Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing

#131| Why Overthinking & Perfectionism Are Destroying Your Confidence—And What to Do About It: Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

• Michelle Gauthier | Inspired by Mel Robbins, Jen Sincero, Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, Emily Ley, Shauna Niequist • Episode 131

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Have you ever felt stuck, wondering how to break through your biggest challenges and finally achieve what you want?

This week, my guest is confidence coach Elyse Conroy. Listen as we dive into real strategies to overcome obstacles that hold you back—whether in business, relationships, or personal growth. If you’ve ever struggled with self-doubt or felt like success is just out of reach, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, you will:

  • Discover the mindset shift that turns challenges into opportunities.
  • Learn practical techniques to stay motivated and focused.
  • Gain insights from real-life experiences that prove success is within your control.


Hit play now and start transforming obstacles into stepping stones toward your biggest goals!


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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.

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Elyse Conroy:

The confidence is going to multiply the more that you get out of your comfort zone and start just taking the steps. Because if we think about it, think about overwhelm. Overwhelm is coming from that overthinking, and confidence is not built through overthinking. It is done through taking action.

Michelle Gauthier:

You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former overwhelmed working woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life. Hi, friend, welcome to today's episode. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest, Elyse Conroy. She's a former beauty industry executive turned confidence coach, and she brings incredible energy. You're definitely going to feel her energy through your headphones today, or however you're listening.

Michelle Gauthier:

In today's episode, you will discover some powerful insights on confidence and how it directly impacts your ability to handle overwhelm. You'll learn why confidence and overwhelm are deeply connected and how building confidence can actually reduce stress the five biggest confidence blockers that might be keeping you stuck and Elyse is going to offer a simple mindset shift that will help you stop waiting to feel confident and start taking action instead. So if you've ever struggled with self-doubt, imposter syndrome or just overwhelmed by all the things, this episode is going to give you tons of tools to shift your mindset and start showing up with confidence. Let's get started, Elyse. Thank you so much for being with us today. I'm so excited to have you.

Elyse Conroy:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Michelle Gauthier:

I'm so excited to be here too. Yes, and I didn't say this in the intro, so I'll say it now Elyse has the highest level of natural energy of any human I think I've ever met in my life. You're going to feel it coming through your headphones or however you're listening today. She is so energetic. You can't help but be energized in her presence. It's magic.

Elyse Conroy:

Yay, Brace yourself people.

Michelle Gauthier:

Oh my gosh, start by telling us a little bit about, because I know you've had a whole big career in the makeup industry. So tell us more about what you used to do and how you became a coach and why, specifically a confidence coach.

Elyse Conroy:

Yes. So it's so interesting because I always think back to the fact of if you told me this is where I would be 20 years ago, I would not have believed you. I probably would have looked at you like you're crazy and had two heads. But my history came in the beauty industry. So I worked for 15 years doing product development, marketing, sales, branding all the things for some of the biggest beauty brands in the world. And the reason I ended up getting into beauty was because I was bullied really bad as a kid and I used to seek refuge inside of my mom's makeup drawer. She sold Avon. She had a pink, sparkly lipstick that it just made me feel really good about myself. So as a little girl I had this dream that if I could just make the makeup, that women would feel confident and they would feel amazing.

Michelle Gauthier:

You are kidding me. I can't believe that's your backstory! That makes so much sense.

Elyse Conroy:

Oh my gosh, yeah. So I had no idea that it was going to take me on this wild journey. My whole dream as a little girl was to work for Estee Lauder. That's where I ended up finishing my corporate career. But I wanted to be a bicontinental businesswoman. I wanted to make makeup all around the world, and that's the beautiful part about the beauty industry is, I spent a lot of time working in between LA, new York, hong Kong, all across Asia and different factories everywhere and in Europe, so I was based a lot of the time in Milan.

Elyse Conroy:

Dream come true, beautiful job, loved it. But what was interesting is I never saw this ending. I thought I would finish my career as a CEO or as a VP of a big beauty brand, but in October of 2018, I was on a business trip in Milan and my dad got diagnosed with cancer. So he had been very sick and I flew home right away. We got the diagnosis and I, for the first time in my adult life, I decided I was going to put family first, because up until that point, it had always been career, and I made a very bold decision to just walk away from my role. I had every intention of going back. But when I stepped away it's as cheesy as it sounds I really had a soul calling because I went back to why did I start doing this work in the first place?

