What Leaders Get Wrong About Hustle w/ Katya Davydova

[00:00:00] I feel the sort of spiciness of burnout, but I don't know what to do about it. My then-partner was like, you don't do anything. You just sit on that couch and don't do anything. Welcome back to Reflect Forward. I'm your host, Kerry Siggins, and I'm so glad you are here today. Today my guest is Katya Davydova, and she is on a mission to make the world of work and life more joyful, meaningful, and human. She is an organizational development expert, a holistic executive coach,

[00:00:29] a keynote speaker. She's done a TEDx talk. She's an award-winning author. She is actually just amazing. She's like my sister from another mother. I love her so much, and we have totally hit it off, and you will see that in this interview. Her thought process and speaking style and approach just infuses this idea of play, practical application, sustained changes in your mindset and your behavior

[00:00:55] so that you can bridge the gap between insight, oh yeah, I get this, to actually taking action and making more life better. So I cannot wait for you to meet her, so hang tight, and I will be right back with Katya. All right, welcome back, everyone. I have my beautiful, wonderful, lovely guest today, Katya Davydova. Katya, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Katya, it is such a blast to be here in presence and in this moment in time with you.

[00:01:23] Wonderful. So you are in LA, and I know that you moved to LA to disrupt your life a little bit. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are, a little bit more about your company, and this kind of disruption that you created in your life? Absolutely. Katya, I know you're no stranger to disruption. It's something that you and I both have in common, and I hope that for folks listening, they find something to take from this too. Essentially, if we were to use labels, right? I don't love using labels to answer the question of who are you, but for ease of use. I'm an executive leadership coach, a public speaker,

[00:01:52] and a facilitator aimed at revolutionizing how people work more efficiently and more humanly in the workplaces. The central thesis of that is that if we spend the majority of our lives working, we might as well find work that is joyful, meaningful, and full of presence and full of humanity in what we do. The reason for that disruption back many years ago when I made the pivot into Los Angeles is that I was living a really good life. I was working full-time in Charlottesville, driving up to graduate school in Washington, D.C. on the weekends, 130 miles one

[00:02:22] way. So I put on 18,000 miles over the course of school in two and a half years, and life was good, y'all. I just had everything. Community, gym, I was the president of Toastmasters, had a beautiful set of friendships, and I knew that if I was going to stay on that path, I was going to stagnate because things were just too good. So it was between two cities, either New York, which is a little too cold, a little too frenetic, although I love visiting, or a little bit of the laid-back vibe,

[00:02:48] which is Los Angeles. Ultimately, I chose LA because I had visited a couple years before I moved and fell in love with it. That's the central TLDR. Happy to go into details, if you like. That's great. And how did you get into coaching? I feel it's been in my bones since I was a kid. Starting all the way from sixth grade, I was a peer mediator. So I would mediate disputes between 12-year-olds, which looking back is so silly because what kinds of disputes did 12-year-olds have? And so this energy to be the listener, I've always been

[00:03:15] a listener in my groups. I grew up as an only kid, so I spent a lot of time around adults, which means that taking in their energy, taking in the way that they interacted, and doing a lot of observing. So getting into coaching over the last, over a decade or so, have been in both formal and informal capacities all throughout my career. All the way in college, I was a, what do we call it? A career peer educator, which brought my fellow peers, right? Also college students on how to optimize their

[00:03:42] LinkedIn profiles, how to apply for jobs, how to construct resumes while being in college myself. So it's an interesting paradigm of taking all the adult things, packaging it into super attainable, digestible material, and being able to facilitate and coach and train people on that. And then all the way up to now, I now work with executives, leaders, managers, and a lot of ICs, individuals who are either in periods of transition, work or life, who need tangible leadership skills, such as how do you

[00:04:10] have a good coaching conversation? How do you give feedback? How do you have effective conversations? And of course, in the areas of public speaking, how do you shine on stage virtually or physically? Just to dive into a little bit more about your background, because I think that this is so fascinating is that you came here as a non-English speaker when you were a child. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. So you can tell us a little bit about that story? Absolutely. So I was born in Uzbekistan. And whenever I say this to people, like, Pakistan, Tajikistan? I'm like, no, it was Uzbekistan. The claim to fame of that country is

[00:04:40] that it looks like an arrow. It's somewhere in Central Asia, and it looks like an arrow. So I was born there, happened to live there for the first number of years of my life. We came here on a visa to basically include smart folks from other countries to the United States. We were very lucky to win because we had a less than 1% chance of winning. So imagine the magnitude of just sheer luck. But I came here knowing only two words, please and thank you. And I also got to learn where is the bathroom because, you know, really crucial life things when you're a seven-year-old. You really know.

