REGINA LARKO | Our Worth, Our Work, and Why We're So Busy, Really (Lead with your voice)

What if the real obstacle to your success isn't your abilities, but your belief in your worth? In this season 2 special Lauren Davis sits down with Regina Larko to explore the hidden fears that keep high-achieving leaders up at night - the universal question of "Am I good enough?" that persists regardless of titles, accolades, or salary.

With years of experience supporting executives worldwide, Lauren reveals the most common fear people are afraid to voice: the constant anxiety about being "discovered for not knowing what they're doing." They dive deep into the core of imposter syndrome, exploring how we've become trapped in a cycle of external validation where our worth feels precarious and dependent on achievements that can vanish in an instant.

Lauren shares her own journey from burning out as "Superwoman" to embracing two liberating truths: "It's okay to be disagreeable" and "It's okay to be ordinary." These revolutionary concepts challenge our culture's obsession with exceptionalism and help listeners understand why mediocrity isn't failure - it's part of being human.

They explore why fear of failure keeps us from even trying, how our brains misinterpret discomfort as danger, and why the pursuit of comfort actually makes us more stuck. Drawing on insights from psychiatrist Phil Stutz, they discuss the three certainties of life: uncertainty, pain, and hard work - and how embracing these with compassion can unlock our courage.

Listeners will discover practical strategies to separate their worth from their work, learn to sit with uncomfortable emotions instead of running from them, and understand the delicate balance between "doing" and "being" that true leadership requires. Lauren offers gentle nudges to help us show up courageously, including the simple yet profound act of questioning our busyness: "Am I doing this because it's necessary, or because I'm trying to prove something?"

This episode cuts through hustle culture to reveal what truly matters beneath the busy - helping leaders, entrepreneurs, and anyone striving to build something meaningful find sustainable success without sacrificing their wellbeing. Perfect for anyone feeling overwhelmed by expectations, questioning their path, or ready to drop the cape and lead authentically.

If you've ever felt like you're one mistake away from being found out, or if you're tired of pursuing someone else's definition of success, this conversation will give you the permission to be human and the tools to lead from a place of wholeness rather than striving.

Find Regina Larko:

www.reginalarko.com

or via @regina_larko 

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Transcript

Lauren Davis (00:00)
Beneath the Busy. A podcast that gives us the opportunity to step back from all the noise and examine what really keeps us so busy.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to be a guest on Regina LarKo's Lead with Your Voice podcast. We discussed exactly what keeps us busy all the time. What sits beneath this need to be productive, useful, always on. We called it our worth, our work, and what keeps us so busy, really. We delved into the core of the issue and had a really interesting conversation. So take a breath, settle in, and let's get into it.

Welcome to Lead with Your Voice, Lauren. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and have this conversation with you. Yeah, and I really just want to go straight in. And of course, everyone who wants to even dig deeper with you, there will be all your links in the show notes as well to how to connect with you and also listen to your amazing podcast. But I actually want to like really let's not tiptoe around it. I would love to...

find out and get a little bit more understanding from your experience as well, where you're working with so many clients from all over the world, supporting them on their journeys, also on their leadership journeys. What do you notice people are most afraid to say out loud? Sure, going right to

right to the heart of it. think them, and it's funny because I've just come off a call with a senior exec and I think the thing that they are most afraid to say out loud and it takes them a good couple of sessions with me before they feel comfortable even in the safe space is, I good enough? I think that is the call that it doesn't matter how successful they are, how many accolades they've got, how many titles, what their salary is. It all comes down to

When am I going to be discovered for not knowing what the hell I'm doing? I almost feel like everybody I speak to feels like they are one step away from being caught up. It's interesting that you say that because I think that's a lot for the people that I work with on their often on their voice leadership journey, know, stepping out on a stage for the first time, use their voice publicly on either a podcast or on a stage or in meetings.

or even at the dinner table in moments that are vulnerable or moments that really matter to them, there is that uncomfort as well, right? That like, this isn't safe. So is there anything like from your experience also as a clinical psychologist and in all the amazing work and important work you do in the mental health space?

