202 - Michelle Irving - How Health Challenges Could Turn Your Work Into Authentic Leadership

We map a clear path from medical leave to meaningful work, sharing the five-stage Career and Chronic framework and the skills that turn lived experience into authentic leadership. Practical scripts, capacity tools, and boundary strategies make work humane and sustainable.

• What career means when health reshapes life
• The five stages: off-ramp, on-ramp, the new, test and redesign, authentic leadership
• Emotional skills for the bed-based phase
• Boundaries without apology or battle
• Baseline versus optimal capacity and how to communicate both
• Reducing emotional labour at work and home
• Why these skills create trusted, empathetic leaders
• The chronic economy and the future of human capacity at work

Links:

Our previous episode - the emotional map: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1835170/episodes/13541520

Connect with Michelle:

http://careerandchronicillness.com/ 

https://www.chronicillnessatwork.com/

Career and Chronic Map: https://www.careerandchronic.com/career-map

The Cocoon (when not working): https://www.careerandchronic.com/the-cocoon

Work & Leadership Series  https://www.careerandchronic.com/chronicleadership (Feb 2026)

Ambition Program (discussed in episode) https://www.careerandchronic.com/ambition

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

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Jackie Baxter 0:45

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long COVID Podcast. I am delighted to be joined by Michelle Irving, who is returning to the podcast. When I was looking through my notes the other day, Michelle previously was episode 100. So you know my my first triple-digit episode, which is quite exciting and absolutely wild. I think by the time this episode goes out, we will have rolled over the 200 mark. So it's been 100 episodes since we last spoke. Today we are going to get into career and what that actually means. And spoiler alert, I think it's a lot wider than you might think. So, Michelle, a very warm welcome back. It is so nice to have you, and I'm so excited to get into this.

Michelle Irving 1:39

Thank you so much for having me again,

Welcome Back And Why Career Matters;

Michelle Irving 1:41

Jackie. And I remember when we last spoke, we really spoke about the emotional map and how to navigate things emotionally. And this work that we're going to talk about now is a companion piece to that. And I'm really excited to share with you again.

Jackie Baxter 1:58

Perfect. Yes, and I remember the emotional map blowing my mind at the time. So I will drop a link to that in the show notes if anyone hasn't heard it. It's an absolute belter. Give us like the one-minute version.

Michelle Irving 2:21

So as you can hear by my accent, I'm an Aussie, and the core focus of my work is really women navigating career and chronic illness. And we'll talk more about what that means in its broadest scope. And I have a global client base. I work exclusively with women, and I run a flagship program called Ambition, which we start around the February of every year. The other thing that's happened since we last met is I've been doing this work around career with women, and sometimes things just keep knocking at your door. And it became very clear to me is it's great to give everybody the skills, but companies also need the skills in people leaders and in management and in organizational structures to understand

From Coaching Women To Corporate Change;

Michelle Irving 3:17

in a cohesive way what navigating work looks like for people with long-term health conditions and how to really make it easier for everyone. So since we last spoke, we've also launched our corporate arm, and that is chronic illness at work. So that's all of the things that's happened in my world since we last chatted.

Jackie Baxter 3:39

Amazing. And like, you know, I think anyone who's had any interaction with employers or, you know, that sort of arm of work since becoming unwell, you know, some people have had better experiences than others. Um, some people have had some dreadful experiences. But I think we can probably all agree that there needs to be more understanding of, you know, health challenges and how, I mean, partly how they're understood and how people are treated as well. Um, so that sounds amazing. So I think, you know, before we kind of get too deep into this, I would love to take an overview of what do you mean by career? Because I think we started off by saying, I think it's a bit wider than you might think. But um, you know, for someone who, you know, where we're talking about people who are sort of all ends of the spectrum, some who are very, very unwell, and some who are maybe further on through their journey and are seeing improvement and maybe, you know, able to do more, but are still not 100% yet. So, you know, this this is obviously going to be relevant to everybody. Um, so what do you mean by by career?

Michelle Irving 4:54

Great. So really it's your work. One of the things that happens, I think, with a chronic condition, particularly if you are bed-based for a long period of time, which often happens through long COVID. And I've worked with many,

What Career Really Means With Illness;

