Remarkable People Podcast

Sharon Grossman | Taking Risks, Embracing Uncertainty, & Avoiding Burnout through Work Life Balance

May 13, 2022 David Pasqualone / Sharon Grossman Season 4 Episode 422
Remarkable People Podcast
Sharon Grossman | Taking Risks, Embracing Uncertainty, & Avoiding Burnout through Work Life Balance
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Show Notes Transcript

This week, you’re not only going to hear about what is burnout, how to recover from burnout, how to avoid burnout, but you’re going to hear Sharon’s remarkable story of how she was born in Israel came to America, went back to Israel, came back to America, went to college, got a, master’s got a PhD.

Then, she put all this together with her life experiences so she can help people like you and me get well. So this truly is a remarkable episode where you’re going to be entertained with Sharon’s story. You’re also going to get life nuggets throughout the episode. And then at the end, we not only transition to the practical, how to, you know, listen, do, repeat for life kind of stuff. But on top of it, Sharon offers our listeners a very generous free offer. To help you avoid and heal from burnout. So get ready for this amazing remarkable episode of the podcast. The Dr. Sharon Grossman story.

“Somethings things are hard, but it doesn’t mean they are bad.” – Sharon Grossman


GUEST BIO: 

Dr. Sharon Grossman helps 6- and 7-figure executives go from Exhausted to Extraordinary™. Using her 3-step method, you learn how to overcome anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout in 90 days or less. Dr. Sharon is the author of the international bestseller, The 7E Solution to Burnout, a psychologist, and success coach. She shares tips and strategies as a keynote speaker and on her weekly podcast, Decode Your Burnout.

 

EPISODE PROUDLY SPONSORED BY: 

 

SHOW NOTES, GUEST CONTACT INFO, SPECIAL OFFERS, & OTHER RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Guest Contact Info:

  • Website: https://drsharongrossman.com/
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharongrossman
  • Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decode-your-burnout-formerly-optimize-your-life/id1548603864

Guest Special Offer(s):

Resources Mentioned: 

  • Book a 30-minute Breakthrough Session with Dr. Sharon: www.bookach
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David Pasqualone


THE NOT-SO-FINE-PRINT DISCLAIMER:

While we are very thankful for all of our guests, please understand that we do not necessarily share or endorse the same beliefs, worldviews, or positions that they may hold. We respectfully agree to disagree in some areas, and thank God for the blessing and privilege of free will.

Hello friends. Welcome to this week's remarkable episode of the podcast. The Dr. Sharon Grossman story! This week, you're not only going to hear about what is burnout, how to recover from burnout, how to avoid burnout, but you're going to hear Sharon's remarkable story of how she was born in Israel came to America, went back to Israel, came back to America, went to college, got a, master's got a PhD.

Then, she put all this together with her life experiences so she can help people like you and me get well. So this truly is a remarkable episode where you're going to be entertained with Sharon’s story. You're also going to get life nuggets throughout the episode. And then at the end, we not only transition to the practical, how to, you know, listen to repeat for life kind of stuff.

But on top of it, Sharon offers our listeners a very generous free offer. To help you avoid and heal from burnout. So get ready for this amazing remarkable episode of the podcast. The Dr. Sharon Grossman story.

INTERVIEW RPP E88 Dr Sharon Grossman Avoiding and Overcoming Anxiety Overwhelm and Burnout in Our Lives: it. Hey Sharon, how are you today? I'm doing amazing. I just got back from spring break. And as we were talking about prior to recording, man, it has been a little bit hard to get back into the swing of things.

So if anybody's listening to this I'm sure we have some people nodding their heads [00:02:00] because every, everybody I've been talking to this week has been having a very similar experience. Yeah. It's tough. Anytime you take a break or a vacation you're in that relaxed mode and then coming back to reality, it's kind of hard to shift gears sometimes, right?

Yeah. And it's kind of interesting, right. As I'm thinking about this, because one of the things we talk about is how. When you're working all the time, you know, you ha you can eliminate that from happening. You get, you're just kind of staying in the groove of things, but you also need to take a break in order not to burn out.