Elyse Conroy:

And getting to the top, you start seeing that you're losing the connection with the consumer. It becomes about money and I'm sitting around boardroom tables with old white men in suits talking about retouching women's dark circles under their eyes to make them feel insecure so we can sell more product. And I'm like, hold on, we've got to do a gut check. This is not the vibe, this is not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to offer women more than a temporary solution, because what was happening is they'd wear my product and then it would. They'd wash their face at the end of the night and there goes their confidence and their inner security and their beauty right down the sink.

Elyse Conroy:

And I had to treat this from the inside out, because that's truly where confidence comes from, and I never saw myself being a coach. I did not see this in the cards, but I had gone on my own personal development journey to really help myself feel better because working in corporate I was burned out. I had low self-confidence as crazy as that sounds, but I lost myself in my last job and what brought me back to life was really doing the inner work and really figuring out how to build confidence from the inside out, because I tried losing the weight, I tried fixing myself from the outside in, but it was really an inside job. So I knew I had a formula and I had to get this into other women's hands, and I've now helped thousands of women across the world create confidence and now focusing specifically on career, that is such an amazing backstory.

Michelle Gauthier:

I absolutely love it. And I love, too, that you still you know, every time I see you you've got like the makeup on and you're still all that like. You still enjoy that. You're not like, oh it doesn't. You don't need to have that to be confident, which I'm sure is what you say, but I love that. You still carry that with you like your little girl magic of putting on your makeup.

Elyse Conroy:

It is because I'm an artist and so for me my face is my canvas and I will be a beauty junkie until the day that I die. Like there's sometimes you'll see me and I'm wearing blue lipstick and crazy like pink eyeshadow. But I just love using my face as a canvas and it's a really fun form of expression for me. And let's be real, I'm still as much as I want to say I'm not in the beauty industry anymore. There are 75% of the women I coach are in beauty. I can't get away from it. It's always going to be a part of me. It's really beautiful to give back to an industry that I love so much and really help transform the industry from the inside out, because that straightens a little bit of love.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, I bet it does. I bet it does. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's great. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and I love that you took your little girl dream to help women have confidence. Help yourself have confidence, to help women have confidence. That's so amazing. So you are talking right now to this audience of overwhelmed working women. So when you're saying you were burned out and overwhelmed, we're all like, yes, everybody here knows what you mean. So we talk a lot on this show about mindfulness and people pleasing and how to say no, but I have never done a show that's just purely talking about confidence. So I'm really interested in if you think building confidence can reduce overwhelm. If there's some tie between being more confident, you know, how do you think those two things tie together in your opinion?

Elyse Conroy:

Yeah, I think they are deeply connected because oftentimes overwhelm blocks confidence. And I noticed there's five specific things that when the overwhelm is high, the confidence is low. And what I see happening is the first thing is overwhelm often breeds doubt and doubt is the enemy of confidence, because when we're doubting ourself, we're thinking about a to-do list, right. When we're overwhelmed and that to-do list is never ending, your brain's going to start saying, oh my God, can I really handle this? And next thing, you know that doubt is just chipping away at your confidence and you don't even realize that it's happening.

Elyse Conroy:

The second thing I see is oh God, let's talk about decision-making fatigue and how that really starts to erode your confidence and self-trust. Because the more overwhelmed you are, the harder it is to really make decisions. So you get into that space where confused mind doesn't make decision. It's eating all your energy. You have no energy left to give from because that loop in your mind never closes. So you might have a lack of trust in your abilities to actually even make the right decision and that makes confidence feel out of reach. So that's the second thing I see.

Elyse Conroy:

Third thing is overwhelm keeps us in survival mode Very challenging place to be too, and I think when you're in survival mode, I think of true confidence as being something that really comes from groundedness and clarity.

