You Are Not Alone - Work Edition
Join us as HR and Leadership professionals discuss the challenges of work and ways they have found to muddle through. We laugh, we cry, we get real.
You Are Not Alone - Work Edition
The Invisible Effects of Emotional Labor
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In this episode, Ruhana Hafiz, a Bangladeshi-born, Harvard MBA-trained, mother of teenage twins, leadership coach, and former senior official in the U.S. intelligence community, shares her insights on emotional labor, navigating multiple identities, and building resilience across cultures and roles. Discover practical strategies for managing invisible emotional work and embracing authenticity in personal and professional life
Key topics
- Emotional labor and its impact
- Cultural and societal expectations
- Authenticity and self-awareness
- Strategies for resilience and self-care
- The role of faith and community in emotional strength
Takeaways
- Emotional labor is ongoing and unavoidable for most people.
- Authenticity can reduce emotional fatigue and empower others.
- Building a support system is crucial for managing emotional labor.
- Framing emotional work as a gift can transform its perception.
- Self-awareness and humor are powerful tools for resilience.
Guest name
Ruhana Hafiz
Keywords
emotional labor, resilience, cultural identity, leadership, authenticity, mental health, diversity, inclusion, self-awareness
Get In Touch
Thanks so much for spending this time with us. We’d love to hear what resonated, what challenged you, or what you’d like us to explore next.
You can connect with Joshua on LinkedIn here and with Emily here. You can also learn more about Emily's work at alocoaching.com.
Until next time, take care.
All right. Hey everyone. So today we have Rohanna with us, Rohanna Hafiz joining us, and Emily's going to introduce her, but we are so excited to have her with us today. As you know, it's Emily and I, so you know we're going to hit on some really cool stuff today. Today, specifically emotional invisible labor and what the concept of that is, the impact of that is, how to navigate and work through it. So, Emily, if you'd like to introduce.
SPEAKER_00I'd love to. So I am very excited to introduce Rohana. So, Rohana Hafiz, she is a leadership coach and former senior official with 15 years in the US intelligence community, including director-level roles at the National Counterterrorism Center, where she built the agency's first ED celebration and led partnerships across federal, private sector, and international stakeholders. She is Bangladeshi born, Harvard MBA trained, and a mother of teenage twins. So she's definitely going to have some input on this topic for us. And she has spent her career navigating the layered emotional work of leading across cultures, genders, and institutional power. She now coaches senior professionals through transitions and she writes about resilience, identity, and what it takes to remain whole while showing up for others. And she is a fantastic writer. So I highly recommend everyone who has her content. So Rohana is joining us today because emotional labor for her is not an abstract topic. It's the through line of every room that she has ever entered. So without that, let's kick things off and get started.
SPEAKER_04Rohanna, the the first question I have for you is when you heard this topic, when you heard the title of the topic, when you heard that you were being asked to speak, what was the first thing that that ran into your mind? First thought, no filter, like how did that topic, what was the immediate emotional response to that topic?
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Emily, for that wonderful introduction. And Josh, really pleased to meet you. Happy to be here. And thanks for giving me a real curveball as your first question. Um I think my first thought was had you asked me this question when I was 26 versus 46, I wouldn't know what to say. So to me, so much of emotional labor, invisible labor, the cost of being authentic and the cost of not being authentic is something we learn over time as we live through lived experiences. So I probably have some things to say now that I may not have had earlier.
SPEAKER_04No, that's perfect. That's the thing with wisdom and those lived experiences, right? They they inform. I don't think there's a single question that I would answer at 26 that I would answer now at 39. I hope not. And I would challenge myself to have grown a little bit in those past 13 years. Thank you so much for that answer. And Emily, I want to make sure that I have a space for you to ask too. But there was there was one question, another question that I really wanted to ask right off the bat before we dig in. And that is in your experience, when you find the room, when you find the atmosphere, when you find the the job description, when you find the day-to-day, is adding on task to you, right? When you when you start feeling that load, when you start feeling that labor work even at home, right? Because I know even as a husband, I can sometimes provide a little more labor that I'm not seeing to my wife than I intend to, right? In your experience, has that load that's been put on you, do you find it it's been more out of ignorance than maliciousness? Which one do you think is more damaging or does it even matter?
