Lots to Unpack There
We’re Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our 40s living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership, and everything in between. We’re navigating the “messy middle” of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone who just gets it makes the journey less hard.
Each week, we’ll share something real from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that as we process and reflect, it’ll inspire and help you do the same—wherever you are.
Lots to Unpack There
Stepping Stones & Still Rooms: Making Peace with the Pause
Jess and Lisa explore the emotional rollercoaster of major life transitions, focusing on Lisa's recent layoff experience and her struggle between constant action and creating space for strategic thinking.
• Lisa describes feeling like a "passenger" in her own emotional journey after being laid off
• The pull between taking immediate action and allowing space for clarity and intentional next steps
• The concept of a "white room" – creating mental and physical space to think strategically rather than reactively
• Recognizing how our professional identities become tied to constant busyness and productivity
• The generational shift from destination-focused careers to journey-oriented approaches
• The pressure we put on decisions when viewing them as ultimate rather than next steps
• Shifting from asking "what do I want to do?" to "who do I want to be?"
• Treating major life changes as gifts to be unwrapped intentionally
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Hey, it's Jess and Lisa. We've got stories to share From our hearts to your ears. Lots to unpack there. Tune in every week you won't want to miss. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa. We're.
Speaker 2:Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our forties living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership and everything in between.
Speaker 3:We're navigating the messy middle of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone along the way who just gets it makes the journey less hard.
Speaker 2:So each week we'll share something from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that, as we process and reflect, it'll inspire you to do the same wherever you are. Hi, jess, good afternoon Lisa. How are you Doing? Well? Well, mostly well. You know that we talked about that freight train of sickness that comes when your kids are sick, Standing right on those tracks no one gets headed for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I got that feeling on Wednesday, maybe tail end of Tuesday, and then yesterday I actually canceled some of my commitments so that I could rest. But today I'm feeling better, so I guess it worked.
Speaker 3:Oh good, yeah. Well, I feel like that almost never happens, so that's great.
Speaker 2:I know, and I was thinking about the difference between napping and then just sleeping more, and there's just something about sleeping during the day that I feel like you get three or four times the recuperation benefit from naps that you do from sleeping overnight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that explains a lot about me, I guess, as a non-napper, right? Yeah, as a wannabe napper, can I be in that group of people?
Speaker 2:instead of a non-napper, I'll be in the wannabe napper group, yes yeah, usually when I think of non-nappers I think of toddlers right are giving no nappers.
Speaker 3:That was the first time I ever heard of that was when you used it for your oldest. You said she is no napping today.
Speaker 2:Yes, those were rough times. Yes, as a first time mom. Yeah, the no napping. And we have weekly dinner with my brother and she would, I mean, she was just so tired, she was beside herself and also a toddler and my poor brother did not know what to do. Yeah, he would just look at me and kind of raise an eyebrow and say no nap. Like made this really angry face. Yeah, Of course I know that it's obvious and we're all fine with it.
Speaker 3:Clearly Right, exactly, yeah, yeah. So I mean I'm not a toddler, quite obviously, but it has just never been something I could pull off the nap.
Speaker 2:I got really into napping in college, I think, making up for all of the not sleeping I did in high school. Yes, it's so much so that my roommate had a comic book class or part there's a comic book as part of her class and the instructor really pushed them to be real and almost kind of on the edge of poking fun at, of like really caricaturizing the people in their life, I guess is maybe a way to say it. And I was the perpetual napper character in her book and her comic book.
Speaker 3:Sounds like a fun class. I mean, it's kind of the definition of write what you know, like if you're going to write about people, write about the people that are around you and what they're doing. So yeah, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. I mean, she was a very talented artist too.
Speaker 3:So Is she a comic book artist now? I don't know, that might be a fun look up.
Speaker 2:I think the last time I looked her up, no is the answer. She was doing more in the education space and less in the art space.
Speaker 3:But follows another common trope If you cannot do, you teach.
Speaker 2:No, she's multi-talented, so I'm sure she's doing a good job there too.
Speaker 3:How are you doing? I'm okay. I've had a roller coaster-y week emotionally. I had a lot of things as I continue to march down the road of being laid off. Being a person who is laid off and all of the feels that come with that. You get so many feels I have found Right. It's not single-faceted this process.
