this inability to move an action forward no matter how you're feeling it is going to get worse 100 of the time and so if i say okay i set boundaries for other things i'm gonna give myself 15 minutes and then i move on and yeah and then there's another thing that i'm not going to say here but basically um i'm going to say my husband no i can't i can't i'm really gonna bleep that but um it's kind of like the idea which i'll tell you off all

22:04offline but uh you have to ask yourself you know do you need to man or woman up like what's the truth i love that yeah you need a man up and one thing with you talking about social media and magazines because i i shared this i think in a different conversation magazines totally fucked me up as a teenager because you think everything's supposed to be perfect and even now as an adult following other mom fluencers or professionals they all look so perfect so i unfollowed almost all of them

22:35every new year's eve i go through and unfollow anyone who hurts my feelings the thing in this actually for you i love your channel because your kids are in it and your life is in it still pretty perfect but it's but it's real and i love it um because that is life and you've got the kids and the work and the and i do think it's important you said this last night too to remember that what you see in instagram isn't the whole story i still unfollow the people who hurt my feelings but it's also not

23:06the full story but to that point i'm almost never on instagram and i think that those type of things are distractions and over time you will become distracted and it doesn't allow for discernment of making the right choice at the right time which is necessary over the lifespan plus if you're building and doing you don't have time for that i think when you're putting the energy into your relationships your work yourself your self-care it's like you will be a person to watch you're not going to be you

23:38know sitting and watching a lot what what about you when you you said this you know you've used the morning but like when the when it's really hitting the fan because i think you know i appreciate performance i do so much like oh i mean we measured how you know how high someone jumps or wattage or whatever but when i really you get my attention when i'm like oh life has its foot on your neck and you're making the right choice now now you have my attention because what's it all for all the training and the guys are measuring like this and you go hey the fire's coming and guys are like what do we

24:11do it's like what's your training for yeah so what do you what do you do you have it do you say anything to yourself do you have a breathing go-to do you you know i sometimes talk really mean to my whole family deep inside my head it makes me really stress i'll be like how you know and then i get it all out that way um my thing is i'm surrounded by chatter all the time and you're self-talking me no no just noise all the time like my daughter is someone who will wake up and start talking and then i have to tell her at night to stop talking and go to sleep my husband has some kind of noise

24:45on all the time a radio or a tv and i'll get in the car and there's like what i qualify as bad music on and it's like i don't even drive it very far but the 10 minutes in the morning i don't want any noise so i get up before anyone else and even the dog won't get out of bed now and i go downstairs and i'll like grab my coffee and i'll go outside and there's no noise and then that's what's like okay you need the quiet yeah what about you oh mine is so opposite i mean i like the morning quiet and

25:19the coffee and i and i start my day like that but i think some strategies i am not a very nice person if i don't exercise and that's maybe even 10 minutes and hopefully maybe a little bit longer um you mentioned failure and i think in my line of work every day is a failure you get a paper rejected a grant rejected for every one success you've had 20 failures and so it's almost like okay now what did i learn and i'm gonna go get it like almost that you shouldn't be here let's do it but putting

25:49yourself in those situations um and then i actually like explicit rap music on my way into campus you got to get your mind right for the punches that are going to be thrown um so i don't like the quiet but i i do think just taking it as it comes yeah and then to me the exercise and then we haven't talked about this but um i've learned therapy is really helpful uh as a way to um you know we have a lot of negative self-talk or even just the surroundings that we're in uh is a couple

26:20strategies yeah yep i know you have strategies because i feel like you you're the most sensitive in a different way no just in a different way which is important because it makes i mean i always love the the lines that you can draw from somebody like someone highly organized and they have all these tools that they go and then of course they have a sensitivity to them so how do you buffer yourself from the outside world and and from the chaos that is living yeah sometimes quite often i break