Michelle Irving 5:09

many, many people with long COVID. So what happens in that arc is you're in a job, maybe something you enjoy, maybe something that's a bit exhausting for you. But sooner or later there's this adjustment that happens through illness about you might lose a lot of your physical capacity, and so you might have to adjust to what I call off-ramping from work. So that's where you're in medical leave, that's where you're bed-based for a long period. That's exactly the experience I've had twice in my career arc, and I know Jackie, you've had that as well. And then there's a point where you just might start to get a little more capacity and you start to think about returning to work. So, why do I talk about career rather than work in this more private container? And the reason for that is that chronic illness itself often brings you to really a reckoning with what you want to do with your life, what your capacity is, and a lot of people change direction. Now they might change direction because of physical capacity, and there's often a huge change of direction because you get super clear about if I have this level of energy and this much time, I've had the real wake-up call that it is my energy, it is my talent, it is my capacity. What do I want to do with my time on the planet while I'm here? And that change of direction opens up a new portal for you. And a lot of it happens actually when you're bed-based and may not be working. So today we'll talk about what I think of as the five stages of navigating career and chronic illness. But I also know for you, Jackie, this change happened for you, that there was a shift in what am I doing, where am I going? And you started not just the podcast, but you actually shifted the work and how you designed your life with work. And that to me is this broad definition of career that gives you this capacity to shift and flex and move in what we might think of this the negative impact of chronic illness, actually becomes the doorway into the deep clarity of what am I doing with my time and my capacity.

Jackie Baxter 7:43

Yeah, I think that's a really great point because, you know, obviously there's a sort of a physical element to it or a cognitive, you know, element to it. You know, maybe people can't do the job that they did before, or they're not able to for some time. Maybe they are able to return to that in the future, but maybe not at the moment, kind of thing. But I think, you know, the the point about what do I actually want to be doing with my life? You know, we we spend so much time working in our lives. For me, it makes sense that it's something that you get something from. And, you know, I my partner and I have had a really interesting discussion about this because, you know, my brain and the way that I am as a person and the way I work is a totally different way to him. And, you know, he does a sort of nine to five job. And, you know, he that works for him. And that's absolutely fine. But for me, I tried stuff like that, you know, not exactly the same, but I tried that kind of, you know, do what you're told, when you're told, be here, be there, do that kind of a job. And it just burned me out and ground me down. And for me, I have to be doing something that lights me up. And, you know, that's the life that I have now built. But I think even for me, one of the turning points when I was unwell was realizing that I didn't have to go back to the job that I was doing before, that actually I could make changes and I could do something else. And then it was starting to think about, well, what could I do? And that actually created a bit of a shift for me because I was still quite sick at the time when I started thinking that. So I think, you know, coming back to your point about actually quite a lot of that kind of starting to think about that can happen before you're able to do it, I think is totally relevant here.

Michelle Irving 10:21

Yeah. So I think what'd be helpful is if I talk about the five stages of the career and chronic process. Um and for everybody listening, this is called the Career and Chronic map. And I know Jackie will put links down in the show notes for you to be able to be able to find it on careerandchronic.com. So this is a map that I built for myself. All of the work that I produce came out of my lived experience, and I've lived with chronic illness now for over 20 years. And so I spent a long time trying to work out how to navigate this. And in the end, the beauty of my life is that I now not only had a map for myself, but was able to consolidate it, and this is what I teach. You can access all of this in self-study, self-program, like you can go and access this immediately after this conversation. So let's talk about the map. There are five stages of career and chronic, and they are the first stage,

The Five-Stage Career And Chronic Map;