So it's kind of a conundrum, isn't it? Because like you take that break and then it takes you a little while to kind of get back to yourself. So you might think, why don't I just not take a vacation and just work all the time? And that's a bad idea. So as, as hard as it might be to get back in, don't like not take your vacation.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it depends what country you're in too. We have listeners from all around the world and the culture is different in every [00:03:00] country, every region. And I mean, some countries, if you're not taking 30 days vacation a year, that's not enough in another countries. If you get seven days, that's like, wow, thank you.

So it really just depends on her background. So you are the expert in this topic and our listeners. I just told them about you, Sharon. So let's get into your episode and then we'll get to the point where we talk about maybe solutions for people who are either not working enough or they're working too hard and we can all find balance.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So let's do this like our listeners know, but if you're a first time listener, the podcast, we go through the past, the present and the future of our guests. And Sharon's going to explain not only what she overcame or achieved in her life, the highs, the lows, the everything in between.

But she's also going to share with us the practical steps of how she did it. So you can too. So at this time, Sharon, our listeners don't want to listen to me. They want to listen to [00:04:00] you. So start off where you born in Croatia, we were born in India. Were you born in America? Where were you born? And what was life like star now?

Yeah, so I was actually born in Israel, so none of the above. And when I was eight years old, my parents decided that they wanted a change of scenery. My grandmother happened to be living in the states at that time. And so they moved us all to Florida and I had to restart my entire life at the age of eight.

And what was, I mean, listening to me now, you might not know this, but I came right into third grade and I didn't speak a word of English. And so just to kind of set the stage. Before the move. My mom was trying to get me prepped because she knew that I was going to have to be able to get through the day.

So I would come home from school. This is in second [00:05:00] grade and she would having to go through these exercises and she would teach me the ABCs. And so the extent of my English was I was able to say the days of the week and the months of the year, I could not, I could not put a sentence together where you, again, I said eight, I was eight.

Oh, wow. So that's older for kids to know what's going on and pick on you and everything. Well, luckily I didn't get picked on, I was almost like this exotic being the showed up and everybody's like, what is this? Like, what's going on? And you know, it was really sweet. Like, I'd have these girls come up to my desk and they want to talk to me.

And I just had no idea what they were saying. So it made it challenging from the perspective of, I couldn't really participate at first. And it really was hard on so many levels because not only could I not engage socially for a big part of that first year, [00:06:00] which if you know anything about kids, like they're social beings, right.

So even more so than adults, like they spend all day playing and just interacting with their friends and whatnot. So it was definitely challenging right off the bat. But also academically, I could not participate in anything that was going on around me. So there wasn't a lot of resources at that time in that school.

So what I ended up having to do is sit at my desk and just watch the clock and wait for the next period. And I, you know, there weren't just any sort of resources for me where I was pulled out. I remember there was a very short period where they hired someone to pull me out, like maybe once a week or something.

And we would go through like the basics. She would show me pictures in a book and she'd be like, that's a leaf. I mean, that was the level that I started at. Right. So obviously I've come a very long way, but [00:07:00] it was not always easy. I have to say, and in addition to the social component and the academic component, I think one of the hardest things for me personally, was the cultural shift, right?

I came from a very, very different background where I was growing up at the time in Israel, in the 1980s back then things were so different than if you were to visit there today. So we grew up very modest. I remember going out to eat very sparsely. So we always ate at home and there was just this different kind of mentality.

And then I come into my school in the state states and happened to be also a private school because my parents were very set on having me, you know, at least have some sort of cultural [00:08:00] parallel, which ironically is very, very different. You know, even though it was a Jewish school Jewish and coming from Israel are two completely different planets, right?

Jewish, American Israeli are like two different animals altogether. So now I'm growing up with these kids who, because it's a private school come from for the most part, pretty well to do backgrounds. And we didn't have means like my mom was working at the school just to subsidize our tuition. Like my parents were all in on like having us in this school and, you know, it was definitely, they were leading with the heart, but it was not an easy transition for me personally.