SPEAKER_01Go with ignorance, sort of fortified by cultural and societal expectations. Because none of us really work as individuals. We are part of a community or a society or a nationality or a tribe. I mean, pick your word, right? So if I think of emotional labor, I mean, I started doing that at seven years old, as the youngest child in my family, where my elder siblings were not really um hitting it out of the park at school. And my parents would come to me and say, Well, you somehow have to carry the family honor. I didn't understand what the word family honor meant at seven. I translated that into have to get straight A's and not put one toe out of line and do five different lexicular activities, so my parents would be okay. So I didn't know it then, but my parents, with their faith in me, which is the positive, was putting emotional labor on me, which is the negative. So when you say it's ignorance or malice, I think for me, as a from a you know, a South Asian Muslim immigrant woman in this country right now, it's more ignorance, but ignorance can also not be fully innocent. So as you go through different rooms as a child, as a student, as a as a grad student, as a first-time employee, as a seasoned manager, if you are the sort of person who's self-aware and starts paying attention to how you show up and how you're received and what sort of labor is being performed by you and everyone else in the room, you start putting the piece of the puzzle together.
SPEAKER_04That's awesome. Thank you. How do you to the topic of that? Because listen, I know, I know every family dynamic. Sorry, Emily knows me. I like once I once I see a thread, I'm gonna pull. Talking about that, I mentioned my wife just a moment ago. You're talking about the family dynamic, right? How did some of those learned behaviors growing up, how does this show up in your marriage?
SPEAKER_01Whoa, I'm glad my husband's not anywhere near. I've actually seen it.
SPEAKER_04I don't think he listens, if that's okay.
SPEAKER_01I don't, I don't think he's I'll make sure he doesn't listen to this one. Um so here's the thing, right? I feel that so many of us, and I definitely subscribe to that, who multi-layer, very complex identities at any given time. I'm never just a daughter or a daughter-in-law or a wife or a mother or a friend or an employer and manager. I'm all of those things, like most of us at any given time. The question becomes at this particular moment, which role am I playing? Which role is being demanded of me the most, and how much of myself I can bring to it. So, what has been fascinating for me is even though I feel I have broken so many taboos and done some adventure things coming from my background, I have never been able to shake off certain labels or expectations that let me be in those rooms. Let me explain that. So my parents sent me to the only Catholic school in a Muslim-majority country like Bangladesh, because that was the best school. It was an English school when I sat next to boys wearing skirts. My grandmother stopped talking to my, my paternal grandmother stopped talking to my mom when she did that. Mom was like, don't care. Best school, my daughter got in, she's gonna go. So, in a way, though, and I think of it now, she was carrying that emotional labor of being ostracized by her in-laws because of the decision she took for her daughter, right? What did that also tell me? You can do this, but don't think you can go out with boys and go to prom. No, no, no. There are limits, right? So there are sort of set standards in which you play. And that was very clear to me. So, sure, I mean, you should try to go abroad. My grades got me into London School of Economics, but please understand you're going there to study, you're not going there to party. You're not going there to discover nightlife in London. So that's the labor part of it that is almost unspoken but very real to me. And now put this in America, right? When I come to America and I have a certain standing in elite Bangladeshi American Muslim circles where we give dinner parties and we wear ethnic clothes and we have a number of families that we mingle with, I have a very different personality there. I almost call that breeziness, that emotional labor of being pretty but not too pretty, of being smart but not proud, of being able to cook 10, 15 dishes by myself from scratch for a Saturday night dinner. But when my people come, oh, it's nothing. You know, we all do that. And we all cook 15 dishes every Saturday. So there's that charade that we play in marriage, in society. And so, as a wife, to bringing this to the question you asked, I can be a kick-ass executive in the hallowed halls of the counter-terrorism center where I am looking at documents that only my clearance allows me to do. But when I come home, there are certain expectations from my husband and my children that I am complicit in that I provide that sort of dinner, that I'm there for them emotionally, physically, to do all the roles they expect me to do. Constant switching and recognizing what it is that you're doing.
SPEAKER_04Do you find that switch, the switching between the roles to add to an element of trying to find the exact word here, but do you feel like it adds to that element of fatigue? Like, do you feel that switching to be hard? Or do you feel that switching to be a moment of a break, right? Like, oh, I can I can turn this part off because that part was very exhausting, and I can turn this on, and this one fills my cup a little bit more.
