Ep. 65 Dr. Arin N. Reeves

On this episode I am joined by Dr. Arin N Reeves. As a researcher, author, and leading advisor to many of America’s top executives, Dr. Arin N. Reeves offers expertise and insights on a wide range of leadership and workplace culture topics. She is the founder and Managing Director of the research and advisory firm Nextions, which specializes in workplace culture change.

In her new book, In Charge, she offers women a path to a successful and meaningful life, by helping women eliminate energy drains, manage what needs to be done, and bring more of what makes them happy into their lives. We discuss the tips that you can use to incorporate more inner peace into your day. We discuss the history of self-care and how it was started by black women needing to create safe boundaries for themselves and how it has become muddled by the idea of it being associated with pampering.

Arin is a best-selling author of four books: The Next IQ, One Size Never Fits All,  Smarter Than A Lie and In Charge: The Energy Management Guide for Badass Women Who Are Tired of Being Tired.

​Values: Joy, Excellence, Kindness, Kairos, Kaizen, Leadership | Nextions
Books | ArinReeves

Ashley (@filledupcup_) • Instagram photos and videos
Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the filled up cup podcast. We are a different kind of self-care resource one that has nothing to do with bubble baths and face masks and everything to do with rediscovering yourself. We bring you real reviews, honest experiences and unfiltered opinions that will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, leave you with a filled up cup.

Ashley: 0:32

I am very excited today. I have Dr. Arin N Reeves joining me. She is a bestselling author, internationally, acclaimed speaker and globally sought after expert on the neuro behavior of inclusion, equity, and diversity. Her newest book is in charge the energy management guide of badass women who are tired of being tired. Thank you so much for joining me.

Arin: 0:56

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Ashley: 0:58

Can you tell me a little bit about your book?

Arin: 1:01

Sure. The book is really about the transition from time management to energy management and why energy management is so much more important for the way that we live our lives today. It started off as a book for everybody, but it really morphed to do a book for women. It's got stories of women who apply these different energy management styles and tactics and strategies to different aspects of their lives. And so I have a lot of strategies in there about how women, especially today can manage their energy. So that they can operate better in a world that is just exhausting. A lot of us.

Ashley: 1:42

Why do you think right now that burnout, especially with women is so prevalent today?

Arin: 1:49

I think burnout is a little bit different than just being tired and burnout really is when the systems around you or the environment that you operate in, whether it's at home or at work It just does not replenish your energy, right? Like it drains it and doesn't replenish it, drains it, and doesn't replenish it until you get to a point where you literally have no way of kind of resetting your energy level. I think it's especially bad these days for women, because during the pandemic, all of the emotional labor the women have historically. Taken on sort of the disproportionate burden of intensified. And so, especially, you know, moms with little kids younger children, elementary school children all of the things that women disproportionately did before, it's like they disproportionately did a hundred times over and dealing with all of the stress in the world. And so I think women just are coming out of this pandemic saying there's gotta be a better way. Like I can't just keep doing the same stuff over and over again,

Ashley: 3:03

which I think is the only sort of fantastic thing or one of the fantastic things to come out of of the pandemic is that we really realized exactly how much we were doing and really what we absolutely didn't wanna do anymore.

Arin: 3:17

I agree. I also think that women realized that it was never going to change until they took it into their own hands. Right. And so I think they realized like they needed to be the ones to change things, either their jobs, their environments their actions, et cetera, because the world. Has the potential. It still does. There's the gravitational pull of it, going back to a lot of its old ways.

Ashley: 3:47

Well, and that's the thing is nobody likes change, especially systems that were benefiting other people. So the more that they can convince us that we should just go back to status quo is, is definitely the way that I think a lot of industries potentially would like us to go back to. So I think it is really just kind of standing up and being like, no, this isn't going to continue is really the only way to make that change. Now, do you think that there's a difference between. Like not to necessarily gender it, but a difference between women's burnout and men's burnouts.

