The Biggest Mistake Leaders Make and How to Avoid It

[0:00]  you know one of the things that I often think about is the story that we tell ourselves about how we're supposed to behave in certain situations is a story that somebody else once again like the roommate put into our head and this life experience that we're going through is uniquely ours with unique challenges to how we're dealing with certain situations and I worry about generations of people who haven't been able to have a safe space to be able to vent because we're worried about the blowback from this volcano and how it's going to make us look you know one of the biggest things things that I deal with when I talk to different entrepreneurs is they often say I'm embarrassed nobody else is going to get it I can't show this side of myself because my team will think less of me what do you think about that response to being able to you know be vulnerable yeah and on some level I agree that it's not appropriate to be

[0:50]  showing your emotions to some people right which is why you do need to seek out those safe spaces to do that whether it's with your partner with a friend with a colleague with a therapist with a coach there has to be some way that you're able to process these things I might be biased but I recommend therapy for people who are just needing a place to process and to vent and to be like what the heck is going on because something is not right here right just like when we have a physical ailment and we feel a pain we we try to say okay maybe it'll go away but when it doesn't we go see a professional and it's the same thing with this if you feel that

[1:38]  your emotions are starting to impact the quality of life your relationships and you're not feeling like yourself or you're not feeling like you should be right or you know if you're feeling angry and irritable all the time and you feel like wait I should be happy I should be feeling Joy why don't I feel these things where this there's this Gap that's here and I need to seek it out and if you don't it's going to continue to impact your relationships and I would ask you what's going to happen 6 months from now if things don't change if you keep blowing up on your team if you keep blowing up on your kids over little things if you keep being irritable with your spouse I mean how is this going to affect you long term all right guys welcome back to a brand

[2:41]  new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now today is going to be an amazing conversation because I am sitting across from a mental health expert and speaker a fellow podcaster a social worker and the founder and CEO of Rise directory so Katherine welcome to the show incredibly excited for you to be here here thanks I'm excited to be here too happy to have this conversation you know the thing that I'm really looking forward to in today's conversation is your perspective as a mental health expert getting us to truly understand what is happening across the landscape of mental health right now the conversations that we're having the people that we're seeing having conversations about mental health and how we can help more people understand why you're so passionate about this work and so as we kind of get into today's episode let's start off with a little

[3:27]  bit of an introduction how did become the amazing podcaster CEO of Rise directory across from me where did all this kind of origin come from oh my gosh well surprisingly or I don't know if it's surprising but it all sort of originated from a place of burnout because as you mentioned I am a social worker and I've been working in the mental health industry for quite a few years love the work I loved helping people it just got to the point that I was giving so much of myself and the organizations just you know they take and take and take they're businesses right and so I was about to quit my industry thinking this is just not it for me I don't want to feel this miserable anymore what else can I possibly do and it turned out that there

[4:15]  really wasn't anything because I just love social work I love the industry that we do and as I was talking to my fellow colleagues I realized most people in our industry have felt this way most people in the helping profession exper experien this same type of struggle so I decided to talk about it and this was back in I decided in 2019 to start talking about it get people's voices out there to create a platform to share stories and share experiences to uplift everybody and 2020 hits and I'm like okay well I started January 2020 I am not quitting two months later and so I just kept it going kept it going and from there it just grown into a beautiful community of support and other people joining in and

[5:03]  saying hey you know I've experienced the struggles too and now after having these conversations I'm realizing this is way bigger than just my industry this is a culture-wide phenomenon why do we think we're seeing such high levels of burnout when you kind of put it together in the helping Fields why do you think that we kind of have the ability to pour into other people rather than pouring into ourselves what's happening here so as far as seeing this phenomenon in our culture and among the helping professions I have a lot of theories on this a lot of research has been done I've done workshops I think this all comes down to us as being helpers having poor boundaries for ourselves we have this amazing energy that people love they

[5:51]  love to be around us we can relate to people we help people people love it however people will take as much as you're willing to give and in our culture it is not really talked about as a way of setting boundaries and saying like Okay now you have done your job you have done the work now it's time to rest because whenever we talk about rest there's this Narrative of oh my gosh well now I'm being lazy because I'm not doing something and I like to challenge my clients in therapy and even in coaching right rest is productive because rest is where you're able to get create creative you're able to get new ideas you're able to step away your body is able to heal itself you're able to

