TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Sheri: I know I say this all the time that I absolutely love the guest I have on my show, but today's guest brought the energy. She brought the heart, and she's also bringing you some productivity tips. And who doesn't want to be more productive? But the other thing Elise brought was an understanding of where a lot of you are today. She understands that Sunday night dread in the Monday morning blues because that was her story, too, which you will hear in today's episode.

00:00:32 Sheri: But let me tell you a little bit more about our guests. So Elise and Reiki's is a productivity coach who guides people to breakthroughs in life and business by illuminating what's next. Elise is your guide for discovering and doing what matters so you and your team can take the steps to leap forward to your next achievement. She takes her experience in the operational world of corporate America, the entrepreneurial world of real estate, and the transformational world of coaching to help you move forward with what matters most. You might want to grab a pen and paper to listen to today's show or just pop in those earbuds and go for a walk and take it all in. Enjoy the episode.

00:01:21 Sheri: Welcome to the Discovering Your Calling Podcast. I'm your host, Sheri Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button and join me on this journey toward Discovering Your Calling.

00:01:50 Sheri: All right. Welcome back, friends, to the Discovering Your Calling podcast. This is your host, Sheri Miter and I am here with my, I would say probably new friend here, Elise. We've already been having a great conversation and very like minded so I know, once again, this is going to be a fun and powerful conversation, so let's just jump right into it. So welcome to the podcast, Elise.

00:02:20 Elise: Thank you, Sheri. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I agree. I feel like, all right, we're friends now. This is fun.

00:02:27 Sheri: Yes. Because I know you have a podcast, too, that, to me, that's one of the things I love most about this podcast, is all the really cool people I've been able to meet and connect with around the world.

00:02:38 Elise: Yeah, well, and through the actual live conversations that we get to have for podcasts. But also, we both talked about how we binged each other's podcast a little bit in preparation, right. And so getting to know each other that way, too. So I love getting both experiences of getting to meet so many people, but also delve into how they're thinking about things more through their own podcasts. It's a lot of fun.

00:03:01 Sheri: Yes, I totally agree. So, Elise, share, because we are on the podcast, we want to have people share their true calling stories because it's inspiring to hear that, and it gives people hope because a lot of our audience that listens to the show, they're trying to figure out their true calling story. And when they hear other people's ups, downs, ins, outs, it really helps them see themselves, one, doing it, and two, give them tips and advice in a way that we don't even know that we're doing. So let's talk a little bit about if you want to share with the audience where you're at today, what you do today, and take us back. Where were you when you kind of realized where you needed to head to get where you are today?

00:03:49 Elise: Yeah. So I am a productivity coach and really what I do is I help women, especially who own businesses, to move forward what matters most in their lives, to get feel like they're back on top of things and that the things that really matter most to them are the things that they're making progress on. And that is not where I started in this life. I'm 46 years old. It took me a while to get there. It took me about 40 years to get there, to get to this point. But I did come to coaching a long time ago.

00:04:22 Elise: So I would say my first kind of true calling phase was when I was in corporate America. I was at Microsoft and I had a really great career there. And on the inside I was pretty much dribbling up and dying and didn't have an understanding of why I was feeling this way. I felt like I should, right, like I should feel grateful, I should feel happy. I have great benefits, I have the respect of my peers and my bosses and I have great opportunities here. I'm paid well.

00:04:56 Elise: And I was having dread starting Sunday afternoons and oftentimes Monday mornings crying because I just didn't like the dread was so overwhelming to me. And I'm not a dramatic person. I'm a very calm, chill, go with the flow on the outside person. And so my husband at the time was kind of like, "What's your problem?" Not in a mean way, but just like, "What is wrong? We've got the dream here."

00:05:20 Elise: And so I eventually allowed myself to leave that career and allowed myself to do some discovery, a little bit of discovery work, but really that just turned into real estate. And I went into real estate and within a year, I knew that wasn't my calling either, even though it was closer because I was helping people, like more directly rather than in the Microsoft world . I was doing online advertising, so I didn't feel like I was really helping people very much. And so this was closer. This was closer. I was getting warmer per se for playing a game of hot and cold, right? I was getting warmer.

00:05:54 Elise: I was so upset and disappointed that this still wasn't it, right ? It's still not this. But I knew very clearly not this. And I knew more confidently, and I moved more quickly that time because I was like, "Okay, I can trust myself on this, even though I don't know what I know. Not this," which is a hard place for people to be. So for anybody who's out there, lean into that, not this, and get information from that, because it can help you move forward. And so I spent the last year of my real estate business informational , interviewing, exploring, just doing whatever I could, and eventually, somehow landed in this realm of coaching. And part of that was because of my experience in the real estate industry, where there's a lot of coaching. So that was like, I had multiple steps to this discovery, right ? And I don't know if do you find that's the case for people, too ? Is there these kinds of multiple steps to get to where they eventually get to?

00:06:43 Sheri: I think for most people, yes. I think it is. And it's a lot.  That's why I always say... that's why I call this the discover-ing. The -ing is part of that journey.

