Fine Is a Trap: Breaking Free from the Work-Sleep-Repeat Cycle

What does it cost to keep saying "I'm fine"? Executive coach Lauren Lefkowitz broke both her shoulders chasing a Roomba.

In this episode of Untamed Leader, Lauri and Lauren unpack the price of the work-sleep-repeat cycle — and what it takes to want more for yourself when you've spent a lifetime being good at everything except rest.

Lauren is an executive coach and founder of Fine Is a Trap. She spent nearly 20 years in corporate HR, coaching on the side, and overworking at 80–100 hours a week — until she couldn't raise her hand to volunteer anymore. What followed was a real-life experiment in untaming: five-minute morning reads, boundary scripts, and learning that a goal without a plan is just a wish.

They talk about:

• Why high achievers can be the last to know they're drowning
• The connection between "I don't want this" and knowing what you do want
• What it feels like to finally have evenings and weekends — and why that's terrifying
• The all-or-nothing trap that keeps ambitious women stuck
• Small steps that actually stick (and why they outperform big leaps every time)

Key Takeaways

1. "Fine" is a lid. It keeps you from falling further — and from rising higher. The same word that protects you also becomes the ceiling.
2. High achievers are often the least equipped to see their own burnout. Being good at doing doesn't make you good at feeling. The skills that built your career can keep you from noticing you're barely surviving.
3. Wanting change and knowing how to change are two different things. You can desperately want something different and still have no idea where to start. That gap isn't weakness — it's just the next thing to solve.
4. Clarity about what you don't want is a valid starting point. You don't have to know what you want in order to move. Start with what feels wrong, icky, or off — and let the opposites reveal themselves from there.
5. A goal without a plan is a wish. Intention without structure evaporates. Real change happens in the tiniest, most boringly specific steps — not in big declarations.
6. The all-or-nothing mind is its own trap. If you can't do it all the way, it doesn't mean don't start. One five-minute read in the morning is the beginning of something. Perfectionism masquerades as standards.
7. Space is terrifying before it's liberating. When you stop filling

Soul Sucker Quiz

Take the Soul Sucker Quiz to learn which Soul Sucker screams the loudest in your mind so you can release them from being in charge and set your voice free!

https://voice-matters.com/soul-sucker-quiz/

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Lauren

Lauri 0:32

Hello and welcome back to the Untamed Leader podcast. My guest today is Lauren Lefkowitz. She is an executive coach who partners with corporate leaders to support them as they escape the trap of being fine and break the work, sleep cycle repeat. Work, sleep, I said that wrong, but that's okay. Work, sleep, repeat cycle. Very, very in line with untaming, and I'm gonna save the rest for things to unfold. Welcome, Lauren.

Lauren 1:05

Thank you so much.

Defining An Untamed Leader

Lauri 1:05

I'm so happy to be here. I love to dive in right away, and I would like to start by asking you what does the phrase untamed leader spark for you?

Lauren 1:20

It is everything I used to allow myself to hide behind. So I was a very tamed leader. I was strong and I was thoughtful and compassionate. And I always thought I was in trouble. And I always thought I'm gonna say one more thing and they're gonna tell me to leave. They never did. But now that I've been in business for several years and I see how I'm allowed to lead by saying all the things out loud that we're all afraid to say, by saying things out loud that I didn't get confident to say myself until really near the end of my corporate career. Being an untamed leader is just absolutely rejecting that there are rules to how quiet you have to be about things. I have since learned that some people don't like that, but most people do. Most people have been waiting for someone to say things out loud and be things out loud. And there's so much freedom in just letting go of all the leashes you've built for yourself and all the cages people have put you in, and all of the boxes they've said you're supposed to be in, and just freaking be there and do what you want, how you want.

Lauri 2:41

I love it, I love it, I love it. I want to jump in like every five seconds and say, I agree, I agree, I agree. Oh my god, I have a story like that too. And I will sometimes. So full disclosure, we've been gonna have you on here for a long time. So there was a story that is probably in your book that I believe you're moving toward finishing, if not already finished. Um way back when you described it as a jarring personal experience leading to transformational change. How did that line up with fine, tamed, and your personal story?

