You're Already Good Enough: Unlearning Never Enough Culture with Interval Paper

What if "good enough" wasn't settling — but the thing that actually raises your standards?

In this Toolbox Tuesday episode, I'm joined by Erica Ando, PhD, and Michelle A.M. Miller, co-founders of Interval Paper and creators of The Good Enough Guide, a pocket-sized guided journal and manifesto for anyone untangling themselves from hustle culture.

Erica is a coach and writer who works with women at consequential moments in their lives, drawing on three decades of somatic learning and Buddhist meditation practice. Michelle is a coach, interdisciplinary artist, writer, and end-of-life doula whose work explores memory, mortality, and meaning.

Together, we get into:

• Their own seasons of burnout — from caregiving through a family health crisis to working around the clock building a business in her 20s
• "Never enough culture" — the broader, sneakier force behind hustle culture that whispers you're not thin enough, smart enough, successful enough, or kind enough
• Why the antidote isn't lowering your standards — and how embracing "good enough" paradoxically elevates them
• The 1% shift: why healing from burnout has to be as compounding as the burnout itself
• How The Good Enough Guide works — and why they intentionally designed it to be small, spacious, and pressure-free
• Questioning the beliefs and identities we absorbed as kids ("I'm a hard worker," "I have to learn the hard way") and whether they're even true
• Their upcoming online summer retreat: three 90-minute gatherings (July–September) exploring joy, enoughness, and time

🧰 This Week's Toolbox:
Visit Erica and Michele at intervalpaper.com to explore The Good Enough Guide and their summer retreat.

🎁 Listener Offer: Get $100 off the summer retreat with code REBELS100 at checkout — but don't sit on it, the code expires July 18th!

FREE RESOURCES:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if instead of scarcity being your baseline, your baseline was I'm good enough? If that's your baseline, then what becomes possible for you? Or you can just imagine if you're not trying to grasp for something in order to feel like you're worthy, or if you're not trying to work harder in order to prove that you deserve to rest, what could happen? Your baseline is actually just elevated.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

This is Hustle Rebels, a podcast for people who know how to grind but are starting to question the cost. I'm Renee, and here we talk about success, burnout, and nervous system regulation without glorifying exhaustion or sacrificing your health, relationships, or your sense of self. And without pretending ambition is the problem. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Hustle Rebels. It is Toolbox Tuesday, and today I am joined by Erica Ando, PhD, and Michelle A. M. Miller, co-founders of Interval Paper, a collaborative coaching project built around private mentorship, group experiences, and their guided journal and manifesto, The Good Enough Guide. Erica is a coach and writer who works with women at consequential moments in their lives, drawing on three decades of somatic learning in a Buddhist meditation practice. Michelle is a coach, interdisciplinary artist, writer, and end-of-life doula whose work sits at the intersection of memory, mortality, and meaning, using somatic practice, mindfulness, and reflective inquiry to help people meet life's hardest questions with more presence and honesty. So, Eric and Michelle, welcome to the toolbox. It's so great to have you guys. Thanks for I would love to hear more about what you guys do. And you guys talk about your own seasons of burnout. Can you take us back there and what you guys did to organize your life around impossibly high standards and what it actually looked like for both of you guys day to day?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

