Me to We ft. Sue Ryan

If you’re winning an award, you’d think that you’d be over the moon excited.

But for Sue Ryan, all she could think was “what’s next?”

That was a pivoting moment for her. She realized that something needed to change within to truly fulfill her.

It wasn’t until she took an in-depth journey of self exploration to come up with a practice of  how to use her wisdom to help others, rather than what would personally satisfy her.


Key Takeaways

• There’s a difference between the words “should” and “choose.” One of them puts you in control.
• You can become truly self aware by giving yourself the grace of space.
• By using The Wheel of Life tool, you can align your priorities to be in harmony with one another rather than balancing them. This helps you to see which one needs more alignment at that moment in time.

Key Moments

{2:10} “...and it would really hit me that I wasn't able to be present in the moment and enjoy this amazing moment.”

{7:01} “ I did not know how to become self-aware. I had not focused on asking myself what I really wanted. I had looked at what do you want based on metrics of performance in my job? Not what made me happy in my life and where I wanted my life to go.”

{17:30} “I'm on a perfectly imperfect journey. I'm meant to be on this journey. All the experiences are meant to be here for me to have to learn for me, and to share with others.”

More about Sue

Sue’s mission is to empower and embolden individuals to maximize the opportunities and potential change will bring. As a speaker, change strategist, author, executive coach, caregiving coach and mentor, she lives this through two passions of her purpose. She guides and inspires leaders and emerging leaders committed to business growth and next-level leadership to be great leaders of themselves and others. And she guides non-professional caregivers to become confident, balanced, and supported in all phases of their caregiving.



Get in touch with Sue

sue@sueryan.solutions



Share your Story

Send it to us at podcast@jennylynnerickson.com


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Transcript

Jenny Lynne: Sue Ryan, I am so excited to have you here on the Death of a Workaholic podcast. 

Sue Ryan: Jenny Lynn, I am so grateful to be here and share with you. I am so proud of you and what you're doing. 

Jenny Lynne: Oh, thank you so much. , we're moving into season two right now, and I'm really excited because season two is about exposing these middle points, right?

When are these moments of insight that we get where we're like, my gosh, my, my relationship with work isn't working anymore. Yes. So my first question to you is, when did your relationship with work stop working for you? 

Sue Ryan: My relationship with work stopped working for me. Right at the time when I was about to receive an award for having top performance in our company globally.

I was [00:01:00] literally backstage. I was going to be announced in a few moments. Everybody was getting all settled in and all of a sudden it just hit me like, Why do I not feel absolutely elated about this? What I was feeling is I should have done more. I could have done better here. All of these other things and a variety of different things hit me.

One of the most was if I can't be absolutely joy filled with this, something's not right. That must have been a 

Jenny Lynne: powerful 

Sue Ryan: moment. It was an absolutely powerful, liberating, just, you know, and actually the moment itself was joy filled to have that revelation cuz at the moment when you've achieved the very peak of everything, setting every record and all the other kinds of things, and you're not.

Just so enamored with the fact that you're right here and, and embracing it and looking around [00:02:00] and seeing everything and just joy, joy, joy, joy, joy field. But thinking more about what's next? What do I need to do next? What's all the other things instead of being present in the moment. And it would really hit me that I wasn't able to be present in the moment and enjoy this amazing moment.

Jenny Lynne: that's workaholism It is not like there was a switch that flipped that says you're a workaholic. It begins gradually and it begins, it's different for me than anybody else.

Sue Ryan: Everybody's got their own path to it. The things that push you to try harder and do more and do more, and a lot of it's judgment based. And, and then . You want more, whatever it is that continues to drive you, and we don't necessarily explore it until one day we either hit a wall.

We have a great revelation or we do self discovery work and just choose something else. And 

Jenny Lynne: it's interesting what you said about the word of choose, cuz when you think of the [00:03:00] word should, the word should is about a sense of pressure around you. That's creating a direction versus choosing is pressure from within you pouring out.

So what did you find were, where were some of the shoulds coming from? 

Sue Ryan: It was based on trying to achieve something that can't be measured. And you don't know that you're there. You, you know, like how do you know when you've achieved it? How do you know when you're here and why? This Part of why this hit me so much is there are metrics to the record that I had set, X number of dollars, X number of sales, X number of all of those were metrics, and yet the feeling of satisfaction of it was not there.

That's where the judgment, the should I. Continued to drive me forward instead of choosing to be fully present in the moment. 

Jenny Lynne: So was it a lack of alignment then that all of those numbers and definitions didn't [00:04:00] align with what was important with you? Or was there another something there? 