A Goal Without A Plan

Lauren 3:30

Um, do you want me to tell the the story of what happened? Okay. Yeah. Um, so I was living this very safe life that didn't actually look safe from the outside. I spoke up enough at work. I was second in command to the CEO. I worked with all different people and all different things. I also worked 80 to 100 hours a week because I was compelled to help everybody with everything all the time. I'm a classic fawner. And I was in the midst of trying to figure out what I wanted to be different in my life. And my go-to always is organize something physical. So I'd gone through my condo, I had organized everything in alphabetical or color or shape or size order. It was the most perfect my condo had ever looked. It was the cleanest I'd ever been. I had hand washed the baseboards. I mean, I had really gone all out. And after I finished that, I was going to decide what to do next. And I was working from home one day, uh, it was a snowy day, and running my roomba vacuum, and I caught out of the side of my eye that the roomba vacuum was going towards the unplugged cord of a glass lamp. I saw disaster coming, so I ran across the room to catch the Roomba, slid in my socks on my wood floor, launched forward, reached out for a table I was not close enough to, and landed front forward on the wood floor that had concrete underneath of it. And I broke both of my shoulders. The first joke from all of my friends was oh, look who can't be a hand raiser. So there I was with two broken shoulders, literally not able to do anything for myself, including volunteering to interim manage a department that I had no business managing, to get in on a project that I had no business getting in on, etc. A long recovery led me back to exactly where I'd been before, which is a really disappointing, what seems like an end to the story that wasn't. But I went back to work after it took about four months for me to be able to go back to work with an absolute goal in mind 40 hours a week, no more. I will clock strikes five, I'm out of there. But I had no plan. And a goal without a plan is a wish. So I had a wish that I couldn't make come true because I didn't know how to put the work into it. Yeah. So I kept telling myself, like, it's fine, it's this is the job. I'll get another job at some point. And there I'll reset myself and I'll do it differently. That wouldn't have been the case because the job that I had before that job was the same. I was overworking, I was over pleasing. Yeah. And I finally woke up one day, and it was in the early days of us having Zoom calls and other video calls. And I was in a group meeting and I looked at myself in the camera, and my skin was gray, and I looked tired. And I realized that not only wasn't I fine, I was well below fine. I was barely getting by. And to add to the routines I had built up over the years, now I knew I wanted it to be different. And I didn't know how, which for me was very hard. I am really good at being good at things, especially work things. And to not know what to do next, which I think is a classic high achiever barrier, is if we don't know what to do next, well, it's not for us. We're not we're not doing it, if we're not good at it right away. Yeah, and I was so good at it for other people. So here I was sitting with myself, telling myself it's gonna be fine because it has to be, because I don't have any other ideas for myself.

Realizing Fine Was A Lie

Lauri 7:44

Yeah, yeah, there's so much in that the you can want to change something, but it's you know, I talk about Steph Curry all the time, and like the era is just about to be over, so I'm gonna do it until he's not on the court anymore, people. If I'm shooting the ball and it's not going in, I can want to change things to have it go in. But if nobody comes along or I don't identify, ball going in in a new way for you is like something more than fine. Vibrant, alive, leaving the office at 5 p.m., not looking gray anymore, but it's like, okay, I want to change it so it goes in the basket with no pull your elbow in, bend your knees more. None of the new habits that help us to actually change it. So, how did you find your way to the how that's led you where you are today?

Lauren 9:50

The first thing I did was try to add more work to my plate because that's what I knew how to do. I'd been in corporate HR for nearly 20 years. I'd been coaching on the side for nearly 15 years. So I had these two careers that were thriving, I guess. I wasn't having fun in either one. I made assumptions that I would have to work in corporate HR until I retired for the benefits and the salary predictability, and that coaching was just sort of this side thing that I enjoyed and it was fun and easy, and I didn't have to charge people really that much for it. And I didn't take it seriously as a business.

Hiring A Coach For Boundaries

Lauri 10:37

Yeah. Because why would you charge people enough for things that are fun and easy? Right. In case there's anyone else out there who, you know, if it feels like this is natural to me, how could it possibly be valuable? When in reality it may very well be one of the most valuable things that you bring and could charge for.

Lauren 11:02

Exactly.

Lauri 11:03

Yeah.