Michelle Irving 11:26

you might this may or may not happen to you, but if this does happen to you, there's actually a name for it, and that is where you off-ramp from work. So for those of us who have had to take medical leave, for those of us who have been what I call bed-based for long periods of time, this is where you are not concerned necessarily with working. You might be anxious about it, anxious about finances, but really you're in the full-time job of medical appointment and you're in that base level of survival. How do I make things work for me? And in that phase, you have one job, and that is to take care of your health and well-being. In that phase of off-ramp from work, your number one thought in your mind will be now, how does this work? And how do I get back to work and how many hours can I work? And all of that conversation turns up while you're off-ramping. And the emotional map for chronic illness, which Jackie and I mentioned, that is where that map fits, is when you're off-ramped from work. So that is where you work out how to navigate it emotionally, how to get your clinician boundaries really strong, how to ask for help and receive it, how to have helpful helpers, not unhelpful helpers, and how to give unhelpful helpers jobs that don't require your emotional labor or to exhaust you. What happens in that phase of off-ramping, if you're there for a while, is it starts to dismantle the identity and it starts to dismantle who you thought you were, who you were at work, which can be a big part of our lives, and all those relationship dynamics with who you've been working with. Now that might be in a career, that might be in a job, that might be if you're an executive, that might be if you're running a business, who you were in relationship in your business network might start to dissolve. That feels terribly frightening, and it feels like if I don't have this, I don't know who I am or what's going to happen, and I don't know how to have a life. What I want to share with you is yes, those are the normal, natural feelings of the disintegration, but that is not where you stay, and that is not the end of the story. That is part of what happens when chronic illness and career meet for the very first time. So in that off-ramping stage, those feelings start to move through you. And the thing about that phase is you're really working out where you have power and where you don't, and how to put your energy where you do have power, which is okay, if that's all shedding, what actually is important to me? If those relationships are dissolving or don't appeal reciprocal now that I have needs, what sort of relationships are important to me? Because you don't have the bandwidth to uh do all the people pleasing or do all the meeting of everybody needs that you had before. So that all happens in almost this first stage of where career and chronic illness meet. It's only the first stage. And it often happens with a medical crisis, and it often happens when you really become bed-based. Some of those themes carry through the other stages, but more structure comes in the other stages. So that's the first stage, and then I'll just talk about the other four and we can go more deeply into them. The second stage is where you on-ramp back to work. For some people, that might be where you start even testing capacity by volunteering. It might be that you actually spend a little bit of time on your side hustle, or you reconfigure things. You might be going for interviews, you might be returning to a job you had previously, the organization might have reorganized and a new job opens up, but that's really the return to work phase. Now, here's the critical thing: the work that you did thinking about what you do want and what works for you starts to gain traction when you return to work because you pull that information forward and you start to make decisions around your boundaries, around your capacity. Do try not to overcommit at this phase. The third phase is the part that we often skip over and don't think about, and it's super important to pay attention. So we off-ramp, we on-ramp. The third phase is the new. Now, even if you were working at your job, you had a surgery, you were off for three days, two weeks, two months, even if you're going back to the same job with the same people, same routine, same work, it will still be new. You might be on different medication, things will still have adjusted in your identity, and in this process, you are recalibrating how to work with work as it is, and you're testing out capacity. Here's the tip about the new. When you realize that it's new, it gives you capacity to relax, it gives you capacity to have a bit of compassion for yourself, and it gives you capacity to treat it as I'm learning again. If you skip over that phase and sort of psyche and approach to yourself, you will barrel forward, you will feel like, why can't I do this? Why isn't this happening? I had capacity, now I'm struggling, I can't do it. And all of that emotional churn will lay a mentally and emotionally huge stress upon you, as well as the physical. If you realize that it's new and you work with it in your own relationship with yourself of I'm learning again, I'm working this out, this is actually new, and you give yourself that space, some of that mental and emotional pressure will fall away. The next fourth stage is where you will spend 80% of your time. And this is test and redesign. I really loved it when I came up with that title because it's just like that is what I have spent my life doing. Test capacity, redesign capacity, test it, redesign. So this is the phase that really you will spend most of your working time in. And if you understand that that's what you're doing, you're testing your capacity, you're testing how you work as well as what you do for work, you're testing what your professional relationships are. And when you understand that, and this is especially what we teach organizations, that this is a continual phase of test and redesign, that is the normal base. So it's not like this is an exhaustive, I have to study for my master's, I have to get it all right, I have to be an A-line student, or I have to study for my apprenticeship, I have to get it all right. Often we treat work when we're in test and redesign with that sort of mindset and that sort of stress. Instead, I like to think of it as I'm refining. I'm testing this part of my capacity. Do I work better in the morning or in the afternoon on an intellectual task? I'm redesigning because my body can't stand for eight hours a day. So I'm redesigning whether I can do some from a chair, what my rest points are, what does this look like? This is a good thing. Test and redesign is an excellent thing if you are navigating career with chronic illness. So here are the four stages, and then I'll share the fifth stage. Off-ramp from work may or may not be part of your experience. On-ramp to work, the new test

Off-Ramping: Identity, Emotions, Power;

Michelle Irving 20:16

and redesign skills at each of those phases, there are really practical things you do, and all of that leads to authentic leadership because what happens is that you emotionally, mentally, and professionally recalibrate in a new identity, and that identity is not the sick person at work, that identity is I know how to navigate something really complex, I know that everybody has something going on underneath the surface, I know the power of authenticity and really being clean in my energy, in my professional boundaries, in my communication. I know how to stand in sovereignty for myself. And that naturally, because you led yourself through this deep, complex terrain professionally, you naturally end up in leadership. That can be people coming and disclosing to you about their conditions or asking for your advice. That can be leading a team because the data is clear that at least. Least 30% of people working are living with a chronic health condition, and that's a chronic physical condition that doesn't even include mental health. Some people may or may not identify as having a disability, but this is a much larger, broader cohort. And so your navigation of this and the skills that you really hone make you a natural authentic leader. So the final thing I want to say about that, Map, is this is a professional skill set. It's not a personal illness skill set, it's not a medical skill set. One of the things I came to understand is that working and navigating this, this was a whole new professional skill set. And that is why I now teach this work. So it doesn't take everybody 12 to 15 years to work it out. And everything that I've shared, there are deep professional skills that go with each of those stages. And all of that you can go find on the website to go deeper. But that's the map.