Speaker 2:Not at all, and it makes sense that that would happen kind of in waves, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean it all makes sense, looking at it as I can do, only kind of objectively. But yeah, I think I'm in a good spot in that. I'm not judging it, I'm just trying to ride along with it. I feel like a bit, though, that I'm in the passenger seat of it.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's such a beautiful metaphor. I'm curious about what's helping you ride with it. And then also that whole driver passenger thing dynamic how is that working out for?
Speaker 3:you? Yeah Well, the answer to the first question is, as always, you. You are helping me with it. That is almost always the answer to every complicated question in my life. Um, but what else is helping me? Lots of walking that helps. Prioritizing In addition to prioritizing all of the feelings and all of the processes that come with someone who's laid off and the administrative burden that comes with that, because there's admin kind of on every side of that. Also, taking the time to prioritize the things in my life that do bring me very consistent joy, fulfillment, happiness, contentedness, whatever the case may be. So, family, that one's kind of a given. Walking, which I love to do. Working out, which I sometimes love to do, depending on the day, yoga every morning as soon as I wake up. I've stayed very consistent with that because if I do it for 30 days without missing a day, I get to get a massage. So I'm very positively motivated by this Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:I love how you gatekept that.
Speaker 3:I totally did and journaling. So those are the things that don't take up a ton of time individually, but are you know filling out my schedule with having all of them and watching Schitt's Creek for the probably third time in a row?
Speaker 1:So I love that show so much.
Speaker 3:That also is a joy bringer for me, where I know that I'm going to watch it and it is going to make me laugh out loud and I'm going to feel better, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And because you've seen it before there's. There's also that thing that happens where you have the anticipatory joy in addition to the joy because you know what's going to happen and it's still funny when it does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I get to watch it when I'm making my breakfast and my lunch, so at least two times a day, which are really truly the only two times that I do watch it, because the rest of the day is, you know, filled with other things. So I get to be like, oh, I'm going to make my breakfast now and I get to put on Schitt's Creek and have this fun little you know space of time, probably no more than 30 minutes, which is like an episode and a half of it or something. So because they're pretty short episodes, so yeah. And then in terms of passenger seats, ride along process, there are it's an, it's yet another roller coaster within the roller coaster, right, because there are some moments when I feel completely held hostage by the feelings that I'm experiencing through this process.
Speaker 3:There are times when I feel totally in control and I've grabbed the wheel and I'm the one driving it and it swings wildly from one to the other, like, for example, on Wednesday I had a meeting with one of my senior leaders which was going to be our last meeting before I'm gone for good, and I don't know whether it was that meeting and kind of the feeling of dread leading up to it, or anxiety leading up to it, or whether it was just coincided on the same day just had this absolute, catastrophic plummet of confidence. And I'm not really prone to that. I'm prone to questioning, to that I'm prone to questioning, I'm a definite questioner of things. But to have the bottom just completely fall out of my confidence in its entirety.
Speaker 3:So unexpected Not sure what I'm going to do with my life, not sure if I am of any value to anyone in this job market like literally just totally collapsed, confident, wise and yeah, but then you know, within a couple of days it was recovered and I'm feeling back to normal. So it is. It does feel. I think there's no other way to really describe it other than a roller coaster.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And just being in that car you know, on the tracks, just hoping for the best what I I, what I imagined when you were describing sometimes being in control and sometimes just being along for the ride. It reminded me of the driver's instruction cars that are specially rigged so that the passenger who is the instructor can take over the vehicle in case of emergency with one of those little emergency flip switch things, and they've got like the brake on the floor, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I had one of those on Wednesday, I was pressing it with all my mind and nothing was happening. Somebody had disconnected the communication between the instructor break and the real break and so it was just it was. You know it was. It was a journey there for a little while. So, yep, lots of, lots of ups and downs and sideways and diagonals and still trying to to trying to figure it all out. And you know I'm not the only person in this situation.
Speaker 2:I have a husband, I have a family, I have confidants and partners and people in my life, and that does change the dynamic from from day to day, as you're weighing pros and cons and forwards and backwards is, and what and what ultimately I want to to see come out of this yeah, yeah, I imagine forward and backward is very much a matter of perspective, because it reminds me of a client conversation I had this week where, for some reason, my mind just always goes to this, this image of being in a cave for some reason, with this lake that is extending in indefinitely in all directions.