00:06:56 Elise: It's a process, This is ever done, right ? Because then I found coaching. I found coaching. I was trained as a life coach. I thought I was going to help people with career transitions because that's what I did. It's like, "Oh, that's what I can help people with." And I joined a networking group. And so I was surrounded by all these entrepreneurs that wanted to hire me. And I'm like, "I can't help you. I don't know how to help you." But I just started helping them anyway, and I was like, "Oh, these are my people." This feels better because with career transitions, it's just a different kind of work that wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. Whereas with entrepreneurs, they have found something that they care enough to put their careers and their money and everything on their time and their family on the line to do something, and they get to make a decision and take action if they want to, right? And so it just was like a quicker pace. It was helping people more personally express their calling to people . And so that was really fun for me, kind of creating that ripple. So I was doing that for years until it would have been 20. What year are we in right now?

00:08:02 Sheri: 2023.

00:08:03 Elise: Yes. What year is this?

00:08:05 Sheri: It's January when we're recording this. So I hope I get a little way on that. I hope.

00:08:12 Elise: So it was probably 2016, 2017, where productivity came into play, and it was completely by accident. I just kind of had this well, it was actually that I had divorced and eventually remarried, and the person that I was with, my wife, was just very kind of just like, "You're so good at systems, and how do you know to do this?" And blah, blah. And it was never appreciated by people around me before, even though I did it for my clients all the time. And I was just like, "Oh, do people not know how to do this? Do people not know how to think about things this way?"

00:08:49 Elise: And so I just kind of ran this random little group for free, this challenge for free, and gathered people up to do this thing. And people were like, "We don't know what you're talking about. We don't know how to do this. We don't know." And I was just like, "Wait. What?" And I had a little breakdown about it after that first session, and my wife just said, "Just teach us." I was like, "I don't qualify. I can't teach you." And she's like, "Yes, you can. Just teach us." And it changed everything.

00:09:17 Elise: And now I feel like this is my calling, is to help people in this way where it's still entrepreneurs, it's still largely business owners, some employees here and there but helping them really decide and prioritize and make time and allocate their resources to what matters most to them, and knowing that that isn't always what society is going to expect. That's not always what the rules will say. The quote unquote 'rules will say.' But for them to get clarity on that and then set up the systems to support them in actually making that happen.

00:09:47 Sheri: I love all of this. So much, so much. And just for the listeners, I didn't know Elise' story, so I'm really excited. I want to go back in before we are going to talk about productivity. So for those about...

00:10:00 Elise: Talk about whatever you want to talk about.

00:10:04 Sheri: I need productivity tips. Give me more of those, Elise.

00:10:07 Elise: We are going to get to that.

00:10:11 Sheri: But I want to tear piece apart some of what you just shared on your story because it is a lot of that typical. And I hate to even say typical like, I take that very loosely when I say that because there is no typical, really, path that we all take. Everybody's path looks a little different, but there are common threads. And a lot of that thread is like telling it is a story. It really is that story where there's a discomfort. You see that in the movies. There's a problem there, you recognize the problem and then we go on this journey. But there's always a danger, there's always an obstacle. And sometimes on that journey you had shared, you tried in the real estate realm and realized like, "Not that it was a danger, but it wasn't the right thing."

00:10:59 Elise: Yeah, not this. Yeah.

00:11:03 Sheri: Not this is just as important to the journey as this.

00:11:08 Elise: Absolutely. I'm so glad that you're calling that out because I know how hard that feeling of not this is. It is stressful, it's painful. It makes you want to just stay where you're at then and put up with whatever is happening. And it's like, no, not this can be absolutely mined for clarity. That's like what you're needing and what you're longing for is clarity in that moment and you can get a lot from what you don't want, from knowing and being really just honest about what you don't want about the not this. But it is such a hard spot to be in. It's not fun. It's not wonderful.

00:11:49 Sheri: No. And it's very confusing like you said, it could send somebody back to, "Wait. What I was doing before wasn't as bad as this," but normally not. Normally. there's a little bit more peace to it, but it could send you back.

00:12:05 Elise: Sheri, I have to tell you something. During my real estate career, my old boss from Microsoft who I loved working with, I loved him like, "Let's have lunch," and was recruiting me back. I had interviews set up. The real estate world was so already like and that was just a few months in. It was already not this enough but I didn't want to acknowledge it. But I acknowledged it in a way where I was like, "Oh, maybe I would go back." And I had interviews set up and canceled them at the last minute.

00:12:38 Sheri: So what made you cancel them?

00:12:41 Elise: Well, logically, what my brain will try to tell me is that in the process, they were like, "Oh, it turns out this position will report to a different person and I thought," and I was like, "I don't want to work for that person." That was my easy out. So that was how I could justify backing out. But I think the real reason I backed out was like, "I knew better. It was like, "Honey, no. What? You're not going back there. Don't you remember what it was like? And it wasn't on paper. It wasn't horrible at all." Lovely people, best experiences. I could have gone through at that point in my career and in my life and at that age. But no, this don't go back. Don't go back. Yeah.

00:13:22 Elise: It was like putting on always… say like this sounds so funny, but I remember as a kid, I'd be swimming in my aunt's pool and you had to get out and go potty, right? Go out and go the bathroom. And I had a one piece and to try to get that wet swimsuit back up again. Never felt good like this cold, wet swimsuit. And to me, really, the thought of going back to this not this place was like, "Oh, I'm going to have to put on that cold wet swimsuit."

00:13:39 Sheri: Weirdest analogy.

00:13:49 Elise: Weirdest analogy, but this is how my cold, wet swimsuit feeling. I don't want that. I know I don't want that. And you do have to remind yourself of that. That's why I'm not going back. Because it would be easy. I know. We just launched our new Cohort, and last night we were talking to the late I was talking to some of the women in there, and it got brought up because there's comfort in where you are, even though you know that's not where you belong anymore. There's still a piece of comfort there that, if we're not careful, could allow us to just stay there.