Sue Ryan: It was actually a wake up of like, why am I doing this?

Mm-hmm. Is this what I'm really passionate about? I'm really good at it. But is this what I really want to do? And I had not asked myself that question in my career. I, I would do my job. Somebody would say, Hey, you're doing great at that. Let's put you here. Oh, okay. I did not in my career have a great clear path that I wanted to go into.

Uh, the path that I had thought I was going to go into had been, been eliminated when I was kicked in the knee by a horse. And so the rest of my professional career began and was just being, somebody else was leading it, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. They would say, you'd be good at this. And I would do it and be like, okay.

And I would do it, do it, do it, and do it very to the best of my ability. That's the way I would do things. And then, oh, well you would be good at this. Oh, okay. And I would do it, do it, do it. And I [00:05:00] didn't reflect back on. Where is this guiding me? Is this where I really wanna be? Why do I want this? Why would I not want this?

I hadn't really done a lot of self discovery. I was feeling great that other people wanted me and wanted me to be doing these things. And, and just followed along. So there's obviously insecurity in all of those things and wanting to achieve, wanting to be, you know, appreciated. All that stuff fell into place as part of where the judgment came from.

Jenny Lynne: Mm-hmm. And it's amazing that in that moment when you were standing on stage that you saw it as a positive thing, as a chance for something different. I think, a lot of us, myself included, would see that as a, you know, whoa, where did the last like X period of time go?

So it sounds like when you were in that moment, You were pretty clear that I'm gonna choose a different path now. It was a little bit of a road to Damascus kinda [00:06:00] moment. 

Sue Ryan: It was. I was really excited that I had that clarity and I recognized, and choice is really the right word. I recognized it was time for me to choose the path I wanted and that while this had been a great path, It was not the path I wanted to be on.

If it was the path I wanted to be on and I was meant to be on, I would be absolutely elated. Mm-hmm. And yet I was still judging myself and that was such a great and beautiful opportunity to have an eye-opening experience like that, that gave me the opportunity to shift.

Jenny Lynne: And I have been talking to so many people about their shifts and they are not one size fits all. Everybody's shift is different. The amount of time to explore, especially like you said, you'd never asked yourself the question, what do I want to do? And so here you are standing on that stage, realizing that you're not sure what you wanna do.

How did you go from that to where you are now? 

Sue Ryan: [00:07:00] What I recognized is that I did not know how to become self-aware. I had not focused on asking myself what I really wanted. I had looked at what do you want based on metrics of performance in my job? Not what made me happy in my life and where I wanted my life to go.

And I began a study of a variety of different wisdom leaders in a, a variety of different areas. I've studied neurolinguistic programming. I studied the Enneagram, I studied, uh, Buddhism. I went to, uh, monastic retreats. Read a lot of books, studied a whole variety of different things to understand myself in a meaningful way, and also to recognize that I.

I was listening to myself. Part of where I had not been in my work was [00:08:00] listening to myself, and I wanted to begin the process of really making sure that everything I did came from the place of checking in with me, as opposed to checking in with somebody else who at the end of the day does not live in my body or care about me, and they're gonna be going off to do something else.

I wanted to make sure that I was the leader leading me, if that makes sense. It does. 

Jenny Lynne: It does. And how long did it take for you to do all this exploration to start to hear yourself for, for the first time to really hear yourself? It 

Sue Ryan: took several years actually, I. Because, and I'm still on the journey, by the way, lifelong now.

Yeah. The journey, the journey is just moving forward and forward and forward and it's so beautiful. And I embrace, I embrace the challenges as much as the the exciting moments because I've learned that everything in my life is happening for me and has a purpose in my life and as I really [00:09:00] intentionally focused for about two years on a variety of different modalities of self-discovery and self-awareness, it was helping me to start slowing down.

So that I had the space to listen to the nudges that were always there. And as I reflected, the more I learned about it and I reflected on it, I would realize, oh yeah, every once in a while I do get that nudge, but I'm busy. I don't have time to listen for it. And when I took the opportunity to begin to slow down and listen, those nudges, those voices.

Were everywhere. They were inside me. They, they were inexperiences, they were in people who would call me out of the blue and I would learn about something and I would just see the world differently and it's been absolutely incredibly beautiful since then. 

Jenny Lynne: So I love that you've called out space, because space is one of the most important ingredients for moving beyond workaholism is consistently when [00:10:00] I'm talking to people and watching what experiences seem to make the most impact.

And you talked about it really well. The voices are there, but they're hidden, right? They're hidden under other, more surface level things. What was hiding those? Those the real voices, right? The deeper ones. The ones that had a lot of nuggets to share. Not the noisy ones that like to run around in our heads all the time.