SPEAKER_01It's a great question, Josh. I would say both. So there are definitely times, and again, it comes to your life stages. When the kids were much younger, I loved going to work because I had a chair that was dedicated to me without anyone hanging off my body physically. So that was label, right? But the labor I perform for my children now is less physical. Sure. I mean, driving them around and the cooking and all that, but it is so much more emotional, like holding them, holding their safe space. And I look to come back to that about, you know, especially the children and the emotional labor later. But to your point, I think I'm very comfortable code switching. It's something I've always done innately, and that's partly because I've lived on three different continents. You know, I speak three, four languages seamlessly. And so this constant going back and forth between cultures and faiths and language and situations, it's very, very normal for most aware, acclimatized immigrants, I think, in this country, which might be a little different from someone who may not have ventured too far, right? And the fatigue is real. What I will say though is now I want to almost choose the emotional labor. So what fatigued me before can rejuvenate me because I'm paying attention to what muscles they're building. So before, emotional labor would just be exhausting, but now I choose how authentic to be in different situations. And so I build a certain skill set from that. And you do go through a lot of pain to gain something. I try to focus more on the gift than the fatigue now. On my best. Yes.
SPEAKER_04So that that was an incredible answer. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I know there were some other things that you had mentioned there that we'll pull on a little bit later, but to not hog the time, Emily, please let me hand it off to you for a second.
SPEAKER_00If there's any questions that you have, just having a fantastic experience just listening to the conversation. Um, Rohanna, I would love to hear because you have such an incredible background. You have moved from different countries, you have been educated in different countries, you're raising children, you've worked in different environments. In your experiences or the experiences of those you work with, how would you say that you find this emotional labor showing up for people? How does that influence either your life or the individuals you work with, their lives?
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Emily. You know, the American Psychology Association defines emotional labor as having to show up in a certain way because the job or the situation demands it. I would like to add something to that. To me, emotional labor is the work of being who others need you to be, but without losing who you actually are. And that's something I've learned over my life. And it there's a cost to all of this, but I think I'm gonna go back to what I just said. If I'm able to look at this as something that also gives me something in return, I try to make it about uh a lesson in self-awareness, self-rejuvenation, but self-enhancement. So when you talk about different countries, I left Bangladesh to go to London at 18. That was extremely hard to be in a country that I didn't know a lot of people, away from my parents, my support system, thrust in an educational system that I did not grow up in. So you have so much anxiety and trauma, and then you find your resilience. So my attitude generally is if it's really tough, I'll probably learn something from it. I don't know why. I tend not to get flustered or scared or awed by too much. And maybe that is why, you know, after Harvard, of all the job options that there were there, I chose to go into the FBI. And I was the only person in my 900% class graduating from HPS in 2010, then joined the government. But to be working in a post-9-11 atmosphere in the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, DC, where I probably was, you know, I was maybe the only Muslim colleague most of my agent and non-agent colleagues had the privilege of communicating with. I took that very seriously. Was it a lot of emotional labor? Absolutely. Was it a gift? Did God give me this chance to be a sort of brand ambassador for my faith, for my for my race, for my identity? I I took that as a gift. So, I mean, let me give you an example. The FBI had recently gone through this whole strategy refresh. It was a bubble chart, flow chart, strategy, goals, milestones, you know, all of that. I just got an MBA from Harvard and I couldn't make sense of it. So I'm gonna put it this way. And my first boss said, you know, Hannah, I'm sorry to do this to you, but you have to be teaching this whole strategy chart to about a hundred agents over the next couple of months, do sessions and figure out. So I want everyone to understand what this is. I said, Oh my God. So I schedule one-hour session, 10 agents at a time, and I do this and I get better at it. I explain what is strategy, why we need it. You know, you just can't spend $9 billion, 40,000 people without having goals and you know, evaluations and all of that good stuff. And I remember this clearly, this 16 years ago. This really tall, very impressive agent comes to me and says, with his friends around him, he says, Rahana, I want to tell you something today. I said, Yes, sir. I just learned it to say sir and ma'am. I'd never knew all of that stuff before. I said, Yes, sir. He said, I have been working in this FBI for 15 years now. I said, Okay. He said, it finally took a foreigner with an accent to explain strategy to me. And I think I get it. I think I get it. So it was like a stunned silence, right? In the whole room. And so here's my choice. And I think that defines me as a person. I could feel insulted, I could just go quiet, I could just say thanks and move on. There's so many things I could have reacted to. And I think I did something that was very authentic in me. I said, I think in your way, you're trying to pay me a compliment on the work that I just did, and I'm just gonna take it as such. Thank you for your attention. And the room burst into applause just spontaneously, because for me, it's yes, there is labor, there is indignity sometimes, there is ignorance sometimes, there is perhaps even malice sometimes, misunderstanding sometimes. But as humans, when we try to build the bridges and form a partnership and try to meet someone halfway, one-third of the way, we get to a better place than not. And I would always rather do that than not. And that's how I think I move through rooms where I'm expected to be a lot of different things trying to hold my authentic self.