Elyse Conroy:

But when you're in overwhelm, that your nervous system is in fight or flight and this is really making it feel impossible to feel self-assured and truly grounded in who you are. Next is boundaries right Lack of boundaries. And when we're in overwhelm, usually we're saying yes to everything and not saying no. And when we take on too much, here comes eroding confidence again, because it keeps you in a cycle of exhaustion and self-sacrifice. And the last thing confidence creates calm, and there's nothing that feels calm about being in overwhelm. So when you're feeling confident, your self-trust is going to be high because you're going to be able to trust that you can actually handle all of the things on your list the challenges, the setbacks and prioritizing what really matters. So I think that the whole idea of confidence relating to overwhelm is we've got to just try not to do everything and just trust ourselves to actually just follow through with what really matters.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, yes, okay. So I think I heard a resounding yes, that confidence and overwhelm are tied together, and you gave us five great examples of why that is true. So I love when you said that when is it? When you're confident, you feel calm and grounded. Is that what you said when you were talking about number three?

Elyse Conroy:

Yeah. So I think confidence really it creates that calm, and I actually merged the two words. I'm going to approach the dictionary and have them put this in there, because I like to think about being calm-fident. Right, because when you're in that state of calm-fidence, you're just in a zone, you're in a flow, you're in a vibe, and when the challenges do come, it's not like we fall apart. We actually keep it together, we keep our feet on the ground, versus just flying into the stratosphere with panic and anxiety and then the overwhelm goes to the next level. We don't want to do that. So when you're calm, you're just in yourself, your self-belief is high, your self-trust is high, you're just taking action, you're making space for all the overwhelm to come, because you know that's what life is just going to serve you up.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, and you can handle it. Yes, absolutely Okay.

Michelle Gauthier:

So if we want to get started on building our confidence, where's the first place that we should start? The pink, sparkly lipstick and then what?

Elyse Conroy:

I think confidence is always going to start with clarity. So I have a formula that I love teaching the women that I work with. It is called care, so the formula itself stands for clarity, action, resilience and energy, right?

Elyse Conroy:

So if we're not feeling clear, everything else is going to feel shaky. So we've got to know what do we want? What are we doing? Who are we? Who do we need to be to do the thing? Where are we going next? Right? And I find that women who are in a place of high overwhelm and low self-confidence typically don't have the answers to that question, any of those questions, right? They're just spinning out in their head and they get into confusion and analysis, paralysis and all the things. So we want to really know clarity first, right? What do you want to do next? What is the number one thing on your to-do list that you've got to get done to actually move the needle? And can all the other things wait so you can actually go prioritize self-care, right?

Michelle Gauthier:

Yeah, and I find I'm wondering if you find this with your clients too. But I find that my clients will believe that they don't have clarity and maybe they don't in the moment, and that they don't know what they want and they don't know what they think is fun anymore. But once we get to a calmer place, they remember. I don't think coaching is usually about becoming someone different. It's like going back to your essential self and the clarity that was always there, but it's.

Michelle Gauthier:

It's almost like it's blocked or we're unable to access it when we feel overwhelmed, or what word do you use to describe non-confidence? I don't know what that word is Insecure, insecure. There you go.

Elyse Conroy:

Insecure yeah. Imposter syndrome High self-doubt right yes.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, all of those, yeah. So I think if you're one of those people who's out there thinking, well, I'm not clear, so I can't have confidence, just know that it's in there, like your clarity and who you are is in there, and believe that it's there and that it is possible to get back to that, yes, and I think the one thing to look for is when your brain serves you the answer I don't know, because when you just stay and I don't know, you're never going to access the actual truth that's within you and our brain will just accept that as truth.

Elyse Conroy:

It'll be like, okay, cool, we answered that question on to the next thing and it's going to offer you a million more questions that day. But we want to really get beneath that first layer of I don't know and I like to think about when we don't know the answer to things. What is something that delights you, that excites you, that creates a spark within you, that brings you back to a sense of self? And I know that year after I left my corporate job, I really went on. 2019 was like my eat pray love year. I went on 15 trips.