00:14:31 Elise: It's uncomfortable. It's scary, and that's our brain's job is to keep us safe. And so our brain wants us to stay in comfort, no matter how uncomfortable that comfort is, right? No matter how truly internally uncomfortable it is. And I think that I don't know if this is what you've seen for your clients, but I know for me and some of the clients I worked with especially back in my career transition days, it's hard for other people to understand what's going on because it's an internal shift, right?

00:14:59 Elise: It would be different if you got laid off. It would be different if you suddenly won the lottery or you got sick and then you got better or a family member died if some sort of external event led to this like, AHA, this insight . What's hard is for a lot of people, it's this inside shift that other people can't see, that they can't understand that you are feeling so strongly and people just don't always get it, so then they don't know how to support you. And so that's why having a cohort like you have matters, is that you're surrounded by other people who may not understand your exact situation , but they understand what it feels like to feel lost and maybe alone in this discovery process, because it can feel that way because nobody else understands what you're like, "What's your problem? Why can't you just be happy with what you have?" 

00:15:46 Sheri: You got a good, great job. Yes, you got  a good retirement, you have security, you have a good paycheck, what's your problem?

00:15:51 Elise: You have a job, right?

00:15:52 Sheri: Yeah. You have it all. All on paper. This is what everybody signs up for in the American dream.

00:15:57 Elise: Right. Exactly.

00:15:59 Sheri: So good. Such good information here. And it is that hot and cold. I'm glad you brought that up because the whole piece and I look at it is almost like you're gathering clues. You're just along the way, you're gathering the clues and the hot and cold game of, "Oh, no, we're going to leave that behind. That doesn't feel good. That stays here." "Wait a minute, that felt kind of good. I'm going to put that in my basket." You're just collecting these and then eventually, it starts to form into this thing that feels right.

00:16:34 Sheri: And the other thing you mentioned, and I really want to go here now is talk, because it is your talent themes, your talents and strengths. And I don't know if you're even familiar with Clifton Strengths. We didn't even talk about that.

00:16:46 Elise: A little bit. I did strengthsfinder a long time ago, and I love assessments, so I'm like let's talk about whatever you want to talk about.

00:16:55 Sheri: Well, one of the reasons I love the Clifton Strengths assessment is it shows you in black and white what your natural talent themes are because most of us don't recognize them.

00:17:05 Elise: Yes.

00:17:08 Sheri: And that's exactly what happened with you, that you have these talents of productivity and putting things in order and doing all these things, but you didn't recognize it as a talent, and it took your wife now to recognize it. And that's what happened. The same thing happened with me. My husband was the one that like, "Wait, you're so good at that. That's your thing."

00:17:32 Sheri: Because when things come so easy for us, we just sit and wonder, "Well, why can't you do that? It's so easy. What's your problem?"

00:17:41 Elise: It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal.

00:17:46 Sheri: Really? Yeah, I hear this a lot. Somebody would pay me for that? It's so easy.

00:17:53 Elise: And you see it for other people, right? You can see...

00:17:55 Sheri: Totally.

00:17:56 Elise: Right? But it is hard to see for yourself. I am constantly like, "That's the thing that you're good at, nobody else can do." I can say that to a client so easily. And for me, I could not see it at all. And to be honest, it was something I was kind of teased for as a kid, as in my previous marriage. It was kind of just like it wasn't appreciated or it was a little bit teasy, and so it felt like it wasn't a valuable thing , even though it's what kept the ship running for everybody around me, you know what I mean? So it was this thing that I didn't embrace either because it wasn't always celebrated. And so I felt like, "Oh, I should probably not be too much of that."

00:18:37 Sheri: Right. And I think that happens so often. So often. And not by people who are trying to be mean to us.

00:18:46 Elise: No. Not at all.

00:18:48 Sheri: It's a line that happens. Teachers, parents, spouses, friends, again, can make fun of us no matter what it is like, "Oh, there she goes." Let's talk about that. What were some of the things that you felt like you were teased about when it comes to productivity or that you took it on as a negative?

00:19:09 Elise: Yeah, one of the things was I remember doing something so my ex husband's love language is acts of service and so I would be doing things, but some of that would be coordinating, organizing, clarifying all these kinds of things. And he was like, "Oh, well, that's just because you like doing it." So it wasn't special because it was something I liked doing but I was trying to be helpful. Or my mom would ask how I wanted something because I'm so particular. And I think of myself as super easy going, but she never said particular, but she's like, "You do like things a certain way." And I'm like, "Okay, what does that mean?"

00:19:50 Elise: Again, like you said, nobody meant anything by it, but it was just like their own. Sometimes it's other people's own issue with themselves where they just say these things and they don't realize what that's doing to the person around them. And so it was that kind of just little slight, little things like, "Oh, well, she'll do it because she's the organized one." It's just like these little things where it's like, well, that's actually a compliment because you want me to do it. But you said it in a way where it doesn't feel very appreciated. Very appreciated. Yeah.

00:20:24 Sheri: Right, right . And I think what, you know from the CliftonStrength perspective is that we are born with these natural talents inside of us like God put these gifts in us and this is the Sheri Miter not  the Gallup perception of it all is that, you know, we're born with this light shining yeah of these gifts and talents. But then life happens around us. People say those little things and that light just gets just a little dimmer. Just a little dimmer. I'm going to snuff that out a little more. And by time we're 30, 40, 50 years old, it's been dimmed so much that we forgot even what were our natural talents.