SPEAKER_04You hit on something when you were talking through that. As you were talking, I was like, oh, I gotta ask her this. A lot of people get frustrated, or a lot of people of color, like that I've had conversations with, that I've had the uh privilege and blessing to work with. You know, one of the biggest things is they have this aversion to being a monolith, right? They are the ambassador to adjective, right? They are the ambassador to descriptor, right? And for them, talking to them, a lot of it was, and this comes back to that emotional labor, they kind of they scorned the emotional labor that came with having to represent a group through their actions, through their thoughts, you know, through their faith, through their feelings, you know, so it's interesting when I hear you talk about choosing that as a blessing and a gift, right? And do you think having that mindset where I'm going to adopt and everyone is different, right? I'm not I'm not asking you to speak for everyone, despite the fact the topic is literally on that right now. But do you find that because you said I I will accept this burden that you found it to be able to be more authentic, that you found yourself able to move through through these rooms in a better way, because something that people were going to automatically put on you already, you just kind of accepted and and leaned into, if you will.
SPEAKER_01100%, Josh. I think you said it very articulately. For me, it took me a while. So my first few months at the Bureau were fraught, right? They looked at me as this elite person, come down from HPS, trying to teach them how to be efficient, but I know nothing about nothing. And they were right. And I was trying to fit in. I was trying to fit in and learn their ways and learn how to be in a very male-dominated, sometimes blue-collar military law enforcement organization. I had never even met these people doing this amazing work in my home country. So it was such uncharted territory for both of us, right? Me and my colleagues. And I was very quiet the first few months, and I realized that wasn't getting me anywhere. It is when I started being myself and owning the identity they were putting on me, anyways, as you so clearly put it, that the conversation started changing. When I realized that I'm going to be the only person who looks like me and sounds like me in these conference rooms for a very long time, anyways. So might as well just really get comfortable and proverbial, you know, get your bag of chips and whatnot and just settle in for the ride, it changed. When I started seeing as a Muslim immigrant to the US, people would look at me because they didn't expect me to say that out loud in a meeting. Like, who says that? Right? So, and then what happened was once and twos, people started seeking me out in the corridors, in the women's belt rooms. So, Nina, I heard what you said. I just wanted to ask you this question about Muslim women and why you don't cover your head. Does that mean you're not a real Muslim? I said, thank you for asking me that I wasn't insulted. You know, I mean, on my snarky day, I may have said, well, there's only two billion of us. Obviously, we're all exactly the same, but no, I didn't say that. Did say, thank you for asking me that. Let me explain where I come from and who am I? I'm just one of many people you may meet who share the same faith. It was an absolute gift to me, and I never saw that as a burden. And here's what I talk about building muscle. What it made me realize is growing up as brown or liberal and Muslim in Bangladesh, I did not think about my faith. You learn it so much by osmosis. My parents didn't sit me down and do all of the stuff that I'm doing with my kids because they're growing up in a non-Muslim nation. I am so much more involved in the Islamic education than my mom was. I just picked stuff up. But when I joined the FBI, I started researching my faith. I actually started reading books. I made myself knowledgeable so I would be able to answer questions as accurately as I could or point them to the right sources. Because when you are making a decision about how to go to a mosque and engage with the Imam in Washington, DC or New York City, and I'm the only Muslim in the room, I am de facto the authority to tell you, no, it is really important you leave your shoes outside the mosque. It is really important if a female special agent goes that she covers her head. It's really important that, you know, you don't necessarily shake hands unless it's offered. Small things and big things. And I thought it was an absolute blessing for me to be in that place at that time to do the very little I could to build that partnership. Because my life's work, whether I was a news presenter or a French teacher or marketing executive at Nestle Bangladesh or an executive at FBR MCTC, it's about building partnerships between people. So we come closer for solutions that serve the common good. That is my life's work. Wow, that's not cheap. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04No, that's I love that. That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00Because it's you've taken such an incredible approach to, you know, being the only in an environment, the only, you know, whatever it is, woman, person of a specific religion or um, you know, minority, anything that oftentimes, like Joshua was saying, just can be so can be so much weight, and it's not always something that we want to take on. And then I'm just trying to think about like, how does that play out over time? You mentioned earlier at the beginning about learning to be authentic along the way. How does it play out if you are authentic versus aren't authentic when you're navigating the emotional labor of any situation?