[00:05:09] So I came here to my whole entire family, which is my parents and myself. That's it. I moved here, and we had no knowledge of customs, of culture, of language, of the way to thrive in a new country, the country that was the land of dreams, right? So we set out to pursue the American dream. Of course, a lot of things happened between when I was a child to now, and the American dream as we know it looks a little different than when it did 20, 30 years ago. Growing up, because I was

[00:05:34] the only progeny of my parents, I was expected to be the best. Like a lot of your guests on this podcast, there's a lot of high achievers. There's a lot of like ownership mindset. I'm going to own everything that I do and just go. So it was a lot of that embedded, dare I say, hustle culture where got straight A's in school, in college, in grad school, like literally like the top of the class, did really well in jobs, asked for promotions, received promotions, pushed back

[00:05:59] when I got too little percentage raise and got a higher raise. All these things that made me a go-getter because that was just in the nature. Of course, after a number of years, as many women do, or as many successful people in general do, we burn out. We realize that this constant grind is not actually something that brings us long-lasting, meaningful internal happiness, whereas it's a shiny veneer on the inside. People are like, you're doing so well. I'm like, yeah, I am doing well.

[00:06:25] And there's other things that will be. So went on a whole path of wrote a book on the wonder of being versus doing, did a TEDx talk on treasure hunting, finding wonder in the ordinary, and now revolve in this intersection of how do we bring our real human selves and marry that with the systems, the processes, the habits of successful people in general. I love it. I play around with this idea

[00:06:51] of being versus doing quite often because I'm a doer as well and wasn't very good at being. It's still a practice that I have to work on. So could you describe the difference of doing versus being and why it's so important for beaders to embrace being rather than just doing? To me, doing is very directed. We have a goal. We scaffold the steps to achieve it, right? We break it down into time boxing. Here's what I'll do this month, this week, today. And all of those systems

[00:07:20] and strategies are really, really good. And I still use them to this day. So I'm not denigrating their efficacy. However, we as human beings need that spaciousness in between doing to let ideas marinate, to let new philosophies, new ideas flourish. I remember during the pandemic, my then partner told me, Katia, you work 12 hours a day. You're writing a book. You're doing too much. I'm like, yeah, I know. I feel this sort of like spiciness of burnout, but I don't know what to do

[00:07:45] about it. My then partner was like, you don't do anything. You just be, just sit on that couch and don't do anything. And I found that so alarming to hear. I'm like, what do you mean don't do anything? He's like, just sit. Yes, but sit and what? He's like, nothing. Just sit. And that seemed to me so foreign because my mind was constantly racing. Like I need to do this and need to cross this off my checklist. It was just not something that was attainable at that point.

[00:08:11] Over time, the process of being has evolved into more active forms of being. So now I go on walks without my phone. I go on trail runs and just get lost in the mountains. I know you bike, you're about to go take a bike ride through your mountains. And it's this form of meditative being that I think allows myself to hear myself without the necessity of having to arrive somewhere. To me, being is having to just exist without the arrival. Beautifully put. I remember the first

[00:08:41] time I was introduced to this idea of being, and it wasn't put that way, but I was in my twenties and I was working for a high tech IT recruiting company. I was a account manager and I had a recruiter that was partnered with me who I love to this day. We're still dear friends. And he said to me, as he was talking about my ambition and the constant go, go, go, go, go. And he said, God, my favorite thing to do is on a Sunday, just sit in my chair with a cup of coffee and stare out

[00:09:06] the window. And I was like, how can you do that? Like what? But it stuck with me. And I longed for that. Like, I would love to be able to do that and not feel guilty because that's what it always was. I just feel guilty that I'm not out there doing something, being productive, achieving, working on myself, all of those different things. And I had to really stop doing so much because