I'll start this one first. So for me, it was, I still remember crystal clear, April 15th, 2020, wheeling my dad into the emergency room that was then locked down. You couldn't, you know, no one could enter if you weren't in a wheelchair or on a gurney, basically, not allow my mother, his beloved and soulmate for a billion years to go in with him. And so, long story short, he eventually came out, very different brain surgeries and lots of 24-7 caregiving. And so trying to keep them afloat, you know, keep them stable and safe, and trying to keep their business afloat, my business, the studio practice afloat, trying to keep myself healthy, my husband safe, everybody. And so that period is really seared into my memory and quite frankly, my body still, of just trying to meet these standards, these impossible standards. They begin with like, I should. So, like, I should be able to do this. I should be able to do all the things. I should be able to learn how to be a caregiver and learn how to take care of two parents simultaneously. And I should know how to navigate this global crisis. And I should be able to exercise and I should be able to apply to these residencies and grants and get my work out into the world. And it was a lot of I should, and it was very, it was just very heavy and complicated, and you know, a swirl of emotions and grief and frustration and anger and hopelessness and all those things. Yeah. So for me, it was this this book and this project really emerged from that particular season. And it wasn't just a point in time, it really did continue for years. We're now on year six, and now we just have mom, and she's living in memory care and doing pretty great by all measures.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Thank you for sharing that. It's so much of the compounding stuff for burnout, which obviously we're going to get into, but how about you, Erica?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, I mean, I think the impossibly high standards have been there my whole life and what that leads to. So sometimes it has led into burnout, but I think like that these, you know, these high standards have been pretty much conditioned in me from a really young age, doing well in school, being rewarded for doing well in school. I mean, I think I was probably burnt out in high school. I remember that. I think I've probably burnt out chronically over the years. But what I remember most acutely is what I started when I was in my 20s and I was determined to make it work. I was very competitive. I was seeing my peers have businesses and they were a few years ahead of me. So of course they were doing better than I was, but I used that as a standard for myself. Why am I not there now? So I kept working and working. I basically worked around the clock. I would sleep, wake up, work, sleep, wake up, work for years, never taking a vacation, neglecting my social life. My partner was understanding, but I was basically not tending to that. So it was all just focused around work and this idea of success I had around making this business work. I think really what ended up happening is I was married and I got pregnant. And I remember saying, I don't have time to go to the doctor, I don't have time to have a baby. And I was like, Oh my god, what has happened? What has happened to me? I don't have time, I don't have time for things that should be important, and I'd made this thing into my whole life, and that was, I think, you know, I was beginning to see already how that could be really harmful, but I think that was really the turning point.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, you guys have very relable stories, and I feel like Erica, you mentioned feeling like you were probably already burnt out in high school, and then Michelle, you mentioned how you feel it in your body. And something that I can relate to both of those stories is that I feel as if I looking back was incredibly burnt out in college when I took on a double major, and I didn't realize that the symptoms that I was experiencing, which was nausea and vomiting for a long period of time to the point where they just assumed it was my gallbladder, so they just took it out. But looking back, I was like, I think that that was anxiety and overwhelm because I'm not an anxious person. I don't present in that way, but knowing what I know now and how we just harbor that in our nervous system, it's very evident to me that even back then, I was probably harboring all of that burnout in my nervous system and it was manifesting inside of my body. So, what was the moment of the slow realization where you just said something needs to change in our lives?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

For me, I can say that it wasn't overnight. So it wasn't this like aha moment. Oh, I'm burned out, and therefore I should do this again, the eyesheds. It was very slow, very gradual, realizing that there was a time before that period when I did feel good, when I did feel more rested, just more present in my life when I didn't feel pain. Cause for me, all those things express themselves as a lot of mysterious pains that you cannot identify. And so just slow, gradual, little like permissions to not do it perfectly, to miss a deadline, to not propose a show, to say no to invitations or offerings, and just little by little and adopting more somatic practices, really rooting back into my mindfulness education that I had had over 10 years ago. But you kind of let these things slip sometimes. And so I certainly was letting them slip. And so really leaning more into mindfulness and embodied practices, and it was just incremental, like a grain of sand. It was not some big aha. Oh, okay, if I do A, B, and C, I'm gonna achieve D. It wasn't that. It was really gradual and just being softer and kinder with myself, just realizing that at that stage, this could not be my life. This was not how it goes. This is not permanent, recognizing that it was temporary and that there was another way for me to be in the world with myself and with my body, and still show up for the people I love and care about.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Yeah, we don't have to be a slave to our system and run ourselves into the ground. Yeah.