Sue Ryan: Several things that were hiding. Those were, first of all, for as long as I could remember, I. I had focused on absolutely working as hard as I could to be the very best, and I hadn't explored why that was, and I explored why that was. And it came from a place of love, my dad, my hero. I never wanted to disappoint my dad.

I hadn't recognized that was the reason that I strived so hard to do things. And then, There were several other things that revealed themselves to me. One was [00:11:00] early in my career, I was the only woman doing things in an A field where there were a number of men. And I was proving that I could be doing that as well as the men could, if not better.

And as I began becoming more self-aware, I recognized that neither of those, those were external, uh, Types of motivation, and I did not know what motivated me internally. And because I stayed so busy trying so hard and had all these things that I was doing, doing, doing, I wasn't being, and it took me a while, truthfully, to slow down, to give myself what I call the grace of space, to listen to myself, to honor those nudges and.

The more that I began to listen to them, become aware of them, the more I sought out the space. I began doing a program, uh, called Centering [00:12:00] Prayer, which is similar to meditation. It's a more faith-based but centering prayer, and I started blocking five minute blocks of time. I couldn't sit for 20 minutes or a half an hour or an hour.

I could sit for five minutes. And I began honoring that and I began not seeking anything from it. It was completely being and not doing. And what I've learned from the self-awareness part is all of the things for the doing are already inside. We're just not hearing them. And the more that I had the opportunity to just be.

The more the voices were there that guided me for the doing. 

Jenny Lynne: And what emerged from those voices? What were the passions that emerged and how did they look, sound and feel when they first started to grow?

Sue Ryan: I am a passionate educator. I. I am a passionate communicator.[00:13:00] My goal was helping people become their greatest leading themselves and others. And the mechanism I had been using was sales, and as it started to emerge, not from that particular role, I found that coaching and speaking and educating, I'm getting ready to launch an online course, providing ways to help people,

learn from themselves and in themselves and feel better about where they are with what they're doing. My course happens to be, , on family caregiving. I've been a family caregiver for the last 40 years, and it's sharing those things so that other people's journeys can be easier. And so the nuggets that kept coming up were educate and communicate and allow people to step into the vision of what their world will look like.

When they do give themselves the grace to become who they are meant to be. Mm. I do leadership coaching because I, I'm fascinated with [00:14:00] emerging leaders or leaders who are emerging in an area. They have passion about something and they have purpose that's connected with it and all they need is the connection with it to be able to see it in themselves. And there's just that revelation when people get that is absolutely beautiful. And those are the things that kept emerging for me. So now I've got the clarity on what those are, and there's so much peace around it, except there's a lot of energy around it too.

That sometimes keeps me up because I just wanna share more and more and more.

Jenny Lynne: So I wanna talk about that. It's very natural, right? We, we move beyond this kind of state of, having our identity be shaped by work. Yes. But then we move into more purpose filled work. Yes. And as we move into more purpose filled work, that means, We are working harder and our work ethic never slows down or stops and we can sometimes still fall into the same traps.

Right. Of, because we love the work now it's now it's coming from a deeper, deeper place. And sometimes that's good. [00:15:00] Like there is a time and a place, and then sometimes it's not. So how do you work with understanding that relationship with work and when it's tipping towards one side or the other? 

Sue Ryan: That's such a great question.

Thank you for asking it. I check in with myself quite frequently. I am so passionate about what I'm doing, and yet I now evaluate the priorities in my life. There's this exercise you can do that's the Wheel of life, and you can look at the different categories of your life and they call it Wheel of Life balance.

And I don't look at all for balance in my life. I look at alignment, is what I'm doing aligned with where I am? For example, in this season with getting my course out, I've intentionally looked at the other areas of my life and said, I'm going to focus less in this particular area right now so that I have capacity to invest in this area.

And I talk about investing my time, not spending my time. And so I check in with myself and I've also recognized. I call it the [00:16:00] transformation from me to we. Earlier in my life, it was building my container and all of the things for gathering for me, and yet now where I get the most satisfaction is on the we side is how do I take the wisdom I have created the experiences that were meant for me in my life.

And use them to be impactful in other people's lives. And this, they're, the people who don't get this are often the people who are in, for example, a midlife crisis. The things that used to bring them pleasure aren't, and they don't know what else to do. And so the thes, the processes that I use are to intentionally check in with myself to make sure that I am aligned.

And then also when I'm really excited about something, checking in with myself about my motivation for it. Is my motivation coming from the right place? 

Jenny Lynne: Uh, got it. So you're saying, am I motivated from the right place or am I [00:17:00] being again driven by the work? Am I being led versus am I actually choosing it?

