Performing Productivity for a Baby Black Bear (Summer Solo Check-In)

As a brief aside, which if you're just getting to know me, I'll say simply part of my story is that I built, um, a career in the corporate world over the last decade.

I went to business school when I was 23.

Um, I think it's important context for "The Truth Is" that I remember being at this fork in the road where I was either gonna pursue drama school or accept this offer to go to business school, and I went to business school, and it's relevant for the types of conversations I have on this show that I, I knew in the back of my head, like, "Okay, you're gonna pursue this path, and somewhere down the line, probably in your 30s, you're gonna have to reconcile what you kinda left to the side." And that has totally come to fruition, which has been really interesting.

But for the sake of today, what I wanna say about my corporate experience, because man, so much of this show, the questions I'm exploring are like how do we veer off the path that we, you know, had carved out and kinda got really familiar with and knew what success meant in a certain world to pursue something totally different, to follow a thread within us that's, like, tugging us somewhere else.

Um, but as part of that, it's been interesting to observe myself in this week where I've been to so many strategy offsites, like annual planning weeks or days over the last decade, and some leaders have been really innovative with like, "We're gonna go offsite and do something totally different and get, like, the blood flowing in a different way." Um, but I've also been in many that are, like, in a conference room under fluorescent lighting, um, eating a catered lunch, kind of like ...

multitasking behind laptops while people present.

And it's been interesting to watch myself this week because I've been in this work for the last year, and now I'm hitting a period of growth where, all right, I wanna lay out some loose plans.

The word loose is, is part of the lesson.

But I wanna share something up front that I'm really learning and observing about myself, because what I'm coming in to learn in my conversations with you guys that are listening to the show is, you know, how do we come to understand how to work and lead our lives less from a standpoint of hustling and not enough, more from a place of groundedness, intuition.

And as I've observed myself throughout this week, I came into this week like, "Oh my gosh, I'm in a beautiful place." There was a part of me that's like, "You're gonna get so much done." And I had really high expectations for how much output would come from this week.

And what I find is that being an entrepreneur, working for myself for the first time, it's like you hear all those lessons that people learn and they try to pass to you, and then you're like, "Yeah, I got it, though." And then it's just so humbling to learn them for yourself.

And I do believe, like, advice is helpful.

Hearing from others' experiences is, like, the point of this show, and it's empowering to just learn things for yourself.

It's like lived experience, lived wisdom.

So I've been watching myself this week, and there's a part of me that comes online that's like, I wake up every morning and I'm like, "All right, you gotta dive right in.

There's so much you wanna get done.

You wanna map out all the guests.

You wanna reach out to potential partners." All this stuff, right? But when that part of me leads, and I think that part of me was so conditioned to overcompensate, stay up all night, um, prove my worth by constantly doing.

When that part of me is leading a day in this week, in this chapter of my life, I find that I get so busy because I'm anxious about not moving forward.

Um, but n- rarely does something substantial come from that way of working and being.

To paint the opposite of that, this morning's a beautiful example, and I'm obviously finally recording the solo episode that I'd been kicking down the road all week because I was manically doing other things.

Um, I got up and I, like, was present to my environment.

I walked in the woods with my dog, even for 20 minutes, without my phone.

I was able to, like, regulate with my body and just, like, tune into the present moment that I'm in right now.

And what's interesting about that state, which I think I used to label as lazy, inactive, the opposite of the way of being that's gonna move me in my work and my life forward.