From What I Hate To Want

Lauren 11:04

So I decided I was going to go get my coaching certification because I had never formally gotten that certification. I'd gotten HR certifications. And I knew I was a good coach, but I also knew there was street cred that comes with having the certification. And I saw an acquaintance on Facebook who had just gotten her certification. So I reached out to her and I asked her if I could ask her some questions about it. And we got on a phone call and I'm checking all of my boxes. How much did it cost? How much of a time commitment was it? What was the value of it for you? If you could do it all over again, would you still get the certification? And she gave me the all the details. What she had chosen was a really intensive program, which is also what I ended up choosing. And I said, sort of off-handedly, I just don't know how I'm going to fit this in. I already work 80 to 100 hours a week and that's not going to change. And she said to me, what I say to my clients and what I've said to clients for years, if you say so, then yeah. And I was furious. I was so angry and I thought, you don't understand, you've never worked in a corporate environment, you don't know what this is like for me. And I gave myself the 15 seconds to process that before I said anything out loud. And then I said, Are you taking clients? And I hired her. I love that. I love that. Is the coach who helped me realize that it wasn't just up to me to preach about boundaries. It wasn't just up to me to tell people that they could have more, that they had choices, that they didn't have to live in this box that had been built for them over their careers. It also applied to me. And that was a real like that was a real exercise in understanding assimilation and alignment. And fast forward to today, I really think I have that alignment, but it didn't even occur to me that I needed to have it. Yeah.

Lauri 13:17

Yeah. It's like there's something in us, a lot of coaches who love this, who are all about helping people to untame all of the shoulds that they have been raised on. And we can look at a client and be like, you deserve more. Yeah. You deserve a better life than the one you're living. And we believe it in our heart and soul for everyone except us. Absolutely. Until somebody looks at you and says, you know, I was about to blurt before I knew she became your coach. That like that's what great coaches do.

Lauren 13:54

Absolutely. Yes. And I definitely, you know, and I know it's not an overnight switch. I didn't have one session with her, and suddenly I was working 40 hours a week and believing in myself in new ways. It was really small steps. And it was really considering for the first time what I actually wanted, which actually started with what I didn't want. And I looked back about six months after we had started working together. She had had me do a questionnaire when we first started. And I looked back at it six months later. And every question that I answered was, I don't want this anymore. I don't want it to be like that anymore. There wasn't even a want in there because I had done so much settling. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what was even available to me.

Lauri 14:52

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I don't love that you didn't even know what you wanted. Lately, I feel like I've been feeling myself and coming across a wave of people who are getting to clarity from questions like, what do you know you don't want anymore? What do you know feels wrong? What do you know is icky? Um, what pisses you off in the world? Well, what you really care about is somewhere in the answer to what pisses you off in the world.

Lauren 15:30

Yeah.

Lauri 15:30

Or what you don't want shows you what you do and helps to open up the possibility of we can know things. This is a helpful way to have some opposites. Yes. There are unhelpful ways to have opposites in the world, but I know I don't want that. Okay. So what's the opposite? Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren 15:53

And I like to take that one question further. Is that what you want? So if if you don't like the color red and you ask, well, what's the opposite of red? It's green. Is that what you want? And often, no, it's actually a shade of yellow that I like. Now that I'm thinking about it.

Lauri 16:15

Yeah, there's a a journey that I've been on from realizing that I still had good girl tendencies going on about a year ago. And that with our young developing brains in particular, a lot of us either, oh, what do I need to do to get an A? What do I need to do for need to do for no one in the room to be upset? So, as like a 15-year-old, 15 to 25, we either blindly follow all those things, or in that young teenage brain, the opposite is some people just say, no, why? Because you said so. And what you're pointing at is like the next question is okay, what do you really want?

Lauren 17:04

Yes.

Lauri 17:05

Where's the true words for it? Could be the sovereign you, the true you, the authentic you, the real you. Yeah, yeah.

It Is What It Is Reframed

Lauren 17:17

Yeah. And it's that good girl mentality that I think all the Gen Xers and elder millennials I know grew up with. It really sticks with us to listen to your boss, they know better, to do what you're supposed to do, to keep on top of everything so you don't get in trouble. I think the good girl mentality has a lot to do from what I've seen in terms of not making anybody angry or disappointed, more so than is this gonna be fun? Is this gonna be helpful? Is this gonna contribute to the world? Is this gonna contribute to my happiness? And I think we do a really good job as good girls saying, I'll get to that later.

Lauri 18:05

Yeah. Or this is good enough.

Lauren 18:08

Yeah, fine.