We always try to find the solution and fix this, right? There is no quick fix, I know. But what helps someone feel safe in these vulnerable moments of visibility, I would want to call it? So if I had a magic wand and I could wave it and I could fix this in one solution, I think a core piece would be separating our worth from our work. Separating kind of how we feel and view ourselves.

from what we are doing. And I think we've got so caught up as a human race in what I'm doing. All my external trappings represent my worth or tell people how good I am. And so why we feel unsafe is it feels so precarious because at any given time, if I mess up on stage or if my podcast doesn't get as many likes or if my car gets taken away or I lose my job or whatever, any of those external things.

are so precarious, we know that they can go at a drop of a hat. So we feel so insecure because if that's gone, then who am I? And so the work that I do with people, and it isn't at a wave of a wand, it's long, hard work and deep introspection and challenge and courage is about saying, who am I without the external tropics? In a summary, what I say is it's about shifting from external validation to internal validation.

and to be able to get to a point where it's not narcissistic or arrogant and saying, I'm amazing, but it's just, I'm human, I'm inherently flawed, I'm going to stuff up sometimes and other times I'm going to be great and I'm okay with who I am, irrespective. And I trust in my capability to cope when things are hard and I trust in my capability to absorb and enjoy when things are good. But it's not easy.

Yeah, I mean, even just putting that guard down, you know, and then feeling like, are people going to think? What are they going to say? Can they handle that? What's underneath, right? When they find me out, right? Am I enough? Maybe it's not enough. The, I don't know, call it imposter syndrome, call it self-doubt. I love that guidance though, that you give us now that idea that everyone can immediately just implement and look at it that way as well.

Like if you strip all of that away, the labels and identities, I guess we have created for ourselves as professionals. How can I be okay with that myself, right? It was probably about seven or eight years ago, I had to drop my cape because I believed I was superwoman and I could do it all. And I had all the trappings and I was trying to prove how brilliant I was and burnt out too terribly. And when I took that cape off,

and I took the kind of superhero outfit off. I crashed quite terribly because it was like, well, who am I if I'm not this superwoman? And I was so buoyed by society and friends and fair. Everybody kept saying, you're so amazing. I don't know how you do it all. And you're such an inspiration. And people were kind of feeling this absolutely abnormal, crazy way of being in the world. And I'll never forget, I was walking on the promenade with my mentor and I was kind of talking about this cape coming off and how

I'm struggling and I said to her, you know what? I'm going to resign from Lauren Davis Consulting. That was what my business was called at that stage because I have the most awful boss. She expects me to work all hours, not take leave. I've got to be on all the time. Nothing's ever good enough. She's just, the pressure on me is unbelievable. So today I'm tendering my resignation. And I think that was a moment where I realized.

There were two words that I started playing around with, are even still hard for me to say, but the one was, it's okay to be disagreeable, that I don't have to be agreeable to everybody. I don't have to say, yes, everybody doesn't even have to like me, which was incredibly hard for a people pleaser like me. And then the other one was, it's okay to be ordinary or even mediocre, which still I want to kind of vomit when I say that word.

I'm still in competition with my husband for everything. We go for our medical health checks and I'm like, I got a better score than you. But to realize that I cannot be excellent at everything, I cannot be above average. And actually I don't even want to. So being ordinary, being mediocre is part of the human experience. And that if I just drop that expectation and start saying, I'm okay with who I am, whether I am achieving this or achieving this.

I'm still comfortable with in my skin. And I think that was the journey, but I learned it the hard way. Yeah. Thank you for sharing this. Something just shifted in me as well when I heard you say that it's almost like, ⁓ isn't that a sigh of relief that we could all feel? Because surely a lot of people that come into my world, also want to, they want to lead and they have an understanding what that looks like.

And oftentimes the labels would be a big stage, a big platform, lots of listeners on their podcast. And that's not to say that they can get there, right? But that's also something that there's this, you wanna already be that, like you wanna be so extraordinary, be that amazing keynote speaker, be that amazing person, have all that expectations and pressure that you put on yourself.

but you're also just at the start, you know, when you are starting out, for example, with your own podcast, it is usually a very mediocre podcast, right? Because you can do it as good as you can, but you still won't be having the, all the experience and all the reps and all the things that you do need to hone your craft. maybe that then holds a lot of people back to not even try, maybe.