26:51um so it's not always a buffer and i've been asking every single one of you lots of advice this week but i do have strategies i like a i like a spreadsheet and a template just like um your husband i very pragmatically i try to see the sunrise every morning because it makes my soul happy it makes me feel happy and then i drink a giant cup of coffee and then i have to run and if i don't run my whole day kind of goes sideways because running is where i set my head and it's my time for not all the noise except

27:22i listen to podcasts when i run a lot but it's my time to just be alone because the whole rest of the day through bedtime i'm not alone um and then the bigger one that i'm learning the older i'm getting is to surround myself with people i trust and respect who i think will say nice things behind my back i don't i tried so long to fit in with the cool people or the top winners and i'm sick of it because if i don't trust them and if they're not gonna fix the crown when i'm not in the room or say

27:53nice things i kind of don't care about them anymore i'm saying that out loud and it's not always true i do sometimes care that's a work in progress um but those things and then i mentioned gratitude journals before but i really try to force myself even if i can only think of one thing a day to think of one thing i'm grateful for i'm grateful for the sand under my feet i'm grateful to see the sunrise i'm grateful to run or to be on the mend from a bad cold and it is fairly templated but i know those

28:23things work for me and if i don't have that template i feel a little bit off which is probably the lack of balance uh but that's the work in progress but see what i love is you have five people all doing it differently and i think that again that goes back to we part of our job i think here while we're here is to understand really truly who we are and then how do we become the best version of ourselves through whatever means and um you know i i was taught something when one of my

28:56girls was a teenager going through a really hard time they said to me speaking about therapy was uh i needed new tools and she goes well you're like a hammer you hammer through hammer down grind it out she goes but now you're going to wash the windows and sometimes parenting is like washing the windows right you need a different tool and for me that has been the greatest um one of the greatest teachers which is i don't need to know i am going to feel uncomfortable as a parent like wait you know your kids will start driving and you start mine yeah not yours i can't see no no they're not yeah

29:31yeah yeah sure that's what they all say and you know we get us ourselves or a different version looking right back at us and you're just like oh geez so the the humbling but then also the genuine like faith in the process so that goes back to what you can control control the controllables right so you're controlling what type of example you are as a person as a mother as a you know you're in your coupleton how you communicate resolve uh conflict all these things i think people don't actually give that enough value and i was i interviewed somebody recently and they said

30:05i think if you're there and you love your kids that's a really good starting point absolutely and if you can be a good example of some decent practices um and and we were we were talking about yesterday that when we're younger especially as females and and men have a different set of issues right they don't get to express their sadness or fears and and then they don't know what to do with it as they get older but we're taught like oh either you're smart or maybe you're attractive or you're a nice girl or you know those silly labels that we get and that you realize when

30:40you're doing all these different things and wearing all these different hats you're everything all the time and you have to slide in and out of these gears right and and how and so i'm i'm wondering how you got more comfortable because sometimes you have to be a boss and go hey i'm sorry that's not good enough and sometimes you're a lover and you're just like can i get you anything um and you know all these different hats and gears and energies um i'm wondering like if you leaned into well i'm smart

31:11when you're young and then you go wait a second i'm a lot of things how did you bridge those those worlds i don't know if i understand the question totally because i think when you're a younger woman it's like oh you're a jock oh you're a brainiac oh you're hot you're this oh you're the nice helpful girl who's on the head of every committee and i think we we can be a lot of different versions of all of those things certainly and even at a decent level um if it's something that is it appeals to us and i and i so i think we tell younger women got to choose and then as you get older it's like oh

31:46wait a second out of necessity i have to be a lot of different things so i'm just wondering how you brought all those worlds together because at the end for me this is the foundation of why you want to be healthy and strong because these are the things you're really going to be navigating most of your days i'm always the asking why person and i think that's how i ended up being where i am like why would i sit still if i can move why would i want to eat that brightly colored thing that you

32:19order as the color and not as a food when i could have this over here that's real food so it's always asking why because i i think i i try to understand someone else's perspective i also try to understand where something else is coming from but ultimately it's like the question of why has driven me to be where i am and how how about the trusting of yourself though because that's also one of the hardest things is to constantly say hey i don't know but also i'm gonna have to trust myself enough