[6:39]  think more clearly it's like hitting the recharge button right so if we have an electric vehicle and we are driving it all day right for hours driving it to Vegas and then it needs a charge up we're not like this Tesla's being so lazy we have to sit here and charge it up right and these are like motor vehicles and yet we don't allow ourselves the same Grace and that's a machine right and it's one focus is to get from here to there but every night it has to recharge and get ready so it can do its job why do you feel like it is so easy for us in society to create a scapegoat if you will of rest and why is it so difficult for us to lean into that recharging

[7:27]  honestly it's all about Generations because because we seen our parents and our grandparents come from hardworking families right they a lot of times looking at history we had laborist jobs and if they were arresting nothing was getting done right the the money wasn't coming in and so I wonder if part of it is just this generational narrative that we've been taught that in order to be productive in order to feel like we are enough in order to even feel like we're Worthy of being loved sometimes we have to produce and this is being re rein what's the word reinstated re reiterated there we go this is being reiterated by the agencies that we work

[8:15]  for because they're pushing productivity numbers how many people can we possibly cram in for example I worked at a position that wanted me to do therapy for eight hours and this is just not possible Right the time is there but the energy that I'm putting out it's just not possible to have that sustained level of energy for eight hours a day without completely burning out and without completely losing myself in the process as well in our previous conversation I talked a little bit about the idea or the framework that I've been messing around with the energy adders and the energy takers right energy adders are things in your life that give you recharge ing spending time with your family reading a good book taking a

[9:02]  break during the daytime but often we forget that the energy takers spending time with other people listening to the trials and tribulations that they're going through doing the work every single day is not a way to recharge our soul why do you feel like so many people feel guilty like we talked about a little bit deeper in leaning into the things that make them recharge those energy adders if you will yeah I've talked to a lot of people that feel that this is self fish and I I think I just attract helpers but people are saying oh well if I do something for myself then maybe I'm taking away resources from my family or I'm taking away time that could be spent doing things for other people and when that narrative comes up I really challenge them to think you

[9:51]  know where does this come from where does this thought of if you do this you are lazy or if you do this you are self fish where is this coming from because a lot of times it is a voice that has been ingrained in us since we were kids and sometimes it's the voice of our parents of our guardians of a coach of a teacher of somebody but if you think about whose voice is this in my head that's when you can narrow it down and begin to see okay this narrative may have been helpful during that time in my life but now now that I'm a professional now that I am exerting a lot of energy giving out to others I cannot pour from an empty cup and I have to I have to pour back into myself if I'm going to expect myself to

[10:41]  perform at the highest level possible there was an amazing book that I read a couple years ago it was called the untethered Soul now the author of this book uses a framework in an analogy for that internal voice called the roommate he said first of all the thing that we need to recognize is if if you can hear that internal voice that means you are the Observer and you have to every once in a while slow down and observe the things that that internal voice is saying to you now you spent so much time with this roommate that you take it as being yourself but once again if you can hear it that's not you so let's go through a little exercise together he says sit down on the couch and watch a movie with your roommate as if they're a real person now the things that they would say were did I check the laundry did I remember to put that list or that

[11:28]  thing on the grocery list did I remember to follow up and call that person did that person ever email me back and before you know it you would tell that roommate to be quiet because they're not helping you stay focused on watching the movie so every once in a while we need to cast that roommate out to be able to give ourselves the space to be able to just be calm and be here now what do you think about that analogy of the roommate yes I love that and I use basically the same story I I say it's a neighbor coming over and being annoying which is anxiety right Clinic technically I'm going to call this anxiety because it's that neighbor that roommate that's constantly in your head bugging you so much that you're like oh my gosh I can't even focus on a movie and it starts to impact your

[12:14]  relationships and your ability to stay focused at work to where in meetings you're thinking about the laundry and the stove and the kids and what you're going to do for vacation that you can't even recall what was just being talked about and now here you are with disciplinary actions saying hey we got to talk because something's going on right so this has real implications for how we live our lives and I looked up some statistics today and in 2024 the amount of Americans who have anxiety is very very high it's estimated about 31% of adults experience any kind of anxiety disorder sometime in their life so three out of 10 and this is also