That's a great question and I think a lot of it comes from a fear of failure. So they want this big thing and part of them knows that they can do it and that they're capable. So there's this part that backs themselves, but then there's another part that's terrified of, what if I fail? So it's sometimes better what people unconsciously and irrationally think is it's better to not even try because then I don't have to face that potential failure.

And I don't have to feel my feelings, right? We speak about this in one of your episodes as well. Yeah. And the other part is I think some people, well, many of us don't want to put in the hard work. Like we all want the six pack, but we don't have to go to gym and do all those sit ups day in and day out because it's hard work. It's uncomfortable. So I think as human beings, we are pleasure seeking and comfort seeking. And so when there's something that...

makes us feel uncomfortable. Even if you know it's for a bigger picture, we kind of resist it because that feeling of discomfort, we're just not used to it. I think our brain interprets it as we're not safe. So it thinks, it's uncomfortable. It must be wrong. But I also think, again, the way we've been conditioned, the society we're in at the moment is all about this pursuit of happiness and joy and ease and buy this and then your life will be better. And even in the mental health space, it's do these 10 steps and then you'll be mentally healthy or

You know, the latest trend now is like sign up for the seven day Tai Chi and you'll lose your belly fat or everything. Quick fixes so that we don't have to put in the hard work. There's an amazing psychiatrist and psychotherapist that I follow. His name's Phil Stutz, I think he's on Netflix and his depth of understanding of the human condition is amazing. And he says there's three things that are definitely for sure in our human life is uncertainty, pain, and hard work. Those are the three things.

we can never avoid. I think as soon as we engage with those, not in a self-sacrificial way, but we do it with compassion, we do it with grace with ourselves. But if we just accept that life is gonna be uncertain, it's gonna come with pain and we have to work hard, then I think we are more courageous to try new things. But as long as we're pursuing comfort and pleasure and ease, and we're so afraid of failing, and it's mainly back to the thing of, if I fail, then people will...

discover that I'm actually not good enough. And so we just kind of stay in these stuck places and then just complain about it, which isn't great either. Would you say there are any kind of gentle steps or something that you could give all of us to show ourselves with compassion there or engage in these maybe more uncomfortable, scary things that are?

potentially leading to some kind of failure. What are some gentle nudges that maybe help you to show up courageously and that are easy to implement? I'm just thinking of how you're starting your podcast. I love that you're starting it with a break, know, or like a break. It's like, we are not, know, and usually you hear in the podcast, you know, there's the intro and we're doing and we're now we're getting going and right, like what did I do today?

I didn't catch a breath. didn't give you a breath. I didn't give myself a breath because I'm already, you know, I scheduled the stuff too tight. You I mean, you're always learning as you're going. I think there's so much self-discovery as well, just in as you're building your own practice, your own consulting, your own business. know a lot of the listeners here, they do want to build something for themselves, for their families, for...

Also making an impact in the world. And there is so much passion for that. And at the same time, there's more of that hustle energy and more of that, exactly that cape, you know, that you took off. And I would also love to, I think I gently already, it's happening to me for sure. I've started because for sure I've experienced that as well, that people would.

comment on how am I able to manage all the things that I do manage and then I feel like that shouldn't be like feeling like a reward. But there is some pride that I then feel like, yeah, look at me how I manage. Or if my, I don't know, mom or grandma comment on something that it's like, yeah, look at me, they're proud of me and look what I can manage. But it feels also very good, Lauren, to be brave, to take that cape off a bit.

Yeah, it feels needed as well. think it would be good if we are able to do that for ourselves before there is a burnout or before there is really health implications that we see in workplaces, in families, friends looking left and right. I mean, I see it everywhere. People are just crumbling.

I don't know where it starts. It starts all over the place, but I think a useful question, I guess that's why my podcast, I called it Beneath the Busy, is I think we have to really question what are we being busy about? Am I doing it because it's really necessary or am I doing it because I'm trying to prove something? I'm trying to prove my worth. I'm trying to prove how busy I am. I'm trying to get that affirmation from other people. And I think you'll find that if you're really honest with yourself,

Often we are busy because we're trying to run away from these uncomfortable feelings or we're busy because we're trying to prove something. And I think one of the episodes in season one, I called it busy is the new lazy. And I think it's because the busyness, it's lazy in a way that we just don't want to stop and look at what we don't want to look at. We don't want to feel the discomfort. We don't want to confront ourselves. And so I think it starts with really looking at what am I being busy about? Cause sometimes there's...

necessary busyness, but I'm sure if you stop and look, a lot of it is self-fueled busyness. And then I think the other piece which you mentioned earlier is just learning to spend time with yourself and those feelings and just being able to sit with them. The good ones, the bad ones, just notice that it's part of the human experience to have emotions. They feel uncomfortable, some of them, but they're not going to overwhelm you. You're not going to crumble if you feel the sadness or the anger or the grief.