32:51to proceed forward yeah so i i told my mom this because she i grew up and i was a super super super such super shy child like i was always in the background i didn't speak i'm still in introverted extrovert or extroverted introvert whatever you want to call it and i think my mom was really surprised when all of this you know she's like i can't believe that you were my daughter who wouldn't say anything and now you're out doing all this stuff i'm like mom this is a situation i don't ever want

33:25to get to a point in my life where i look back and say i wish i had taken that opportunity because you can always go back to where you were for the most part but it's really hard to move forward without challenging yourself or asking someone new in the room who they are what they're doing to kind of open doors for everyone so it comes down to like that movie sliding doors where she took the opportunity and went somewhere but then you know the other side of things is she came home and found her boyfriend or partner cheating right and so it changed the course of her life so when i you know had the

34:00opportunity of someone out of the blue i worked with was a vc said let's start a company and it's like well that means i have to give up everything i've worked for at stanford i'm you know a few months from having my first child but you don't really say no to someone who wants to drop money and start a company so it's like okay well i know i could probably always go back to academia but i'm not ever going to get an opportunity where someone's going to give you money to start a company so i always look at those things so i try to like even have these conversations with my daughter because she's

34:32very nervous about change and the other day she's like i don't want to go to dance i was like why not because it's a class up and i don't know anyone there and i don't know if i'm going to be appropriate i don't know if i can do it so i'm really afraid i was like well you won't know unless you go and if you go and you're not comfortable and you feel like you can't do that then you can always drop down a level but i don't ever want you to say i wish i had and that's how i've been running my life really since i was a teenager and was told i couldn't do certain things i'm like well why not

35:03i want to do this so why can't i yeah what about you abby oh gosh i was gonna say i think with your question i first thought well i i don't do any of that like i think based on my environment every day is still like oh you have to convince yourself you're good enough and convince yourself to like show up which you all know i tried to talk myself out of coming but i think it's this idea that you have to try and what's the downside and a lot of times there is downside but i do think some of

35:35it too in this space women are set to a different standard you have to look a certain way if they're going to believe what you say or you have to have all of the data before you say anything when in reality then we will never move forward so i think but i'm a big believer that if you are comfortable you're not moving forward so i just try to make myself uncomfortable but also put yourself around people that um challenge your own inner self-critic so i would say i don't i actually don't know how old anyone is you all look so great but i think you know my hope would be that when i am

36:1010 years older that i have more of that um although i'm not i'm not sure no you do i think you definitely get i think around 40 what i've seen could be sooner or later you you really start to go yeah no i i got a drill in him but listen we i'm 55 and my i have a friend who calls up the fuck you 50s because at the end of the day you don't have time and what it means is not because you have two little kids you're you start being aware of time and you're like i'm never going to make everybody happy

36:40you know the people that i use as a litmus for like am i doing all right and myself and after that you really have to just keep moving because there is no time um dr lyon you you know we were joking one time on a call um you know you have a very direct robust way of like i'm here i'm working on that no we love it because i think that is a very hard um you know you never wanted people were taught

37:15like don't be too much right like it's good but don't be too much um so do you do you do it first and then follow into the character or do you is it like here it is like where does that come from never even thought about it it's just here it is i think that a couple things competency uh requires repetition right for us to become competent at anything no one starts out being good at it and i expect things to be hard because if i expect it to be hard then i can see it as an opportunity to

37:50kind of figure it out versus if i expect it to be easy and why am i not just good at it at this moment i'm screwed yeah right and um you know we were talking about this before i think that we're all born with a certain level of attributes and we don't necessarily at least i don't i don't really think about it i think it's supposed to be hard you know i will i want to say one thing though that's interesting is you said i'm working on the softening right but meanwhile you're saying i want