[13:03]  coupled with people who have depression sometimes anxiety and depression can go hand inand and for depression it's 29% of people who have uh experience that in their lifetime so it's very very common to be experiencing these things and the tool that I like to recommend for quieting your roommates or your annoying neighbor is really practicing mindfulness and meditation and if you can you can even go on YouTube and just type in three minute guided meditation and this is going it's like going to the gym for your brain because you're working on strengthening your ability to stay focused because right now your brain just kind of all over the place and it's

[13:51]  flip-flopping around but if you're able to practice staying focused without these thoughts coming in that's where the magic happens but it does take practice and it takes consistency and it takes you even being aware that you need to do this that it's a problem what do we say to people who say I'm too busy to meditate I don't have an extra three minutes in my day where I can even slow down and quiet my mind to try and practice this stuff what do we say to those people okay one I don't believe you and two I do say that this can be done anywhere anywhere so it can be done in the car it can be done while you're washing your dishes while you're cooking dinner while you're in the Drive-Thru while you're taking a shower a shower is

[14:38]  a great place to practice this because a lot of times we do a lot of thinking in the shower and our brains are kind of going on overdrive and if you want to practice this practice being really present in the moment and just feeling the water feeling the Heat or the cold or whatever and really being aware of what's happening around you right and so you can practice this and and just try to stay focused on one thing right the water that could be an easy thing to be focused on and if you have thoughts that come into your head while you're thinking about the water just notice them don't give yourself any grief over it because it's completely normal and just return your focus back to the water and if you can practice this for a

[15:26]  minute even then that is a good start I was interviewing a brain surgeon who is a PhD in neuroscience and I asked him what is the most valuable skill set a person can develop on their own and he said emotional regulation because the thing that we don't recognize about our emotions is they are World Shapers if we have an emotion it changes how we think about the things that people are saying to us it changes the way in which we think about our own thoughts it changes how we see certain activities and certain Behavior what do you think about his acknowledgement that emotional regulation is the most important skill set that somebody can develop absolutely because so many of our decisions are made from an emotional place the the

[16:17]  thoughts that we think influence how we feel and from those emotions is how we're going to act and how we're going to respond whether it's better or worse and our emotions dictates so much in our lives our our work our play our family how we just show up on a daily basis for for everybody and for ourselves right so I can use an example back in what was it in the last Olympics 2020 when Simone biles went out there she had a lot of emotions right and it she was learning how to manage those emotions how to control them and she had to take a break right so she went on a break from Sports and unfortunately it was very public at

[17:05]  first people were very supportive but then later they're calling her lazy saying that she doesn't have any work ethic and it speaks to the fact of our society is not understanding of what it means to actually heal yourself and to really practice getting a handle on your emotions and dealing with it because when we have these I use the analogy of a volcano right when there's things bubbling up and there's Steam and lava trying to get out what we try to do as a society and a culture is just plug it up plug it up put the rocks in plug it up but it's all still there and it's going to come out eventually but if we can begin to take those rocks off and let

[17:54]  some steam out vent a little bit then that's where we're really going to be able to find that emotional stability but we have to be able to First recognize that this is a need that we have and have that self-awareness I mean but it's so easy for us to just throw rocks into the gigantic hole and hoping that these emotions kind of go away you know one of the things that I often think about is the story that we tell ourselves about how we're supposed to behave in certain situations is a story that somebody else once again like the roommate put into our head and this life experience that we're going through is unique uniquely ours with unique challenges to how we're dealing with certain situations and I worry about generations of people who haven't been able to have a safe space to be able to vent because we're worried

[18:41]  about the blowback from this volcano and how it's going to make us look you know one of the biggest things that I deal with when I talk to different entrepreneurs is they often say I'm embarrassed nobody else is going to get it I can't show this side of myself because my team will think less of me what do you think about that response to being able to you know be vulnerable yeah and on some level I agree that it's not appropriate to be showing your emotions to some people right which is why you do need to seek out those safe spaces to do that whether it's with your partner with a friend with a colleague with a therapist with a coach there has to be some way that you're able to process these things I'm might be biased