Lauri 18:09

That's another way of saying fine. This is fine. Yeah, I'm fine, it's good enough. I don't deserve better. Right. Going on or better isn't even possible.

Lauren 18:20

Something like better doesn't really exist. This is what I got, right? You get what you get and you don't get upset. Yeah. Um, and there's the old uh speaking of basketball, which is very funny for me because I am not a sports fanatic at all. Sports are none of my business, but I have a magnet on my fridge that is a quote from Pat Summit, who's a women's basketball coach. Um, she took the phrase, it is what it is, and she added, but it becomes what you make it. And man, did that hit me in the heart and the gut when I saw it, because fine is it is what it is, how things are. This is how it has to be. Yeah, and sure, maybe in the moment you can't make a huge pivot on the thing that feels fine, that's not really fine, but longer term, there's so much cool stuff out here. Yeah, why wouldn't we go for more?

Lauri 19:17

Yeah, it is what it is, but it can become what you make it.

Lauren 19:21

It be yeah, it is what it is, but it becomes what you make it.

Lauri 19:24

Yeah, that's a quote that feels like it's one of my ingredients of leadership is you have to have a vision so that what I could make it, if you're a leader, you see the possibility for something that doesn't exist right now, either in your own life, in the world, with your team if you're a coach, and the piece that um I think made me unique for a bit, putting it in this way, is that leadership lives in the creative tension between the present moment and actually being present in it and that future. I'm present here, it is what it is. I'm not pretending with like a peppy energy that what it is right now isn't what it is, it is what it is, yeah, and I still see and hold the possibility of that different future, so then it will become what I make it from that. And I remember decades ago going to some conferences and feeling like there was either a really pushing energy, like this isn't good enough, almost like a teenage rebellion energy, or let's all sit around and be present and sit on pillows. And I was like, No, there's a third option where I am aware of what is here in the present moment, in myself, in the room, in the world, and I am moving toward the possibility of what I believe in my heart, in my spine, in my core, is the better that we could move toward.

Lauren 21:10

Yes. Yeah. And I think that we get so caught up in right this second that we just say it is what it is, and then we move to the next thing and say, it is what it is. And when we are trying to think of how it could be different, we assume it can't be in anything that already exists. So there's a lot of starting over, and who has the time to start over? We have to start from where we are, we have to start from what is feeling fine or less than fine. We have to start with looking at the cobwebs that are in our head that keep catching the new flies, the new ideas, because we're too bogged down to even develop those ideas.

Cobwebs And Repeating Patterns

Lauri 21:58

Yeah. And the it can't, it can't, the thing we want can't come in this world that already exists. It struck me as it's so close to the truth, except we take it wrong. We think it means, oh, obviously, I need to quit this job because it's the job's fault that I'm working 80 to 100 hours a week. Yes. And raise your hand if you or someone you know has gone to the new job and repeated, or the new relationship, or the new company that they started and repeated the exact same pattern. Hand raised.

Lauren 22:36

Yeah, same.

Lauri 22:37

The reality is it's the cobwebs, it's the cobwebs in our mind and the physical habits in our own body. If we're showing up like hard work or showing up like fawn all the time, I think they play together and it limits our ability to see all the possibilities if we've got one locked in our bodies, or we're like holding on for dear life to the cobwebs in our own mind.

Lauren 23:07

Yes, so true. And sometimes there is something that is like a fresh new start. You're starting a new hobby, or you're starting a business, or you're applying to be on a board, whatever it is, and it doesn't feel familiar because it's different than anything you've done any other way. And the fear of crashing out because you're not immediately the Expert because you can't equate it to the other things that you've done, often will stop you from even trying, or you'll have this one raging start because you're so excited about it, and then immediately the flames go out because it didn't give you the dopamine that you were looking for, or it didn't give you the return that you were looking for immediately.

Lauri 23:54

Yeah.

Lauren 23:55

And I think that that's something to really think about is if you're in that pattern where you start this and then you stop it, or you get into this and then you stop it, there's more to it than that you've lost interest in so many things so quickly.

Lauri 24:09

Where did that lead in your life? Or was that a part of where things led once you started working with that coach?