Jackie Baxter 22:41

I love this because it's it's very clear. You know, I think what we often find, I mean, certainly my experience, you know, I became unwell and my entire world basically imploded almost overnight. And, you know, so I was obviously in that that first stage and uh not not doing it very well, as it turned out, but I mean, who does? Um so and and I think you know that it what was so terrifying, I suppose, was that there was no map, there was no plan, there was no information. And you know, I think that's what I liked so much about your emotional map was that it kind of normalized some of those feelings, but also gave a bit of a route through. And, you know, and I think the same is here. And, you know, a lot of people will be thinking, well, I've done the off-ramp, I'm stuck in between one and two kind of thing. Um, but even if that is where you are, which is you know where a lot of people are, I think, you know, knowing that the map can, you know, that that there is that map, there is that trajectory. So even if you do feel a little bit kind of stuck in between one and two, knowing that there is somewhere to go, I think is very, very helpful. I think that's also given me quite a lot of clarity about what I did and why some of the things that I did worked and why some of the things that I did were maybe less helpful. So yeah, I wish I'd had this, Matt. Like you said last time. I know, I know, I should have spoken to you like three years earlier. Um so you know, I I think um I think as well, you know, you you said that these are skills that you know, I think they make you a better, well, I'm sure they make you better work. I I think they make you a better person as well. Yeah.

Michelle Irving 24:32

So one of the things about this is that we all know living with chronic illness brings us into the rawest, most vulnerable part of ourselves. And in this culture, particularly around working, that vulnerable, raw, human, it's actually just humanity, is the stuff that we mask and cover up in our working lives. And it's actually, this is gonna sound terrible, but I'm gonna just give it direct to everybody. It's actually a great thing to be connected to that part of you that is deeply human because that is where the power is. Now, when we interact with others who may be, shall we say, more structured, uh, more in, I call it inverted, comma, civilian land, uh, who are not navigating this level of depth and experience, we can feel like we are off kilter, that there's something wrong with us, that we're not getting stuff done. What I can say to you, and I want to tell this story so it's super clean, everybody can hear it. I was in these situations, like I was off ramp for nine months. You know, the the office might send chocolates, but I really just had to complete the HR forms or the, you know, insurance forms. I was in the world of treatment, medical appointments, can't get out of bed, people are doing my groceries, people are doing my washing, I don't know where this is going, and I don't know when it's gonna end. That's when I built the emotional map, and then I later reflected that's what the off-ramp looks like. What also happened in that is I was super clear I did not want to be in Verticom as the sick person, and that there would be pity or there would be this sense that I wasn't together or enough or whatever. Now, the important thing is

On-Ramp, The New, And Pacing;

Michelle Irving 26:35

that actually, as a human going through an extremely complex experience, that it was very difficult, that my grit, my vulnerability, and my tenacity were incredible skills and resources that I was not only using but were being built. So, what looked like, ooh, that's really complex, and she's you know not quite together, she's got a lot going on, um, as if I was not what everybody else was. In fact, I was taking a very rich curriculum, as I would say. And it was a curriculum about connecting in with myself and how to navigate power dynamics and hold my power in a system that was designed for power to be quite superficial and quite status-oriented. When you have the capacity to hold your sovereignty, even when you feel fragile, when you know how to advocate for what is important to you, what your capacity is, and hold a hardcore boundary around that capacity so you don't crash and burn, and also so you don't do a terrible job and then get sort of all up in the drama of that, that is an incredibly rich personal skill set. What happened for me is there were a lot of, I worked with a lot of professional people in a hierarchy, in actually a department around health. It was fascinating. And then as I've developed and moved through this layer of skills at each and every step, strengthening my inner personal power so that the way I communicate is super clean. I'm not passive aggressive, I'm transparent, people can trust that I will tell the truth and that I will be accountable for myself and I won't overpromise, and I also won't underdeliver because I'm clean in what my capacity is. Years later, the very people who might have been top of the pile, um, you know, really in their career, moving along fast and hard, years later, sooner or later, everybody hits a bump which dismantles their identity and their life. And what's fascinating is I now have previous colleagues who are like, oh yeah, none of us, like Michelle's really, her business has really bloomed. I mean, who would think a chronic illness business would bloom? Like everybody's like, what are you doing? This is crazy. But I'm like, no, this is really important, and I'm deeply passionately committed to this skill set being accessible. So the reason I'm sharing this is what you're going through now in developing this skill is something that sooner or later everybody will have to meet at some time, even if it's at the end of their life in the vulnerability of what death looks like. But it's also huge foundation stones that really clear up your personal relationships, your financial capacity, your professional relationships, your um intimacy, your relationships with children, your relationships with health. It cleans all that up because it consolidates you into a system where you have to get rigorous and clean and clear about what's important, how you're gonna navigate it, and how you're gonna honor the priority of you and your energy first. And that is a benefit to you, that is a benefit to your family, that is a benefit to your colleagues, and the truth is it it is actually a benefit to the world.