Elyse Conroy:

I was just trying to figure out who the heck I was, and the first thing that I went back to was a child thing or childlike thing that I love to do, and that was camping. And it was so interesting because I never would have thought, coming from this big career and find the globe, I didn't think that camping was going to bring me home to myself, but I was outside. I knew that that was just evoking this nostalgic sense of connection to who I was, and it was so interesting because I didn't think that that was going to be something that brought me home to myself. But when I got to that point of knowing it was because I knew I wanted to be outside. So what could I do? That was something outside that made me happy and my husband and I bought an RV. We went on all these camping trips all across the country and it was amazing. But I had to get underneath that first. I don't know, because the answer until I started answering things was I don't know, and that's normal for most of us.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yeah, so what do you if your client does, if their brain serves them and I don't know, and they say that to you, what do you say back? How do you get them to go deeper?

Elyse Conroy:

Usually I say I don't knows are not a viable answer in this coaching session. Okay, but I say what if you did know? Because somewhere in you you do know. So I always love to give women their power back when they think that they don't know, because they do know. They just either haven't given themselves the permission to admit what they really want out loud or they haven't gone deep enough to actually create the answer for themselves. And I think that once you get quiet and the overwhelm is low and you can actually hear what your brain is saying and what your gut is saying and what your heart is aligning to, then you can get to the real answer.

Elyse Conroy:

I remember I started working with a healer in 2019 in my Eat Pray Love year, and she's like you have too much going on in your head. She's like I don't know how you get anything done. I'd be scared to be in your head. I'm like I'm scared to be here too, because there was, there was no silence.

Elyse Conroy:

It was like an unsupervised toddler running around with scissors in my brain all day long and I really struggled to be alone outside, and I want you to stare at a leaf on a tree for an hour and I looked at her and I was like you have certainly lost your mind. That is such a waste of time I'm not going to do that. You don't understand. I have stuff to do, like my to-do list is never ending and she's like that's the problem. That's the problem, right there is. You create no stillness to even connect with what your truest desire actually is. You've got to get quiet and I was like, oh, and then I went and started the leaf and she was so right and I'm still annoyed to this day that she was right.

Elyse Conroy:

But look, set me free A real long time though. Yeah, it was a really long time. Yeah, and those first 10 minutes it felt like that could have been 10 hours. Yes.

Michelle Gauthier:

Oh my gosh, that's like I just had this experience. I've never. I had never done this before, but I just tried salt therapy. Where you sit in this room, that has like then, have you ever done it before?

Elyse Conroy:

All the time.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, Okay, okay. So I had never done it and I you can't really feel anything specific. It's just quiet and you're sitting there and you have no phone and you're just, you know, on your own, and it was such a weird feeling. It was 45 minutes long. It wasn't that long, but I the number of things that I thought about and, you know, not from a panicky place, but just like I wonder what that person is doing. Well, I should do that idea that I had, and it was. I kept thinking what time is it, how long have I been in here, and I had to remind myself like someone's going to come back and get me. But it is exactly what you're talking about, where at first it feels uncomfortable and then it was like I hope no one ever comes to get me. This is awesome. I love this, because if I did that at home, I just fall asleep, for sure, yeah, but it was just because I was somewhere different and whatever.

Michelle Gauthier:

It was such an interesting experience. So I guess what we're telling the listener is try some stillness, go sit in a salt room, go stare at a a leaf. I just heard somebody give an example of they ate an almond for four minutes one almond, like chewing, and really noticing all the things about the almond, I was like, oh, that sounds kind of gross, but like something like that, to slow yourself down is always good, okay, so we got the C. Oh wait, before I go on, I usually try to keep my interviews to 30 minutes. I didn't tell you that at the beginning.

Elyse Conroy:

So, okay, okay. So we've got the C. Now what's next? Okay, now we're going to start taking action. Right, because confidence is going to generate with action, and most of us wait to take action, because we're waiting to feel confident, but no courage comes first.

Michelle Gauthier:

So we've got to say that again for the people in the back row, because I definitely think that's true. So many times we will say, as humans like well, I don't feel comfortable doing it, so I'm not going to do it yet. And so what Elise is telling us is take the action and feel the confidence that comes after you take the action. Okay, A hundred percent.