SPEAKER_01Earlier, when I thought a lot about who am I and how I'm bringing myself into a room, the fatigue was more. As I've gotten older, wiser, more responsibility, managing larger teams, I realized when I give myself the license to be authentic, the emotional labor is less. But very importantly, I am then empowering my colleagues and the people I have the privilege of leading also. To bring their more authentic selves into the room. And that is a very, very important point to me. Because if I cannot show up as an authentic leader, if I cannot create psychologically safe spaces for people to be themselves, I will not be able to help them perform to their best ability because we all bring emotional labor to work, right? We all have lives outside. Let's just take the professional context for a second. I'll come back to being a mom leader. We all have a life before we come into the work building. Like for us, it's always obviously on site, but work is work, whatever you're doing it from. And there's a very big fuller life when you shut down your laptop and you go back to your life. So in between, whether it's four hours or eight hours or 12 hours, that is a version of you. That's not the full version of you. So if you have someone you're worried about at home, if you're a caregiver, for example, whether it's your parent or your spouse or your child or someone else, and you somehow tell yourself, it doesn't matter. I will just repress that thought for eight hours, I'm going to be wonderful and whatnot. Is that actually possible? Or is it possible over the long term? What's the cost you're paying? So, what I started doing as I started moving up to the ranks, but also as a person, is without weighing things down, I would bring my life into the conversation and I would be very open about it. That, you know, my twins are sick. I'll be leaving early tonight. And this is what we need to do. Let's put the uh the plan in place. Who's going to be covering this? What can we not drop through the cracks? I mean, these are tough organizations with stressful situations, right? Obviously. So when you are honest and you show up, I think you help others also bring their emotional labor to the forefront and work on it together. You know, in my last job, had my my desk face the door. So if I'm just like this, people would see me working at my computer. So they were facing the back of my desktop. I printed a gigantic poster that says, asking for help is a sign of strength. And I just put it, and my door was always open. I'm an open door manager. So anytime anybody would walk in, they're seeing that multiple times a day. Because I realized so many of us, the emotional labor we carry into work is somehow I have to figure this out on my own. I have to show up analytical, efficient, you know, very proficient in these skills. I have to have a solution. I have to go with my manager with always a solution. I cannot bring problems. I have to be cheerful, I have to be the colleague people want to hang up with, etc. Name it. But what I was trying to do in my own small ways, I can say to some people, some people will hear it, some people will read it. But I was making it clear that when you come to me, I expect you to be just yourself. Like if you have a problem and not an unpolished version, just come. And people who wouldn't normally come to me started coming to my office because they told me we saw that asking for help is a sign of strength. We've never seen that. In these IC communities, you don't say that. You're supposed to be an expert of bioweapons or domestic radicalization. Take your topic, violent crime. You should know it. How dare you say you don't? So I think when you take this emotional labor and the myth of it apart, you're doing something bigger for your community. And that's what drives me, honestly. So, which makes the labor more of a gift I choose.
SPEAKER_04Thank you for that. It's incredible. And I love that you know, we talked about the beginning, like any anytime I hear a servant's heart, I'm gonna get excited, right? So I think that's absolutely incredible. What you've done, I was as I was listening to that, we talk about what an open door policy is, right? Open door policy being the motif of the door is open, come on in. The door was open and no one was coming in, right? So, like the open door policy isn't the thing, right? What you did when you created that banner, that poster, was create a psychologically safe space where yes, I have an open door, but that open door doesn't imply invitation. And so when you put the poster up, now you're inviting that in. And I think that is fantastic. And I and then you hit on a couple of things that are near and dear. I I as a person of faith myself, as a person who understands what that upbringing looks like, your upbringing, you know, is is very is similar in some ways, very, very drastically different in others. Being a having your upbringing, right? Having coming from the, you know, coming from the time place in the world that you did with the faith that you had, did you find it harder or or was that empowering for you to speak up when you have a need? Or did you have to somehow learn how to reconcile those things when you needed to ask for help?
SPEAKER_01I did not know too much about other faiths. I knew that more theoretically, perhaps. Bangladesh just have a sizable Hindu population. And I have to take a moment here to talk about my mom because I think who am I as a person has been disproportionately, hopefully positively shaped by an extraordinary woman. May God rest your soul in peace. But I cannot really talk about my values without talking about my parents, but really my my mom is more accessible to me. She's the person who read the Bible and the Torah in Bengali 40 years ago in Bangladesh. She's the one who would take me to the Diwali festival. She would make sure there was always cake on Christmas, which Americans obviously do not know, but Christmas is a federal holiday in Bangladesh. So I grew up in a household where non-judgmental compassion and respect for all faiths and culture was part of our vocabulary. But I really got to practice that when I immigrated to the United States at 23 because boom, Manhattan, New York, you know, the world's playground. It was amazing. I mean, it was it was amazing that I would walk down the streets and hear 20 different languages and meet people every day from a particular faith system, ice religion or not, that I had not encountered previously. What I started realizing though very quickly is I'm very passionate about interfaith. And I think Emily knows that a bit. I'm involved with some organizations locally as well. But I had to learn more about my faith than myself to be a person who could participate in those rules and conversations. And it is easier, I think, when you leave the judgment and the um, what's the word I'm looking for? The comparison at the door. I went to my first Jewish service last week at our local synagogue, and I was listening to the rabbi who showed us the original scrolls, and it was electrifying for me. I think I'm trying very hard to teach this to my children because the other thing I realized is they have a very different upbringing for me. Like I grew up in a homogeneous country, everyone looked like me, everyone spoke like me. I have a completely different upbringing that I can't really quite relate to. But that also puts the oldest need to learn more about my adoptive country. And all of this is again building the muscle that we need to maybe just survive better in a very chaotic and crazy world.