For all the reasons I've mentioned, but like also because. Just culturally. I didn't feel like I fit in. And so we went through the school before you go on Sharon, because we have listeners from all different parts of the world. And even within America, you have like [00:09:00] seven major regions. I mean, it's totally different culturally.

So go ahead and just give us a quick breakdown so people can understand, like, what is it like to be Israeli, culturally? What is it like to be American Jewish? Because there is a giant difference. It's like an Italian American growing up in America is different of me growing up in Southern Italy. So talk about the culture differences.

So even within what people would think is quote, unquote, your community, you're still having culture shock. Right? So talk about those real quick. The parallel. Yeah. So people don't usually know these things. So I think it's a great question. So in Israel, at least at the time, it was just, you know, even though we, we were Jewish and we're growing up with tradition and whatnot, which means like celebrating holidays and things like that we're [00:10:00] very like religious light.

Okay. People are just kind of doing their thing and you come to the states and when you're in a Jewish school here, even though it wasn't an Orthodox school There is that expectation that you go a little bit heavier into the religion. So there's prayers and there's a lot of Judaic studies and like, they're, you know, they're trying to get all of these American kids to understand their culture better.

So they're like inserting that into the school. So if you go to public school, you basically have all of your English and science and math

things, and then you also have on top of it, the Hebrew language class, and then you have the Judaic studies class. So there's a lot kind of in that. And [00:11:00] in addition to that, I think what I'm talking about is not so much the schooling, but more so the way that people lead their lives. So there was the difference in how people approach life from like a Jewish perspective, like people in the states take their high holidays very seriously.

They're going to temple and they're acting almost like they're Orthodox even when they're not because the mentality is if I'm not going to be observant year round at the very least. Let me do the high holidays the way I'm supposed to do them. Right. And then, and then I'll be a good Jew. Like I can check the box.

Right. And in Israel, like nobody does that. People are just like the, the tradition is more about being with family and not so much about being religious. So it's about like, oh, if it's a holiday, maybe you fast once, once a year, when we have young key, poor, and then you break the [00:12:00] fast with the family and the focus is more on the breaking of the fast.

Cause that's when you get together with the family and here it's more about going to temple and observing all of the rules. Right? So there's like these little subtle differences, but more so for me, I think one of the big pieces that was a big culture shock was just the difference in how people spend their time and the focus on the materialism.

Right? So like I said, we grew up very modest and then I come into the school and we have kids who are from very well-to-do families and they spend their weekends going shopping. And they don't just go shopping at Walmart, kind of a thing. They go shopping at these very high-end retail stores. So I remember sleeping over at a friend's house.

And when I have people sleep over my house on the weekends, [00:13:00] my parents always wanted to engage us in activities. So they would take us like roller skating or we would do something fun. You know, they felt like it was their responsibility to entertain the other child. And when I would go to my friend's houses, they would take me shopping with their kid.

So I would like sit there and watch their kid, like try on Jews kind of a thing. Right. So it was such a different kind of super fun, super fun. Let's watch them out, spend money and I get to do nothing, you know? So it was just, it was just very different. And then I had to figure out, as you might imagine that eight year old, how do I fit into this new reality?

Because even though it's so different, from what I know, I still need to have friends. Right. And I need to figure out who am I now that I'm here, I have to kind of figure out like, what is my American identity? What is that all about? And yeah, I mean, it, wasn't an easy thing for me to figure out because I.[00:14:00] 

I guess you can say I was a little resistant to going with the flow, right. There was a piece of me that even though I was learning the language and I was living in American life, there's a piece of me that hold onto my past. So it still had the Hebrew language, which I could use with family members, but more so it was about my identity.

And I think what it turned into wasn't even so much at that point about being an immigrant or about being in a different social class. I think what all of these experiences ended up doing is shaping me to be the kind of person who has to take a step back, look at the big picture, think strategically about things and not just look to fit in.[00:15:00] 

And I think that comes from just years of not fitting in right where I was on the sidelines and feeling like I don't belong. These are not my people. Obviously I had friends. We would have, then we get into, you know, fifth and sixth grade, and now everybody like literally every weekend is having their bar and bat mitzvahs, which basically, if you don't know what that is, it's a mini wedding, right.