Arin: 4:19

I think you know, Men's burnout is oftentimes absorbed by women and women's burnout is not absorbed by anybody. So even when you look at, you know, workplaces and workplace, teams women still are doing most of the emotional labor in workplaces you look at their emotional labor at home with child rearing. They're doing more of that. They're doing more of the housework. So the burnout that comes from work, for example is compounded for women because they're getting the burnout from work. They're getting the burnout from home. They're also getting the burnout just in their communities. They're the ones who are more likely to step up in a lot of the caretaking jobs. So if you think about, you know, during the pandemic nursing, for example You know, and other kinds of caretaking industries that got us through the pandemic, a lot of those were predominantly female. So there's just everywhere you look, you see women just have so many more of the factors that lead to burnout and no one in their lives to necessarily absorb the impact of it.

Ashley: 5:31

Which is really challenging that that has been the case for so long. When we realize that we're in that state of burnout, we wanna make a change. What are some of the ways that we can manage or protect our energy?

Arin: 5:46

Sure. I think the first thing is for people to really start looking at where is my energy going, right. I think a lot of times there's so many things that women have taken on where we're just like, well, I need to do that and I need to do that. And I'm responsible for that, but just really take maybe two, three days and take careful stock of where is your energy going and stop doing things that are making you miserable. Right. There's just, you know, sometimes people say, well, Arin, you don't understand the cost of me saying no. And when I've coached women, I've said, but what is the cost of you saying yes, women are taught that. There's a cost of saying no, but we're not taught to measure the cost of saying yes, saying yes to the things that are not good for us that are not productive or healthy for us. And the ways in which our bodies and our minds and our emotions pay the cost for us saying yes to things that we have no business saying yes to. So I think really paying attention to where your energy is going, stop doing the things that aren't working for you That are not rejuvenating you, but definitely stop doing the stuff that's draining you. Don't be afraid of the cost because there's costs to doing things you're not supposed to be doing as well as stopping them. And if more women assess the cost side by side, we find that the cost of saying no is actually way less than the cost of saying yes in perpetuity.

Ashley: 7:24

I couldn't agree with that more. It's just, it's such a true statement. And you can almost feel the energy shift when you think about it. It's like, what's the cost of saying yes to what's the cost of saying no? And I feel like a lot of the times we create this unnecessary guilt of it's too hard to say no, or we've been programmed that we shouldn't say no. It really is one of those things that you do have to weigh out. If I say no, is the worlds gonna, you know, collapse? It's probably not like a lot of the things that we're afraid of saying no to, we can actually find a better way and people around us are, are maybe just as willing to say yes to the things that we wanna say no to. If we communicate that a little bit more effectively as well.

Arin: 8:07

Absolutely. And also, yes, people are going to react. As I was writing this book, as I was looking at my own life and places where. I am constantly absorbing other people's emotions so that they're okay. So that they don't have a hard time so that, you know, they feel better. And when I say no, You know, people have made different decisions about their lives, right? Like an employee may resign or a friend may decide that they don't wanna go somewhere. And so I am not suggesting that like saying no is easy. The consequences can be very real, but there is a relief that follows. Even what feels like the most destructive of circumstance, because when you say yes, please understand you're saying yes for the rest of your life, right? Like you're gonna have to keep saying yes. And when you say no, the people who don't know how to take a no they fall away. They will go away and your life will be lighter and easier for it. So will things change? Yes. Will it feel bad.. Maybe will it feel for a moment like, Ugh, I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I promise you on the other side of that. No. And other people doing whatever they need to do, there is so much relief and lightness because. They're not gonna come back and keep asking you things that you shouldn't be doing.

Ashley: 9:39

Yeah. Setting those boundaries for yourself is really, really important. And to know that at the end of the day, you just have to do what's best for yourself that we, I think as women tend to worry too much about everybody else first, and we really struggle to prioritize ourself in the same level of importance.