00:21:03 Elise: Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny because my LLC, my original business name is Shine A Light Coaching, and it was inspired by the Mary Ann Williamson quote about shining your light and like, "Who are you not to shine, you were a child of God." You are meant to shine so you can give others the permission to shine. And so that was part of that name of my business, was a calling to myself to shine and to be brave and go ahead and shine my light. But it really was the intention of it was then to create an impact where it helps other people be brave enough to shine their light as well. So I completely appreciate that analogy because I do. I think that, yeah, we come into this world with amazing talents and gifts, and sometimes they get overdone and they don't work out well for us.

00:21:51 Elise: So there is an awareness that's needed, but overall, it can kind of get lacquered over by expectations and like you said, comments and all the things that can happen over time. And so that's why I wanted to be here with you today, is because you're somebody who helps people shine their light and that's really important to me. And so I want to do whatever I can to help reinforce that message out into the world.

00:22:14 Sheri: Yes, I appreciate that. And I forgot about that poem. I've always loved that I wrote that down.

00:22:23 Elise: That was a touch point. That's the benefit of going through coach training and stuff. You get exposed to all these books and curriculum and all this stuff  And that was one of the books that was required reading, or no maybe that wasn't, but it got pulled into one of our training and that quote was like "That's it. That is like what I am." I need to be brave enough to shine my light because I want to give just for myself and I want to give permission to everybody else to shine theirs, too, because I really, truly think the world would be a better place when we all get to shine.

00:22:57 Sheri: Right. And that's totally like my mission on here is that what you just said? You just said my mission. It is about when you do, and sometimes going back, it takes somebody else to see it. Whether it's through the assessment helps, but then you still want that other person, whether it's a coach or somebody in your life that sees those things, we don't see for ourselves to say, "Wait a minute , that's your gift?" No, nobody else does it and nobody else does it. Even if somebody else does it, they don't do it like you do.

00:23:30 Elise: Exactly.

00:23:31 Sheri: And once you start shining that light , it really does give others around. I mean, if you think about a candle, it's so easy to light another candle when your light is burning bright. So other candles, and we can make that glow. And I do have this vision that when we're all living in our calling, we're all going to be so much happier people. I think it really could solve the world's problems.

00:23:57 Elise: Again, we're sisters in this somehow, right? Because with my one on one clients, I do purpose work. So when we talk about productivity in my world, it's about moving forward, what matters most. And there's a tactical, practical component to that and there's systems involved, but there's also knowing what matters most to you. There's the clarity work around that . And so one of those pieces is purpose discovery, and having a clear purpose statement in mind is to foster understanding and acceptance of self and others so that we can come together to make the world a better place.

00:24:30 Elise: And oftentimes I think people can think of acceptance as this passive like I'll just accept what it is and like no, it's acceptance of yourself and who you are so that you can shine and the acceptance of the other people around you so they can shine. And we will make a better place when we come together that way. I really do believe that. I know that's a big hope and it's a big wish for the world , but I really do believe that .

00:24:54 Sheri: Yeah. And I think that's with the talent themes and the CliftonStrengths, that's why I love that. And I always say that have others around you do that because what you just said about acceptance of others. When my husband took the CliftonStrengths, that was such an eye opener. And we have a great marriage, we've been married 36, 37 years.

00:25:14 Elise: Congratulations. That's awesome.

00:25:16 Sheri: I don't go back. I'm futuristic. I'm always going for it. I'm like you. I don't know. What year is it? I don't know. I don't know how my kids are or how long we've been married. But when he took the assessment, I mean, I had already taken it, obviously, it was just such an eye opener to see like, oh, one, we could recognize why he does things that annoy me and I do things that annoy him. But it became an appreciation because we realized that actually those are talents that we have but just sometimes come out in a different way that we don't understand. And a lot of annoyances or why we don't appreciate people is because we just don't understand.

00:25:59 Elise: And I think it's also because one of my coaching friends who focuses a lot on Myers Briggs. And I kind of come from that background a little bit too. It is pathologizing of thinking that they're doing that to annoy you and they're not doing it to annoy you, that is their expression of themselves and it's different than your expression and it doesn't always align. And so it's coming at things without that belief about their behavior. It's like being able to remove that belief like, "Oh, they're just trying to annoy me thing, they're just trying to get under my skin." Sure, sometimes people are being jerks and they are doing that, but for the most part, people are being themselves and they're not meaning to rub somebody the wrong way especially are people that we truly love and who love us back.

00:26:43 Sheri: Right. I always laugh now when I hear that because I used to always say that in my training, and I still do. Most people don't wake up in the morning thinking, "What can I do to annoy Elise today? What can I do to annoy Sheri today?" They're not thinking that. They're going about their day doing the best they can, and we're going about the day doing the best we can. But sometimes because we're different, we don't understand differences that can happen.

00:27:12 Sheri: Anyway. I was doing a training one time and my son wasn't happy to be my oldest son happened to be in the training and his wife was listening and she texted me later, "I think your son does wake up in the morning to annoy me."

00:27:26 Elise: That is hilarious.

00:27:29 Sheri: Every time I hear the all I take is [inaudible] texting me. She probably has it all right besides that. But it's done in love.

00:27:41 Elise: Yes, exactly.