unknown 9:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

I think there's this almost like burnout is the absolute extreme, you know? But there's all this stuff before burnout. And what I was talking about before, I think that that was a clear case of burnout. Around the same time that I was working on that business, I started to study somatic learning through the Feldenkrais method. And I got certified in it. So I think that helped a lot at the time to help me calm my nervous system and then maybe even to start recognizing that, hey, this wasn't good. But I did this intense training program, learned a lot, started teaching it, and then I let it lapse. Other stuff happened in my life. I did a PhD program, and I don't know that I got burnt out on it. There are many other factors happening at the time, like getting a divorce. And I can clearly say I was stressed. I don't know that I was clinically burnt out, but I was definitely stressed. I was definitely trying to live up to high standards, impossible standards, between raising my kid, living on my own, starting another business. So I feel like it's just been so gradual. And in the last few years, I think I can't say that I've been burnt out, but I notice that the high standards coming through. You know, I notice that, and that's the last almost the last part of it. Maybe I don't have the burnout symptoms, and maybe I know how to rest, and maybe I know how to take care of myself more. But those little things, like, and it comes through in ways that sometimes I don't even expect. Like it's just so deep inside me. This trying to live up to these high standards. I think that's the last part of it, really, is just recognizing that this is in me, that it's probably always going to be in me. Something that I have to always be attentive to because society is telling you to do this too. It's not just that it's in me, it's being enforced, reinforced all the time from the outside. You know, you should be farther along, you should be better at this. And it's so subtle, you know. Even things like I was thinking the other day, as much as I well, Bernie Brown and being vulnerable, at some point, this has become something you have to do too. You must be more vulnerable, otherwise, you're failing. You know, like you're always trying to improve yourself. So I think this kind of like trying to improve yourself, trying to be better also becomes a high standard. And it's just so sneaky. And I feel like I'm always having to watch that.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Yeah. And I feel like that's the biggest conundrum of burnout, right? Because we have this idea that it's these big traumatic things. I mean, I come from the first responder world, and people think that the trauma and first responders are these gnarly calls that we go on. And in reality, it's really not. It's the small compounding shit that just happens on the daily basis, on top of the idea that we work 24-hour shifts, possibly longer. We're not on good sleep schedules, we're probably not eating healthy. Have you seen the majority of our first responders? We're constantly stressed in flight or fight. And that's a lot of just high-achieving professionals as well. Everyone's just in this hyper-vigilant, hyperactive state and calling it ADHD, you know, when in reality, it's like what you were saying, it's like a forced ADHD drive better, do better. Like I just hired a marketing specialist and he's been really helpful. But he's also like, we could put you into this other tier and do analytics. And I'm like, if I do that, I'm going to drive myself nuts because then I want to change my content and then I want to do this, and I'm going to be like, at three and a half minutes, people dropped off because I might have said this wrong. And then I'm going to pick everything apart. And it's just this drive to never be good enough and always need to be better, which leads me to my next question for you guys is you have a great phrase of never enough culture. So can you just unpack a little bit what that means and how it's different from how people usually talk about the hustle culture?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

It's almost like hustle culture is about work and never enough culture is maybe broader and contains hustle culture. So never enough culture could be like I'm not thin enough, pretty enough, I don't have a nice enough house, I don't have a good enough education, not enough of a nice person, I'm not a generous person. All the things, you know, I can always be better than what I am. So hustle culture is part of that. And never enough culture is where you don't have enough, or will never have enough, you'll never be good enough, and you just have to keep trying.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

And to add to everything that Erica just said, there's a criticality to the self-talk to it as well for never enough culture. It's very judgmental, very critical, very harsh. I find that in that mode, my self-talk and my own mindset and thoughts about myself become almost mechanistic, like computer or equipment language. You know, I don't have enough space in my hard drive, or I have to reprogram something, or I need to optimize my schedule. You know, the language even becomes distorted or contaminated with that insufficiency. And it's really subtle. And I do think it, like Erica was saying before, it starts early. So there's danger in that because when we're really young, we attune to that. We think it's normal. And it's really challenging to recognize, pause, and step back and say, wait a minute, where am I getting this? Why was that message being beamed to me? Do I want to accept it? Do I want to believe it? Is it true?