Jackie Baxter 30:43

I think that's such a beautiful way of putting it. Um, you know, I mean, I would personally agree with that, you know, that the the skills that I learned, whether it was breathing exercises or boundaries or understanding my nervous system or learning to say no, um, all of these things that I learned out of necessity are actually now things that I make me a better person, they make me a more empathetic person, they make me better at the job that I do now, and they make me happier. And you know, and it's it's just you know, I don't I don't know what you know, it feels like a silver lining to have come from a really awful thing to have gone through, to have kind of come out stronger, I suppose. And I and I think, you know, it's I think it's so important to feel like we have power, I suppose was the word that you used, wasn't it? Because we do have power, yeah. Yeah, it feels like such a disempowering experience because everything is ripped out from underneath you. And you know, and I think your point about this can happen to anyone at any time in any way, you know, whether it's long COVID or whether it's any other illness or a bereavement, or you know, there's just there's so many different things that can happen to you in your life that are really shit. And, you know, we we can't avoid these things happening. So it's having skills to deal with them when they do happen, and knowing that you know, you have the skills, that you have the support around you, you have the ability to set boundaries and to understand your own needs and all of these things. So when that does happen, you know, you you do have some skills in place. It doesn't mean that the situation won't dark because it will. Um, but it's it's having having something there, isn't it, that you can, you know, reach out and and use, I suppose.

Michelle Irving 32:44

There's something about, I think we expect when we're in it, the first sort of phase is this can't be happening. This is not who I am. How is this possible? Then there's the dismantling, and we think the dismantling is going to take us down, and it does, it takes you down to the foundations. But the foundations are the foundations of your power, they're actually you, they're actually your intellect, your creativity, your capacity, your way of looking at the world, your inner wisdom. Now, are there things that support? Absolutely, and what's to me beautiful about our current culture,

Test And Redesign As A Way Of Working;

Michelle Irving 33:23

as much as everybody who's newly diagnosed or navigating things in year two or year three is feeling like the culture's not paying attention, or you know, we can't get the support. Um, I have the legacy of having been diagnosed in like 2004 with an autoimmune life-threatening chronic condition that is very rare. And not only are there very few people in Australia, there's very few people in the world with it. And certainly nobody when I was 34, I didn't know anybody with a chronic condition, and there was nobody at work who was sharing. So I look at the world now in which there weren't podcasts, like there was radio, the podcasting wasn't even really a thing. So now there are places to hear and listen and connect with. About I just mapped what I did when I was off ramping and I could see the through line. And that's what you did, Jackie. You said, actually, I was thinking about it, I changed career. The through this is just a map of what is there. It doesn't mean that everybody's going to end up in executive roles or in leadership, it doesn't mean that you might consistently be in the new. Or test and redesign. When I first went back to work, I went back five hours a week over three days, and none of those days could be consecutive days. So that was it for a very long time for me. It took two years before I could work up to three full-time days, and I stopped at that point. Like I didn't work more than three full-time days. That was my capacity. So there are tips and tricks that I've learned. They're not um illusions, they're just like the more power I have internally, the more I'm clear and the more I can communicate in a grounded, steady way, the less that I am battling with others, the less that I am asking others to adjust or do things for me, the more I am just solid, and I let other people have the discomfort of the boundary, not me have the discomfort of overextending and burning myself out.

Jackie Baxter 37:01

And what I love so much about the way that you talk about this is you know there's so much sort of cultural, social kind of pressure to work as many hours as exist in the day, and the sort of idea that productivity is tied to worth, and you know, if you are not working full-time or you're doing quote unquote less than others, or you know, all of these sort of things that you're seen as a malingerer or someone who's lazy, or you know, and none of these things are true, they're all complete bullshit, but you know, society, you know, society does kind of give us that. And you know, many of us were taught it from childhood. Certainly I was. So, you know, it's it's this idea that you know, you put it beautifully, that you you are you are you and you're unapologetically you, you know, you're not making excuses, you're not trying to pretend you're something you're not, you're just saying, this is me, this is what I can do, this is what I can't do, this is what I want to do, take it or leave it. And, you know, I I think, you know, there is tremendous power in that, isn't it? You know, where we can be so apologetic, um, you know, and and sort of cringing about ourselves. And, you know, I think this is something that, you know, now that I am much better at, I'm not not as good at it as you are, but you know, this kind of like, actually, I don't want to work full-time. Um, you know, I I'm still in that test and redesign phase some of the time because it's like, actually, I don't want to do that. I'm gonna see what happens if I try this, or I'm gonna try that bit of working, I'm gonna try that new funnel. I'm gonna, you know, and it's I I love the way that you put it into the map, in that it's just it's a stage, you know, that that it is this continuous kind of development. And I I find that still now, and you know, having it there in the map makes me think, yeah, it's okay that I kind of still move between some of those phases where I try something new and then oh great. And then I move into the kind of final holy grail phase, but then I go back into test and redesign because you know, I found something else new that I want to learn. And, you know, I just think that's awesome.