00:27:46 Sheri: So just kind of closing in on that. Just the thought that we started with there of a lot of times it takes whether it's an assessment or a coach or a spouse, somebody else seen and recognizing those gifts and talents in you that you don't recognize for yourself. So if somebody says something again, take a hold of that for our listeners. And that is a huge clue. Huge clue.

00:28:09 Elise: It is like hold on to it. Cherish that. I love the imagery of you saying like you're collecting that and putting it in the basket like that. It's not always going to be the things that you uncover for yourself. Sometimes other people are going to give you those things. You're like, "Oh, gosh, stuff that away. Put that in there and put that in that basket."

00:28:32 Sheri: Yeah. And even if it's the imagery, sometimes it's like I think of  even puzzle pieces because I love to do puzzles. So then you collect all these puzzle pieces and you can eventually put them all together and you can then see, "Ah, this is the thing."

00:28:49 Elise: You just don't have the lid for the box. And that's the hard part. You're like, "Just forget this. I'm going to go back to this other thing. No, keep working on the puzzle." Just get the edges, edge pieces and then we'll go from there.

00:29:07 Sheri: I do want to get, like I said, jump into the productivity piece, but just a couple more questions about your calling story. So we already covered a lot of things, but what other advice might you have for somebody that is just like you? Because so many people today are that Sunday night dread, that Monday morning anxiety. They're feeling that way, but they feel stuck. What I hear all the time . And you probably heard this when you were in the career transition stage of like I know I need to change, but I have no idea what. And we've already talked a lot about a lot of things but is there anything else that you would offer advice to that either you did or that you helped people do or you've heard of people doing ?

00:29:52 Elise: Yeah, what I did was two big things that that helped me were one is I seriously got that Richard Bolles, I think his name is, the whole What Color is your Parachute book. But find something, some way to get things out of your head in front of you. That is the biggest thing. And so whether it is a career discovery book, whether it is taking a class, whether it's joining a cohort like you have, whether it's hiring a coach, like finding some way to get things out of your head and in front of you so you can see them and work with them and discover the patterns and put the things in your basket.

00:30:28 Elise: For me, it was a book, a couple of different books to just help me get things out of my head and not swim around in there so much. And I'm somebody, that is I'm a verbal processor. And so, even though I didn't have somebody at the time to necessarily verbally process with, having a book to ask me questions and then write them out , scratched that itch for me. It helped do that for me. That's one. And two, I took a career transition course, right ? So there was... luckily a place here in the Seattle area where I live that had a course around career discovery that taught a model around career discovery. And it just helped give me peace to see like, "Oh, this is where I'm at." And then I'll get here eventually and hearing here like 

this is where I'm at. And there's other people that are here. There are other people around me at that class that are here too. I'm not alone in this. So finding community, finding a model to just follow and give you guidance and kind of help you see like, "Okay, here's where I am and here's where I'm probably going to go next," those two things were helpful. So getting things out of my head and then finding people to be with that can understand where I'm at.

00:31:39 Elise: And it's not like in that particular case, it was a course that lasted I think it was like four weeks in the evenings over some place in Seattle, a retreat center in Seattle. And that was it, right? It wasn't super intensive, but it was something to help me feel less alone and something to give me kind of a process or a model that I could follow and kind of reference back to you in my journey. Those were the two biggest, most helpful things . And then after that was really informational. Interviewing, getting out into the real world and talking to anybody who did anything that I was remotely interested in and just taking them out for coffee and asking them questions. And I was all over the map. I was all over the map until I eventually narrowed down into coaching.

00:32:23 Sheri: Yeah. And that's actually one of the steps that we do in my Discovering Your Calling program is one of the phases it's getting out there.

00:32:33 Elise: Yeah, you have to get into the real world. This is one of the things that I talk with my clients about all the time. Again, productivity coaching can sound a lot about. There are systems, components to it, but so much of it is about what is the next thing you're going to do to move this forward? And so when it comes to discovering your calling, it requires real steps in the real world. There's a lot of stuff that needs to happen to get things out of your head and to look at that, to inform some of these steps. But you can't stay there forever because people try to play out these movies in their head. My clients do this all the time. They can see where it's going to go. I'm like, "Oh, really? You can predict the future? That's amazing. That's so cool." Yeah, you don't have to do anything. You can just sit here in misery, right?

00:32:23 Elise: Or you can see how it feels. Play that game of hot and cold and take the smallest next step possible and see how it feels. And if it feels scary but right, take the next smallest step. And if it feels scary and horrible, you either don't take another step, or you pivot in this step and you take a different next step. But to me, no matter how big the quote, end quote problem is, or how big the goal is, it's always going to be, what is the next step that I can see you take? I could walk in and see you doing to move this thing forward. And so, yeah, making those steps in the real world. And sometimes it's going to be buy a book. Sometimes it's going to be join a group. That might be the next step.

00:34:00 Sheri: Right. That's what some of the things when we get to that phase, sometimes it is reading books. Sometimes it's following somebody on Facebook that's doing the thing that you think you might want to do. You're not sure yet, but follow them, see what they're doing, see how they're doing it. Think about how would you do something similar, but how would you do it different? Because, again, we all have a different spin on everything. Sometimes it is going if you are in that physical proximity to them, go shadow them, get their hands dirty, go volunteer or go do something.