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Questioning everything that we have once believed as children that we might not even realize we absorbed, you know. I followed this one podcast and uh he talks a lot about the identity shiftings that we absorbed as children. And it's funny, it just dawned on me. He talks a lot about the financial aspect, and a lot of people live in scarcity mindset. It just dawned on me when you were talking, Erica, about the never enough culture. The scarcity mindset isn't just in financial worlds, it's it really isn't everything. It's the scarcity mindset of just never enough in being ourselves and being kind enough, being generous enough, giving enough of our talents and our time. I feel like that, yeah, we are always living in a scarcity mindset. And it's wild to really think about when you take a step back. So, what do you guys think is the antidote of this never enough culture, this hustle culture that just is constantly feeding us and pushing us to push ourselves to the brim?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Good enough, but not in the lowering of standards way, not in a traditional way. And so this is where Eric and I are maybe being a bit subversive or counter-cultural, but it's not that it's insufficient, it's not that something or a person or a way of being is insufficient, it's not good enough. It's like, no, you are inherently good enough right now as you are and worthy of kindness and care and attention and compassion. And what if we all begin to approach ourselves that way? How would we be different in the world? Speaking for myself, I know that once I started to flip that script from the insufficiency and the inadequacy narrative, it snowballs slowly but gently, but almost inevitably, it really does snowball. And so then I do become kinder to myself, and that ripples outward to how I treat other people. It also paradoxically raises my standards because when I am no longer striving and grasping for things that are not mine to strive and grasp for, my standards elevate. And so I become more discerning and more careful and more thoughtful about the choices I do make. And so it's very interesting, at least in my life, it's been very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah, good enough. It does sound like lowering your standards. Like, why should I want to do that? But yeah, what if instead of scarcity being your baseline, your baseline was I'm good enough. If that's your baseline, then what becomes possible for you? Or you can just imagine if you're not trying to grasp for something in order to feel like you're worthy, or if you're not trying to work harder in order to prove that you deserve to rest, what could happen? Your baseline is actually just elevated.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

And then everything else is like it's like a gift, you know? It's not like something you expect to have.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

I love that. So let's talk about your good enough guide because I have loved going through it myself. It brings like peace when I do my meditations in the mornings too, because it really does bring you to a grounding state. Like I was telling you ladies the other day how it reminded me of the just taking my time type of thing. I don't need to rush through stuff, I can just admire what's around me being present in the moment. And that is part of the aspect of good enough and the good enough guide. And what is it exactly and what made a guided journal and manifesto the right format for this work?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

We started out with something quite different. It was heavier and denser, and it was just crazy. Again, it was like the high achievers conundrum. And we just kept sitting with it and recognizing that it just wasn't the right path for what we were trying to communicate. And so the more we edited out and curated out elements and words and even the format shrunk down into this really portable, accessible, pocket-size guide. It was like we both could just exhale and just sort of breathe. And it felt just more generous, more spacious, and just really humane, I think, in its simplicity.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

I love it too, because each day you can do something different with it too. You could do like a meditation, you could do it on its own, you could do a guided breath work, and it really brings you into a presence. And walk with us through what actually shifts through someone after they use it, like what someone actually experienced when they go through it.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, first of all, it's small and portable. So the experience from the beginning is that it's accessible, it's not like something big and heavy you have to carry around. You know, we paid a lot of attention to the way the paper was and how it feels.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

It is true though. I will say the paper is like, I'm a texture person, so it's one of those things, and I'm also like a notebook person too. So I appreciate that very much so.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

So it's part of the experience that it does feel good to write in. We put a lot of attention into the pacing, the white space on the page. And so I think what somebody experiences is a kind of spaciousness. And like you said, you can do one question at a time, and it's an opportunity to put your attention on this question that you might not even think about during your day because you're So busy living your life, and to actually reflect on the effect of what it's like to live in this culture, and then to have a kind of antidote to whatever it is in that chapter, and to reflect on how that shows up in your own life. And so it's almost like the questions are broad. There aren't a lot of questions. So you can revisit it and you might have a different answer on a different day. And so over time, what can happen is just you start having a different relationship to hustle culture or never enough culture. You end up having a different relationship to yourself and how you relate. Because we're not really asking you for a lot. We're just saying, what would happen if you shifted by 1%? What would happen if you shifted your thinking by 1%? And so if you revisit that, say six months from now, you might have a different answer because you will have shifted that one percent. And it becomes, you know, you start doing it in a more gradual way instead of trying to like wrestle your life into being good enough. You like Michelle said, it's like it's a long process, takes time, but when it takes time, it's deeper, it goes deeper.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Not burning yourself to burn yourself out.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