Arin: 9:58

Yeah. Even the things that. You know, when self-care is talked about for women, it's always, women are encouraged to do self-care, that's so safe. We're asked to take baths and do yoga and do meditation instead of breaking rules and saying no and quitting our jobs and doing other things that. The world doesn't necessarily want us to do so. It's not just that, like we're socialized to say, yes, we're even socialized. To take care of ourselves in ways that like work for everybody else and not ourselves.

Ashley: 10:38

I think too much of the time self-care has really become, in my opinion, this annoying buzzword that on one hand, it's either have a shower, you know, go to the grocery store by yourself, which are really like just daily errands and not really anything that's benefiting our soul or allowing us to be replenished, or it's this idea that you. Have to, go to a spa or you have to, you know, add additional task into your day and prioritize doing this one appointment versus deciding in this day, what is gonna serve me? What is gonna, you know, give me that energy boost, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the same every single day or per person.

Arin: 11:23

Absolutely. And the roots of the term self care actually come from the black liberation movement with the black Panthers and people like Audrey Lord and Angela Davis. And it really comes from this notion that those that are supposed to take care of me. Aren't as a matter of fact, they're doing things that hurt me and I have to take care of myself. It comes from a very autonomy independence like self-reliance kind of a perspective and the kinds of. Things that Audrey Lord and Angela Davis and Elaine brown and some of the other women in the black Panther movement. And around that time were talking about, were things like, you know, wear your hair the way you want to you know, stand up for yourself. When people call you a name, it wasn't about pampering. It was about Not being afraid to step in and take up space. Right. And so sometimes when I coach women and they talk about they just start having a lot of stress at work and they need to find better ways to take care of themselves. I'll say like, if something isn't working for you at work, fixing that thing, asking for it to be different that's self-care taking a shower it's cleanliness, right? Like taking a bath is it's sanitation. Like that's not self care. And I, you know, give the metaphor sometimes of like, if you're in a canoe and it's leaking. That you keep like scooping up the water and putting it back into the lake and scooping up the water and putting back into the lake. And at the end of the day, you're like, oh my God, I'm so tired. I'm gonna go get a massage, but really you need to fix that leak, right? Like you need to patch that leak. Women are, I think, consistently misdirected to. These pamper types of self care, as opposed to what I call like, you know, more radical self care, which is no, I don't want a lifetime supply of bandaids. I'd like to stop the thing that keeps cutting my finger. Right? So it's this idea of, the pain isn't natural, the way that we're working, isn't natural. I get to do it differently. Not, I'm gonna keep doing it the same way and get massages to feel better.

Ashley: 13:55

It definitely does need that it needs to not be basically the gentrified version of what it was originally intended to be. It is taking up that space. It is. Finding your authentic self and, creating the space for it. It is one of those things that it is really frustrating. This idea that self care is. basically an after fact, it is that bandaid instead of what are we gonna do so that we don't reach the burnout so that we don't feel disrespected so that we can feel that we are filling ourselves up versus always being depleted.

Arin: 14:31

Yeah. And I think that, it's gonna be different for every woman. I think in addition to that, it's gonna be different in different phases of your life. And it's important to really ground yourself in this moment. I think you were saying that before, like it'll, it'll vary day to day, but ground yourself in this moment, you know look around like, who are you today? What are your responsibilities today? What's working for you today? I have two teenage kids. What's self care. is, to me today is very different than what self care was to me when they were toddlers. Or when they were in elementary school, because I was fighting different rules back then. Right. So this idea that. Break the rules. Don't do things that aren't set up for you to succeed, determine your own definition of success. All of these things are self-care techniques, but they're different women to women and they're different. For you from season to season of your own life. And so it's not about saying, well, okay, this is the self-care technique. I'm gonna use the rest of my life. It's this is the self-care technique that's working for right now. And it may not work a year from now. The world may change again. I may change again. I may change jobs, whatever it is, and then I'll do something different that will help me then. So I think the. Really pragmatic nature of it is really important. It's not self care. If it's not helping you feel better at the end of the day.