[19:29]  but I recommend therapy for people who are just needing a place to process and to vent and to be like what the heck is going on because something is not right here right just like when we have a physical ailment and we feel a pain we try to say okay maybe it'll go away but when it doesn't we go see a professional and it's the same thing with this if you feel that your emotions are starting to impact the quality of life your relationship ship and you're not feeling like yourself or you're not feeling like you should be right or you know if you're feeling angry and irritable all the time and you feel like wait I should be happy I should be feeling Joy why don't I feel these things where this there's this Gap that's here and I need

[20:17]  to seek it out and if you don't it's going to continue to impact your relationships and I would ask you what's going to happen six months from now if things don't change if you keep blowing up on your team if you keep blowing up on your kids over little things if you keep being irritable with your spouse I mean how is this going to affect you long term this is uh this is hitting home for me because I sit across the table in this podcast from amazing leaders and often we feel like there is no safe space for us to be able to have these type of conversations and that's why I feel like the element of being vulnerable especially from my own perspective is really important you know back in 2000 and 17 I um was in a really dark place I was in a place where my

[21:03]  business wasn't working it seemed like everything was outside of my control so the one thing that I recognized that I could control was the inputs that I put into my mind my thoughts right I could only control my mindset so in 2017 I went onto social media and I started recording a daily video on my Instagram story that was meant for me and for me only it was like hey man just listen up I just want you to know that today's a small step in the right direction and each message was an iteration on something like that what I found was day 62 day 164 day 206 of this 365-day commitment I had people who were reaching out to me and saying hey man you know I never would have thought you were the person who needed help but because you've been vulnerable I've found that I've started doing some of these things for myself and it's made a gigantic difference and my message

[21:50]  behind that story is when we are vulnerable and we are humans in the fact that we're all dealing with stress we're all dealing with anxieties feelings insecurity or inferiority it's really interesting to see what happens when we share our story because other people can find themselves within it but I really worry about the people who feel like they can't show up as their authentic self because what is the benefit of that long term it sounds like an unsustainable practice right definitely and those are the people that find themselves in a lot of trouble a lot of grief a lot of broken relationships and it's hard because our society Praises strength and Praises you know you got to pull yourself up by your boot drops and it's you know don't be crying about it because that's not going

[22:37]  to change anything right but if we don't have the space to be able to step back and say what the heck is going on here has have other people experienced this and it's really Brave of you to share your story because sharing it especially with peers is can be scary and intimidating in uh but it has a real difference and even among celebrities right I feel like celebrities we think of them as Untouchable and their lives are just so perfect because we see them for just you know two hours on stage but in reality they're humans too and they battle with the same struggles that we do with anxiety with depression with grief with loss body shaming miscarriages addiction depression trauma all of these things and so it's a human

[23:27]  experience to go through these things and research has shown that when you know somebody who is able to vouch like I I've I've been through this I've struggled with it and I sought help and help the therapy was helpful or whatever right talking with a friend it could be anything that was helpful it normalizes and validates that this isn't weird this isn't something to be ashamed of it's it's life like this is real life when it comes to celebrities and other people sharing their story have you been inspired by seeing someone be vulnerable and authentic enough to say Hey listen it's okay for me not to be okay and this is what I've been dealing with how do you think about that yes I admire that

[24:15]  because they really are under a m microscope because you and I Keenan we have people who you know followers podcast listeners but we're not highlevel celebrities right they have so much so much judgment around them whether they do or don't right whether they're vulnerable or whether not and it takes a lot of courage to do that and I applaud them because they're saving lives right by opening up this conversation and saying hey I have anxiety I've been through trauma and this is how I dealt with it and there is hope Beyond this right and just being able to reach back a hand to somebody who might be just behind you and that's one of the qualities of a really great

[25:03]  leader like you don't have to have any credentials or anything but if you've been through some stuff and you see someone else also on that same path and you can reach out a hand and say hey I've been there too how can I help I'm here to support and that's all it is is just reaching out and saying you're not alone and that's the most important thing that people need is to know that they're not alone and in 2022 the Surgeon General came on to a national broadcast and said the biggest threat to our American society today is not another viral pandemic but an epidemic of isolation and loneliness how do you think about the macro landscape of mental health when it comes to being infected or impacted by these little devices social media and things like that that's a great question and I'm