You're not burning yourself to not burn yourself.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Which is a common problem. I have a coach that I work with, and the other day I was like, I'm feeling really tired. This is all everything I'm doing, I'm doing all these things. And she's just like, stop trying so hard. And I'm like, but I need to stop feeling so tired. And so it's just like you're feeling so tired because you're trying so hard. You know, like we do these things, and especially as hustlers, you just feel like you have to be zero to a hundred all of the time, you know. So it's like, this is one of those things where I feel like you're taking a step back and you're just doing these one percent little tiny changes that are just the same way that burnout is compounding. The healing also has to be compounding because if you go zero to a hundred, it's not gonna be lasting, you know. So I also say too, it's a little nostalgic too, because I had a little flashback. There's that little pillow drawing inside there, too. It reminds me a little bit of Shelf Silverstein, which was one of my favorite um like poets growing up. I'm like, I feel like that's another reason why I love it so much too. It's like nostalgia, it's like homey.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

I'd also love to learn more about this online retreat that you guys are going to be running to. So, what's it about and how it came together? Tell us a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Oh, yeah, summer is here, and we're really excited to share some space and time with people. You know, again, as we do, I think Eric and I created this dense, heavy program early on. And we recognize just sitting with it and sensing in our bodies, like, no, no, no. Let's unwind that a bit and bring in some spaciousness, some pleasure, just some time. The way when we were kids, right? You would just maybe it was more loose, not formulaic, and you're not gonna go through these chapters. You know, you have to get through these chapters in a set amount of time. We wanted something that would be really enjoyable for us to lead as well. And so I think we really sat with what that could look like, and we came up with the retreat. And so Deldi, Erica, I'll let you talk about what we're gonna do inside summer.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yeah, so from July, August, and September we'll meet online once a month for 90 minutes, and we'll be sharing stories, conversations around topics. So the first month we'll be talking around joy, second month we'll be talking about enoughness, and the third month we'll be talking about time, and so it's just an opportunity to step away from that daily grind, and we don't have an opportunity to reflect, contemplate, it's a lot like the good enough guide. We don't have to upend your life and end up in burnout to be reflecting on these topics that actually organize our lives. And so, in terms of going from zero to a hundred, there's all this in-between, right? We don't have to be completely collapsed, we don't have to be, you know, monks, and it's possible to live and to be thoughtful and intentional, and summer is part of that, and in between our meetings, we'll be sending poems, contemplations, thoughts that we have, not as homework or things that you have to keep up with, but they're just companions throughout the season. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

And by the end of it, what are people expecting to be able to experience?

SPEAKER_01 27:03

I hope they will experience a rejuvenated or refreshed relationship with themselves and how they experience the themes of the season. And so the hope is very invitational in that we will be sharing our perspectives, our experiences, and things that inspire us and support us in surfacing those qualities that we find so nourishing when navigating these busy, hectic, demanding lives that we all lead. So hopefully there'll be a renewed relationship with joy, an understanding of how accessible it is and how to locate it in everyday life. And the same for all the themes.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, well, unlike a course, it's not like once you finish this module, you'll just know everything about it. You'll be an expert in joy. Yeah, you'll be a joy expert after the first one. So it's ongoing, and that's how we were thinking about this. That we're constantly learning, we're constantly growing. We're not gonna just nail it in one module, you know. We're living and it's like seeing our lives in a much broader way rather than what I need to get done this week.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