[00:09:29] I never really came close to burnout, but I just knew I was missing so much because I had every minute of my day filled. I was actually talking to a friend of mine last week and I said to him, Oh, it was really great. I came home and I just laid on my bed for a half an hour and just looked out the window. I didn't do anything and just laid there. And it's amazing how 20 years later,

[00:09:54] I have evolved and worked on myself enough to be able to appreciate laying there, doing nothing, staring out the window. I did have music on. It wasn't quiet, but I wanted to listen to some music. Sometimes I do sit in just the quiet and just enjoy myself doing nothing and just being like, who am I? What am I feeling right now? What does my body feel like right now? I got up and I was energized and I was ready to go on and okay, that was a great 20 minutes. Now I feel like I'm more

[00:10:21] prepared to be able to go do the things that I want to do. 20 years ago, I never could have imagined that. Carrie, what was the catalyst of that change for you? What helped you make that shift? I think evolution. I don't know that it was such a catalyst. I think it's the search for happiness and joy. I don't know that I know how to accept joy. I think I'm getting better at it. I am a joyful person. In fact, I like to be the bringer of joy and make people as happy and joyful as possible.

[00:10:48] But to really just accept that joy in my life and appreciate where I am in the moment, I do believe I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. But if you are just constantly filling your time, you don't ever stop and appreciate it. So I think part of it is just maturing and understanding that it's not a healthy way to live, the constant doing and going. And then I'm missing out on some of these really important things in life because I don't appreciate the pause. I don't appreciate the space.

[00:11:17] And so I wanted to explore that and see how it changed me and how it changed my perspective. And it has absolutely for the better. Amazing. You know, this makes me think of sensitization where we are so as a society, especially Western society, sensitized to speed and especially hyper speed that the pause feels so uncomfortable. Many years ago, a decade and a half ago, I did paleo because I did. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm admitting this, but I did CrossFit

[00:11:44] in my younger days and fell into the paleo diet, which is a very restrictive diet. And part of paleo or part of like Whole30 was no sugar, no carbs, no legumes, no dairy. And part of the no sugar means that no chocolate, none of my favorite treats, nothing. And so after a month of this or many months of this, I tasted an apple two months after starting that super restrictive diet. And Carrie, that apple was the most delicious, sweetest thing that I tasted in seemingly my entire life,

[00:12:11] because I didn't have that hypersensitization of all the very stuff that I was eating before. Now, nowadays, I don't follow any sort of specific diet. I still have chocolate. I had chocolate this morning as one of the first things that I ate, but it allows us to really savor the slowness versus just trying to get rid of it. Yes. I did a podcast on this recently, and I think everybody should listen to it because it's about how the brain works with dopamine. And we are so used to getting easy dopamine hits with food at our fingertips, with alcohol, with any kind of substances, with shopping,

[00:12:41] with social media, with our phones. And we don't work for our dopamine, but we are supposed to work for our dopamine. That's how we survive. If we don't have dopamine, we aren't motivated to eat and to take care of ourselves. So we need to have dopamine, but you want it to be released over time because you're working for it. So that's why a workout is so good. Or, you know, when you go and you clean your garage and you're like, well, this really sucks. But when you get done, you're like,

[00:13:05] wow, I feel so productive and so good. That's how we're supposed to get our dopamine. But because it's at our fingertips, we are just constantly seeking more and more of it and more of it. And then we go into these wild swings as our brain is trying to even itself out. I think that's why the pause is so uncomfortable is that yes, we're desensitized to it, but it's also because we are just getting that constant dopamine hit, eating that sugar all the time, whether that is in the form of alcohol

[00:13:35] or the form of your iPhone, whatever it is. And I don't think people really understand that. We don't stop enough to think, huh, why am I doing this? And is it healthy for me? And I think there's also something to be said about the fact that people might recognize that they might have the intellectual or cognitive knowledge of it, but the habit change or the behavior change is difficult because it is so addictive. It is designed to be addictive. Yes, you're totally right. Yeah. From the systems or the systemic level, we're not going to invite the entire world

[00:14:04] to get rid of their smartphones, but in community and in circles of accountability, maybe we can do many challenges to say, cool, for the first hour of the day, I won't have my phone. Even for the first 10 minutes, so many of us, including myself, like I'm part of this group too, some days I roll over, turn off the alarm on my phone and say, okay, let me just do a quick scroll just to make sure I haven't missed anything in the last eight hours. I'm not going to miss something urgent in eight hours. They can wait another hour. So that's a constant reminder that I work with folks on and work with