Elyse Conroy:

Yeah, because the confidence is going to multiply the more that you get out of your comfort zone and start just taking the steps. Because if we think about it, think about overwhelm. Overwhelm is coming from that overthinking, and confidence is not built through overthinking, it is done through taking action. So the more steps you take, the more confidence you're going to feel. So just think of one thing that is going to push you ever so slightly out of your comfort zone this week and start doing that, and that could be okay. I'm only going to do one thing on my to-do list and just trust that that's enough.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, oh my gosh, and everyone just like fell over dead when you said that.

Elyse Conroy:

Yes, but to all my perfectionists out there who think it has to be perfect, where is overwhelm coming from? And I just think of perfectionism as nothing more than a protection mechanism from our brain to keep us safe from failing or getting judged or getting it wrong. It's just keeping us safe from a feeling we don't want to feel. So just notice what that is, because a lot of times that in itself is creating so much more overwhelm than actually just doing the thing.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely Okay.

Elyse Conroy:

Okay. So our next is R. So resilience. So setbacks are going to be inevitable, even when it comes to getting through a to-do list right. There might be something where you're like, okay, I know, I have a toddler, this happens to me all the time. I say I'm gonna on his nap time, I'm gonna get through the thing, and then we have a bad nap time, right. So that is normal. Life is 50-50. You're gonna have curve balls come, you're gonna have things that take you out of the game. So I also have a high level of confidence because the two go hand in hand. So anytime a setback comes, just make space for it, choose not to see it as a problem, Just say you know what. Okay, so we're here. That confidence coach on Michelle's podcast told me this was going to happen.

Elyse Conroy:

So what can I do to be resilient and I use all opportunities like that, when a challenge does come, to understand myself more, to learn, to grow, because I really see everything. Everything is really, instead of being a setback as a setup, as cheesy as that sounds, because every moment, life is trying to teach me something. It's not happening to me, it's happening for me. And when I really stopped looking at it as more being a victim of like all these bad things are happening and I could never get the things done. That's when my life really changed, because it gave me my power back. So when the setbacks do come, I love to just use that as a moment of okay, so I failed. This is just feedback that's going to inform my next best success. I'm not going to character assassinate myself. What am I going to learn from this? And then I just keep it moving.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, I love that. Can you tell us an example? Because you're obviously such a successful, butt-kicking kind of person. So can you tell us some examples of times when you have failed and just been like OK, I'm going to move on?

Elyse Conroy:

Yeah, absolutely. So. I went through a really hard return after coming back from maternity leave because when I left on maternity leave, my business was on fire. I mean, level 10 could not have done anything wrong. It was just everything I was doing had turned to gold and I took a year and a half off and I made the assumption that when I got back, everything was just going to be business as usual, and that was not the case. I had five zero dollar launches and it was the biggest slice of humble pie I'd ever eaten.

Elyse Conroy:

And I kept telling myself am I done Like? Did I get washed up? Did people forget about me? Is this over? Did I ride this momentum wave as far as it was going to go? And when I actually sat back and I started evaluating, okay, how did the industry change when I was gone? How did I change? How did everything move while I was gone? And then I started learning and I actually did deep dives on everything that didn't work. I started looking at who I needed to be to make my business succeed in this new chapter because, let's be real, the person I came back as after maternity leave was not the person that I left, as I had grown into a hundred different versions of myself.

Elyse Conroy:

I had went to the, you know, all the way through the fire as I'd gone through that process, as any mama can really attest to going through this and I had to start building my business from there.

Elyse Conroy:

And it was so interesting because once I just got real with myself and I went home to why am I doing this in the first place, and I came home to my why and really just got my feet back on the ground and just let my ego go, everything started working again. But had I have not been willing to see all those times that I fell on my face, that I just embarrassed myself publicly. All of the times people were congratulating me because from the outside in it looked very successful, but nobody even clicked my email link. And I'm over here like, oh my God, you know, and just choosing to not tell myself a negative story about that and see that it was actually happening for me I wouldn't be here now with so much more success I've created more success now on the other side of having my baby than I did before I left but had I have not seen that I wouldn't be here. So I won't fail with confidence. To me that's just. It's just going to be feedback that informs my next best success.