00:34:31 Elise: People are usually happy to talk about themselves and to share their things with you. If they really love it and care about it, they're usually happy to talk with you about it. And even if they don't like it, then they're happy to vent. More often than not, people said yes to me for informational interviews, and it was just like, does anybody know anybody who and I'm not that person that does that usually. But I was just so determined to figure this out because I knew where I was was just not right. And I needed more information , and I wasn't at some point. You're not going to get the information online or in books, you're going to get that information by engaging in the outside world.

00:35:12 Elise: And it can be hard to do, especially in our, this time now, of so much access online and so much virtual connection. But you can do a Zoom as an informational interview. You'd be like, "Okay, let's grab a cup of tea and hop on zoom for 15 minutes and tell me more about what you do. What do you love about it? What do you hate about it? How did you get there? How did you know?" Almost like little mini Discovery Your Calling informational interview sessions with people to see how they got where they got to, right ?

 00:35:36 Sheri: Because I know people are going to ask this. And you started to say when you were doing these discovery sessions, so what were the steps to set that up?

00:35:47 Elise: Yeah, it's so funny because it was years ago. So this was 2006, right? 2008. So it wasn't the same as now. We didn't have social media. I guess we kind of did it. It wasn't like it is now, where you could really follow somebody and see what they're like. So it was asking friends like, who do you... I thought, I want to help people, so I'm going to find people in the nonprofit world. Okay, so asking friends, who do you know in the nonprofit world ?

00:36:19 Elise: And my husband had... he was a mortgage broker and he had a client that was in the nonprofit because he knew what everybody's statements, their payroll statements were. And so he was like, "Well, I'll see if she wants to talk with you." And she was on leave, and so she just had me over to her house with her little baby, and I sat on the floor with her baby and we had tea and talked about what she does and to found more people that way and realize like, oh, the nonprofit world is huge. It's not about it being  nonprofit. It's about me wanting to help people. And there's lots of ways to help people, so maybe I don't need to just focus there. So then it was like marketing.

00:36:42 Elise: So then I found people in marketing and I asked my friends around, who do you know that does this and who does that? And people would just connect me with via email, introductions to people, and I would just ask if I could take them to coffee. And like I said, more often than not , they said yes. And if nothing else, they just didn't respond. It's not like they were like, "No, I have no time for you. How dare you reach out to me?" They were just like no response or yeah, sure, no problem. Let me know when. And so it really was just asking the people around me.

00:37:21 Elise:  And now there's LinkedIn. Now you can do it in so many other ways. But if nothing else, ask for that warm introduction from the people around you who know you, who want to help you and be okay to let them in to help you on this journey. Because that's how I found everybody I needed to talk to, right ?

00:37:37 Sheri: I mean, today it could be as easy as putting a Facebook post out. You know, that does X-Y-Z whatever it is you're thinking might be your thing. Somebody you know knows somebody that does what you're thinking of doing. I guarantee it.

00:37:55 Elise: Absolutely. Even if it's peripherally in that realm, it doesn't matter because then you talk to that person and then at the end of that informational and you're still interested, you can say, "Okay, so who else should I talk to?" And then you just get to keep branching out more and more until you're gathering things in your basket, until you can find the thing that feels better and keep going in that direction.

00:38:19 Sheri: Such great advice. Great advice. I love that. Action plan. Action step.

00:38:25 Elise: Get out of your head and get to action. This is a step you can go take to start figuring out where you're going to go.

00:38:35 Sheri: So let's talk about some more action steps for productivity. I think this is a good time to kind of weave into that. And one of the things you say on your podcast intro that I absolutely love is that it's being okay with what's not getting done as what is.

00:38:54 Elise: I always tell people it's like a weird thing for me to want for people, but I want you to be just as okay with what's not getting done as you are with what is getting done. And so what that's about is the fact that our anxiety comes from not knowing what's not getting done. We can be stressed about how much we have to do when we know what we have to do. So that's stress. And I'm okay with being stressed. Stress is healthy. It's fine. You don't want chronic stress. But the anxiety comes from not knowing.

00:39:26 Elise: And so if you can get everything known, you can make conscious choices about what is and isn't getting done and be okay with what's not getting done because you chose not to do it. It's different when it slipped through the cracks and you're like, "Oh crap." It's different when you're like, "Oh shoot, I forgot."  And you get that dreaded email where they say you missed a deadline or something or, "Hey, you said you were going to..." like, oh no, or your kids waiting at school and you forgot that you're going to go do the field trip thing or whatever it might be.

00:39:54 Elise: It's being able to make sure that you get everything known so that you decide what doesn't get done. And you're okay with that because here are the resources I have my time and energy I have available. This is what's not going to get done today and I'm okay with that.

00:40:07 Sheri: I love that. And does that mean like shortening than the to-do list?

00:40:12 Elise: Yes. Again, I feel like I have these weird aspirations for my people, which is I want you to expect less of yourself. And what I mean though is because as a coach like you, I'm looking forward. I want my people to be aspirational about the impact they want to have with their lives and the lives that they want to live. I want them to be absolutely aspirational about that and I want them to be painfully, ridiculously realistic about what can get accomplished in a given day with the time that they have. So it isn't marrying those two worlds which can be sometimes hard for people to do. And I just have that weird ability to navigate the big picture and the details. And so it's being able to see like, yeah, when we look at how much white space is on your calendar, these 42 things aren't going to happen.