[00:14:32] myself on as well. It's an important break. And I do agree with you. You know that I quit drinking. We talked about it when we met the first time and you're right. Like I knew I wanted to quit for years. I wrote about it in my journal and it's so hard to make that decision and change your life because yes, your brain is actively working against you. And then of course, society is working against you too, right? I need to be connected. I might miss something. How am I going

[00:15:00] to have fun if I go out and I don't drink? How am I going to look cute if I don't buy the pair of jeans that I don't need, which I just did this weekend. I bought a pair of jeans I didn't need, but they were so cute anyway. But the reality of it is that it's really hard and it requires you to be incredibly present. Like quitting drinking required me to be so present to be able to say, okay, I am feeling this way right now. And it feels icky. And I would like to have a glass of wine because

[00:15:29] I've just disrupted my pattern, my habit, and I have to just be present in this ickiness to get through it. And a lot of people don't want to do that. It is very uncomfortable. It's very hard while you are figuring out who you are as you make these changes from going from doing to being. I know you believe in that. I know that you are a big believer in presence and advocate that with your clients. So what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I think that the two most crucial and crucially

[00:15:56] emerging skills that we as humans can possess, especially in the day and age of AI, of global instability, of a lot of discourse, a lot of things that get perpetrated online, the two most crucial things are curiosity and presence. Keri, you mentioned presence. Presence means being so fully with the moment, even and especially if it's uncomfortable, because that's how we flex our resistance to dopamine acceptance. We say, okay, let me delay the gratification of the snack, this treat, this

[00:16:25] scroll through Instagram. That sort of presence really energetically can be so viscerally felt. Like, let me be really present with you. I know that audibly we can't really receive it, but I'm visually, I'm looking at you and I'm just being super in tune with you. And I'm sure that even though we're thousands of miles apart, you can feel my energy flowing to you and being with you. And that is a gift when all the time for the folks watching, we're kind of looking off into the distance, looking at our phones, doing anything but being here in the moment. Presence is important,

[00:16:53] but the curiosity to have that sustained presence is even more so. What's really alarming is that I noticed myself, especially during the pandemic, taking in so much junk, online junk, consuming a lot of online junk, but it wasn't with curiosity. It was just like whatever coming through my feed, okay, let me just consume, consume, consume. That's sort of mindlessness versus the curiosity to say, okay, what am I actually interested in? And so over the last number of years, I've been retraining my brain to go a little bit slower and go back into reading, go back into long form

[00:17:21] articles, into actual books. I still listen to audio books at 2x speed because my brain just functions that way, but I'll listen to it twice just to really eke everything out of it. But that curiosity and presence helps to make people feel seen, heard, loved, valued, which ultimately I think is the central core of the human condition. Everybody wants to feel seen, heard, valued, loved. I love curiosity. I love asking questions. It's my superpower. I can get

[00:17:48] anybody to tell me anything just because I know how to ask questions, but it requires presence. It is impossible to be curious at that level where you pick up on the nuances of, what did you mean by that word? Or you looked away when you said that. What were you thinking? It's truly the combination of the two that have allowed me to make it a superpower because I am there. I'm right there. I'm looking, making eye contact and paying real attention to not just

[00:18:15] what's being said, but what's not being said. I can ask questions and get to the heart of what's really going on. I call it like pulling the thread. And if you are not present, it's hard. What questions do you even know to ask? If you didn't notice that someone looked away or you weren't paying attention to their word choice and the word choice matters. I agree with you. They go hand in hand and really, I think you take your leadership to the next level. If you pay attention to what's

[00:18:43] being said and what's not being said and ask questions. Yeah. You know, we can even systematize it to make it easier to digest. We can even liken this to three levels of listening. The first is surface level. It's like, what are they actually saying? That's the content. The second is the sort of emotions behind it. What are they feeling? What might they be expressing through their body language? And the third is the level of what might they be needing that they're not even consciously aware of, and we can pick up on it. And if we get to that third level of what are the needs behind all the

[00:19:11] words behind all the emotion, then we can really be connected to have that thread of understanding. I love that. And it also helps you not tell yourself a story. So for example, I got a massage this morning, early morning massage, and my massage therapist came in to meet me early to help me because I was like, oh my God, I need you. And she was in a hurry because we're there. It's like 645 and she hadn't gotten the room ready. And so I was waiting in the parking lot and she rushed in.