[25:51]  really concerned to be honest there's pros and cons but especially when looking ahead and looking at this current generation of people who are in their 20s and teenagers the social skills are not there and so like we've been talking about a lot of ways that you can get through the hard times is by talking to people and by having that genuine authentic vulnerable connection and you cannot always get it via telephones it's not personable there's no there it's hard to communicate via text message and it's important to know how to be uncomfortable honestly how to sit across from somebody who's just ugly

[26:40]  crying snot running down their nose and being able to be like like I don't have the answers this really sucks but I'm here you're not alone I'm with you right and that just does there's there's no replacement for somebody being there in person and the phone is never going to be that replacement there are some really great things about it and I've even seen where AI is doing therapy and people have found it helpful so it's really you know good and bad but I I I worry most about the people who are not socializing because probably in that same study that they released is that loneliness has the same effect on your health as smoking a

[27:28]  pack of cigarettes a day it's extremely dangerous it impacts your body on all different systems your organs your blood flow your muscles everything um and so you know it's really important to just just get out there and and we need people we need people and one last thought about that is when I hear people say you know I don't need anybody all I rely on is myself I immediately think that some sort of trauma response because somewhere in your life you have learned that you can't rely on other people people may have betrayed you maybe you have lost somebody maybe people have died and you haven't been able to heal from that trauma enough for you to feel comfortable reaching out to people trusting people forming new

[28:18]  connections with people and if that's you I would definitely recommend you know talking to somebody about that because we can go so much farther when we're when we're with other people who just get it when we're in community I want to double click on that a little bit because that's something I haven't really thought of um when somebody naturally looks inward to say I don't need anybody else I'm fine I don't have to rely on anybody else that often isn't a sign of strength but a sign of something that's happened in the past that came out of a negative experience can you kind of talk a little bit about that because I want to talk about that a little bit more on the podcast why do people react in that way yeah it's a protective Factor so they've been hurt they've experienced some sort of grief loss trauma harm against themselves and they're putting up this wall this

[29:06]  barrier so that nobody can come in nobody can hurt them again and in the moment it might be helpful right to be able to protect yourself and to heal and maybe to to just spend some time alone but we can't live life like that alone because l loneliness is is really bad for our health and it doesn't actually facilitate long-term healing because healing is done in community a lot of times we can't heal alone but we do need other people there and not even a therapist but anybody family friends support groups this is why AA Alcoholics annonymous has such a

[29:55]  huge following because when you're going through some something that's really serious that's really struggling you're trying to change your life for the better it is wildly impactful to have other people who are there on the same journey to support you and to encourage you and to lift you up and same thing for you right if you you're on this journey and you see somebody who's struggling it's empowering for you to be able to be like wow I was there and now I'm not now I've made it through that darkness and I'm on the other side and I see this person and to be able to reach out to them that's what gives us purpose right and that's what happens to so many of us who are in isolation is we lose that purpose in our life to where so I talked to so many

[30:43]  people where they they just go to work and come home and do nothing and they don't feel like they have a purpose you can't have a purpose when you're by yourself it's alarming because I think I shared the statistic in our last call that the average 18-year-old today is spending about 9 hours per day on their device and if you extrapolate that 9 hours of screen time per day over the rest of their lifetime they'll spend on average about 24 hours a day behind their screen so when you hear statistics like spending 24 years of your life behind your device by yourself in a dark room literally alone what kind of red flags go off in your mind oh yeah so many so many for sure depression and anxiety a lot of times imposter syndrome

[31:32]  or um what's the like not the fear of missing out but feeling inadequate because you're watching everyone else you know there's rich people on there there's people who have bigger houses better cars they're prettier they're skinnier they're more fit they're doing all these things they're traveling they're living life and here you are in your room in the dark by yourself and when you turn off your phone I wonder how are you feeling and that's really the first step is to be able to acknowledge like does your phone make you feel better are you getting energized are you feeling invigorated inspired are you actually going to do all the workouts

[32:19]  that you have been saving are you actually going to cook all of the meals that you have been saving to your favorites board that's what I would want to see because we have to have something to do something to live for the core the reason I don't know I this is my belief the reason why we're alive is to have purpose is to have something to do no matter where we are in life we have to have something that we're striving for we have to have a reason to get up in the morning and social media is not it I really worry about that though because social media and this is kind of an opportunity for me to age myself a little bit I was born in 1990 and I saw the emergence of social media but I also saw how social media changed from when I first started experiencing it in 2009 I