Speaker 2:All you can see is this water, and on the lake there are these stepping stones that go from place to place and in order to get from where you are to what's next, you have to maybe go backwards to be able to choose a different path. And so it feels maybe like going backwards, and yet it also opens up all of these other pathways that are there, and when you look at it kind of top down, you would see that wherever you were, maybe there wasn't anything that you could jump to, so the only way is to go back where you came, to move forward. But I don't know where that image comes from in my mind or in my life.
Speaker 3:I think it's very clear, and it conjures up a similar one of me. When you, you know you're a kid and you go to the restaurant and they give you, like those placemats you can draw on, and there's always, there's inevitably a maze yeah, that you can draw in, and almost every time you're not going to get it exactly right, You're going to have to backtrack in order to find the right loop to go on, and so I think it's very apt.
Speaker 2:I just think we societally we kind of stigmatize what feels like going backwards, but when we take more of a bird's eye view, it's really the only path and it's not backwards. It's like you're saying that backtracking even has a little bit of a different feeling that comes with less judgment.
Speaker 3:Well, I feel like there's a stigma with backtracking, and there's also a stigma with the understanding that if you're backtracking, that means that the place that you were at was the wrong place. And I don't think that either of those things are true, but I think it's very easy to get to that if you're thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I just saw something on Instagram today that was saying stop telling trailblazers that they're on the wrong path they know, because they don't want to go where any of the paths already have led, or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, the only thing about the image of the stepping stones and the lake is that it's an infuriating process to not have that drone shot over the top where you see what the actual end point is that you're trying to get to, because I think many people are like me in that. That is a very hazy view, absolutely. Most of us do not know what we want to be when we grow up.
Speaker 2:Right, I was saying that to somebody else who was giving herself a hard time over not knowing what it was. I was like does anybody know what they want to be when they grow up? I think most of us are just figuring it out. I'm sure there are a few but many do not.
Speaker 3:Most people that I talk to do not know what the end game really looks like.
Speaker 2:And that's a story that I think we have control over is reminding ourselves that nobody has it all figured out. We are all just getting to that stepping stone, seeing what we can see and deciding which direction we want to move forward or going back to where we came from to find another path.
Speaker 3:It would be such a different narrative and I really do feel like Gen Z is big on this narrative and I think it's a good thing in general in that it's micro decisions that get you to a place.
Speaker 3:Our generation, previous generations, it was all in the destination and the journey was just a function of the destination and it was how fast can you make it through the journey in order to get to the destination?
Speaker 3:Let's say, especially in boomers and Gen Xers, I would say that destination was C-suite, let's just say from like a corporate perspective, you get as high as you can, as fast as you can, with as much power and span of control and money as you can, and that is your destination.
Speaker 3:That is what you're supposed to be shooting for, because that offers you the best opportunity in your life to have what you want money, success, power, fame, whatever the case may be in your various industry. And I think what Gen Z is teaching all of us in a very backwards generational what's that reverse mentoring sort of way, is that it's that's a totally flawed way to look at your life, especially when a lot of us in our generation and the millennials and after have seen people think about things from a destination standpoint. And then they get to their destination and they're unhappy, right, they're burned out, and or it was the destination they wanted to get to, but they spent all of their life capital getting to that place that they never got to enjoy it when they got there and once they achieved, that thing.
Speaker 2:So many things are coming up for me. One is that idea of journey before destination. Yeah, because you're right, we are prone to falling into an. I will be happy when trap yes, and just a little bit longer. Trap of. I only have to work this hard for a little bit longer and then I'll have it made. But then we get there and we're like what do I?
Speaker 2:do with myself, and I think that idea that that happens kind of without us doing it intentionally, is work equates to hard, and so we don't look for work.
Speaker 2:That doesn't feel like work. When we have that higher level position and we don't have to work so hard, try so hard, we somehow feel like we're failing, because all of that effort, I guess, and the pressure that we're used to being under maybe exists differently depending on the position. The other thing that is coming to mind for me is the idea of decisions as being ultimate versus next step, and I think a lot of people fall into this. They put the weight of every decision on the next decision because they're pressing the fast forward button to get all the way to the end when we don't even know who we're going to be. At that point we're making decisions for a future self that we don't know yet, and if we start to think about our decisions in terms of cause and effect, I think it shifts the emphasis to more of a. The decision is the decision, not the decision is all of the decisions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it does put a ton of pressure and a ton of weight where it doesn't necessarily belong, and I think we're able to get to that place. When something is out of our control and a thing happens, I think we can easily shift weight. Some of us maybe not universally so, but we can easily shift weight because it's out of our control. But when it's in our control, we put all kinds of pressure and weight on it Because ultimately, if it's the wrong decision it's on us, not on the universe or not on this company or that person or this manager or anything else. And so we add all sorts of unnecessary, like we expect ourselves to have the gift of prophecy or something like that in terms of making these decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just wish we would stop doing that, because none of us, nothing, is ever 100% in our control, I mean aside from our, you know.