00:41:04 Elise: So with the 15 minutes here, the 30 minutes there, and the 2 hours here, what actually get done? And let's make sure that those things happen and consciously decide these other things are going to move to a different day or maybe just come off your list completely. If you move it enough, maybe you're just like, oh, maybe this doesn't matter , and it can just actually come off my list completely. And that becomes the conscious thing of what doesn't get done, right ?

00:41:28 Sheri: Yeah.

00:41:28 Elise: A choice. A choice. Instead of like, "Oh, man," like feeling bad and feeling guilty and it's this thing you kind of just keep pushing to the side. It's like, no, let me decide this and know that I can pick it up again later. I can push it off to next year, but consciously decide that and communicate that to the people around me that might be impacted. But no, this is not my priority right now. These are my priorities .

00:41:51 Sheri: Do you find that that's one of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs have? Or what else do you see when it comes to productivity? That is one of the bigger challenges.

00:42:01 Elise: I mean, inherently , entrepreneurs are like, we have all these ideas that we want to pursue and different personality types have different battles with inspiration and ideas and stuff like that . But that's definitely one of them. Is there just so much they want to do? And so it's a matter of like, "Okay, but which one of these things is most important right now? Which one of these things?" There's that book, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papistan where they talk about what is the one thing that if I got this done, would make everything else easier or completely irrelevant. So it's like being able to say, "What is the most important thing? Yes, there's a lot of great ideas out there, but which of these is a great idea? For me, that's one of them.

00:42:44 Elise: That's one of the things that can be a hang up for entrepreneurs, but the one that really gets people is being reactive. And this is for everybody, whether we are parents, business owners. I have an aging mom, right ? So it's like, I want to be responsive to her. We all want to be responsive. We all know that we need to be responsive to grow our business, responsive to the market, to our clients needs and all of these things. But what happens very easily, especially because at the beginning we're trying to get any business we can and get things off the ground. We tip over into reactivity. And so every interruption is suddenly the most important thing. And so that is one of the biggest things that people struggle with is, sure, maybe they get to the point where they have a more reasonable list, but the interruptions sidetrack them constantly, and they actually don't need to.

00:43:36 Elise: But because everything feels so chaotic and out of control, if they don't respond to it then, they're afraid they're going to lose it. They're afraid they're going to lose track of that thing and it's going to slip through the cracks, right . Because it's in there with 1000 other emails or texts or whatever. And so, again, it's getting everything out and into one place so that you can confidently say not now, and know that you will get back to it so that you can stay on point with the stuff that matters most. And to be able to discern between oh no, that is a now thing. This interruption that just came in, it's okay that I'm going to work on this thing right now, because this really is the most important thing I could be working on. Even though these other things I said were important. This really is the most important thing. But not everything can be the most important thing, right ?

00:44:20 Sheri: Right. Totally. And I can see in my own life, definitely the times that I used to be one of those people that had the to-do list of 10-15 things . And I think that's the good thing about getting older, my energy level has gotten to the point I don't have the energy to do. I know I don't have the energy to show ten things well, so my list got shorter and shorter. And then I will say it's so funny and sometimes I think it is our body or protecting us. But I had COVID last year and I had COVID again this year, and it really 'dizzaps' my energy.

00:44:56 Elise: Oh my gosh. Totally.

00:44:57 Sheri: But it totally really made me prioritize  like, okay, if I only have one thing, I had to be very conscious of, if I only get real productive things done today, what is that one thing ? And I wasn't thinking about the one thing, but I wasn't thinking about the book, the one thing that I was thinking, but it was that most important thing and it really made me prioritize. And I've kind of... even though now I'm semi-recovered from that, I've tried to keep that mindset of like, what are the two, three things that really matter most today?

00:45:36 Elise: Well, it's the gift that you got from this. The thing is, we're all capable of it. We do this when we're sick, we do this when we're getting ready to go on vacation. We're like what has to get done before I go. We get suddenly very clear about how much time we have. We do this like I had in 2020, and not even due to COVID, I had two people very close to me die within a week and needed to be out of my business for leading up to their deaths. And then after just to recover, it was very clear what needed to get done and what did to get done.

00:46:10 Elise: We're capable of doing it when we have to. We just don't give ourselves a gift of doing it every day. And we forget how good it feels to know I got the most important thing done, and everything else can wait. Everything else can wait. And then the next day, I got the most important thing done and everything else can wait. And not every day is going to be that way. Things will go sideways, and that's okay. It's like you said, it's discovering your calling. To me, it's about getting your stuff together, getting your system in place. You're constantly going to be doing that. You're going to come back, refresh, reframe, reset, and then hit the next week or the next day or the next half of the day, whatever it is. When you have a system to support you, you can just constantly reset whenever you need to. So we have the ability to do it. We just don't give ourselves a gift of doing it every day.

00:47:00 Sheri: I love that so much. And I think this conversation and we'll have to do part two, where we really just get into more productivity tips. Because I know a lot of the women and men that listen to my podcast that I work with that they're looking for their calling because they want more freedom in their life. Whether they're going to become an entrepreneur or work a different job or whatever that might end up looking like a lot of them are entrepreneurial mindset, but it's about having freedom, and with freedom, becomes stronger choices we have to make.

00:47:40 Elise: It's a double edged sword. But even when you're an employee, it's the same thing. I have attorneys that work with me. I have a lot of different people who are also employees that work with me as well. And it's a matter of juggling it all. Like feeling like they have to juggle it all, especially women, because we have the invisible workload to consider and just being the family household runners a lot of the time, because that's the expectation that's been put on us. And so it's being able to, again, get everything in front of you. So you can make decisions about things, but also delegate things and hand off and ask for help. But know that things are still getting done without you having to be the one to do it, whether it's at work or whether it's at home, it's being able to have that peace of mind that I know everything that I've said yes to. And maybe I need to say no to some things now, but I know everything that I said yes to. I know everything that's on my plate, and now I'm going to decide what's going to actually move forward.