Tiny Steps Beat All Or Nothing

Lauren 24:18

It's where things led when I started working with that coach. I have a very all or nothing mentality. In a way that has made every coach laugh, that's made me laugh, that's made all my therapists that I've ever had laugh. Because I will say, it's misting outside right now. I wish it would either just like rain or not rain, right? I mean, down to everything. I want it all to work out, or I want none of it at all. And so for me to learn that the way I worked with my clients was actually the way I needed to be working myself in taking really tiny steps towards things. I mean, I went through phases where I was like, I'm gonna meditate every morning and then I would miss it on morning three, and I'd be like, Well, that's over. And so working with my coach, one of the first things I learned was that there are really tiny steps you can take that are gonna make a difference, that are gonna make you hungrier for more of that. My first move with my coach was a five-minute exercise. That in the morning I would set my alarm. As soon as I got up, I would open my phone only to set a five-minute timer, which then I turned over to my Alexa because then I didn't even have to open my phone. And during that five minutes, I didn't get out of bed, I didn't go to the bathroom, I didn't get let the dog get riled up, and I opened a book and I read for five minutes. And when the alarm went off, I put the book down. I was had become a person who uh I led a book club for 12 years, and every month, two nights before the book club, I would be reading until two or three in the morning so that I could finish the book, so I could go to book club and have held up my end of responsibility. There was no longer any enjoyment in it because I was making myself too busy to do what I actually wanted to do, which was read at a leisurely pace. After a week of these five minutes, I moved to 15. And then I moved to, well, now it goes on my calendar and I read for a half hour at night. And as I picked up these little things, and I did it with little boundaries, with saying to an employee, I can't talk right now. Can I come to you at the top of the hour? Instead of clearing my desk and saying, Whatever you need, come on in, I'll take it, and having my whole day get lost to that. It led me to realizing that not only wasn't I fine, first of all, I was awful. I was so burnt out. But I couldn't even see what fine could be. I couldn't even see what like mediocrity could look like for me because I was so tied into all of these things. So it was this constant clearing of the cobwebs, this constant untangling of my belief system and what I believed people expected from me, and then testing it and then stepping back and waiting. Are people reacting? Are they mad at me? Am I in trouble? And starting to recognize that no, I wasn't. I got myself down in about four months to 60 hours a week, which is still a lot, but it's not 80 plus.

Lauri 27:37

Yeah.

Learning Evenings Weekends And Space

Lauren 27:38

And then I got scared and I talked to my coach and I said, I don't know what people do with evenings and weekends. I think I should put more time into work. And then I had to go through this discovery process. And at that time it felt like I had to. Now it feels like I get to. But at that time, I had to figure out like, what do people do after work? What do people do on weekends when they're not like squeezing in a brunch with two friends where they're going to be silently and secretly checking their phone to make sure nothing has blown up at work on a Sunday? And then I finally started getting hungry for like, what's actually better than this? What do I actually want? What is my opportunity? And if you fast forward to today, none of it is anything I could have imagined. And it's amazing.

Lauri 29:40

Yeah. The that space, I feel like, what am I gonna do with all this time? Is so key because I I can almost hear in you talking about it that the initial, oh my gosh, there's all this space, was full of all kinds of hormones, adrenaline that is not very comfortable. That is part of why the entire Western world is texting one minute, driving the next, crashing the car, going to work in a meeting while also texting other people, because the space feels really scary. Yes. And then my experience with that space, and it sounded like you had some of this too, is like at first, it's all the hormones, and oh my god, get me out of here. And it takes the beginning step of courage to do it. And then actually being in the space, it's almost like I can could, can, if it's new, feel all those chemicals leaving my body. And then there's this eerie kind of silence that then becomes like whoa, all this space is really cool. I could do whatever I want with it.

Building A Multi Lane Career

Lauren 31:05

Yes, absolutely. And I still think I still have that a little bit of back and forth because I will go through time periods where there's a lot going on, not just work stuff, because I don't live like that anymore, but uh travel and seeing people and networking and running errands, you know, there's there are just times when everything feels like fuller and more. And then there are lulls, and my automatic animal brain says, You're gonna waste away. What are you gonna do with this time? How are you gonna manage this? How are you gonna fill it? What are you gonna get done? What are you gonna accomplish? And I'm learning to say, nothing. I'm gonna sit on my porch and that's gonna be the whole activity. Yeah, and it's a really cool awakening. And even though I still sometimes backslide, as we all do, because somehow I've not figured out perfection, but even when I backslide, I come back more quickly, I recognize it more quickly, I remind myself that I have choices. I have a list of foods on my fridge to remind me what I like to eat because I got used to just rushing around. I never really learned how to cook. I'm almost 50, never really learned how to cook. I'm not super interested at this point in doing that. And every time I walk into my kitchen, I'm like, what's in here? What are these ingredients? How do they go together? And so I've made myself a short list to get away from that decision fatigue to say, like, these are the eight things that I like putting together for dinner.