Michelle Irving 39:21

Yes, and you've brought up such an important point. As I've mapped this out, I've made it sound like it's linear, and that's not true. Actually, you can be bed-based and then get treatment, and then you'll be right in test and redesign because the full capacity comes back, or you might move between test and redesign and the new consistently. One of the things about it is to see that these stages are skill sets. So you have the capacity and the skill to navigate testing and redesigning. Now, that phase requires really healthy professional boundaries, not healthy um battling boundaries. So um, and I use the word healthy there, and that was a bit of a misnomer. So unhealthy battling boundaries are this is it, you've just got to take it, and then there's sort of all your energies put in the defense. What a healthy professional boundary looks like. I want to give you an example. So I had um very worked out, like it just worked for me to do my three days with a with a break in between for my body to recover and to recalibrate. And I remember I had a boss who said to me, now look about this not coming in on Tuesdays, there are times when we might need you on a Tuesday. What's what's the level of flexibility with that? And so I just said there is none. And then I stayed silent. I didn't justify it, I just said there isn't any flexibility. That is what my capacity is, and that is how it will work best, and that is what it will enable me to deliver the work. And you can hear how in my voice, even repeating it, I'm just grounded, I'm just earthed in me. And then she had the shock capacity of like, huh, there was nowhere for her to go, there was no lever

Authentic Leadership And Sovereignty;

Michelle Irving 41:29

that she could use. Because if I had left any room, what happens is if you ask or say your answer as if you're asking for permission, oh, there isn't any capacity. See how my it sounds like a question, and I'm asking her is it okay if that's my boundary? As soon As you give that, somebody can go around you, and they know exactly what levers to push to get you to really burn your capacity. And it's for their benefit, supposedly, but it's to your detriment. A battling boundary would be there is no capacity, and so there's this. I just cross my arms, there's this whole focus of like and don't you if you want to battle me? And then I'm using you can hear in my voice all the emotion, all the stress, whereas it's just about neutral, there is no flexibility. That's it, that's just a fact, it's just technical, it's not personal, it's not um hierarchical. I'm just technically stating that that's the fact. And so this is part of your skill set at that test and redesign, is there's a lot of pieces to work that nervous system up into the neutrality, and that is the work that enables that to have a lot more ease and also no apology, but also no battle.

Jackie Baxter 43:11

Yeah, so it's having that conversation from that regulated state rather than from that state of fight-flight effectively, which is often what happens, isn't it? You know, we get into a conversation with a boss, for example, and I guess this is where your education for employers piece comes in, because it's important that they approach the conversation in the right way rather than why aren't you coming in on a Tuesday, Michelle? Um, you know, so I think you know, it's it's got to come from both sides, but it's also knowing that as that employee kind of role that that you are allowing yourself to stay regulated rather than allowing yourself to become aggressive or defensive, because that's going to escalate the the conversation to, as you say, your detriment, because you're going to end up feeling worse, but it's also probably going to end up with them trying to force you to do more than you want to do as well. So it's a kind of a lose-lose, isn't it, in that situation?