38:20to take my my children with me on traveling to me that is softening not acting like is everybody okay and is this so i think that's the other thing is we define things as like here's a plate of cookies and this is somehow being sweet and kind versus i'm going to go through an extra ton of work to bring my two small children with me because i want them with me yeah i don't know of anything softer than that and so sometimes i think it's also in how we look at it or it's been defined for us and being

38:51like yeah what what is softer than that and i think the biggest challenge is that how we all have various ways of showing expressing love and care and they're completely different i might be very direct and i might think that that's how everyone hears things and you might say you know what i think that there's probably kinder ways to say things to get the same end result and we all have to try to figure out how we do it together and i think that that is there's always lessons to be learned in that

39:26um i love that that's important i think that's kind of the maybe it's the balance and accepting the people around you and then also accepting that everybody's going to be different personally i also think we need to accept that we're not going to like everybody and not everybody's going to like us and i think that's totally okay so long as we pick where we want to put our time and do good with that time hopefully um i have i can add to that which is i used to kind of because i'm i can when i meet

39:59people i'm pretty sensitive to them and instead of being like i like them i don't like them when i realized that i didn't have chemistry because you can even have same sex opposite sex people just certain people you just have chemistry with instead of being like oh i don't like them or they don't like me oh we just don't have chemistry so you don't have to you know integrate in the conversation around balance and and obviously i'm not going to over simplify by saying that it's something women navigate more so than men but just based on biological responsibility um even what you desire i do

40:34think we're juggling it differently than they are um when you guys hear it's not fair it's not supposed to be yeah it's not there's so many like i am someone who's like part of the reason that i fight and not fist fight but fight for space and to have a voice for women is because of the injustice because i grew up in a family where everybody and everything was relatively equal you

41:06know you had the opportunities you could say what you wanted if you stepped the line you would know it you know so there was boundaries but there wasn't anything that was remotely unfair and unjust you get out in the real world and you get faced with so much of that like why why i don't understand this like this is so not fair but you can't change it so you have to understand yes there it's not fair it's not equal things that are going to piss you off but how do you navigate around that and move forward because if we get stuck there and that unfairness and that never change and yeah and you

41:40never learn you never know how to leapfrog over someone who's holding you back or manipulate around a situation that's holding you back one if you don't challenge yourself but if you think everything should be fair and we know that it's not then you're really going to be pulled back yeah well it's what you and i talked about too of you know at one phase of our our life where we're the doers we're trying to make it and now we're all kind of at a space where we can help those behind us in different ways and so i think it's never fair but can we make it easier or leverage our existing

42:15resources and our our time etc to help make it easier um to make it better yeah i think that's really important that is um that's something i value a lot that if you have the capacity and space to be able to help people that you think are doing good work that you should yeah we'll also say what i do think is equally as important as if there are people in your close lexicon that could be doing something better for you not to say hey man um i see you're doing it this way and perhaps have you

42:47thought about it this way or that way i think that that is what um true friendship is not just hey man you're doing great yeah yeah but hey man that kind of sucked let's talk about it yeah i think that's a yeah yeah i think when you're able to do that for somebody else it helps them more than the pad on the back when they when they could improve more and it's being open-minded we talked about of letting those people also teach us of being adaptable of maybe you're they're not doing it that way but they're doing something else that we can do better as well of it's not just a top down it's a it's a

43:21bottom-up um approach as well yeah that's a big one for me is to is to not just stay stuck in my framework that has worked thus far but to continue to stay open-minded and and i think you know coming together to have these conversations um not only because i do i'm curious too i want to learn but it is sort of can we synthesize some of this and give actionable but credible information for people because at the foundation of this whole conversation is taking care of yourself so i want to

43:51just wrap up with one last question is one thing i am ruthless about um when it comes to my family and my work is my self-care i always have been i hate that word ruthless no i like that word self-care well because it's whatever you want to say now for me you know what it is you i feel like you and i are similar in this way it people go what do you like to do to relax i go exercise yeah like what's your luxury thing exercise like yeah the time to do it yeah yeah so that real estate