I also feel like it's great timing because you're taking, I mean, Erica, you were from Connecticut, and we were just talking about me being in Massachusetts and very hard coming off of the winter, and there's a lot of seasonal depression. I feel like the way that you guys timed it, you're almost like utilizing these great high spirits into the summer, and then going into the fall, too, where the things start getting a little bit more hectic, and families are starting to bring their kids back to school, and sports stuff starts back up, and the busy seasons start coming back together, and things are still a little bit more calm, and people are still a little bit like, oh, I remember what joy feels like. And then they get to be able to bring it back into the fall when things start to get a little bit hectic, you know, have that residual training they can bring back in with them. So I feel like it's such a great timing for everything.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Oh, actually, we would love to offer your listeners a discount. So if you want to join this program and please feel free to ask questions if you have any about it. But we'd like to offer a discount of $100 off the price, Rebels 100. Right. So when you check out, put that in the code spot. It's 100.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Yeah, that's awesome. An awesome promotional code. And I'll also put that into the description show notes for the listeners as well, so they'll be able to have that access as well. So I'm really excited to hear that you guys are working on that. As we come into your guys' experiences around success, what do you think most people get wrong about that within the hustle culture and why they're trying to grasp onto things as we're in this never good enough type of feeling? And they're trying to get this success that they've probably wanted their whole entire life. And some of them might even have had the success that they thought that they wanted and they're still unhappy. What do you think that they're getting wrong with that?

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Eric and I talk about this a lot. And I don't know if it's about getting something wrong or right necessarily. I think it's more about alignment and recognizing and questioning that someone else's version of success could be, to me, a gilded cage. And so questioning what is the idea of success? So, what does that mean really? What does that look like? What does that feel like? You know, when you picture it. And where did you get that idea? Are you getting it from pop culture, from your friends, from your family, from your country, your, you know, where where is it being communicated to you that that is success? And why do you think you want that? Questioning, questioning everything really is how I tend to approach it now, versus thinking there's this checklist and I have to achieve all these things on this checklist, right? And then I will feel successful as opposed to burning the checklist and questioning if it's even true that I want that in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Yeah. Yeah. And there's this idea as you were talking, Michelle, I was thinking that there's a tendency to think that we've failed when we don't achieve those things. And I think that that can be so devastating, you know. And so yeah, I think it's like just to watch that because the feeling of I didn't achieve that thing, so I must not be worthy is can be, I think, really dangerous, you know, harmful.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Yes. I just think that's the biggest thing about the never good enough feeling, right? It's deeper than just not being good enough. I feel like a lot of people end up thinking I'm not worthy. Right. It's at the identity core. We have talked a lot about our formative years and being younger and a lot of things that we absorb as children as something that we also don't necessarily are aware of. And I think a lot of things that we don't also talk about publicly, because we're conditioned to also think of these things as private beliefs and stuff, too. Is there a piece that you guys have kind of believed now as an adult that you're like, oh wow, I believed that as a child, and now I no longer believe this as an adult that you're willing to share with us today?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Yeah, that's a great question. That's probably all of what we've been talking about. You know, I don't fault my family because they're from this culture too. It's almost like the culture, it's bigger than the parts, it's greater than the parts, and well-intentioned people, teachers, coaches, like school people, family, friends, well-intentioned people will give you advice. And so almost anything that is a belief, and like you were talking about Renee, identity. When I believe myself to have a certain kind of identity, and for me it was I'm a hard worker, and that got put into me as a very young person to the point where that was that's the only thing I have is my ability to work hard. That was something that has been years and years and years in the making. So being praised by my family for working hard, being praised by my teachers for working hard. And then a few years ago I was diagnosed with a chronic illness and I couldn't work hard. And so that was very devastating. And so if I had never had that thought, how would I be different? If I had never had that thought and I got a chronic illness, would I think differently? Probably. And so it's like Michelle was saying, questioning the beliefs, questioning the beliefs behind the identity, it feels like whenever I find myself saying I am this way, then it's a hint to take a look at that. Because we have tendencies, I think. Our bodies have tendencies, but how much of that is conditioned, how much of that is just who I am. A lot of it is conditioned. I'm not sure I answered the question.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