Michelle Gauthier:

It doesn't mean anything negative about me. I think fail that's such a great point, because failing with confidence is like, okay, yes, I failed, like I didn't hit the goal that I wanted and also, I'm fine, let's find out what it is that happened or how can I do it differently next time, or whatever. And I think, too, that you know someone like you who started a business, who has a podcast, who appears like you have it all together all the time. It's good for people to hear yes, I totally failed. I tried to sell something five different times and nobody bought it.

Michelle Gauthier:

And look here, I am super successful because I had the confidence to just keep going. And I know, in my case, like the business failures that I have had well, I've had plenty of failures in life, some of them business. But when I've had those failures in my life, I have to feel that sadness or whatever that feeling is. But exactly to underscore your point of the A, the previous one I can't feel more confident without doing anything. I have to feel confident by taking action, by saying, okay, I'm going to try again, I'm going to do this next time, so just continuing to move forward after failures. Okay, thank you for sharing that with us. I think that's really helpful to everybody listening.

Elyse Conroy:

All right, the E, let's wrap this up. So energy, so obviously burnout is going to kill confidence. It is very challenging to show up as your very put together, confident self if you have no energy in your tank. So I think when you're exhausted, making decisions is challenging. Being productive is challenging and when I think about I used to work 110 hour weeks I was the most overweight I've ever been. My skin was gray. I was flying 100,000 miles a year. There was no time for me to actually pour back into myself. So I was that person that was people pleasing, putting everybody else's needs at the top of the list while mine came at the bottom.

Elyse Conroy:

And now, in this stage of life, I am so unapologetic about applying up copious amounts of luxurious self-care. I have a high self-care game. I don't take any days off when it comes to self-care and I want everyone listening to. Just think about the one thing that you are doing right now, because we all do something where it is leaking your energy and it is killing your productivity.

Elyse Conroy:

And for me, that was overthinking, it was perfectionism, it was complaining, it was just being in a space where I was deprioritizing myself and I think every day we plug our phone in, we charge our cars, we fuel our cars. Why are we not doing the same thing to ourselves? So if you're in a space where you're overwhelmed because you're skipping a lunch break or you're working after hours or you're prioritizing your husband's needs, your kids' needs, everybody else's needs before you, where do you fall into your to-do list and what needs to happen for you to become number one and not see that as selfish or bad or guilty, like so many women are? Like oh, you're just so unapologetic with the self-care. Like don't you feel guilty, you're a mom and I'm like that is why I'm an incredible mom, because I'm actually showing up present.

Michelle Gauthier:

I'm not showing up, you know, with a brain fog that I can't even see through. Yes, yes, absolutely, and I think it's just another example of you have to take the action first. You have to do the self-care first, because if you wait around to see what spare time is left where you're like, oh my gosh, I have an hour, what should I do for myself? Like it's never going to come. If you're a mom and you're working, it's just, even if you're not a mom, if you're working, because when you were working all these hours, you weren't a mom yet and you still didn't have any time for self-care. So we can't even blame it on being a mom. It's just. If you're a person who is pleasing everybody else before you please yourself, you are never going to have the time to take care of yourself.

Elyse Conroy:

No, and I want everyone listening to to just think about the things that you aren't doing. So let's say you have to get your car tuned up, you have to make a doctor's appointment, you have to clean out your closet how much time are you actually spending thinking about those? Because that's eating your energy too. So if your whole idea of being energized and combating overwhelm and you're just overthinking, of course, you're going to be feeling overwhelmed with no energy. So we've got to make that shift. Just do one thing today where you say, okay, I'm going to make this doctor's appointment, I'm going to plan this car service, I'm going to clean out one part of the closet, and just make it easy for yourself, because for so many of us, we think we have to do it all at once. We don't. We can just do one little thing and you will be shocked how much energy you are going to gain by just chipping away at it and doing micro steps.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yeah, that's such a great. That's such a great tip too. You have so many great tips. I love it. Thank you, okay, I feel like we could go on and on, but I have a work specific question and then I want to ask you the two questions that I always ask every guest who comes on the show. But I think a lot of times in the women that I work with, who have big jobs, like you used to have and I used to have a lot of times they will still have imposter syndrome or feel like they lose their confidence in high pressure situations like difficult conversations or giving a big presentation. So do you see clients in your practice who are, you know, in general fairly confident, but they have these specific spots, like a blind spot almost, where they don't feel confident or they feel like they're being an imposter, and if so, what should they do?