44:23so you have a new baby or you have little children or you have new businesses this tiny and i said you know when i was in my 20s playing ball and 30s it was like it was a big hot flame and i was putting all the gas on there and then your kids come and you're just like trying to keep this one little piece of real estate that's just who you are not you the doctor or the athlete or the business person or the woman or the wife or the mom just this spirit that says i like this i feel this i dream this did you do anything special or just do the best you could to keep that little flame until you could

44:59you know put more juice on it when the time was right when i first had my daughter one of my childhood friends i've kept in touch with and she has two kids and she's like so what are you doing for you i'm like what do you mean she goes you can't be a good mom or a wife or anything else unless you take care of you first so if you want to go for a run you go for a run you want to have time in the weight room you want time by yourself you want to play music on the tables whatever it is you take

45:33that time because if you can't look after yourself then you're going to be no good to anyone so i tell people like my phd students i'm like yes this is very important this is your life right now but you can't show up if you haven't taken care of your own self you need to go home you need to get some sleep you need a day off we can work around that but if you show up and you are completely off kilter then nothing's going to get done and it's going to be bad for everyone yeah what about you i'm the exact same i think it's the analogy of when you're on the airplane they tell you that you need to put

46:07the gas mask on yourself first face mask face yeah don't put a gas mask on a plane that would be terrible yeah terrible and probably illegal yeah yeah don't do that put the oxygen on yourself first and mine also is exercise i know that i'm a better mom a better wife a better colleague a better boss when i do that yep and so i force the time every day and that's the one thing exercise and good foods are actually the two things that i will force because i'm a better human being for those things and maybe it's selfish but it's also selfish on behalf of the people around me yeah it's not selfish

46:41it isn't and we have to get that out of our thinking because we've somehow got slipped in there i put it on the calendar as a meeting i have wellness meetings oh heck yeah the wellness meeting is either wellness with myself or friends and we're working out every day okay gabrielle what about you i'm not this is not a great skill set for me um i i don't know when it comes to self-care do i train yeah but some you know i'm like probably gonna bitch about the fact that i'm going tomorrow i'm gonna start right now to bitch about the fact i'm going tomorrow to

47:11train yes i like to train um i really value my relationships i am extremely relationship team oriented and i bet you kind of guessed that and so to me it's all about being of service of my to my homies and i would say that that is you know there's this idea of the stress response everyone talks about fight or flight as if that's the only single stress response but there is tend and befriend there is the courage response and i would say that i would lean towards tend and befriend you know hey gabby what's

47:47going on how are you yeah just out for a walk and to me that's that and more movies but other than that that's about it yeah i like that yeah i'm not a good person to answer this um but i struggle because my the way i fill my cup is to help others but how do you help others if you don't fill your cup so one thing is uh like my husband will say okay put all that shit down and go exercise so like having people in your life to like remind you what you need yeah uh and then i also do think there's

48:19something uh that if you're giving to people it does give back uh but how to how to do that that self-care piece is sometimes it it doesn't look like bubble baths and it never no yeah i know but i think so some it's it's framing it in um it maybe doesn't feel super relaxing but if i can create some time to get something off my list that will elevate the space or others trying to reframe it because that's not what they teach you that you know like that piece can help uh feel better or fill your cup a little bit because then it takes one thing off my plate that's weighing it

48:52down so back to you have to do it your way we all have different techniques and it's really about that discovery but also being willing to change it because your needs change as your dynamics change um i think saying no is a really important tool i gotta learn that in this oh i say no all the time uh i think you know what do they say no complaining no explaining right like you can say no and not have to say all the reasons why you can't make it um and and and to help each other i think that you know the idea of us coming together is a notion of what balance can look like because i'm going to leave

49:28maybe with some different ideas uh that i can bring forth into my day-to-day life so i appreciate that and we'll see what it what it looks like next time we talk it could be completely different it's very very true it will be you