[33:08]  graduated from high school and went to college and that was the first time I really came across Facebook and Facebook was an amazing tool because it was a chronological document of how the entire day went down from somebody waking up early in the morning in the gyms and then posting on the Facebook feed like someone make sure that loud truck is quiet cuz it's waking me up I have to go to class in an hour and you would see the entire chronological day but somewhere around 2016 2017 the algorithms changed and they went from you being on Instagram and going to the very bottom and it saying you're all the way caught up for the day to being an endless loop of information and something else happened during that time we stopped seeing so many of our friends and we started seeing the global community of Instagram and this is where a lot of those feelings of inadequacy

[33:57]  and compar and started popping up in our lives because we weren't comparing ourselves to people who were at our school or in our States but we were comparing ourselves to people in California or Las Vegas or Miami or Dubai and London and this is a unique challenge that I think a lot of people haven't realized is how quickly and secretively these algorithms Chang in our life to show us things that were completely out of our worldview what do you think about that little change that happened yeah absolutely I noticed that same thing too I was born in '87 so around the the same time and social media started as a way to to get caught up on people's lives that I actually knew and I had met in person and that I care about and now we follow influencers and the algorithm will also give you more of

[34:48]  what you have been searching for so if you're in your feelings and you're feeling down and you're searching search and cutting or suicide the algorithm is going to feed that and I've seen this with teenagers too where now all they're seeing is depressing stuff how to how to cause harm how to harm yourself and it's this constant influx of things that we may not want to see that are not healthy or even with with things that seem innocent so for example have a daughter she's seven and she was on YouTube and I I hate having her watch YouTube but sometimes I'll I'll do it but every time I'm like

[35:36]  oh this is why so for example there she was watching this girl and this boy and they're maybe 10 this girl is wearing like some booty shorts and a sports bra and then doing the splits in front of the guy and she gets the guy's attention and he's like wow and he gets out his phone and starts recording her and she walks off all sexy and I'm thinking oh my gosh is this what my daughter is learning that you need to wear this outfit and do splits in front of men for them to look at you and to get attention like this is not this is not what I want her to learn and also there's subtle messages too because all she watches what you can't control what pops up so I've seen another video where

[36:25]  these girls are wearing makeup and they're like oh now I feel pretty now I'm so pretty because I have this makeup on and I'm like I don't want like little girls should not be told that you need to have makeup on in order to be pretty and so there's so many different ways that social media impacts us mostly for the negative and I and another part too is I worry about our ability to be critical thinkers because kids kids that I've talked to as well if they can't find it on YouTube it's too hard and they get discouraged and they don't want to try their their homework they don't want to try to learn something new and whatever the influencer says that's what they think too so they have all of these

[37:14]  voices all of these different messages coming in to where we don't even have a sense of self at this point I don't even know what I like what I want to do I'm just watching what everybody else is is doing and so that's dangerous too because if I don't have a sense of self of who I am and my values and my likes and dislikes that's when someone else can come in you know someone who's toxic or harmful and cause harm another way that way too so it's a lot I mean we're we're kind of at the point in time where Authority is being confused with popularity just because something has a million likes or 200 50,000 shares we look at that as being authoritative just

[38:01]  because it is popular and this is a unique element where I feel like the younger Generations are going to have to become very good at being skeptical asking the question is this the right information is this a resource that I can trust is everybody else just going along with this just because it's popular I mean especially when we start thinking you mentioned a little bit about AI a little earlier deep fakes fake people fake messages fake voices all of this stuff is coming right around the corner and I don't know if we've built the skill set of being critical thinkers sharp enough to be able to challenge some of the ideas that are put in front of us yes it's true I worry about the critical thinking all the time because you have to be a critical thinker in order to be successful because things are changing so rapidly

[38:49]  in our world that if you're not able to think for yourself if you're not able to see the pattern see the trends see what is happening here then not only are you putting yourself at risk but you're going to fall behind because the people who are able to think for themselves and be creative and come up with new ideas those are going to be the leaders in the Next Generation for sure so at what point in time do we draw the line in saying I'm not going to expose myself to these types of platforms I have just crossed over my 8-week mark of not having Instagram or Tik Tok or any social media platforms on my phone whatsoever because at one point in time I realized very much similar to the question of what do we say to people who say they don't have time to meditate I