Speaker 3:Your direct actions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our direct actions and even though some might argue like we, I don't know that a little bit waiting for the roller coaster to calm down before making decisions.
Speaker 3:And yeah, again the roller coaster, being emotional waves that come upon me that I don't necessarily expect. I did not expect on Wednesday, to lose full confidence in my abilities as a professional in my industry, did not expect that to happen, and I'm cautious of making big decisions or even medium-sized decisions when I don't know what's going to come up for me in the scope of this process. In the scope of this process, I have, I guess, like two more weeks left before I'm gone officially from my company and I don't know how that's going to shift and change. I don't know what additional loop-de-loops or, you know, splash mountain-esque things are going to happen on the roller coaster between now and then. So I'm trying to take my time and luckily I have it. I have space and time right now.
Speaker 3:But I'm noticing and this is what I wanted to unpack with you today is this very, very surprising sense of mental busyness in my mind that if I were to forecast what I would be like in this exact situation, let's say a month ago, and you told me, all of those meetings that take up eight hours of your day, they're gone, they're gone off your calendar, and all of those projects that you had in the works for months and months on end. Those are gone too. How would you feel? And my response to that would have been I would feel unburdened. I would feel unburdened, I would feel free. I would have been wrong. I would have been really, really, really wrong had that have been my prediction, because that is not what I feel For one.
Speaker 3:I don't feel less busy, even though I am arguably way less busy. And two, my mental state has not caught up with that. I actually regularly have to turn off audio books and podcasts because it's too many things in my head at once, and that is surprising, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you I'm, I think you were. You're only sort of wrong because there was a period in which you felt unburdened.
Speaker 3:Yes, I felt unburdened from a like obligation sense.
Speaker 2:Yes, and maybe you're just not there yet. I'm also remembering your stress galation path and how this where are you in your stress levels? Because I think that greatly contributes to your feeling of this ping-ponging that's happening in your brain.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm, where am I? That's a really good question. I'm definitely not all the way up. I don't have any hallucinations or anything like that. Sugar craving, nail biting, that's all definitely happening. Actually, I was really pleased with myself because I wasn't picking at my nails and biting them for like a week and they were getting long and pretty. Licking at my nails and biting them for like a week and they were getting long and pretty.
Speaker 2:And then on Wednesday it just it all went down, yeah. So, um, yeah, I would say, some amount of stress. You're maybe not at peak stress, but you're not at low stress.
Speaker 3:Correct. And then yesterday I was supposed to have some dental work and this is new information about Lisa for the group but I don't handle the dentist well. It is probably my least favorite place to be and let's just sum it up by saying it did not go well and I ended up running out of the dentist office crying without getting actually any dental work done. So stress-wise in that situation yesterday very high.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm also curious about this concept we talked about last week a little bit of going from zero to 60 and 60 to zero, a little bit of going from zero to 60 and 60 to zero, and I'm wondering, kind of maybe extending the passenger metaphor, like the vehicle is slowing down but you're still moving forward through space a little bit. And so what? What do you need right now to be able to kind of feel the slowdown, so that you can have that mental clarity?
Speaker 3:I think it's tricky because if I were to answer that right off the cuff, without thinking too long and hard about it, I would say taking off the table that which adds stress. I know that sounds really, really obvious when you say it like that, but I mean, I was really good at putting at bay all of those things to say what's next. I was thinking about what I wanted in a creative exercise, but I wasn't making any concrete movements. Now that all changed on Monday and on Monday I, on a whim, applied for nearly a dozen jobs. I don't know why. I just felt like I needed to. I felt like that was the appropriate thing to do, and so I was inspired to make that change. Inspired to make that change.