SPEAKER_04No, perfect. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And Ruhana, you don't have to constantly be interviewed. You can ask us questions if you want. Yeah. You're here as our guests, so we want to get as much as we can from you. Yeah, I actually would like to ask you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would like to ask both of you a question. I think we've covered uh the emotional labor of work of fair work. I was curious about where in your personal lives you feel you're performing the most emotional labor, recognized, unappreciated, whatever. Oh, I'm gonna need a moment to think about that.
SPEAKER_04So while Emily's thinking about it, I'll jump in. I just didn't want to talk over anybody. So for me, where I think to answer that question best, my wife she struggles with a chronic pain disease and a nervous system disease, which limits her physical functionality. She goes to work, she does a really great job. You know, she's very, she's very strong. Um, she does an incredible job of showing up uh daily with it. And I'm very proud of her, and she's a role model. Where I, you know, there are days though that it's just not working, right? And she's gonna struggle to get out of bed, or she's gonna be able to work that day, but that's all she's gonna be able to offer that day, you know, before she's gonna need a lot of rest, you know. So for her to show up the right way and consistently, there's a lot of elements of rest that need to come with that. And when she has those moments of rest, that is when I come in and start picking up a lot of those pieces, right? And saying, okay, well, I'll take care of the home then. I'll I'll make sure that you know there's but you know, I I have to have a job that can support both of us at any time. Because what if something happens to her and she's unable to work anymore and that income goes away? So I have this constant thing in the back of my mind that says I have to always have a level of income, a level of provision that is this marked. Because if it's not and something happens, we immediately start to struggle in ways that we may not be prepared for. So in the back of my mind, I'm constantly, constantly chasing more because I know that it better supports my family. At the same time, I'm fighting my faith and my upbringing that says humility. Don't chase the wrong things, be mindful. So there's a tug of war there. And then just again, that that showing up in the home at every specific way is like we don't know when when a day is going to be that she's not feeling well, and being able to take that switch and go, okay, no matter how rough today was, when I get home, like I said, we we have to make sure that just because I have to make sure that the house is still taken care of and everybody is still okay, you know? So like I said, it's that is probably where in my personal life I think it shows up the most. Now, here's here's kind of what you were saying earlier that really resonated with me, and I love that you gave me a vocabulary for it. And it is it is a gift to to be able to do that. It's the difference between get to and have to, right? When you say get to, there's a positive inflection. Like, man, I I get to show up that way even when it's hard, right? And then there's the word have to, I have to go home and take care of stuff. Just you know how it is, you know, like when you're able to change your mindset and you're able to get to see the blessing and the gift and be able to say, I get to have that gift, I get to take on that burden, that emotional labor is something that makes me stronger and provides for our future, man, that's special. So I said I really appreciate that vocabulary and thank you for hitting on that.