[00:19:39] I knew she's rushing in so she can hurry up and get everything set up because we both have to get to other things. We get into the massage. She goes, hey, were you upset? Did you think I was upset when we walked in because I just rushed in? And I said, no, not at all. I knew that you needed to go get the table set up. And so I just let you do that. And I'm really appreciative that you met me here early to help me feel a little bit better. And I was so glad that she asked that question

[00:20:06] because she was telling herself a story about how I might have perceived her shortness, her quickness. And that could have certainly as I'm getting a massage, energetically changed the massage, but we're also good friends. And I wouldn't have wanted her to walk away thinking that I was hurt or annoyed or frustrated or any of those things of her hurriedness to get into the building. I really was glad that she asked me that question. She was present enough to know here's how I'm

[00:20:35] feeling and I'm telling myself a story. That's how Carrie might be feeling. And so she asked and we could just clear on up and I got to express my gratitude for her and it was all good. But that is what presence and curiosity requires. So yes, it's also good to understand where the other person might be coming from, but it also helps you make sure that you aren't misreading a situation. You aren't telling yourself a story that you're giving a person the opportunity to be able to say, no,

[00:21:05] that's not how I feel at all. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm really hearing you say it's curiosity, not only about the external world, but what's the stories that we feel ourselves, our internal world. I had this one client come to me for help with public speaking. She got into a leadership position. So she was presenting a lot to her team internally and externally. And she said, Katia, I just really want to be able to speak well and feel confident. And I'm like, great. A lot of folks come to me with that. Let me help you. Of course, as with a lot of conversations, that is just the presenting problem, right? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

[00:21:32] What ended up happening is we went so far deep below the iceberg, below the waterline to explore what is the source of this maybe lack of confidence of this sort of constriction when being seen by others up on stage. And we got to talk about childhood narratives, the story that she was telling herself about her perspective or her perception of how she was viewed. And it was just such a beautiful unfolding, like a blossoming of like, let's tackle everything beneath the iceberg so that

[00:21:59] you can get up at the top at the skill that you want to develop. Incredibly powerful. I know that you also work a lot with intuition versus logic, which I think a lot of leaders are constantly battling of do I trust my gut or do I go get more data to make decisions? Can you talk a little bit about your philosophy around intuition versus logic and how leaders need to use both? You know, Carrie, if you had asked me this question 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago,

[00:22:25] I would have been like, just give me the science. Give me the data because it's something that I can trust. It's something that I can see. It's something that's so tangible that I can almost taste it or touch it or hold it. I've come to the understanding that there's so much more than meets the eye. Now we know this as a trite saying, but it's true. And here's why. Logic, frameworks, data tell us one flavor of the story and they should absolutely be counted. However, it's also really important to assess how the logic data systems feel within our bodies. I'm a huge

[00:22:55] proponent of embodied intelligence, which is essentially using our body as like a compass or tool to assess, does this feel right? Does this feel wrong? And I'm purposely using the word feel because it is a feeling. When we marry logic with intuition, with that feeling, we have a much stronger navigation system. An example that I like to use that I like to share with clients is the feeling of expansion versus constriction. Let's say you're faced with the decision, should I take this

[00:23:21] new project or this new job or should I not? Logic might tell you one story. You know, this new job might give you more money. It might be a longer commute, unfortunately, but it'll open up opportunities for X, Y, Z. But intuition tells you a different story. If you take this job, ugh, like that sort of constricted feeling comes up, like the ick story. The step then is not necessarily to just follow logic or to just follow the intuition and say like, ew, this job has given me an ick, so I'm not going to take it. But rather to get curious. What about this new job doesn't make me want to go to it?

[00:23:51] Can I explore that source of constriction? Is it that I feel like I'm not going to be respected? Is it that I feel that I'm going to be wasting my time driving a lot more and missing out on family and friends? What is the source of that constriction? So logic and intuition give us more avenues to ask even more questions such that we can then arrive at the truth, whatever the truth might be. That's kind of how I view the unity between logic and intuition. I'm curious how it lands for you or

[00:24:18] how you use the two in your decision. So I think that intuition is data. It's data from your experiences. So you've lived this whole life. You've experienced so many different things and your intuition intuition is crunching all of those experiences and giving you this gut feel. And so I look at it as a data point. I also am a big believer of just because you think it doesn't mean it's true.