And I think the more we get comfortable with sitting with those emotions, the less scary they become and the less we feel we've got to keep busy to stay away from them. I think those are the top kind of two things that pop to mind right now. There's obviously a lot more, but I think those two as a start. Yeah. And this is so helpful. If someone would want to, they've got some food for thought now and they want to continue reflecting on that and they may be one.

to maybe define the way they want to interpret leadership. And they want to do it their way, in their unique way, in their homes, at their workplaces. And they want to do that change in a sense that they want to lead differently, like from a more authentic place. Besides now starting to listening to your podcast, of course, where do they begin?

I think it's about being able to balance this paradox that we sit in between the doing and the being. I think we're too much in the doing. And I suppose if you're wanting to lead a team, your family, your life, if you want to lead well, we have to be able to say when is the time to do and when is the time to be. I think this whole work life balance thing that we've started, it's almost created this polar opposites. You're either working or you're lifeing. And that's

got us quite stuck. But if you almost see it as a continuum that I'm going to do because I need to, but when I'm doing too much and I'm going into the downsides of the doing and it's starting to feel like burnout and exhaustion, that's when I need to start opening up the self-compassion tap a bit more and saying, okay, now I need to pull back and I need to be and I need to rest and I need to recharge. I need to do the things that I enjoy, spend time with my family, get away from the results and the targets and the actions. And then

It's almost trusting that when you've had enough of that, you will go back into the doing. But we're so scared of that resting because we think we're just never going to get, we'll just get stuck there. Yeah. we're not going to catch up. Right. Because now we're like, now we weren't productive. Yeah. This is so helpful, Lauren. And the analogy that I often use is just if you drive a car, I mean, you know, almost intuitively you put on the gas when it's time to go on the open road and then you know when to put on the brake and then...

When you put on the brake too much and it stops, you put on the... And that's that self-trust and that self-compassion that we need to start building is being in tune with ourselves to say, I have enough now, I'm going to do. Now I've done enough, now I need to rest. But not enough according to what our kind of performance target-driven brain says, but enough in terms of how much capacity, energy, emotional, physical energy I have. let's all do that and let's all get...

Yeah, start reflecting on that busy. That's something wonderful you gave us there with the word as well and with beneath the busy, like what's underneath there when you're just keeping yourself busy all the time. I'm so grateful for you sharing your time and your thoughts with us. Everyone head over to Lauren's podcast and check it out. And thank you so much for being here with our wonderful community there. You're in a ⁓

in a great place where we're very happy we had you here today. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Hi there, this is Toto. I'm the producer and editor here at LJD headquarters in Benita Bizi. And I just wanted to leave you with a quick note before you head out into the rest of your day or your week. Please take some time to look into the rest of Regina Larco's wonderful work. She does amazing coachings and keynotes and also workshops all across leadership, confidence and courage and is involved in some really amazing community programs. So you can find her at ReginaLarco.com and across all socials and of course her wonderful podcast, hashtag impact.

If you also want to get some more information on Lauren and dive into her work further, which I highly recommend, you can find out ljdwellbeing.com or ljdwellbeing on YouTube and Beneath a Busy podcast on Instagram. Aside from the keynotes and workshops that Lauren's doing and also the one-on-one coachings for leaders in HR, there's an array of online courses and a free mental health masterclass that you can find on our website as well. Again, that's ljdwellbeing.com.

I also want to tell you about a really special episode that's coming up in two weeks. Lauren had a chance to sit down and have a really candid and interesting conversation with the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, also known as SADAC. So yeah, you can look out for that across our social media channels, at Beneath a Busy Podcast, or Lauren's newsletter and website. Thank you so much for your time. Enjoy the rest of your day or your week. And until next time, be well and take care.