Speaker 3:And I think that is what allowed all of this additional busyness to sort of enter my brain. It kicked all of that back up. And the second thing is that there is a little bit of muscle memory to be had here, in that I am used to my days being extremely busy, extremely fraught with projects and necessities and needs and favors and Slack messages and emails and things like that kind of pinging all the time, and I think there is a little bit of that muscle memory, one that feels familiar to me, so I can kind of see myself seeking it out to some degree. Yeah, and two, that just is. It's going to be an inertia. That happens because that's what you know. If you've been doing jumping jacks for 60 minutes and then you stop doing jumping jacks all of a sudden, your body will kind of, yes, you'll be relieved to stop doing jumping jacks, but I think your body will naturally start to do those movements anyway.
Speaker 2:Right, it's like when you press your arms up against a doorframe for so long, and then you step away.
Speaker 3:And you let them go. Yeah, and they start raising up, they start floating up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, exactly, yeah. Well, you've identified some pretty key areas here, or key reasons, and I guess what I'm feeling most curious about is, on this zero to 60 busyness, where do you want to be right now?
Speaker 3:that's a really tough question to ask or answer. It's not a tough question to ask.
Speaker 2:It was very easy to ask.
Speaker 3:I can do it again if you need me to. It's tough to answer because I'm of multiple minds about it. Which is maybe part of the busyness in my head is that I have got multiple versions of myself that could answer that. So the version of myself that feels responsible for my family and for my husband to feel safe with my income says you know, I need to be doing this in order to feel comfortable. I need to know that I'm moving somewhere, going somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that you're doing the things that you can control, that you can do.
Speaker 3:Yes. And then the other part of me that's maybe more in a vacuum just Lisa would probably say. What I need is to know that I'm going to be okay even if I don't do something that demonstrates my next successful role right now.
Speaker 2:So if you were going to put these two versions of yourself on a continuum, what would you label the axes for left to right?
Speaker 3:I would say one is to not disappoint. So that would be the one that says do what you can to make sure that everyone's okay around you. And the other one would be you've been given a gift right. So it's the gift. It's the gift of time, it's the gift of space, it's the gift of the moments that you have to just be.
Speaker 2:So maybe like savor versus chew, I don't know versus chew, I don't know, saver versus act.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, one is of motion and the other is absent of motion.
Speaker 2:What are some of the benefits of being in motion?
Speaker 3:I don't miss opportunities that are currently available, that might not be available when I am theoretically 100% ready to show progress, to be I mean, we've this. This is a perennial thing that we touch on in the podcast.
Speaker 3:But to be productive, to feel- like you're making strides and that you're continuing to be relevant and that I think there's an ego component to that as well. There's probably an ego component to both of them, but the ego component to the emotion side of it is you have all of these network people and you're so relevant in this industry and your ability to touch into this industry and you know your ability to touch into this network and tap into them and use all of these connections to get you, you know, the next, the next best step stepping stone in the lake. So there's probably a lot more than that too, but I mean, I would say a surefire paycheck would probably be on the list somewhere.
Speaker 2:What happens when you over-index on action? What are some of the negative consequences?
Speaker 3:Well, I think for me, I feel busy in my mind and I don't get that clarity, and that was, I would say that was a little bit of a thing, for the job that I had was that there were fairly simple strategic goals Like, for example, writing a charter for my program. Fairly straightforward, it's a document, it's a program document. Most of it can be written with generative AI, and I could never get it done because it required a clean, quiet environment for which I could produce the parts of my program that I needed to to lay out and the space to think about not today, not tomorrow, but five years from now what does this program need to be. And I could never, I could never muster the resources to do stuff like that because you are in constant reactive mode Exactly, and so maybe that's another.
Speaker 2:The downside is that you feel like in your body, you feel like you are always reacting to the next thing, which doesn't feel empowered. Yeah, what about on the other side. That's really it.
Speaker 3:Honestly, that's a huge thing, Jess is. Yeah, when you're constantly reacting, you're not empowered. You are beholden to all of those environmental factors that are deciding how you spend your time and the way that you show up, because you're not in control of the things that happen around you. Yeah, You're the butterfly in the hurricane.
Speaker 2:Right. So moving to the other side of this continuum, where you have that inaction or absence of action maybe not the same thing as inaction- Right right. What are some of the benefits of being in that space? What do you get from that?
Speaker 3:I think that's exactly what I was trying to. Well, what I was just describing is ideally. I don't know if I could actually create this. It's a little bit theoretical because I've never actually done it.