Ashley: 16:06

I definitely agree with that. I think it's also important to not, you know, we're in this digital age where everybody puts their happiest moments online, but I also think it's really important that we don't get caught up in the comparison. Especially if you're somebody that has like two young kids and you're like, well, you know, my neighbor who has teenagers, they can go for a run every weekend. Well, somebody with two young kids may not be able to find that balance in that day or whatever their thing looks like that. I also think it's really important that we don't get caught in the comparison of this person. Looks like they have it together. This person incorporates more self care. However it looks like for them. And to make it mean something about you, if you don't have the same ability or the same time, or if your practice looks completely different.

Arin: 16:52

Yeah. I mean, you've got to really ground yourself, like a big part of. I think why women are so exhausted is the standards that we're supposed to live up to in every area of our lives are just total bullshit. Like they're not possible. Right. These standards are perpetuated by, you know influencers who are paid to do so on Instagram or in media or even in you know, in articles that we read. And I think sure, like read all that stuff, inform yourself, but really ask yourself, you know, what makes me feel good? What makes me feel alive? What fills me with dread what exhausts me? and start asking yourself the question of, do I really need to do this thing that exhausts me? And how can I do more of that thing that inspires me? And again, every day you may have different answers. There's some days where I'm like, I really wanna go into the garden for a couple of hours, because I'm excited about what's growing the next day. It's like, I need a nap.. Right. And the next day it is, I really wanna journal. And the day after that, it's, you know, I don't need a nap, but I wanna lay down. I mean, and it's giving yourself permission to say, I'm gonna listen to my body. And my mind is something that women have to reteach ourselves because it kind of got, you know socialized out of us.

Ashley: 18:32

In thinking about. Basically our time management, I would say the majority of women are working or working mothers. What would you say for them to, how would they set up sort of their work life or their work environment so that they are creating energy safe spaces for themselves?

Arin: 18:52

If you are, you know, especially if you're a working mom, I wouldn't just do it at work. I would go ahead and really look at, your personal life and your professional life and draw three interlocking kind of circles on a piece of paper. And the first circle say things that I can control. Right. The second is things that I can influence. Even if I can't control them. And the third is things that I have no influence or control over. And as you go through your day, write stuff down, right. You may not have any control over where your office is located or how often you have to go into work, but you have maybe you have some influence over what time you have to go into work. You have total control over what route you take or what you do on your commute. So really, I think part of this is we need to be realistic about what we can actually change. What is up to us and given our seniority levels, our jobs we have completely different things that go into the spheres of like what we can control, what we can influence. Right. When my children were little, they were in like the control category. I could control them now it's I can influence them at best on, good days. I think once you have that, then really start asking yourself what is draining my energy. And, you know, I know that. Not everybody has choices to leave your work, et cetera. But if you find that, there's so many things that drain your energy every day and they're all in your, I can't control this category. You gotta really ask yourself if you need to be going back there every day. Because if most of what is making you miserable is not in your control. There's not that much you can do. Right. If more of it is like in the, I can influence this, even if I can't control this, then you can actually start creating a strategy for yourself. Like how can I influence you know, whatever it is that you wanna influence with work? Like what team I'm on or when I work or how I structure my work or how I structure my workspace, et C.

Ashley: 21:14

I think that is really important. And I think coming out of the pandemic, we realized what a gift time is and how important it is not to waste it in certain senses. So if it is something that you have no control and you are miserable, there's a million other jobs out there that potentially, you know, there'd be other factors, whether it's location, whether it would be a salary difference. Even just maybe finding something where you're more in the influence category, then I'm stuck, hating this day to day place that I have to spend, you know, 45 hours a week or whatever that looks like to be miserable all the time. I think a lot of people really have decided that that's not really worth it for them anymore. I know a lot of people. Basically left their positions to find something that was a better fit for their boundaries and their just overall lifestyle.