Sue Ryan: Yes, and in the, the centering prayer that I do, that's a great way for me to just be in the allowing of that, checking in of that. And if I feel a nudge or if I feel any resistance in any place, then I explore it. And then I just give myself tremendous grace and say, well, thank you very much. And I, I just live from a place of giving myself a tremendous amount of grace.

I'm on a perfectly imperfect journey. Yeah. I'm meant to be on this journey. All the experiences are meant to be here for me to have to learn for me, and to share with others. 

Jenny Lynne: So what nuggets of wisdom do you have for people that don't know their purpose? I talk to a lot of people, and that is where they're stuck.

They're hitting that wall. Like, I realize that I'm not aligned with my purpose and I have no idea what it is. So what nuggets of wisdom do you have for them, for how to [00:18:00] explore different things and allow that to emerge? 

Sue Ryan: I have two ways that I do it. Both of them are very simple and both of them are things you can do like for the rest of your life.

I, I have one part that I look at and I continuously check in with myself and say what fills my heart and what breaks my heart and the things that fill my heart are the things I want more of in my life. And they're aligned with my purpose and also the things that break my heart are aligned with my purpose because it breaks my heart so much when I see them not happening.

So wherever I have a charge. Something that's either wonderfully beautiful and exciting or that it just breaks my heart. It makes me sad. It makes me motivated to want to do something, [00:19:00] to, to fix it. Those are two different. Two different ways that I do it. And it's great for people to do that because many of us are either toward people we wanna move toward joy and away from pain, or we wanna jump into the pain and fix it.

And so this helps us on both ends of the spectrum. And then the other thing, which is a great self-awareness exercise. It's a great thing to help us. And it's actually something I learned from a gentleman named Marcus Buckingham. And the leadership coaching that he does, and he shifted. He said, we, we know our strengths and weaknesses, and if we're not clear on them, we can talk to those around us and they'll help us to identify what those are.

That's one level. He said, the level that is where we're going to have the most impact is what strengthens us and what weakens us. What strengthens us is the things that when we do them, we want to do more of them. They make us [00:20:00] feel good. There's something about them that we enjoy. It doesn't have to be anything that we're good at.

For example, one of the things that strengthens me is singing. I love to sing. I sing all around the house. The only way I would have money associated with me singing is if somebody said, I'll pay you not to sing in front of us. I don't, I can't carry a tuna. I don't care. It strengthens me. It fills me with joy, but it's not one of my strengths.

And then the other side of that is what weakens you? What drains you? What's a chore for you? What, what do you not what want to have in your life? So those are the things that weaken you. They exhaust you. You don't look for, we don't procrastinate in our areas of joy. And again, And I could tell you stories.

I don't wanna take the time, but if we have time at the end, I can share them with you. But, but there you could be really, really great in an area that actually weakens you. And one of the things that many of us who are not self-aware are, and this was part of me, is that will [00:21:00] continue working on something that absolutely weakens us.

It drains us of energy, but we're good at it. And people have said, well, you're really good at that. So we feel like, well, we should keep doing that. The way. Okay. Makes sense. Alright, 

Jenny Lynne: so the way, this is a confession, by the way, for those of you who can't see, I'm raising my hand on the video. I know this is gonna be an audio, 

Sue Ryan: so he's nodding your head and raising your hand.

Okay. So the way that you, the way that you start raising this to your level of awareness, and I actually use a little spiral bound notebook, one of those little three by five kind of things. You can, you can put it in a computer, you can do whatever you want, but it's so easy just to hand write 'em. In the front of the notebook, you write strength bends.

In the back of the notebook, you write weakens and as you go through your day and you don't do this in a day, cuz it, we don't do everything all the time. You just keep doing it over and over and over again. You know, you've, you've got your dog, you hug your dog, that, that strengthens you, you love hugging your dog and maybe like doing the dishes, weakens, you don't like to do the dishes.

It doesn't matter what it is, you can focus on it with. Tasks at work, you can focus on it in relationship. You [00:22:00] focus on it in every area of your life and nothing is off limits. And I remember working with somebody one time and she says, oh, I hate to travel. And I was said, okay, put that down. And then she called me the next day and she said, well, I really don't hate olive travel.

I, I don't, you know, I love to get there. I just don't like sitting at the airport and I don't like this. And I said, okay, well you don't scratch out. I hate travel. You just. Add the, the, the clarifications that break it down a little bit more because this means you're revealing in your understanding. And then over time you start getting a pattern of things that strengthen you and a pattern of things that weaken you.