Michelle Irving 44:08

Yeah, and it's not even what you want to do, it's here's the key, and it's really important to understand this if you want just a takeaway to think through. Most of us will say to um, you know, our boss, our colleague, our business partner, we will state what our capacity is at our optimal capacity. And on our best day, in our best container, in the way in which the miracle of that one day could be a month, could be a year, could be every two, whatever it is, we will set that up as the expectation because we don't want the vulnerability of actually sharing what our baseline capacity is. Now, what happens is in that is not only does that create this process where you're on your worst day trying to hit your best day, and then the guilt, the shame, just the spiral that comes with that for you, but it also sets up huge confusion for your colleague, your boss, your peer, and your business partner, whoever it is, because they're like, but hang on, they said their capacity was this, and now they're over here. So this tool that we share, that people can go to the website and grab this right away, it's called your circle of wellness. I had to make this for myself because I kept realizing that I kept overstating capacity, and that was not only not fair to me, but it really um disrupted the relationship and the professional relationship, and that's why I'm saying it's a professional skill. So, what I had to do was work out my baseline capacity and my optimal capacity, and then be able to communicate from those two things so that then who I'm working with, they weren't as confused because it was clear. And that's what we do when we work with employers and people leaders who are managing people with chronic conditions. What we're doing is clearing up what I call chronic confusion so that everybody has chronic confidence. You want the chronic confidence to be able to have the conversation as the person with the condition, we want the people leader to have the confidence to have that conversation about chronic illness and what it looks like. And everybody needs to be clear about what capacity is. So there's a huge educational component because if you are in an experience with your body in your work where you treat work like running a marathon, I mean, why do we hear so much about burnout from everybody? It's because it's skewed, like it's completely off base. It doesn't run to human capacity. So I always say that people with chronic conditions are at the avant-garde edge of corporate culture or workplace culture because really we're the ones really doing the work for what a healthy human culture looks like and needs to look like. And the one thing I can tell you is in the world of AI, what we're experiencing about our capacity, everybody is about to experience about their capacity because everybody is not going to have the capacity that the AI has to do the work and do the jobs. So as we watch all the anxiety, however it works out, whatever the timeline is, we have the skill set and the professional skill set to really work as humans and in ways that work for us and our body. That skillset, no matter how big a marathon runner you are at work, that skillset is going to happen and be required for everybody because nobody can run at the pace of the AI.

Jackie Baxter 48:24

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think, you know, one of the things that kind of just clicked for me as you were speaking just there was that communication, I think, is really, really central to this. But it's, you know, it's communication with yourself. So really starting to understand, you know, what can I do? What are my needs? How can I best support myself in all these different situations, both mentally, physically, emotionally? How can I communicate that to others? How can, you know, how can I best have those conversations? And coming back to what you were saying about, you know, these being really great skill sets to learn, I think my communication is far better now than it ever has been. You know, I am able to communicate with my partner. We have conversations that we wouldn't have had before, um, with with clients, obviously, with with friends. And I I think, you know, certainly for me, that is something that that I'm glad to have taken from it and that that has, you know, improved the way that I do things

Boundaries Without Battle: Scripts That Work;

Jackie Baxter 49:27

and and it's given me a lot of really great insight into how I can best live my life now. So I I think it's a great way of putting it.

Michelle Irving 49:37

That's your authentic leadership. It's not just leadership, it's authentic because you live the thing about the authentic leadership is you naturally lead yourself through it. That's how it becomes authentic leadership. Doesn't matter what the role is, what the description is, it's you end up there because this builds. And what I'm hearing so beautifully in you, Jackie, is this is your biography, is this your skill set and capacity, and the biography is not all centered around the chronic condition, it's centered around this is part of my experience, this is part of what I've navigated, but my biography is actually around my skill set, and it's actually around my leadership, and it's actually around the values and the life I'm making for myself, and it's come through a huge mountain to climb, but what looks like insurmountable, every step you take, as hard as it is, and as dis destabilizing as it is, it has an arc and it is leading you into your deepest power. It absolutely is, and there are beautiful resources in the world now to support that. And the fact that we're having this conversation across two different countries, and I know this podcast goes out to a huge worldwide audience. I mean, this podcast is the greatest and deepest service to all of humanity, but especially to those living with the condition, but also those who are caring for people with the condition. I also know lots of people listen to this podcast who may not have long COVID, but actually have other conditions that really line up with a lot of those symptoms. And what more is there to do in the world than to do the work that is in your heart that is of deep service, but doesn't require you to sacrifice yourself, in fact, nourishes you, and this is the key. We've been trained, particularly as women, that the first priority in our lives is to sacrifice ourselves for other people's well-being. And the problem with chronic illness is you can no longer do that. That feels destabilizing to your identity, but it's actually a good thing, like that's actually a really good thing that you no longer can do that, because then you start to orientate into how am I moving in the world in my work? If I am not self-sacrificing, what has to shift and change? And a lot of the time we think that's about the work. It's not about the work. Most people can do the work depending on where your capacity is and how many hours that is. What actually shifts is the emotional labor that you are doing at work, the emotional labor that you are doing with your partner, the emotional labor you are doing with adults in your family. That is actually where most of the energy drain is, and it's mental and emotional and physical, and that rewrite always leads you back to this is actually good, and I have to set this now, and the discomfort you're going through is the deconditioning of sacrificing yourself, and then the work that you do, the relationships that you have become, in my language, sacred, and they become sovereign between two sovereigns, two adults, rather than between you either you self-sacrificing and other people receiving that, or mostly in our relationships, everybody's self-sacrificing and nobody's got any energy and everybody's exhausted and nobody knows what to do.