SPEAKER_00I'm going to try and follow that up. Rohana knows because we went through coach training together, that even though I'm I'm trained on this, I'm not always the one that's going to immediately speak about my emotions on things. So when it comes to emotional labor showing up in my life, I really did have to think about it while you were sharing, Joshua. And I think there are two ways, two areas that this shows up for me. One, I think part of it is that even though you don't necessarily go out into the world in the US culture and see people saying, women need to be quiet and polite and you know, don't eat too much and stay pretty and you know, keep it all together and let people be mean to you, but you have to be nice to everyone else, and you also have to try and be as perfect as you can. Oh, and boys will be boys. So there's that emotional labor that growing up with some of that conditioning, and some of it was covert and some of it was overt because I was raised by an Eastern European mother where he's a boy, it's fine, rub some dirt on it. But Emily, you Rahana, like you were sharing earlier, you have to get straight A's. You're smart, you have to do all these things, you have to be proper, you have to do so much that you're carrying, and I've carried that with me into my life, personal and professional, where I'm trying to meet these expectations of what it is to be a woman and be a good woman, but I'm also that has gone too far into a level of perfectionism. And I do that not only at work, but also with my home life. And so my husband, so grateful for him because it's so nice to see what someone with like health, mental health, like good stability is like to have that person around and kind of help balance me when I start to spiral a little bit, because the thing that comes up is it's not perfect. I'm not perfect, therefore, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. And the weight of that becomes so much and it comes out in so many different ways. My house isn't perfect. For example, recently we had to travel and my in-laws stayed at our house, but I was working, I was finishing finals, I was writing massive 15-page papers. I didn't vacuum the house, and I was nearly freaking out because my house is not perfect and my in-laws are going to stay here and it's not clean, and now I'm not good enough. And so I think that's where in my personal life I carry so much of that emotional labor, is taking on this bridle of expectations that I did not necessarily set for myself. And one of the things Rohana said was like, if we'd asked her about emotional labor and at 26 versus 46, she's not even sure how she would have answered that. I think I'm in that transition. I'm in my mid-30s and I'm exploring what are these things that have been put on my shoulders that I am lugging around with me that are affecting me mentally, emotionally, physically, that I no longer want to carry. And I'm shifting that dynamic, and it is slow and it is hard, but it is incredibly rewarding and is contributing to a lot of personal development and growth along the way. So that would be where I see it.
SPEAKER_01So I think that's amazing. I mean, I mean, both of you, right? So Josh is almost finding a new vocabulary for what he's doing, anyways. It's not so much for the script, but he's labeling the script as I choose to versus I have to, get to versus I need to. And words are powerful. And as coaches, we know how we frame things, how we frame things psychologically, and that shows up in our work and life are incredibly impactful. So kudos to you for that. And Emily, what you said, to be in your mid-30s and having that transition, I think it's a lifelong work. But people who have a modicum of self-awareness, who have perhaps the luxury of spending some time thinking about themselves and their places and their multi-layered identities in the world, may get to a point where they're able to choose, okay, this is serving me, this is no longer serving me. What do I keep? What do I discard? And is there a balance? Is there a combination? I just want to say something. We all will do emotional labor all our lives in some form or the other. There is no, there's no clean solution. If you are alive and you're breathing and you have a relationship with anybody, including yourself, you will be performing emotional labor. Now the question is, how do you carry it? What do you learn from it? Because I think really tough things has the capacity to make you sore like others, other things don't. And what is your advice to yourself and others, right? That's something where I keep coming back to. You cannot perform emotional labor unless you're taking care of yourself. Like all these wonderful things that I say, that is the truth. But there are also other multiple truths I hold concurrently. I have an amazing support group of mainly female friends that I go to, people with whom I can be absolutely myself, who go to coffee with me or stroll through a museum with me or just let me rant or whatever that is. So we all need those places, those safe spaces to be ourselves and find the strength to carry the emotional labor on days where you're the only one doing the labor. So I ask both of you to really think about where you get that strength from that lets you do all this labor, willingly or unwillingly.
SPEAKER_00Um I think for me, the strength comes from being able to see that I have done this before. Being able to see that I can get through it again. And in doing so, in building that awareness and learning about myself, you mentioned something earlier when you shared the story about how you had to go home and take care of the twins, but the work still had to get done. When you shared that, I was thinking about how oftentimes it feels like a give and take in relationships with people. You want to give, give, give so much, and especially as women were often conditioned to give, give, give. However, it is okay to get and it is okay to express what you need. And so in this process, I've been learning to also stay aware of what effect that's having on me.
SPEAKER_04For me, it is a combination of experiences, uh, very much faith-driven. I get a lot of strength from that. I get a lot of strength from as Emily was saying, those experiences. One of the things that I I'm always repeatedly surprised by is I think back to a younger version of myself and go, everything that I've ever accomplished since I probably graduated high school is something that Joshua would have told himself he would never do. Right? You you would you would never, you're never gonna do this, man. Like you, like I saw you in high school. You're not gonna pull this off, you know. Like I know this kid, you know, and so it is being able to challenge myself to do hard things and surprising myself. And so those experiences of, hey, like, you know, I am gonna be a first-generation college student, you know, I am I am gonna do those things. I'm gonna I'm going to I'm going to escape this cycle of poverty. I'm going to escape a cycle of abuse in my life. I'm going to escape these things. And once I got out and was able to become more independent, that started laying this groundwork of like, wait a second, all of the things that were impossible are possible. So why like I can handle this? I can do this. It's like I said, just that that confidence. And so I would say, like, where do where does that come from again? That faith, that experience, and that desire to leave a legacy, whether there's credit or not.