And then you, you lay those together with the things that fill your heart and the things that break your heart. Those combined are what your purpose is. Hmm 

Jenny Lynne: Gives you a beautiful landscape. It also gives you a very good tactical tool set to help solve very real problems like delegation, et cetera. Cuz now you've got your list of things that you could figure out how to work differently, if that makes sense.

Sue Ryan: Oh, teams that I've had, [00:23:00] Come together. You, you, you come together on a work team and you come together based on the job that you were hired for. Mm-hmm. When I have worked with teams and had them do that, the productivity levels skyrocketed because people got to work in the area that they were most passionate about.

Mm-hmm. For that particular project, not what their, their technical role was. 

Jenny Lynne: Yeah, and I've also seen that happen a lot. I love the example you gave of travel. Sometimes people think they don't like something, but it's actually just a part of something. And really identifying what that part is and curving it out can actually make something that you do need to do more enjoyable too, which frankly can help with the energy levels a lot.

So now comes the fun part where I get to attempt to recap your journey and you get to tell me how right or wrong, I'm, the main thing that I'm hearing you say is it's about choosing your work versus your work choosing you. That's the first thing. It's [00:24:00] about being intentional about where you spend your time, your energy, what fulfills you, your passion, but choosing it.

Sue Ryan: Yes. Because when you're a choice, you're not in judgment. 

Jenny Lynne: Yeah. Oh, I love that. When you're at choice, you're not in judgment, cuz you're right. You have options and you've chosen. That's beautiful. I one of the things in your journey was that moment that you had gotten to where you were quote unquote supposed to be, that in that moment, You were not enjoying it.

Instead, you were thinking ahead about what was next. And that was a, a wake up call to you that you weren't in the right line of work. 

 So once somebody has. Recognize that moment. The next thing you went through was a journey of self-awareness, learning how to listen to yourself, and that took time, it sounds like.

So I heard give yourself grace and take the time to learn how to hear what, what you want, so that you're not being led, but you understand who you are at your core and what's important to you. 

Sue Ryan: Very well [00:25:00] said, and it'll be different for everybody. Each of us is different. And one of the things that can happen, and this is a caution, don't rush the process.

Don't feel like you should. I had a conversation with somebody the other day. They said, I'll take three months and get this all figured out. Don't think you should get it all figured out in a certain period of time. Enjoy the process. Be open to the process. Think less of it as an achievement, and this is where we get back to the workaholism, think less of it as an achievement than a journey.

Jenny Lynne: I love that. So they're going on this journey. Mm-hmm. And the biggest element or recipe of that journey for you, it sounded like was creating enough space to slow down so that you could hear what was already there. Yes. And it sounds like that's a huge part, for people is really to slow themselves down enough to be present in the being, [00:26:00] knowing that they already have the answers inside of them, but probably just haven't learned how to listen to them yet.

Sue Ryan: I couldn't say it any better. Yes. 

Jenny Lynne: And then for, in terms of finding you had a great way that they could find their passion. You had actually like three different tools you recommended. So one was this, it sounds like a recurring process you do where you look at all the areas of your life and decide intentionally where to take from and where to put energy into more so that it's not a perfect balance, but everything is in harmony. Knowing that you only have so much capacity to give. 

And then you gave a really good tip for how to start to understand your passions and there were two questions you asked. One is what? Breaks your heart and what fills your heart. 

So really understanding where our passions are, because if our heart breaks enough to fix it, that's a passion of ours. That's a purpose. And then the last thing you mentioned is there's gonna be seasons.

Cuz once you start working on passion, you're [00:27:00] gonna go through periods or seasons where you do more work and less work. And this is where this exercise about balance and being intentional about it comes in with your wheel of life. So how is that, other than being out of order? Cuz I was out of order, I realized.

How is that for a summary of your. 

Sue Ryan: That was very impressive. The only other thing I'll include about seasons is intentionally focus on the season of life you're in. Check in with yourself. Periodically we move from focusing on what's important to us and building our container to a place where we get more enjoyment out of taking what we've learned and, and our gifts and sharing them to make a, a larger impact in the world.

Mm-hmm And that's the transformation from me to we. I love that. 

Jenny Lynne: I love that. It's absolutely beautiful. Well, Sue Ryan, I am so incredibly glad that we had you on today. You are a gift. Thank you for being present with us and really for helping to start to uncover this [00:28:00] whole process of finding yourself.

And that's really what I heard today. And then more than that, choosing yourself. So thank you. For choosing yourself and everything that you've given to the world. 

Sue Ryan: Thank you so much for inviting me to share. I, I appreciate it and I'm grateful for the opportunity to potentially touch someone else's life.