Speaker 3:But the space, the time I'm imagining, not in an insane asylum sort of way, but in a nice way a very clean white space with a clean white desk and a clean white chair and a blank piece of paper and no distractions and no busyness and no notifications and no things to react to and endless time and space to answer the questions. First, you have to know what the questions are, which is a whole nother thing. It's a whole nother pre-step within that white wall with white desk, it's you know. Prior to that, you have to have those things. But to answer those questions in that environment, that is what the pause or the lack of action looks like to me. Yeah, and the idea being that I walk out of that room in X amount of time and I have the answers to at least some of those questions and I feel good about them. I feel strongly that they are at least a pretty good guess at the next one or two or three stepping stones.
Speaker 2:So spaciousness is a component of that. Because you're removing all of the things that you're reacting to, you now have space to settle and to look in the pond, now that the dust has settled, and see what even am I looking at here?
Speaker 3:I feel like if you spend a lot of time looking down at the next stone, you're not looking up at the trees and the sky and the ripples that are made in the lake and the cave behind you and what's on the other side. You're not seeing any of those things because all you're doing is just looking down, making sure you're not stepping on the moss-covered ones. That's going to make you take a dip.
Speaker 2:Right, right. What happens if you over index on that side?
Speaker 3:Missing opportunities, potentially, in an extreme case, if it took a really long time loss of income, loss of faith or a sense of safety in my partner or my house, and loss of those network connections that are looking for me to take immediate action.
Speaker 2:So from what you, how you have described, how your mind is now, it sounds like you're more in the action side, yes, and and it's not where you want to be.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And yet swinging so far to the inaction or lack of action side is maybe also not where you want to be right.
Speaker 3:For those reasons, for an extended period of time. For sure, I think in my mind I have it that I wouldn't need a terribly long time in the white room. The white room could be a pretty quick, relatively speaking process as long as I get it. As long as I get the space, the time, the resources and the questions ahead of time, it wouldn't have to be a months or years long time to spend in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like you need an offsite, I do.
Speaker 3:I need a personal offsite.
Speaker 2:You need a personal offsite. Yes, okay, knowing that there's this like almost magnetic draw to the action side, because you've got all of these things ping ponging.
Speaker 3:It's a stronger yeah, it's a stronger magnetism, because it's what I'm used to.
Speaker 2:It's a stronger magnetism because it's what I'm used to. Yeah, yeah, what is taking one step closer to your offsite and your white room look like?
Speaker 3:Hmm, I think it would look like several days in a row of not taking actions to find another job their job, not setting up profiles, not checking LinkedIn repeatedly, not reaching out to people constantly, not scrolling job sites, not touching base with recruiters, not doing those things that are now chewing up a good amount of my time and also just taking up an inordinately large amount of space in my brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would allow you to do that? What do you need?
Speaker 3:Choice. I would just have to choose to. Really, that's the great thing about my current situation is that I do get to choose. I just I chose differently this week and next week is a new week and I can choose differently again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is that? What you want to do Is take next week or a couple of days next week.
Speaker 3:It is what I want to do. Unfortunately the train has kind of already left the station because now I have screening calls and pre-interviews with lots of places, so there's a little bit that I got to put back in the bag there.
Speaker 2:but Well, what? Okay, so let's reframe that a little bit. What boundaries do you need to set up to give yourself that space?
Speaker 3:Well, I put them all in the same day so maybe that day is just lost. I can focus on the other days. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Is it in the middle of the week, like you're doing?
Speaker 3:Tuesday.
Speaker 2:So maybe next Wednesday, thursday, friday, right, you can give yourself, yeah, that space.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, like I said, maybe, maybe, just a matter of a couple hours a day. And that's what I was doing at first. I was giving myself blocks of multiple Pomodoros to say this is just for you, this is just for you, to take literally thinking time and contemplation time. I mean, it's such a luxury, it's like a mink stole, it's like the biggest luxury ever to have someone just be like.
Speaker 2:Here's a block of time, it's yours think yeah, speaking from experience though there is you can't even enjoy that block of time until you have decompressed, because life and being in that state of action all of the time, it's just winding our springs tighter and tighter, yeah.
Speaker 3:My springs are so tight.