SPEAKER_00So I I also wanted to ask you, Hannah, like, where where does the source of strength come from when navigating this emotional labor for you?
SPEAKER_01I would say quite a few sources, actually. I will start with my positivity. And I know that's a word that gets thrown around a lot, but I am one of the most persistently, perhaps annoyingly positive persons I know. And, you know, I choose that because I've moved countries, moved away from families, built a new life for myself, new identity, organizations I never thought I would go into. Like Josh said, What? I did that, what? I'm gonna do that. And if I weren't positive, I couldn't walk through those doors. I couldn't claim my seat at the table. More than claiming my seat at the table, I couldn't lead those conversations. So I think there's something in me that is still wide-eyed and curious and very happy and blessed, almost in a childlike way, that while I get to do all of these things, what a gift. That's one for sure. And you know, I've lived through the death of both parents, a lot of estrangement, not having my family and so many of my people I grew up with around here. But that same strain has led me to build a different kind of support system here of friends who have become family, of acquaintances who I get to have deep philosophical conversations with. But so I think there's an attitude you bring to the world, and the world gives that back to you. 100% for me. I'm the person who will say hello first. And nine times out of ten, someone will say hello back, and we have a different conversation than we wouldn't have. And by the way, smiling and saying hello and putting my hand first out doesn't cost me anything. Nine times out of ten, I gain something out of it. So that's my lived evidence, empirical evidence, if you will. One, two, my faith. Um, it's it's innate. I I I get a lot of strength from it, a lot of guidance from it. But this when you have a sense that this life is just not it, and we're all playing parts on a stage, if you realize that this is all finite and it will be okay eventually in the end, and some higher power, whatever you believe in or don't, has a plan that I don't control, it takes the burden off of you a bit. Even if you mess up in a very catastrophic way, it's okay. Maybe it was meant to happen, it'll sort itself out. So, what that helps me do is be very serious about the gift of life, but not take myself too seriously. And I think any you know about me. Like I say, humor is one of the ways I deal with life. And I used to take for granted, doesn't everyone crack jokes at work? Doesn't everyone like the video? And then when I kept getting 3C degree fit feedback from my managers, my staff, and they kept pointing out how, in the most tense situations, I was able to find the levity. I was able to make them smile, I was able to hold us in a humorous, compassionate way. I realized that what I've been taking for granted for some of my skills and attributes, I started paying attention to them. So I think there's a combination of, as I said, you know, taking life very seriously as a gift, but not taking myself over seriously. That comes from my faith, that helps. And lastly, I think friendship for me is huge. So if you ask about emotional labor, I am very, very deliberate and I invest in my friendships a lot. I'm the person who texts at least 15 people a day. I'm the person who's making sure that my girlfriends and I were meeting up for coffee, lunches, museum visits, just getting together, going to a Jewish synagogue together, going grocery shopping together, cooking together. I will do that labor, that tangible physical labor of communicating, reaching out, bringing people together. But see, because I get so much out of it, it's not labor. It is absolutely refreshing and rejuvenating to me. So I think we need to find what lifts us because then it makes the labor that is actual labor more bearable.
SPEAKER_00So thank you for sharing that.
SPEAKER_02Perfect.
SPEAKER_00So I want to be conscientious of time here. We're coming up on our hour. And I would love to ask Rohana what advice you would have for people or what you want to make sure that anyone who's listening walks away with in regards to this topic.
SPEAKER_01A few things. Emotional labor is real. It is real for almost all of us in various situations at work, in our lives, in our relationships, even with people with whom you don't have a deep connection. We are performing invisible emotional labor most days of our lives. But if you choose to see this as something you can grow stronger from and as an opportunity, it makes it not just more bearable, but almost a gift. And you have to protect the person yourself who's performing the emotional labor. So I really ask everyone to think about what lifts them, what truly makes them strong, so that the labor is part of what they do, but not a defining thing that brings fatigue. And lastly, I think without overthinking anything, you can fix a problem without caring. And you can care without fixing. I know because I do both. Fantastic. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I love that. Good advice. Thank you so much. So, Rwanda, I feel like I've made a friend today. So I really appreciate you coming in and talking with us today. This is a real pleasure again when we talk about pouring cups, finding the things that give us pleasure. This is definitely an hour of my weekend that's going to carry me for a long time. So, thank you so much uh for spending the time with us, giving us this gift. So, thank you, Ronna.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.