Lauri 32:48

Yeah, it's like having a menu in your kitchen. Like, what would it be like if we walked into a restaurant and they were like, What do you want? without a menu. So you put a menu menu in your own kitchen. It's genius.

Lauren 33:01

And I'll look at our fridge, tell us what you want from the from the kitchen. We'll tell the chef. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, there are ways I think to uh help yourself with the decision fatigue and with that empty space, and there are ways to get like really excited about the open space that has come your way because you have made a decision for things to be different than they have been.

Lauri 33:29

Yeah, very cool. What are you up to now? Like paint the picture of the um way more than fine life that you have now. Yes.

Scheduling Rules That Protect You

Lauren 33:45

So I went from 80 to 100 hours a week, workaholic, working on the side with a few clients at a time, uh spending the rest of my free time figuring out when I was going to go see family every three to six weeks in uh about four hours away, to having all of the choices. And in a five-year period, five to seven year period, some of it happened earlier when I was still in my corporate life, but in the last five years in particular, I went from thinking I would do exclusively executive coaching to now having multitude lines of business. I do coaching, I do some HR work, I became a certified laughter yoga instructor. I speak, I write. I did just finish writing a memoir and I'm in talks with a publisher who I'm very excited about. And yes, very excited about that. Um, and I just launched a new company with two partners called Social Good Networking. We built this membership community for people who have not found their place in the paid networking communities. The forced referrals, the condescending generation of folks who think they know better, the uh the place where you meet people, you say nice things to each other, you may get a referral here or there, but there isn't necessarily intentionality around that. Um, and frankly, the progressive folks. We've run into a lot of conservative folks, and I don't think there's anything wrong wrong with whatever your political views might be, mostly to an extent. But I'm super liberal. I want to be in the room with women and people of color and people in the LGBTQ community, and I want to be in a place where we all can feel really comfortable being there. And so we built that, we launched it last week, um, and we're we're starting to grow already. I thought I would have one line of business, and now I'm up to like I haven't even mentioned all of them. Yeah, I also uh I grew up in New York, lived in the DC area for 30 years, went to college there and then stayed. And on a whim a year and a half ago, I moved to the Delaware beaches because I came out here for a weekend with a girlfriend, which I never would have made time to do in my old life. I drove into town and I took the time to just drive around and get my bearings. And I said to that friend, I want to live here. And she said, Why don't you? And so now instead of a corporate commute and a one-bedroom condo in the city, I have a three-bedroom house in a Hallmark movie town, a block from the farmer's market that happens every Saturday. It's adorable, it's quaint, it's not at all a pace of life I ever thought I would embrace. And I barely ever work even 40 hours a week. Wow.

Lauri 36:54

Wow. If that doesn't have threads of untaming in it, I don't know what does. There's even more, you know, the you have to do one thing and do it forever is until you retire, and then you have to off a cliff, you know. My dad lived through that, and we were all raised at the beginning of our life thinking that's the way that it would go. And then all of those one-way kind of old school formed in I don't know, the 1900s, at least we'll say rules of business. Like if you're going to start something, you have to do one thing, or you have to do one thing at a time. And some of us don't operate that way. Our untamed, intuitive selves, one creative thing has an arc that feeds us, and then the arc on that thing dies, and then there might be a moment of rest, and then something else kind of rises up. And this can happen in like one hour, one week. It depends on our individual flow. And there are times where it's like three months of this thing is getting priority, and then sometimes there isn't a rest in between. One thing just feeds directly into the other, and others who are more linear are looking at us like, how do you do that? And you know, like lots of other people, I work with Claude these days.

Lauren 38:31

Yep.