[39:36]  would find myself throughout my day saying man I just like don't have time to get all the stuff that I need to get done and then my girlfriend pulled out my phone and said let me see your phone and looked at my screen time and I had like 6 hours and 15 minutes of screen time on my phone each day so how do we stay informed without hitting the eject button like I did by saying if I'm going to be successful I need to eliminate these things completely from my life is there a balance there or like what do you think that looks like I think it depends on everybody I'm curious how how are you feeling now how do you feel like you've been more productive like your life is Back in Balance um I have seen a dramatic shift in trajectory of my life I am no longer interested in the things that TMZ is saying I am no longer seeing the subconscious messages of compar

[40:27]  about me being a business owner and not making $6 million this month and that means that I'm no good I haven't seen the tabloids and all the other type of hate messages that are being sent by both campaigns at this point in time in the United States of recording this and so I do feel under informed but I feel so much more whole at the same time if that makes sense agreed yes yes uh for me personally I try to limit my social media I don't do a very good job but I'm very aware of it and this is mostly so that my energy is going to the things that matter to my clients to my family to God and to myself because I'm only worried about the things that I can control and how can I make the most

[41:15]  impact in my little corner In my home in my neighborhood in my community and so social media is a tool that I can use to promote my business but once I start to be a consumer and not a and not using it for business at that point I'm like okay this is a waste of time and so I think it's different for everybody because I'll be honest I do like to watch some funny dog videos because with all the stuff that's going on and my job is so heavy I'm a therapist but my job is so heavy sometimes I just like to watch dogs and cats you know play around um so it can be a good distraction but that's exactly what it is and if we can recognize like okay this is a distraction right now then then that's what it is if somebody

[42:04]  is at the point where like you it's starting to impact your schedule your productivity if you're feeling like there's not enough time if you are feeling worse when you turn off your phone then yeah it's time to definitely reduce that and and there's plenty of other ways to get your news plenty of other ways so let's I want to talk a little bit about the idea of self-care so someone who sits across this digital table with me is literally a mental health professional you are somebody who is in a incredibly taxing space how do you kind of prioritize self-care so you can show up as the present peaceful voice that people can pour into and you can be that backboard for them to get up shots in life and kind of you know have that

[42:51]  safe space that you're living in so what does your self-care routine look like yeah I'll be honest it takes a lot of practice practice and a lot of checking in with myself and how I'm feeling and just being honest with myself like this client is like really trying me today or uh or parents at school like they are really testing me and I'm irritated and I'll be honest with the people around me too like hey I'm I'm feeling irritable today and I'm not trying to take it out on you so the way that I do self-care just really depends on what it is so I might need some alone time I'm an introvert so I need to have that space to just refresh and be alone and re-energize that way sometimes I will do walking so being outside in nature and moving is very

[43:43]  healing for for the body and especially for me I feel when I step outside sometimes like I can breathe I'm like oh thank gosh I don't feel so so trapped so walking is huge going to the gy gy and listening to music talking to friends talking to other people who are supportive and that feed energy into me not the energy drainers but the ones who are going to be good for my mental health those are the main ways but there's so many other ways that is important you know like laughing um being artistic dancing therapy there's so many ways that people can self-care in healthy ways I've been really focusing a lot on that creativity element of things recently um I grew up

[44:32]  and I used to be you know really into drawing because it gave me a place to be able to just express myself and be more connected to what I was creating but I also had to be incredibly present in that time and so over the weekend I've been busting out my easel so I can start drawing again and what I found is like that activity in itself is a form of selfcare it's not always about going to get a massage it's not always about going to the gym and things like that but it's giving myself the space to be present with myself so I can just kind of have that internal monologue and be creative and get connected to my inner child more so than anything else and it's amazing to see how refreshing that really is when you just give yourself enough space to not be busy and to do things that you truly are passionate about that's been a huge unlock for me over the last couple weeks and maybe it's because I haven't been spending so

