Ep 167: Do Less Be More

Ever notice how sometimes, when you have the smallest margins and the most to do in a small period of time…for some reason that seems to be exactly when the tire is flat, the dog gets out, or you start getting that tickle in the back of your throat? 

It was one of those weeks for me; with two back to back speaking events separated by a red eye flight, when I got really sick, for the first time in years. I didn’t have time to prepare the way I normally would. I had to re-think what was most important and how to pull it all off in a way that honored the people who were counting on me. And what happened next surprised me. Less preparation, and more presence can be a really, really good thing. 

For so many of the women I coach, we’ve been socialized to believe that we need to do more, serve more, prepare more; provide more value. But what if we’ve been over-relying on doing… at the expense of being?

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why so many of us over-prepare, overwork, and over-function as a way to prove our value
• How the gender gap shows up in our belief we need to do more 
• The hidden belief that “I have to do more to be enough”—and how it shows up in work, leadership, and life
• How over-preparing can actually block presence, connection, and impact
• How our capacity increases when we understand our value is our mind, our presence and whatever we bring in the moment
• How releasing pressure allows you to be more open, responsive, and powerful in the moment
• How to understand your yellow zones, and make a goal to increase your comfort with doing less 
• How increasing your self-trust ripples out into every area of your life

What if your value is already inherent—because you exist?

When you start from that place, you show up more open, more grounded, more connected, more present to what’s actually happening - and ironically, that’s when your best work comes through.

You are valuable because you’re you. Not because of how much you do. Not because of how well you perform. Not because of how prepared you are. When you release the need to prove, you unlock a different kind of power and capacity.

A more grounded power. A more connected presence. A more magnetic way of moving through the world…and way more fun. So this week, experiment with doing a little less…
And being a whole lot more.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Doing Less And Being More