Decision Fatigue And The Coke Metaphor

Lauri 38:31

And I was working on let's let's look at my schedule. Because the Untamed Leader podcast, when I changed the name, I got a wave of people interested in coming on the show. And for a minute there, I was like, oh my god, overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelm. Slow your roll. And I was like, why might this be overwhelming me? And Claude said, because of my manifesting generator human design, you love variety, but you really love it when it's your choice. And what's happening right now is people are booking all of your types of appointments all over your calendar, and you're at their mercy. This is me now starting to take it over and put it in words. And I was like, oh, well, that's an easy fix. I'll just pick the rules for myself for when I know I want to do these things. And then if I want to break that rule and record a podcast on a Friday instead of only Tuesdays and Thursdays, it's my choice. And I could feel the like, wow, my choice. I get to follow what lights me up in how I'm calendaring myself. And then what was overwhelming and oh my god, I can't do what I can't have at all. Became this is how I can set it up around the way I work instead of the things that we inherited from like madmen for how they scheduled. Right.

Lauren 40:06

Yes, yes. And it's I remember when I first set up my schedule when I left my corporate life, it was like Monday morning through Friday afternoon, and some Sundays. And if you absolutely need me on a Saturday, then that too. And as I have continued to get better at boundary setting, I have four windows a week where I will take potential client calls. I have two windows a week where I will take networking calls. And then if I'm scheduling on someone else's schedule, I have the freedom to make the choice, but I know if someone is scheduling with me that I have barriers around that on purpose. And if that doesn't work for whoever I'm going to be speaking to, working with, then we can talk about what works instead. But I don't have to open my entire life to everybody else first. And I think self-serving is a really looked-over quality, especially for women. We're not trained to do that. We're trained to do the opposite. Yeah. Like if you have any fuel left, do something nice for yourself. Go get a many petty. Yeah. But if you start there, you still get to serve who you want to serve. You still get to be really powerful for your clients, for your family, for your friends, for whoever you're trying to show up with, with and for. But you get to refill your own tank. You get to rest, you get to choose an activity of absolutely nothing so that you can refresh.

Lauri 41:49

Yeah. And then in reality, you made me think of two things. One, once upon a time, as an adult, my mother blurted to me, if you do the right thing for yourself, you automatically do the right thing for everyone else. I like that. And it landed when she said it. The other thing is at one point, I was 30 something, so over 20 years ago, I was teaching summer camp, theater summer camp, and it was way like done, over. I hated it. I was coming home. I'm not built for younger children. Um, I'm a teacher and a coach past say 15 years old or higher, depending on the person.

Lauren 42:36

Right.

Lauri 42:36

And I was coming home and like closing my blinds and like sitting in the dark, like, really, like just my nervous system, the screaming of the children does I'm just not good at it. It's not where I'm meant to be.

Lauren 42:50

Yeah.

Choices Community And Better Mirrors

Lauri 42:51

And I was on a coaching call when I think it was when I was going through certification, so that long ago. And the coach who was coaching me as part of certification said, You're already out of integrity. You just described practically falling asleep in the back of the room of the people that you were supposed to be serving. Oh. And I turned around and I quit because in that case, it wasn't like it didn't have to do with overwork. It was I was telling myself that in order to have any money, I had to be working with the kids.

Lauren 43:29

Yeah.

Lauri 43:30

And filling our own cup first is how we actually have the energy to be serving if we have a service-oriented business or 10 of them in the world, instead of, well, I don't have enough, but I'm still going to try to keep giving to you as I martyr myself.

Lauren 43:51

Yes. Yes. We were talking before we started recording, we were talking about water, and you went to get more water, so you'd be ready for this conversation. And I always picture the old me, most of my clients who come to me with empty water bottles. Too busy. Too busy to do it. And it makes me think of being at a party. And imagine you go to a party and the host says, What can I get you to drink? And all you want is like a crispy Coke with a lot of ice. And the post says, Great, I'll go get you a Coke. And you say, Well, I'll just take what's left over from everybody else's drinks. We don't do that. That's not how it works. And those drinks, first of all, are going to gross you out because it's just backwash and leftover ice. But also, you're never going to be quenched if you're taking a little sip of this and a little sip of that and whatever's left over from here. Whereas if you're on the front end taking that crispy coke and drinking and enjoying yourself, then your mouth doesn't get dry and you can keep up in conversations and you don't have to look around for scraps.

Lauri 45:09

Yeah.

Lauren 45:10

You get to be in the group of people who are all taking care of themselves and each other.

Lauri 45:15

Love it. Love it. And I have to ask if there are people listening and driving a car who can't see the show notes who are like, I want to get to know her more. Where can they reach you?