[00:24:43] And so I question my thoughts and use external data sources too. But I don't dismiss my intuition as a non-scientific approach to making a decision because I do have a lot of experience and I trust myself. And so the gut is another data point for you. So that's how that lands for me. And then I'm a huge believer in what the body tells you. Everything is energy and our bodies are energy.

[00:25:10] And the more tuned in we are to our bodies, the more information we can discern. But you have to pay attention. You have to know your body. And that's goes back to the doing versus being. It's really hard to know your body and be able to feel what your body's telling you if you're so busy doing all the time instead of stopping in and saying, what's my body telling me? I was actually just talking to my massage therapist about this morning. She's my spiritual therapist. Like she's so much more than

[00:25:35] just a massage therapist. She's amazing. I wish everybody had a Kim in their life like I do. But I was telling her about an action that I took and I said, my body had a very visceral reaction. It was a very positive reaction in this instance. It wasn't a negative one. But my body was telling me that's a yes. I said, I just have learned to trust my body when my body was telling me like, oh yeah, that's

[00:26:01] right. I'm going to go do it. And because I have trusted myself and I've taken that action, even if I wasn't really sure, like, I wonder what's going to happen on the other side of this. I'm going to just take that risk and I'm going to see. And so over time, I've learned how to trust it more and to be able to be more in tune to what it's telling me. If I wouldn't have listened to my body in this situation, I might not have even paid attention to the opportunity that was in front of me. And even

[00:26:26] if I did see the opportunity may not have acted upon it. And so I think that's the power of your body. If you are paying attention and understanding that they're all data points for you and to dismiss intuition or dismiss what your body is saying, you are dismissing a very valid data set. I love the example that you shared where it sounds like it was a full body guess. This feels good.

[00:26:52] This feels expansive and like I'm moving towards something versus running away in the body. This is something that can be helpful for potentially large scale decisions, but a way to calibrate your own internal GPS, your own sort of body is to use this method. I've used this from as little as should I choose salad versus soup at a restaurant to like, should I go on this trip or not? It's been really lovely. Step one is to internally calibrate. Find yourself sitting in a comfortable position, cross-site, however you like. If you lean forward, that's a yes. If you lean backwards, that's a no.

[00:27:23] So ask yourself a question. Is my name Carrie? Your body leans forward? Yes. Obviously if you do this, Carrie, your body should lean forward. Is my name Katya? Yes, I lean forward. Is my name Carrie? If I ask myself that, I lean back because my name is Katya. I'm doing a couple of like factual calibration questions. And then you might say to yourself, okay, I'm going to ask myself a question. Yes is forward. No is backward. And then see where your body intuitively leans. I know this sounds a little woo. If I were to hear this again, five years ago, I'm like, what is this bull? Give me,

[00:27:51] give me hard evidence. Like you said, this is a data point. And just getting curious about like, why am I leaning forward? Why am I leaning back? Can be really instrumental because it is an instrument to help what is true for you. I love it. I use it. There's a great book called The Emotion Code out there that talks about how to release trapped emotions in your body. Definitely would be considered a woo book. It was fascinating to me, but I completely agree and have used that method to help me make decisions. And again, I think people blow it off, but everything is energy. And if we

[00:28:21] could just realize that we're all just in tune to whatever frequency is out there, that yes or the no is our body being in tune with it and helping us have that framework for decision-making. So I'm really glad that you shared that. Thank you. I haven't used that in a while, so I'm going to start using it again. One more story before I ask you my signature question. So I know that you're very into the beginner's mind and this whole idea of overcoming the fear of not being good at

[00:28:49] something or trying something new as an adult. So can you share a little bit of your experience with that and how leaders need to embrace this idea of a beginner's mind? So there's this phenomenon that the higher up that you get leadership positions, the more challenging it is to challenge you. You're say the CEO or the top leader of a company, you most likely have gotten there because you've made really strategic, strong decisions. And any challenges to those decisions might feel like