Speaker 2:I remember leaving my last job and thinking well, my last day is July 1st, I'll take the month of July, and then by August 1st I'll be. I mean, it was several months before I was able to feel like I had my feet under me again, because I had the phantom limb of slack, because I kept looking for that connection and realizing that I just didn't have it and I I went into a pretty lonely place for a while and I don't think I needed to, but I also just didn't know how to integrate those. That way of thinking that that balance between action and non-action to also keep the social connections going Right, Like that was the piece that was missing for me. And so I'm thinking about it in your case as kind of integrating these two ends, of finding not just a happy medium but really being able to get the benefit of both things, without always being in reactive mode and without missing all of the opportunities and having your social network become irrelevant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, to be fair, I want to train myself out of being reactive mode, no matter what job I take. That was not a healthy habit or, to be fair, a productive or highly performative habit to have anyway. Yeah, I was busy but not productive. Right, exactly that was something I wanted to change about my work life for just being a better employee, being a better manager, anyway. So what better time than the present to figure out a different way to be? I do feel like I am going against years and years and years of training to be a nice reactive, you know person who responds to what she's asked to do, and then so many environments are based on whose action is next and go, go, go.
Speaker 2:And when is this deadline?
Speaker 3:and so yes, and being a doer. That's what I know. I know being a doer and if I know, if I have heard anything about being successful in 2025, it is not about what you do. That is the surest way to never actually see true large-scale success. If you just sit and do your job all day, that's not really super valuable a lot of the time. So I do want to get out of the habit anyway. Yeah, but there is just such really really fine training that has gone into me being this way, some by me and some by literally every place and every person I've ever worked with prior to now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are some of the questions you could ask yourself to be more intentional and empowered when you're facing these?
Speaker 3:choices. I think the biggest one for me is what is the most important thing you can do today? I have always it was one of the very first questions that was ever asked of me when I started coaching, and it is one of the most important and useful tools that I've ever come back to which is, if you're indexing on the most important thing you're going to do that day, even if you're not busy, busy, busy all day you will feel productive if you get that thing accomplished. Yeah, you will feel productive if you get that thing accomplished, and I think it's a way for me to have my cake and eat it too, in that I can still feel like I did something. You know, I get to check that productive box and I get to check the box of.
Speaker 3:You are a thinker, you are a strategist, you are a person who is not just doing the thing, but you're leading the thing, and that is an uncomfortable place for a doer to be in, but it is ultimately where I would like to go, and so maybe that's the question I need to ask myself every morning as I write my checklist, which I love. I love a checklist, I love checking everything off the checklist, but that is the exact opposite mentality that I ultimately want to have, right? So, yeah, what's the most important thing you can do today and maybe for right now? Most important thing you can do today and maybe for right now, that is answer this one question about your life or, you know, whittle down how you feel about this thing, or, you know, maybe that's how that has to appear for me.
Speaker 2:Something you just said made me think of. Hear from me Something you just said made me think of a great reframe of instead of asking what do you want to do, ask yourself, who do you want to be? And I think you're getting at that when you're saying I don't want to be a doer, I want to be a thinker, strategist, I want to build something. I want to be a builder. And there is some doing that happens in those things, but it is not primarily doing, and so I wonder if, maybe, as you're thinking about what is the most important thing you could do today, thinking about what is the most important thing you could do today, how aligned is that thing with who you want to be, and maybe the first question is who do you want to be?
Speaker 2:Well, sure yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, that seems like a white room kind of question yeah very white room question.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that was a lot to unpack. How are you feeling about the?
Speaker 3:unpacking, I'm feeling definitely good. It was really good to solidify some of those things. As I've mentioned, there's a lot of things swirling in my brain right now, and so getting the chance to drill down on one of them and get to a point of resolution, to a point of resolution or forward understanding I'm not even sure that's a phrase it is now. You just made it one.
Speaker 2:It feels a little bit better and it kind of loosens my shoulders and it kind of feels maybe slightly less heavy than it did an hour ago. It kind of feels like even just the energy is shifted a little bit from this feeling like I have to to now I can choose to and knowing that you can choose to be busy, you can choose to be in action, but that doesn't have to define you, because you can also choose not to be, depending on how you're feeling that day.
Speaker 3:I think one of the biggest things for me is I keep referring to this layoff as a gift and I'm not treating it like it's a gift.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is an interesting insight.
Speaker 3:I think treating it like a gift is to be able to revel in all the yumminess and all of the positive attributes that I get from this experience. And I'm not, I'm just, you know. I held myself back for like what? A week and a half and then, you know, I wound myself up like a little toy and I just said okay, go, go, go, go go, it's been too long you have to go, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, like you said, you've been training to be go, go, go for a really long time, yeah, and so now you have to train your body to know that you that isn't the only way that you don't have to be in that kind of high pressure, and when there's high pressure, it's holding you in, yeah, and when the pressure is gone, all of that stuff can now like come out. And so maybe that's what this unboxing has like you're unboxing the gift and realizing all of this stuff that has been held in.