No, you did. That was very powerful.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

I yeah, I always love listening to Erica talk. Listening to those stories makes me think it's a kind of an answer to the question that may be more recent for me, but we're still speaking, you know, years, several years in the making, is that I can change. I can change my mind. My identity can change. And that one's more resilient. Like that's a bit sticky. And that might take working with a coach or a therapist or you know, close friends, having conversations. But there's something about inertia I find as I get older that really can just continue to propel us down a particular path. And I'm sure we've all witnessed it in our circle of friends and peers and loved ones and colleagues. That identity inertia is tricky sometimes. And it's not like, I'm not saying like cut your losses or or something like that, but for myself, I needed to be willing to adapt and to change. And I think we are very adaptable creatures fundamentally. And maybe sometimes we forget that, but it is essential, I think, to not only just survival, but I think it's essential to thriving in this one life that we get.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

I really appreciate you guys sharing your stories. And one for me that I've had to wrestle with lately is that life is hard. Just everything has to be hard in literally just everything. Physically work, you know, I will always have to experience the hardships of life in order to be successful. And I will always have to learn the hard way as well. And it wasn't until recently till I someone was like, Is that true though? Like, do you have to learn the hard way? Because I just kept saying it. I'm just like, oh, it's just where I have to learn. I'm just always the type of person that has to learn the hard way. And they were like, But do you have to though? Or are you just stubborn and you think you have to? And I was like, that was like that was like an arrow to the heart. Yeah. It takes a while to really like Erica, like you were saying, is it a conditioned or is it like a tendency? Like, I'm conditioned to believe that I tend to have to learn the hard way, you know? And it's really hard to have to recondition yourself to even believe that the goodness of the universe or God, whatever the source of energy is for the individual, is in our favor. And it can change, like Michelle was saying, like anything can change. It's just a very powerful. Both of your stories are so powerful, and I'm so thankful for you guys to share them. And I just have one last question for you guys. What do you think that the hustle rebels, those who are listening, they're like, I really would love to hear more. What would you want to lead them with in this moment?

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Start small, and I would say, following on your lovely share, Renee, at least for me, I've seen that the belief or the identity shift doesn't have to come first. I can start using words very differently, be very careful about my language. And so sometimes it's just saying nicer things about myself privately. It doesn't have to be out loud. It can be written down in a book that no one will ever see. But for me, that's like a little tiny thing that I started doing five, six years ago, and it has made all the difference.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

I would say it's so hard to because we're conditioned to not be nice to ourselves, to be kind to ourselves. If you can imagine being kind to somebody else and then put that on yourself, if somebody said to you, Well, I'm a loser because I couldn't do that thing, just imagine what you might say to them and try to put that on yourself. For like one moment, be a good friend to yourself in a tiny way.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

You both touched on a very important topic of the fact that our words are very powerful. And we forget that speaking them to ourselves is our brain registering in a lot of ways, and the negativity is very similar to someone speaking them to us as well, and it's no different, really. In fact, it's probably more impactful because it's in our own head and we're saying them a lot.

unknown 39:41

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

But this is such a great and rich conversation with you guys. And I thank you so much for being generous with your stories and everything that you're working on. And before we go, I would love for you to share where people can find you.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Thank you so much, Renee. It's been such a pleasure having this chat with you. I really enjoyed getting to know you in preparation of this episode. So I would invite your listeners and everyone to visit us at inter.com. The best place. Awesome. Makes it super easy. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

We all like the one-click wonder, right? So if anything has landed for you guys in this conversation, if you recognize in yourself that you have that never enough feeling, go check out Michelle and Erica with Interval Paper at intervalpaper.com, like Michelle has just mentioned, and look into the good enough guide. And if you act before July 18th, listeners will get a $100 discount on their online summer retreat with the code Rebels100. And the code's going to expire soon, like I mentioned, so you're not going to want to sit on this. So this is Toolbox Tuesday. The links are all going to be in the description show notes, and we will see you guys next week.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Yeah, of course.