Arin: 22:12

Absolutely. I had a really good friend who had a heart attack about four years ago. I remember he had been talking about changing jobs for a while and he kept saying, you know, I can't afford the pay cut. I can't afford the pay cut. I was in the hospital visiting him and I said, how much would you pay today to have a healthy heart? Right. And he just kind of looks at me. And I said, you know, when we say we can't afford a pay cut. We're not taking into account the cost to our bodies. And if something goes wrong with our bodies Then, if we ask ourselves, like how much would I pay for a healthy heart? How much would I pay to have lower blood pressure? You realized you would actually pay way more than the pay cut that you were not wanting to take that led to the heart attack. Right. So it's really important that like, we question some of this, I can never do this. I can't do this. I can do this. I can only do this if those kinds.

Ashley: 23:15

Limiting thoughts.

Arin: 23:17

Yeah. They're so absolute in our heads. Right? Like I cannot do that. Like you don't understand, I can't do that. I think if we just say, well, what if, what if I could do that? We open ourselves up to true self care. Right? Truly taking care of ourselves in a way that is consistent with. What our bodies need or what our minds and our emotions need.

Ashley: 23:42

Yeah. We really just need to stop leading with fear, fear of the unknown of, of the what ifs.

Arin: 23:49

I don't even think it's fear of the, what ifs or fear of the unknown it's fear of what other people are gonna say.

Ashley: 23:55

That's true.

Arin: 23:55

It is the biggest fear. One of the things that I did during the pandemic, I was going through a lot. I literally wrote down the names of all the people and literally there's a total of five. Of if they're pissed off at me, I give a shit like, literally I was like, these are the five people that if they tell me they're mad at me, I actually will care. And I look at that list every day because it is this idea that like anybody who's pissed off at me, anybody who has something to say can enter my consciousness is you have to protect yourself against that. Make a list of who honestly, do you care if you piss them off, and no one else should be coming into your decision making processes, because somebody is always gonna have something to say about everything. It's just, there's no way to escape it. Right. And so Yeah, you gotta limit the number of people whose opinions you care.

Ashley: 25:06

I really love that. The idea of actually making a list and thinking about the people of do I really care? Do I not really care? Because I think what you said is exactly spot on that we think, because we have access to so many people and we have access to communicate with so many people. We do put people that we really don't care about necessarily on our list of, oh shit, what are they gonna think? And at the end of the day, who cares. And it really shifting that energy into your mindset so that you actually think about it in that way, I think would be massive for people.

Arin: 25:40

Absolutely. And I tell people all the time, you know, like I have five people and two of them I made, right. Like they literally came out as me. And why do I care what these other people think. And I think it's this. And you know, you made the point about social media earlier. Some of it is you don't want to make people mad. The other is you're seeking approval from all these people, right. You're seeking the likes and the, I know like the retweets or whatever, and it's the same list. Who do you care about approving or validating your work. And if you didn't put your name at the first of that, you know, at the top of that list, that's part of the problem right there is, do you like it? Do you care about it? If so, you know weigh other people's perspectives against your own. So this need to not piss off other people, not incur their criticism and always seek their approval and their validation on like a minute by minute basis is all like literally the opposite of self care.

Ashley: 26:47

Well, and even say on your five people list, if you find that, other people aren't prioritizing you on that five people list, I think it's also knowing it's important to check in with that list. That it absolutely isn't necessarily a permanent, because sometimes you could. Put somebody on your list and you aren't on theirs, unfortunately. I think it is as women. I don't know why we struggle with prioritizing ourselves. Like obviously it's a lot of, we aren't conditioned to think that way, but I do think that we really collectively all do need to have that shift of prioritizing ourselves. It isn't even selfish to do that where I feel like sometimes that's one of the feelings that comes up for it is that it's selfish or that, you know, we should be doing something else. Those. You know, never ending shoulds, but I think it is really important that we do have to prioritize ourselves and prioritize our wellbeing. Whether we're at work, whether we're at home or, or what the case may be.