[00:29:17] a threat or might feel like we're going to be putting our defenses up. Now I say this because to especially rising leaders and senior leaders, this beginner's mindset is crucial because we need to feel like we are bad at something. CEOs and top leaders have gotten to where they are because they're good at the things that they do, but it's crucial to feel the opposite. I'll share a quick story of where I recently experienced beginner's mind and it has something to do with dance. So growing up, I was a

[00:29:43] gymnast. I was very, very active, was very in tune with my own body because as a gymnast, as an ice skater, as a swimmer, I had to be. But I always thought that I was one of those hardcore, let me lift some weights, let me have some muscle on me type of thing, but not graceful. Just because you're a gymnast does not mean that you're graceful. I learned that the hard way. So I thought that I was born and continue to have two left feet. However, I decided to take a chance. It was one of those full body yeses

[00:30:07] that I leaned forward into trying something new to start salsa and bachata classes for adults. Now, the first day in class, I was like, oh my gosh, this is flashbacks to middle school. Will I be chosen as a partner in partner dancing? Will I be able to make friends? Will I be able to fit into this group of other adults who seem so confident and competent, and yet they're probably feeling the exact same on the inside? Turns out the answer

[00:30:31] was an astounding yes. But it was so challenging to learn something new and be horribly bad at it. Like the first class is like, I do not feel the connection between my torso and my feet. They are on two totally different planets. But of course, week over week with time, that connection grew stronger and stronger. And I share this story because it is the desire to go towards what you think you're going to be bad at will ultimately not only make you better at that thing. In my case, it was bachata. In fact, I'm now in intermediate classes and I'm thoroughly

[00:31:00] obsessed with it. But two, it helps you open up to new ways of relating to yourself, to others, to the world, to the work that you do. That makes, I think, makes you hold compassion, how difficult things can be. I believe compassion is one of the driving forces of people, especially in this day and age. We need to have more compassion now more than ever, and especially that compassion for ourselves. So give myself the grace to say like, wow, I'm really bad at this first and I can get better. It's not a, but I will

[00:31:28] stay stagnant and never get better. It's, and I'm curious to explore more. And I'm curious to be present in this moment of suckiness in order to be 10% less bad tomorrow. And lo and behold, it works. We are not good at anything that we do when we start off. I think we just forget that. And it goes back to the dopamine conversation, working for your dopamine. And that means doing things that you're not good at. And then all of a sudden, okay, I'm in intermediate classes now. And I got better

[00:31:55] at this. And I feel so proud of myself for taking that risk, betting on myself, putting in the work. And now I don't have two left feet anymore. We're meant to do hard things and we don't need to play it safe. Whether that's taking something like dance lessons. For me, I'm learning how to play golf. My son loves to play golf, not my jam. I suck at it, but I am determined to at least play somewhat decently. I don't know. It's really hard to get good at golf, but maybe someday I will be.

[00:32:22] You know what? I know I could be that good at it. If I decide I want to put the time into being good at golf, I have to reframe that so that, uh, that it is out there. Cause it's always possible. We're meant to do hard things. We're meant to challenge ourselves. And if we always just play it safe because we only do the things that we're good at, then we're going to become stagnant as human beings, as leaders. And so thank you for sharing that story. Absolutely. I think what your story sort of demonstrates and especially bringing your

[00:32:47] kiddo into it is that it's not only espousing and taking on beginner's mind. It's also using the perspective of what it's like to be a kid, right? Cause when we're kids, everything feels new. Everything feels fresh because we've never experienced it for the first time. And one of my missions in life is to ignite adults to remember what it was like as a kid and to introduce that newness, to introduce that sort of wide eyed, bushy tailed persona back into their lives. Because life was just a lot more vibrant back then for many of us. And the beauty is that we can't

[00:33:16] access it in adulthood. We just have to want to. And oftentimes we try it and then our brain justifies, oh yeah, that was fun. It's less so like, oh yeah, I'm so excited about these golf or these dance lessons. And then we show up unenthused. We might show up unenthused, but then the brain justifies, yeah, let me try that again next time as well. Beautifully put. All right. Last question. The name of this podcast is Reflect Forward. What does Reflect Forward mean to you? I love that question.

[00:33:40] What I really pick up on is this momentum of going forward while having the hindsight. So it's two things. One, the reflection is the wisdom. That's looking back at all our lived experiences, the data, the logic, the intuition, sort of bodily wisdom to be able to use those reflections as the springboard to where you want to go. Now, as we know it, as humans know it rather, time, and this is debated in many circles nowadays, time for us as human beings seems linear, right? We're only getting older.