Elyse Conroy:

Yes, such a good question. And every single woman I've worked with has struggled with imposter syndrome. Not enoughness, perfectionism, people pleasing this is all normal, because these are all symptoms of low self-confidence. So, imposter syndrome so many people are new to this term, which is funny, because for me, I'm like this is just so in me, but it's really a psychological phenomenon where we feel like a fraud. So I love to use this as an example, because 80% of women have struggled with this, but we don't talk about it.

Elyse Conroy:

It's not like we go to dinner with our girls and they're like, oh, where'd you feel like an imposter this week? So I think we've got to air this out. Maybe we should. Maybe we should start doing that. Yeah, high-powered dinner series of how did I feel like a failure this week, or whatever it is, because this is normal and for so many women we think that we're alone, the only one facing this. You're not. So the women that I coach their director at C-suite level, every single one of them has faced imposter syndrome. So I think it starts with normalizing this and realizing it's not just a you thing, that this is going to come up anytime you put yourself in a bigger room, anytime that you leave your comfort zone, you're gonna feel fear, doubt, insecurity and you're gonna have limiting beliefs come up, and this is normal. So I've gotta de-stigmatize that, because for so many people that's where they feel like, oh my God, this is a problem, and then we don't know how to deal with the discomfort when that comes. So we end up quitting or we end up shop or watch too many episodes of the Real Housewives.

Elyse Conroy:

Whatever your vice is right, yeah, oh, when you're in that space, what I would I really encourage you to think about is who is the most confident version of you and what does she do and not do every single day, and just write that down for yourself. So if you're going into a big meeting and you are thinking of your to-do list and you're overwhelmed by how many meetings you have, okay, confident me walks into the meeting not worrying about her to-do list, not panicking herself with things that are not here. She's present. She's only focused on what's right in front of her. Really, get yourself into a place of accountability, because then you just need to show up as if you were already that version of yourself and that's going to help you become her that much faster. So, normalizing it and then just holding yourself accountable to show up as what confident you would do in that situation. I think that's half the battle, right there.

Michelle Gauthier:

I love it. I absolutely love it. That's great advice and I do think it's so funny when you're coaching someone who's so successful and you find out they have imposter syndrome and, like you said, everyone has that, all women have that at some point in time, and you would never think from the outside like, oh, that person that's like me, asking you about your failures, like you just perceive that this person is totally confident, has it all together at all times and I think it's never true, which is kind of nice.

Elyse Conroy:

Yeah you know it is. Yeah, people are always shocked. Oh sorry, I keep interrupting you go, go, go, no, no, go, please, no. People are always shocked when I tell them I'm a confidence coach and I feel insecure and I have self-doubt and they're like wait, but you teach confidence and I always say sometimes we need to teach what we need to learn the most. So I'm a human being. I have the same jerk brain that says the same thing, like my inner mean girl. I named her Sasha, and Sasha is fierce, just like Beyonce's alter ego. She comes in hot and my goal in this is to turn the microphone down on her and just keep moving, because I don't want to engage with the thoughts and that's the relationship I built with them. Now they come, but I just don't entertain them in the way that I used to.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, yes, exactly Exactly. And I am an overwhelmed coach who gets overwhelmed, and I actually am grateful for that, because I feel like I still know how it feels. I've been working on this for seven years. I can get rid of it very quickly, but it still comes, and I think that's good for us as coaches to still know how that feels. And it just I mean, when you say that to me, I'm like, yeah, you're just a human. You know, you're really good at confidence and teaching people, but you're just a human after all. Have you I'm sure you have heard that saying like, may we all have the confidence of a mediocre white male? It's like all these high powered, you know women who are just killing it and they're like I don't know if I'm good enough. So you just everybody just needs to think about.

Elyse Conroy:

Yes, there's actually a thing it's called confident power posing. It's something I teach, and there's one post in particular called the relaxed boss pose and think of the stock images that you would find of a white man sitting at a boardroom table with his arms back and his feet up. I'm like get into that pose. I want you showing up with that level of unapologetic confidence where you can just be that same white dude in the suit right, bringing that vibe into it.