00:48:34 Sheri: And I love that you said that, what you've said yes to, because that's one of the things I say often, too , especially if they've done the CliftonStrengths. One of the themes is responsibility. Just like it sounds. Somebody with high responsibility feels very much that they need to be the one responsible to accomplish this task. So they put a lot of weight on themselves. And my husband happens to be one of those people. And we've talked a lot about this and shown the clients. It's like for every yes, you say you are saying no to something or someone else. So be careful with the yes, because sometimes it's better to just say, I can't do that . Thank you for asking me. I'm flattered that you thought of me, but right now I have to say no.

00:49:31 Elise: And it's okay. Especially as you're going through this journey. Because what can be hard for people is once they get it all in front of them, they're like, "Oh no," I can't do all this. They already knew that subconsciously, they were already feeling that that's why they found me. So there is that moment where it's like, "Oh, no." And so sometimes at the beginning, before you are more practiced at saying no ahead of time, you're going to have to say no after the fact. And that's okay too. It'd be like, "You know what? I shouldn't have agreed to do this. I apologize. It can't be a priority for me right now. I really don't have the resources to do this right now. Let's revisit it in the spring," whatever it might be. Or I just, "No, sorry, shouldn't have said yes." And so there's a little bit of that that people kind of have to negotiate at some point because you just realize I can't do it all.

00:50:31 Elise: No. There's this great David Allen quote where he says, "You can do everything or you can do anything , but you can't do everything."  And paired with that is one I love from Peter Walsh where he says, and I think he got it from somewhere else and I just haven't sourced it yet, but he said, "When everything's important, nothing is important." I think those two things combined are great things to hold on to as you think about how do I want to spend my time on this Earth?

00:50:56 Sheri: Right. So our time here has come to an end, which went by so fast, and I hope that those of you listening really were able to take from Elise's true calling story, take from the productivity tips. And I love Elise that when you're talking about productivity that you get so much into the head.

00:51:24 Elise: Yeah, it's like it's in our way. Like we can figure out how to get stuff done. We know what we need to do. That's rarely the problem. That's rarely the problem. We have to understand why what really matters, have clarity around that so that we can move those things forward .

00:51:41 Sheri: So if people want to follow you or learn more from you or connect with you, what's the best way to reach you or find you?

00:51:49 Elise: Yeah, I love being on Instagram. That's my favorite place to hang out socially. So I'm @productivitybreakthrough there. And then I also have the Dare to Prioritize challenge. So it is where you can go through and go through a process to help yourself identify on a daily basis what really matters most to make sure that you can move those things forward and move the rest of it to another time or take it off your list altogether. So if you go to daretopeproritize.com, you can find that for free.

 00:52:18 Sheri: And is that something they can take at any time?

00:52:22 Elise: Yes. So actually, I'll be running it, I don't know when this is going to air, but I'll be running it live in February. So I'll be actually leading a live challenge for five days in February. But when I'm not leading a live challenge, it's something you can do as a DIY.

00:52:34 Sheri: Awesome. Okay, we will have all of that in the show notes on how you can take the Dare to Prioritize challenge. I love that . Anything else that you want to mention put out there that we didn't get around to today?

00:52:51 Elise: No, I think it's more really like reinforcing some of the things that we talked about . And I think the biggest one is if you are in this discovering or calling stage phase and you are in this not this stage, that you're not alone, that there are people that know how to guide you like Sheri. There are people that can guide you, there are people that are in this with you, that can support you. It can be a really lonely feeling and you don't actually have to be alone to navigate this process at all.

00:53:19 Sheri: No. And that's actually one of the reasons I turned this from a one on one. I still do one on one, but into a group program .

00:53:25 Elise: Yeah. I think community programs, group components are really special and really magical. My program I do as one on one and a group as well. And the group component, there's so much learning and growth that happens from hearing other people's experiences and stories and from everybody getting to help each other in addition to the expert facilitating and guiding through it. So, yeah, I think it's really special. I'm glad that you have that for people.

00:53:51 Sheri: Right. I would say iron sharpens iron and you probably.

00:53:57 Elise: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. This is really fun.

00:53:59 Sheri: Yeah. Elise, thank you for being here. And I had a feeling it was going to be a great conversation and look forward to continuing it with you.

00:54:08 Elise: Yes.

00:54:09 Sheri: And connecting with you, staying in touch with you, too, personally and professionally. So be great.

00:54:16 Elise: Thank you.

00:54:18 Sheri: All right. Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Discovering Your Calling Podcast and we will catch you back here next week.

00:54:29 Sheri: Thank you, friends, for spending this time with me. My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action towards Discovering Your Calling. But before you sign off, just two more quick things. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, can you do me a huge favor and leave a review or share this with a friend. Help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world.  And second of all, if you haven't yet, don't forget to check the show notes to grab your Five to Thrive guide. It's my gift to you. It's a guide to help you intentionally invest in your natural talents so you can turn them into strength. Think of it as your personal navigational guide on your journey to a fulfilling life. And until next episode, remember you've been created to live a life of fulfillment, purpose, success and joy.