Getting Sick And Losing Prep Time

Why Less Script Can Land Better

Green Yellow Red Zone Framework

Your Weekly Challenge And Results

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast. I am coming to you today from Monterey up in Northern California, where I've been at a speaking event, and it's so beautiful up here. It is so sunny and so lovely, and I've been walking on the beach in between doing the speaking event, meeting with people, and then working. I kind of used this little escape up here as a little writing retreat for a few different things I have going on for our podcast, of course, and some classes and retreat planning because the Moxie Mastermind retreat is about to happen in the next month, and I'm so excited about it. We have some spots open for people that are not in the Moxie that are joining us, and I just can't wait to have everybody together for that retreat. So I wanted to talk today about doing less and being more. And I've had this on my list of episodes to make because I see it so often in my own clients and in myself and in women in the Moxie Mastermind, it comes up so frequently as something that pops up specifically for women. But I'm sure this also is relevant for everybody. Where when we have anything that we're showing up to in our life, whether that's in our work, in our personal life, with our families, many of us tend to feel like we have to do a lot, like we have to have a lot set up. We have to show up, we have to have plans, we have to have programming, we have to have rehearsed what we're gonna do. We have to have thought things through, we have to know what we're gonna wear. We we have to prepare and do a lot. And I I have faced this in my own life over and over again. And I have some stories to tell you about that. But the reason I'm talking about this is because I see a huge gender imbalance in this thinking. So if you look statistically at men, they are much more likely to apply for jobs that they're not qualified for and just put their foot forward, believe in themselves, talk about how they'll approach the job and get the job, right? Whereas women are much less likely statistically to apply for jobs that they're underqualified for. And this is indicative of this whole genre of thinking where we as women have been socialized to believe that we need to over-prepare, that we need to be over-qualified, that we need to provide value through service. And again, if you are not someone who identifies as female, I am sure that this applies to you in different ways. And the core piece that I want you all to take from today is that you are valuable just by showing up. And when you can get your mindset into a place where you know that your value is inherent because you are you, because you have a lived experience that is incredibly valuable and you can share from that experience, that your brain and the beautiful words that you will say, the perspectives you will share, the things that you can create in the moment are incredibly valuable. Your companionship, your company is incredibly valuable to people. Life becomes so much easier and so much less of a hustle. So I have a few different ways that I want to talk to you about this. First of all, this last week was a hustle. It was a hustle that I knew was coming because I had multiple classes that I was teaching. And then I was um leading a speaking event on Sunday night in San Diego that I needed to do a bunch of preparation for. And then after that, I was flying out at 10 p.m. and coming up to Monterey for a speaking event that I was doing in the afternoon on Monday. So it was a lot of preparation. And what happened was on Wednesday of last week, I got sick. I was very cocky about this. I was like, I never get sick. I always get the little like surface symptoms and I never go down. I went down, y'all. And I had a fever for the first time since, I don't know, since I was a kid. And then it my symptoms sort of uh progressed and went into um stomach aches, all kinds of flue symptoms, and then a head cold. And you can still hear it in my voice here on the podcast. It's been, you know, over a week and I still have a cough and have been sneezing and have this kind of head cold. So the reason I'm sharing that is because I had dramatically less time to prepare because I was down, my kids were down. I did not, I was not able to prepare last week in the ways that I like to prepare for speaking events. And so I had to dig deep into my self-concept, my belief in myself to remind myself that I am enough. The irony here that I always think about that cracks me up is like when I come to a podcast and I have a super solid plan for what I'm gonna say, I feel so great. And sometimes when I, especially in the beginning, come to a podcast, for instance, without a really solid plan, I feel less prepared. I feel like what I'm, you know, I have to think through the thoughts that pop up that whatever I'm gonna say might not be as valuable, which is funny because I'm writing it either way. The content is coming out of my mind, whether I plan it in advance or whether I say it in the moment. But we tell ourselves that it's not going to be as good if we don't write it in advance. Now, sometimes that is true for big speaking events. Of course, I want to have thought through exactly what I want to say, I want to prepare. And sometimes being in the moment is even more valuable. And I'll tell you, I used to over-prepare for retreats and workshops and speaking events. I used to memorize every single word. And I would be leading like six workshops over the course of two days, and I literally would memorize every single word of the six workshops. You all I do not, if you can just imagine what that's like, right? And then after a two-day retreat that I was leading, how exhausted I would be. It was the good kind of exhausted where I loved what I was doing and I um, you know, put all this energy into it and was so tired and happy. But it was a lot. Now, I got the feedback during those retreats and workshops that people, you know, from my colleagues and my peers, they said, you know, I wonder what it would be like if you didn't memorize everything. Because my favorite times when you speak are when you're off the cuff and you're riffing. My favorite times are when you're just sharing from the heart and you you're making it up as you go along. And I was shocked. And I was so outside of my comfort zone with just the idea of not preparing and memorizing everything. But I took that feedback to heart and I started pushing myself into a slightly more uncomfortable zone. I started preparing a little bit less. I started going up and giving speeches and talks with no preparation when it was like a toast or a spur-of-the-moment opportunity to go speak. And I had done that many times, but I was pushing myself to do that more. I pushed myself to have more of my speaking events, my podcasts, my workshops unscripted so that I could be in the moment with the people in front of me. And I started doing that more in my personal life. I started preparing a little bit less for gatherings with people. I started, you know, being a little bit more in the moment with creating experiences with my family and friends. And what I found is that that mindset has ripples everywhere. When we know that our value is inherent because we exist, when we know that we can show up to a conversation, an event, whatever it is that we're doing, a presentation, and we know that we are valuable because of who we are, it impacts so much more than whatever that event is or that speaking opportunity. And so what I want to invite you to do today is to look at your life and look at where you're over-preparing. Where do you think you need to do more, that you need to prove your value instead of just showing up? And where can you push yourself into your yellow zone just a little bit more? And I'm gonna tell you what that means and give you an invitation to practice this this week. So, what I mean by pushing yourself into your yellow zone is that we all have a green zone that is our comfort zone. That green zone is where we are really comfortable. And the example of this is I used to be my green zone was memorizing every word. It's like if we do that, we know that we can show up. But this speaking event I was actually presenting on presenting and on public speaking, and I was giving this talk and this workshop on it, and one of the people said that their green zone is they could speak to an audience of any size, doesn't even matter, thousands, as long as they are really, really, really prepared. Now we also have a yellow zone. That yellow zone is a place where we're not as comfortable, but it's not terrifying. The yellow zone is a zone where we could push ourselves a little bit out of our comfort zone and try to show up to whatever this challenge is with a little bit of nerves, maybe. It's a little bit outside of our sweet spot. Now we also have a red zone, which is terrifying. That would be, you know, showing up to the Super Bowl halftime show if we're afraid, if we're afraid of public speaking or deciding that we're gonna start cooking and making our first foray into being a chef, cooking a 12-course meal for 40 people. That's the red zone. It's terrifying. Usually, if we want to push ourselves, we don't want to push ourselves into the red zone most of the time, unless we're gonna really prepare and come at it strategically. Because if we push ourselves into the red zone, often we'll prove to ourselves that we should never push ourselves at all. So, what we want to do is push ourselves into the yellow zone and take on incremental challenges that are a little bit beyond our green zone to encourage us to grow. We want to toggle back and forth between the green and the yellow zone because here's why. If we only stay in our green zone, our green zone shrinks. We become less and less comfortable. And this applies to everything in our life. If you're only comfortable surfing tiny waves and you keep only surfing tiny waves, you are going to become less and less comfortable on the size of the wave will become smaller and smaller, or you'll stay in this very small zone of comfort with a size of wave that you're comfortable surfing. If you can push yourself up not to a tidal wave, not to a gigantic barrel wave, but to a little bit of a bigger wave, over time you will evolve yourself in your comfort area, your green zone will grow. This applies to making new friends. It applies to putting yourself out there and talking to people that intimidate you. It applies to not knowing people, taking yourself out on a date, traveling by yourself. It applies to everything. So my invitation for you today is to identify where is your green zone with doing more? Just doing a lot, preparing, making sure that you're providing value, being of service, doing, doing, doing. And where could you pull that back a little bit and expand into your yellow zone and do a little bit less? Where can you show up and know that you're valuable just because you're there with fewer plans, doing less? The end result of my two speaking events is they were wonderful. I was a little bit less prepared and they were better for it. And I developed more confidence in myself to take things as they come. I got great feedback. We laughed so much and great responses to both events. So, where can you push into your yellow zone? And please tell me all about it because I love to hear it. That's what I've got for you this week, and I will see you next week.

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SPEAKER_01 13:06

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