[45:18]  much time on this device right and that I've had the opportunity to kind of discover that type of stuff which has been really cool yes yes everybody needs a hobby everyone needs something that they enjoy that they look forward to doing that they want to do it's so important as we kind of put the uh the wheels down to land the plane here let's talk about you know our final Reflections and our call to action here we've talked about a lot of important stuff we've talked about the impacts of social media we've talked about you know the conversations that we've had with self and that internal voice monologue roommate or neighbor um we talked about you know mental health and the impacts that it has on us I talked about you a little bit of being super intentional with eliminating distractions in our life what other topics should we be talking about that maybe we haven't

[46:04]  talked about here today that are super important from your seat you know I think we covered a lot of the big ones I think the one that I would want someone to take away is that it's okay to not be okay nobody is ever okay all the time and life happens and so it's okay to reach out to your friends to say like like hey I just need to talk to somebody are you are you available right or reach out um a lot of times when you have health insurance it'll cover therapy sessions and being or even being able to reach out to your own family and friends and if you've never been vulnerable or open before to just practice like hey I'm having a hard day can you hang out right even just being

[46:55]  able to to say that and to acknowledge that and to be able to recognize all right you know I need to hang out with some people or I need to go blow off some steam in the gym or I need to to get out my eil and and draw or take up that old hobby whatever it is because if you are constantly feeling a source of stress and overwhelm and irritability there's something going on there that needs to be addressed and what I would also challenge us to do is if you can't be the person who at this point in time feels brave enough to say hey I'm not doing okay reach out to your friends and say hey I'm here for you be that friend that other people can lean on because when you create that safe space for others you'd be surprised about how many people are willing to create that safe

[47:42]  place in reciprocation and that's one of the things I think we really should be talking about more on podcasts and things like this is go check on three people today because if you think that you're alone in this process of life and everybody else is too busy and you wish somebody would check on you why don't you be the person that you wish you saw around you a little bit more often and I run this exercise every once in a while where I'll reach out to 10 or 15 my friends and just give them a message of encouragement or acknowledgement and be like hey man I know we've been talked in a long time but you've been in the front of my mind or hey we haven't been able to hang out as much as we used to and I miss the way in which we were able to laugh back in the day and do all this different stuff you'd be surprised about how many people would come back and say hey man this is the message that exactly what I needed to hear today and so let's just kind of be the people that more people want to see that would be my piece of advice as we kind of walk away

[48:30]  from this episode together I love that and I realize I did that too so I've been going through a hard time this year and I got to the point where I was tired of complaining about my life to my friends but I would still want someone to talk to and so I'd reach out to again to people and just be like hey checking in like how are you doing and just being able to hear their story and what they're going through it can help to take take off some of that load and be able to to refocus your energy on giving to someone else you know if you have that space to do so so I like that and and yeah how many times do people just randomly text and say hey I'm thinking about you it's pretty awesome it really is well one of the traditions we have here on the podcast was we' love to end with a a question from our previous guest now our previous guest um was a

[49:19]  CEO of a large nonprofit and this question was made for another CEO often you know as a leader we find our ourselves pouring into other people more so than we have time to pour into ourselves and it feels like nobody truly understands the context of what we're going through sounds pretty familiar from today's conversation so as a CEO and somebody who sits across the table from me who are the people that support you when you feel like you are run down and you don't have any more to give is there anybody that you have in your life who you lean on specifically absolutely absolutely I would say the top of my mind is my friends and my sister and other colleagues who are in the industry that I am because they're able to my friends and family are able to

[50:10]  support me on a personal level but professionally if I'm feeling stuck if I'm feeling like oh my gosh I'm out of my wheelhouse here I don't know what's happening then definitely the colleagues and being able to to have that support from other people and not even people that work in your company but other people in same positions in other companies are super powerful well I love that well thank you so much Katherine for coming on the show this has been an amazing conversation and you brought so many unique perspectives to the importance of asking for help the conversations around mental health and all the other things that we talked about here today this has been an absolute blessing I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show and where can people find more information about you how can they tune into your podcast yeah absolutely so my podcast is called social workers rise so if you are interested in social work or

[50:57]  Human Services then this is your jam and you can reach me on LinkedIn I'm at Katherine it's linkedin.com cine LCSW and that's probably the best place that you can reach me is on LinkedIn well there we go guys that's been another wrap of the hard and hustle podcast once again Katherine Moore thanks for coming on the show we appreciate it thanks Canan