You basically rent a hall, you have a DJ. I mean, it's a huge party with food and photography and the music and just like totally over the top stuff. And what that means is prac practically speaking for somebody like me is that now I have to put on a show every single weekend and I have to dress up for the occasion.

So it's kind of like when [00:16:00] you think about your sweet sixties, kind of like that, right. You see, or, or even prom, right? You see the women get, or the ladies kind of get dressed up in these fancy dresses. It was like every weekend we had to do that. And if you, God forbid wore something a couple of times you would

like people were keeping tabs on your wardrobe. So there was a lot of this peer pressure up and constantly have more and more new things. And

to like, it just, wasn't one of my values. And so it felt very awkward. It felt like I'm, I'm this, I don't know how to phrase it, but almost like I'm an actor in somebody [00:17:00] else's play.

And so fast forward a few years my, my parents decided we're going to move back to Israel. Well, what are you going before you go on? Did you have brothers and sisters or were you the only child? So I had a sister and my sister was younger. So it's actually interesting when you talk to her and you get her version of the story, but the way I always thought about it is she was the lucky one because when she came in, she had to repeat kindergarten because the cutoff with the birthday just happened to be in such a way where even though she had completed kindergarten in Israel, she was supposed to go into first grade.

They actually brought her back a year because of the birthday cutoff. I know that color is so intense. You just can't push a kid.

I'm being sarcastic. I mean, we have such a [00:18:00] broken educational system in America. I mean, what people used to do in 18 years, they're doing, I mean, what people used to do in six years, it's taken them 18 years to do now. So it's so watered down. It's so, so, so the, the lucky thing I thought for her in that respect is that because she was in kindergarten, she started right off the bat with everybody else learning the ABCs, learning to read.

Like she didn't have to do the catch-up that I had to do. But interestingly, I just recently talked to her about her experience and she actually has a lot of resentment about being put back because she felt like that was humiliating. Right. That she, there wasn't anything wrong with her brain or that she hadn't passed a grade or whatever, but like, she has to suffer the consequences of this cutoff date and go back and maybe be an older kid in her class or whatever the case was.

Right. So [00:19:00] it's interesting like her take on it, but from an academic perspective, I think it worked out really well for her. Yeah. So while you were going through all this and you felt like you are kind of a character in somebody else's story, I was wondering your sister or other siblings. Did they feel the same way, but it sounds like what you're saying is she was a little more acclimated just because she started younger and she didn't really know as much to compare and contrast.

Is that correct? Yeah. I think there's definitely that where she was so much younger that she didn't have as much background as I did. Right. She hadn't even started elementary school. I was already two years in and yeah, just the fact that she didn't have to do that catch up. Like she wasn't sitting in third grade looking at the walls and waiting for time to pass by.

She was able to right off the bat, learn with everyone else. It just made the whole transition, I think, a [00:20:00] lot easier. And were your parents during this time, like you said they were working hard, put you in private school where your parents embracing the American lifestyle or are they teaching you like, Hey, this is really materialistic or part of this environment, but we don't want you to become like this.

Like what was their perspective? You know, I think they were just trying to compensate a lot of the first year. So they. Made it, their mission. We weren't really having these conversations. Right. It was more so about, let's do something fun on the weekends as a family. So they were constantly taking us to, like I said, roller skate or I don't know, different kinds of activities, parks and things to, you know, because we lived in Florida, we went to Disney world, things like that.

So they were just like trying to elevate the more fun family time, because that's the thing they had control over. And we [00:21:00] really weren't having these deep discussions. And as a matter of fact, I don't think they really knew what my experience going through school ever was because we didn't talk about these things.

I don't remember them asking. And I don't remember sharing about what it was like and how I felt like an outsider. And like, they didn't know, like they were just in survival mode. Do you know what I mean? Like, they were just like, we got to work and pay the bills and great. You guys are done with homework and let's go out on the weekend.

Right? Like we weren't having these deep discussions. Yeah. And that's a huge generational difference. Like when you, and I think we're around the same age, I think you're younger, but I'm 45. So when we were growing up, it seems like it was like, this is your existence. Adapt and overcome and figure it out.