Jackie Baxter 53:48

And that, you know, that's that's such a great point. And I think, you know, it's it's almost that maybe it's not even almost, I think it's entirely, you know, that society actually praises us for self-sacrificing. I think, you know, particularly as women, but I think, I think possibly everybody. And uh, you know, I think, yeah, part of my journey was realizing that actually it's not selfish to put myself first. It's exactly what I should be doing. Um, you know, because, well, you know, if you don't put yourself first, who will? But also, you know, that you're no use to anyone else if you don't put yourself first either. So, you know, I I think it is that, you know, yeah, you know, self-compassion, but also, you know, just learning to meet your own needs before before other people. But you know, we've had it, as you say, conditioned out of us, isn't it?

Michelle Irving 54:34

Yeah, and I like to phrase it as I'm actually accountable to myself. So it's not that even I'm prioritizing, it's actually it's my energy, it's my mental capacity, my emotional capacity, my financial capacity, my creative capacity. All of those things, those are things I am accountable to myself for. So if I burn them down, I then have to be accountable for the burnout that's in me. Now, I'm not saying this in any guilt or any shame. I'm just saying that that's the shift. It's not about self-sacrificing, it's actually about being accountable. Now, when I'm accountable for the energy, then what I give is actually real. It's actually authentic because when you give and it's not authentic and it comes from self-sacrificing, you will end up in resentment, you will end up burning down your energy, you will end up paying the debt for overgiving in that price. And we think that it's the other person taking from us. That's not the case because they will then end up with our resentment pinged at them, like there's a whole dance going on here. So if I'm accountable for my energy, I also have to get off the resentment, I have to get off feeling victimized. Like there's a whole lot of stuff that I also have to be accountable for, which were the payoffs. Now, this is very deep work. You don't have to do it all at once, you don't have to do it if you don't want to. But the key that I'm talking about here is when you are clean and clear in your energy, in how you show up with others, in you give what is actually yours to give and is easy for you to give, or you give it with a true accountability that that might cost me something, but I'm willing to spend the day in bed having done that, and it feels like the right thing for me, not for the others, but for you. When you turn up that way, you just dismantled a whole lot of levers that other people can use to get you to do what they want you to do for their comfort, not yours. Because if you're doing it for what they want to do and their comfort, you've got work to do on the part that's self-sacrificing. And this is really what I mean when we talk about boundaries. This is some core work that um we do

Baseline Vs Optimal Capacity And Clarity;

Michelle Irving 57:14

in a self-study program I've called Chronic Confidence, where we do the map, but we also do how power dynamics work and how to recover those so that it resets all of this. It looks like a career map, but it's your personal sovereignty map. It's navigated to what happens at work, but it has personal benefits to it. And when you work through that, you also start to recalibrate and what is truly your authentic ambition, which is the next framework that we can talk about another time. But we've done the emotional map, this is the career map, and the third part of this whole arc of living with chronic illness is the authentic um ambition framework, and that takes this work further, but all of it combines together to give you the capacity to actually be with your own power, so you own it, you're accountable from it, you act from it, you love from it, and you nourish yourself with it.

Jackie Baxter 58:29

And that I think is the perfect place to leave it. Michelle, thank you so much. I feel like you have yet again managed to make sense of the sort of spaghetti in my brain, um, which you have a talent for doing. Um, you've shared so many useful tips, strategies, root plans. I will make sure that all those links that you sent me go into the show notes or if people want to follow up with this map, the emotional map, our previous episode, or any of your upcoming stuff, for want of a better word, then they know where to go.

Michelle Irving 59:08

Yes, we've got our event process. Um, and so as everybody's listening to this, for those of you who've caught it in early 2026, in February 2026, we're running a completely free weekly program of panels where I um it's a live event, people can come, you can ask your questions. But the first one will be uh with women talking about chronic leadership and what that looks like. And these are women who are very familiar with my work. And then each week, the next week, we will be doing chronic entrepreneurs. And the final week, we'll be talking about something wild. We're going to talk about the chronic economy, and we're going to talk about the huge um unseen billion-dollar industry that is currently, you know, your insurance company and currently managed uh through the medical industry, but actually, what is emerging for the incredible powerhouse of women and men who are taking leadership, not in those industries, but actually just like you, Jackie, in the production, in the navigation, in the career of the work that really serves in this massive economy that is built on our money, it's built on our experience, and it's actually about well, how do we receive the benefit of that? So that's a beautiful series we're doing for everybody that's totally free and you can come to in February.

Jackie Baxter 1:00:45

That sounds amazing.

Michelle Irving 1:00:47

For anyone who can't make it live, will they be recorded? They will be recorded. You'll just have to register to see them and um we'll make sure they're in the show notes for everyone.

Jackie Baxter 1:00:57

Amazing. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. Um, let's do this again.

Michelle Irving 1:01:02

Thank you so much, Jackie. It's so great to be with you again.