Arin: 27:50

Absolutely. I mean, we are not very good at prioritizing ourselves, but. even when we try to prioritize ourselves people are not good at letting us prioritize ourselves. Yeah. You know where it is. I kind of sarcastically write in my book. Like how many Google hits there are for like you know, the search term, like how to set boundaries, but there's almost no Google terms for the search term. Like how to respect people's boundaries that like, while you're busy Googling away, like how to set boundaries, the people who don't respect your boundaries are not Googling anything about boundaries, right. They just exactly like disrespecting your boundaries. And so it's. Standing up for yourself is not a one time thing. It's a daily thing. Like you have to snatch back that control of your boundaries of your energy. Like hour by hour, minute by minute, day by day, where there's always someone waiting in the wings to be like, Arin, I know you said no, but can you please just do it.

Ashley: 28:56

Oh, yeah. People wanna change that. No, to maybe all of the time,

Arin: 29:00

I have a male friend who said to me, so no means not yet. And I was like, no, no means no, not yet means not yet. And unless you're saying that, I don't know how to say not yet. You don't get to take one word and change it into something else. I think sometimes the exhaustion that women feel is how hard we have to work. To just get our own boundaries like respected men don't have to work that hard to get their boundaries respected.

Ashley: 29:29

No, and I think that the downside of it is a lot of time, men are taught that no means try harder or to try in a different way versus the idea that no actually means no. And that, on the other side, that women can say no, and it doesn't have to be the start of a sentence.

Arin: 29:47

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ashley: 29:50

One thing that you had referenced before was different, like workshops. Can you explain what you offer and how people would work with you?

Arin: 29:57

Sure I do a lot of one-on-one coaching. Most of our work is with companies. We work on all aspects of diversity and inclusion and culture change. We do a lot of workshops for women through companies, but if women are interested in getting some people together, we've taken them through some of the exercises in the book But one of the things about the book is I really wrote it where you can even get maybe a couple of girlfriends together and go through the exercises collectively. There's a lot of exercises in this book and there's a lot of stories in this book. So between the two I think people who pick up the book will find something that they go, oh, let me try that. And that's what we want more than anything else is, for women to start building a collective. Intelligence around this, like, Hey, I tried this, it works. And someone else doesn't have to reinvent the wheel that we're talking to each other, that we're sharing these strategies with each other and all getting, maybe marginally less tired in the process.

Ashley: 31:09

I love the fact that it's like hands on exercises. I think sometimes when you're reading something and only sort of look at it from one perspective versus how does it relate to me? How can we do this? Start the discussion. It doesn't always necessarily click. Yep. And I do also really appreciate the fact. I think there has been a bit of a shift in this idea that women have always been pitted against each other for years, that there, you know, is one spot for women to work in the workplace or there's one special person. So I do love the fact that it's like, get your family, get your coworkers, get your girlfriends together and have these discussions because I think we are stronger together and we are so much more alike than we are different that I think when we eliminate those mindsets or we eliminate those boundaries, even just between us, that I think will be so much more powerful.

Arin: 32:06

Absolutely. There's a large section in the book about community. And I talk about the fact that women need community because not only do we need to sort of gather and mind that collective intelligence, but we need to have each other's back out there when we're trying to set boundaries or, Ask for a raise or anytime two women, three women you know, ask for something or step up or people know that she's got girlfriends who are gonna follow up her question after her. You just get different results. So we gotta listen to each other, we gotta share our stories. And we've gotta gather that collective intelligence and then have each others' back when we do stuff that is breaking the rules and, or disruptive.

Ashley: 32:58

I love that. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me today, Arin.

Arin: 33:03

Absolutely.

Ashley: 33:03

Can you let everybody know if they are looking for you online. Where can they find you?

Arin: 33:09

Sure you can go to ArinReeves.com. You can also just. Type in Arin Reeves in Amazon and all of the different books come up, but this one is called in charge and it has a beautiful butterfly on the front with the woman in a hat and a butterfly. So I hope the picture brings a smile to your face. In addition to the words, if you decide to pick it up, thank you so much for having me on.

Ashley: 33:34

I really appreciate it, Arin.

33:38

Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the filled up cup podcast, don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. If you like what you hear, you can also connect with us@filledupcup.com. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.