Lauren 45:28

Fineisatrap.com was a surprisingly available domain when I named the company. So fine is a trap is the best place to find me, and LinkedIn is the best place to see me talking on the regular.

Lauri 45:44

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you before we slide into the Pivot pivot. I feel like this is an example of how quote air quotes leadership can show up everywhere in your life, not just the forms of leadership that we were raised on. And one of the most important things is being the change that we wish to see in the world. Like you wanted it for other people, and now you're walking around embodying that change for yourself so that others are inspired by it and know what is possible because you're showing them with how you live your life.

Lauren 46:28

It's so true, and it's so exciting to be on this side of the fence and not looking over the fence. At my other people, at clients I've helped, or companies I've helped, or people I've helped develop in their corporate careers. It's so cool to be in the room with everybody and not just, you know, looking over the fence or peeking through the window and saying, Oh, it looks really cool over there. I'm so glad I helped other people figure that out.

Lauri 46:57

Yeah. If you could shout a message or whisper a message back over the fence to your old self or people who might still be over there, what message would you share with them?

The Pivot Questions

Lauren 47:10

The key message for me has been to understand that I have choices and that I am not responsible for figuring them out from A to Z in what I want, how I want to get them, what I want the conclusion to be, all by myself. I did a lot of isolating in my career and in my life. I'll do it myself. I had like a very toddler mentality of how to get things done. And it turns out I am not the most clever person about me, which still feels surprising and a little bit insulting. But also I have brilliant people around me, my professional community, my friends. I have brilliant people in my world. And if I am willing to take my choices or the I don't even understand what choices I have to somebody else, they can help me more objectively see what there is, what the options are, how to get to those things, who to hire if I need to hire somebody for one of those things. And I just don't sit in isolation thinking either I have no choices at all because I don't know how to do the things I might want to do, or it's too many choices and I can't pick one, and so they're all gonna fail.

Lauri 48:30

Yeah.

Lauren 48:31

I think that is the key to having really constructive community around you.

Lauri 48:36

Yeah. When you were describing it, it felt like navigating through a world with no mirrors. It's not as if you don't know anything about what's going on with you without a mirror to look in, but you see different things when a mirror is showing you what you couldn't see without the mirror.

Lauren 49:01

Yeah. And that's actually how I got really in touch with my all or nothing mentality. Was that I would say something that I was going to do, and then I would say that I didn't have time for it. And somebody would say, Well, what's the first step? And my response would be, Well, if I'm not willing to do all of it, why would I start it? Yeah. I've learned why, because once you start doing something, then you want to do the next thing. Yeah. But finding that spectrum in between the all or nothing, I think has been my biggest challenge. And it's been the biggest mirror for me in all aspects of my life to have people ask me, well, what's in the middle? What's what's what if you just do a small part? Yeah, beautiful.

Lauri 49:45

Thank you. All right. Now let's get to the pivot pivot. Lauren, what is your favorite word?

Lauren 49:55

Awesome.

Where To Find Lauren And Closing

Lauri 49:57

What is your least favorite word? Moist. What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

Lauren 50:10

Uh belly laughs.

Lauri 50:16

What turns you off? Um jerks. What sound or noise do you love?

Lauren 50:29

I love the sound of a dog coming up to me when you can hear their tags clinking on their collar. There's just something to me that's so joyful about knowing a dog is coming over.

Lauri 50:46

What sound or noise do you hate?

Lauren 50:52

An unexpected ring of the phone or the doorbell.

Lauri 50:59

What's your favorite cuss word? Fuck. What profession other than the ones you've already done in your life would be fun to try?

Lauren 51:10

I would like to train service dogs.

Lauri 51:14

What profession would you not like to try? Uh engineering. And Lauren, what do you hope people say about you on your 100th birthday? Man, she looks young. You look a lot younger without the gray skin. So, you know, you said you're almost 50. You're halfway there.

Lauren 51:44

Yes.

Lauri 51:44

Yes. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your story on the show today.

Lauren 51:50

This has been great fun. Thank you for hosting me.

Lauri 51:53

Yeah. And if you are listening and this touched you, made you belly laugh, or you have a friend who's got gray skin and you think they need to hear it, please either like it, follow it, write a review, or share it with that friend so we can pass the pulse of things like what's possible and untaming. And I will see you back here next time.