Michelle Gauthier:

We can hate on the men on this show because none are listening. It's fine.

Elyse Conroy:

We If we can hate on the men on this show because none are listening. It's fine, we won't offend anyone and if we did, I don't really care. Okay, so here are the two questions that I ask every guest on the show. So this is a breathing exercise that is actually from the Navy SEALs that they use in peak moments of stress. So the way that this works is you're going to breathe in for four seconds, hold at the top for four seconds, release for four seconds and you're going to do this four times. So this is a very simple box breathing exercise where it brings you back to what's called homeostasis. So when you're in a high moment of stress, anxiety, if you are going through a fear or doubt or insecurity, imposter syndrome fueled spiral, just bring yourself back to the present by doing this quick 48 second reset breathing exercise. It changes the game for me every single time.

Michelle Gauthier:

I absolutely love that and I second that, and I also love that you can do it right in public, sitting in the boardroom. You can do it right in public, sitting in the boardroom. You can do that and nobody knows that you're doing any special breathing. That is such a great suggestion, okay, and then what's something that you do in order to do less, to save yourself time?

Elyse Conroy:

Yes.

Elyse Conroy:

So I figured out something when I went on maternity leave and I basically evaluated my workload and I cut 75% of the work from my workload and decided that I was going to give the remaining 25% 100% of my effort.

Elyse Conroy:

And the reason I did this is I was thinking about okay, with the energy I have, with the bomb that's coming, that is my baby, I'm not going to have the time and the energy to do what I was once capable of doing. And I wanted to get ahead of this. And when I realized, when I was able to cut that 75%, I realized how much was fluff and how much of what was on my to-do list wasn't actually a priority or a needle mover or contributing to any greater good of success or happiness or wellbeing for me. And I kept that actually since I've come back from maternity leave, because now I'm able to just have the leanest workload as possible but the maximum level of efficiency and productivity, with the lowest amount of overwhelm and stress and that methodology. I feel like you can apply this for anywhere in your life, but for me in business, that has absolutely changed the game for me and I show up confident right to every situation because I'm not overwhelmed by the work that I'm doing anymore.

Michelle Gauthier:

Yes, oh, that's so amazing. I absolutely love that and it just falls in line with, like, the 80-20 type rule. I know it's not exactly 80-20, but just the idea that, like, you get like that 20% of things that probably really make your business run you're doing, you're doing that and then an extra 5% too, exactly, I love it. I love it. That's great. Okay, so where can people find you? If they're interested in listening to you, following you, hiring you, where should they go?

Elyse Conroy:

Yes, visit me inside of the Confidence Lounge. That is my free weekly podcast where I talk all things career confidence and you can learn about working with me on my website, wwwsoulmakeupcom. And definitely come hang out with me on LinkedIn. At Elise Conroy it's E-L-Y-S-E-C-O-N-R-O-Y. It at Elise Conroy it's E-L-Y-S-E-C-O-N-R-O-Y. It is my favorite place to be. I am building the most beautiful community of women who want to build career confidence and overcome that hideous imposter syndrome and perfectionism. So come join me there.

Michelle Gauthier:

I love it. Okay, let's just talk about LinkedIn for a second, because I feel like, especially after having a corporate job for a long time, that's like the place where I never go hang out for fun things. I'm so excited that you have a fun, cool community on there. I'm going to come hang around your area of LinkedIn.

Elyse Conroy:

Please do, because I want to make LinkedIn a funner, more pink, sparkly place.

Michelle Gauthier:

You know I love fun and pink. That's perfect.

Elyse Conroy:

Yes, yeah. I feel like I'm totally that psycho who enjoys LinkedIn over any other social platform, because I'm so obsessed with success and business, so I enjoy LinkedIn over Instagram. It's like embarrassing to admit out loud.

Michelle Gauthier:

Oh my gosh, You're the only person I've ever heard say that I love it, but you're kind of making me want to like Instagram now. So I mean, you're making me want to like LinkedIn now. So good job, okay, thanks for being here. Thank Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegothiercom. See you next week.

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Michelle Gauthier

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