[00:34:09] There's other philosophies that time is not linear. Time is just a circle. But for us as humans, it's using that embodied wisdom to say, okay, where do I want to go next? And more aptly, what are the possibilities that I can create to step into them, to play into them? That is what I view as Reflect Forward. I literally see in my mind's eye a springboard and just a person just like, wee, jumping off into the future. I love it. That's a great visual. Thank you. Very articulately put. Thank you for sharing.

[00:34:38] All right. So how can people find you? Well, you're welcome to visit me at my link tree. All of the links will be in Carrie's podcast. I'm huge on LinkedIn. So if you want to connect with me on there, I post a couple of times a week. My DMs are always open. If you're curious about exploring a deeper dive into your own public speaking journey, or if you're facing your own transition, I do private containers for executives, managers, and individuals. And if you'd like to work with me, feel free to find all of

[00:35:04] that on my links, which Carrie will share. But Carrie, can I ask you a question? Yeah, of course. I just was so enlivened by your question of the Reflect Forward. Do you have a visual that comes to mind? Because you've been doing this for so long, has the visual changed of Reflect Forward for you? Oh, gosh. I've heard so many amazing answers to the question through the context of the conversation. So I have this really broad view of a Reflect Forward. And how I came up with the name

[00:35:32] is that my girlfriend and I, we had drove to Urray, Colorado to go sit in the hot springs. And I was telling her that your past definitely shapes who you are, but it doesn't have to define who you are. I have a lot of things that happened in my past that I'm not proud of, but I'm also very grateful for because they allowed me to get to where I am today. And so all of the good things, all of the hard things, everything is shaping where we're going to go in the future. And so I was telling her about the

[00:35:58] podcast and this is what I wanted to be about. I wanted to be these leadership stories that share vulnerability, not just about building businesses and leading, but how do we also show up with our humanity as we are growing and evolving and sharing these experiences? And then she came up with, well, I think that sounds like Reflecting Forward. You should call it Reflect Forward. And I was like, yes, that is exactly right. So the visual that I really have is I'm big into water. I love water. I'm a

[00:36:27] mountain girl. I like lakes rather than beaches. I love this idea of this calm lake that's in front of you and that you have this beautiful reflection coming back to you. But when you dive in, like the whole world changes, right? It's not the lake reflecting back on you anymore. Now you're in this whole different environment, this whole different landscape as you were moving through the water. And so that's really the visual that I had when we were discussing Reflect Forward. And of

[00:36:57] course, we've just been coming back from a pool, but it's like, yeah, I'm sitting here, I'm staring at this beautiful lake and I'm seeing my reflection and all of the things around me bouncing back at me. But when I go forward and when I go under the water, it's this whole new world. It's a whole new experience. And that's the visual that I had. Oh, that's so powerful. I see that as a giant mural and also a tactical tattoo. I love it. Well, thank you for asking. I know it's been five years of this podcast. So it was five years

[00:37:24] ago that we were driving back from Uray, Colorado, figuring out what to name this thing. And it's been such a gift. So many lakes to swim in so much to explore. Exactly. All right. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This was just such a beautiful conversation. And I can't wait to meet you in person someday and continue the conversation. And I'll share all of this, all of your links in the show notes so that hopefully people can get in touch with you and just get to experience your magic real time.

[00:37:52] Amazing. Carrie, it's such a treat to be here with you in all the full curiousness and presence. Just really grateful to be in this time and space together. Thank you. All right. Hang tight and I'll be right back. All right, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that interview. I could have been talking to her forever. She's just so fantastic. Please be sure to check out her book and the links in the show notes. She is a magical person to know. With that, I will leave you to your day. Please share this episode

[00:38:16] with anybody who is looking for more joy and more presence and more curiosity in their lives. And of course, if you have this podcast, please share it. Subscribe to it on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Go on and write a review. It's always so helpful. I really appreciate it. It improves the algorithms and it just gets these amazing people and stories out to the world, people who you might not ever have an opportunity to know. And we should share all of that with our friends and family. So with that, I will leave you until next week. Have a great day. Take care. Take care.

[00:38:46] Bye-bye.