Speaker 2:It's like one of those surprise boxes where everything like shoots out everywhere.
Speaker 3:I feel like I like went to unwrap the gift and then I was like just kidding and like slid it across the table and like I'm just going to leave it there until later. So maybe I should slide the gift back in front of me, actually take off the ribbon carefully, undo the wrapping paper, if you're the type of person that likes to save wrapping paper for later. I don't like to save it, but I don't like to rip it either. I'm a crazy person. I. I don't like to save it, but I don't like to rip it either.
Speaker 2:I'm a crazy person. I go out like an animal so I can't. That stresses me out so bad. But I also fold up my trash because the package I know it's so weird, Like if I have a paper bag as part of my trash, you know, like I went to Five Guys or whatever I will flatten it and fold it and then put it in the trash, Just what I know. Yeah, I mean the the packing coefficient is is greater.
Speaker 3:Thank you for mapping that one out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh, oh, I had a friend who gave me so much crap about that, but anyway, uh, yeah. So that's what I do with wrapping paper I don't save it, but I also don't crumple it up. I fold it and then I put it in the trash or the recycling depending.
Speaker 3:I'm going to have to take a minute to think about how I feel about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can maybe unpack snack.
Speaker 3:Let's unpack snack that one some other time yeah yeah okay.
Speaker 2:So, uh, you have this gift. Now it is sliding in front of you and maybe it is not exploding with all of these like mechanical butterflies that are going to go out, although that sounds kind of cool, it right, but unexpected perhaps. So what is one thing that you want to do, moving forward, that is going to allow you to see the gift and to move forward in that space of choice that you're looking for blocking of, you know, maybe giving myself 45 minutes or an hour every day to do that stuff, to do the moving forward stuff.
Speaker 3:Since I'm already in motion, I can't very well ignore it at this point. And then the rest of the time I get to structure in a giftly sort of way, mm-hmm, for the next maybe couple weeks until my job ends officially, and then maybe it's a different gift from there, maybe I get to unwrap a new one and we can kind of see how that one looks too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a nesting box of gifts. Yes, gifts within gifts.
Speaker 3:A nesting gift. Yes, Past the parcel if you will.
Speaker 2:I'm still feeling curious about the white room, uh-huh, and I wonder if there might be even a literal, an actual, oh yeah, you know my deep devotion to coffeehouses, yeah, and my inspiration that comes from them.
Speaker 3:It would probably be a very, very good thing for me to take my act down the road to a coffee house that makes me feel inspired but calm, yeah, and gives me that change of scenery. And I think there is no small part of this. That is, I am sitting at my desk with my computer, with all of the functionality and the applications and the things that come with, working full time even though I'm technically not technically working full time right now.
Speaker 2:I think that is so true. I'll share for the listeners. After I left my job and went through this thing, I had to change my wallpaper in my office.
Speaker 2:I mean I really, because it was like that, it was because I went down into my office and everything had changed, but nothing had changed, and so I rearranged my desk. I mean I really think that this is a very big change for you, yeah, and so taking some time to meet the symbolism in the real space too, to be able to kind of wrap this up and step forward into whatever is next, yes, I, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think that is a solid recommendation and one that I will absolutely be doing next week, necessarily because I have lunches all over the state of Maryland with people that I like, and so I will be the traveling pants next week going and seeing all of these wonderful people that I never had time to see until now. So I think that's going to a little bit be forced to happen, but I like that. I like the reframe that I'm choosing for it to happen. It's all part of the grand play, right, right right, you're doing it for the plot, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's absolutely right. So thanks for unpacking Lisa.
Speaker 3:That sounds really good. Thank you so much for unpacking with me your thoughts really good. Thank you so much for unpacking with me your thoughts, and your thoughtfulness and your mindfulness are just never, ever, ever wasted on this subject. No, thank you, thanks. Check you next time, sis. Yeah, all right, bye.
Speaker 2:Love you.
Speaker 3:Bye.
Speaker 1:Love you, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. And Lisa, we've got stories to share From our hearts to your ears. Lots to unpack there. Tune in every week you won't wanna miss.
Speaker 3:Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa especially when, when, especially when I don't know where that accent came from A little twang Hashtag white room question yeah, soon to be trending on a social media platform near you, right, right, right.