That was the mentality I grew up with. And there wasn't options, like how bad things got this is your life, figure it out or under that's [00:22:00] it, that's it. Yeah, it did feel a little bit like a dictatorship. Like my parents did not ask me what I thought, what I wanted. It was like, this is what we're doing, folks.

Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying like, to me, that was normal. Quote, unquote, growing up. But now I, I mean, people have problems that aren't problems and they make stuff up because they're bored. I'm like the other day I was actually in a store and there was this kid whining to his mother. He's like a teenager.

And I'm like, I interjected, I'm like, dude, you need to suck it up and be a man. I'm like, this is life. This isn't a real problem. There's people starving, dying, being raped. And you're bitching at your mom about something. And the worst part is your mom's taking it. I said, do you want to be a man? Or do you want to be a slave?

And the kid just looked at me. I said, do you want to be a man? Do you want to be a slave? I said, because our governments all around the world, they're radio and slave you, are you going to think on your own adapt and overcome? Are you going to bitch to your mommy? Cause you want. The kid just sat up straight.

He's [00:23:00] like, I want to be a man. I'm like the knack like it. And I checked out the grocery store, but the thing is it's like, we just grew up in such a different generation. Sorry, my dog's barking. We grew up in such a different generation that I can like, just I'm smiling on the camera because I'm listening to you and I'm like, she's just getting it done.

It didn't matter what was going on. So exactly. So, you know, we would have to just make it up as we went along and that included my mom who took the brunt of the responsibility in raising us. So as an example, as I'm going through this period where I have to produce all of these dresses every weekend and we can't afford like all of these fancy things, she ends up taking me to this warehouse.

And in this warehouse, there's all of these kinds of. Second rate. If you will gowns there, they're very fancy, but there's a little something wrong with them, if you will. Right. [00:24:00] Imperfections. Yes. But what that meant was that we can get a whole bunch of them for like a fraction of the price. So we go in and she bargains with the woman and we ended up getting like five or six outfits for me.

And it's like score now. I'm good. You know? And that, that was our reality. Like even one of the dresses, I remember had a broken zipper and my mom's like, I can fix that. Can we have a discount? Right. We get like a dress for like $7. Like that was the level that we were dealing with to fit into the reality of the kind of people in my grade and in my school that I was supposed to socialize with.

And then we are in your story at some point, did your parents get sick of the keeping up with the Joneses? Is that when they were moving back to Israel, was it a job or career switch? W how old were you and what made them move back? Yeah, so my dad came to the United States. My dad's an entrepreneur [00:25:00] and entrepreneurs take risks, as you know.

And so my dad came to the states with one goal. I mean, yes, they wanted a change of scenery, especially because in the eighties, when we were living in Israel, there was a lot of turmoil in Israel, politically, and he would get called in. To the reserves to serve. And so that left my mom alone at home with two little kids.

And so they thought, you know what enough of this let's, let's go for the American dream. Right. And my grandmother was living in Florida at the time. My dad's Canadian, by the way. So he already spoke English. My mom had a BA in English, so they weren't good to go. But when we decided to move back, it's because he had achieved his goal of, he wanted to make his, he wanted to make a million dollars.

He wanted to make it big in America. And once he was able to make that [00:26:00] goal come to fruition, he had also listened to me and all through the years we would go visit in the summertime. And you gotta remember I'm being raised in the suburbs in the United States where you're basically dependent on your parents for everything.

Okay. And then we would go over the summer to visit family in Israel. And I would just see how different things are for the kids. There. There's public transportation and kids are just taking buses everywhere and just, they just have so much more freedom. And in the states, my parents became these very over-protective helicopter parents.

They had to know everything we're doing all the time. They have to take us and bring us. And like, you couldn't go anywhere by yourself. And there was just all this fear all the time. Right. And so I was like feeling, not only am I living this life where I feel like I don't belong, but I have no freedom.

Right. And I was [00:27:00] craving that. I was like, I just want to breathe. I just want to be able to, I, I just, I think my personality is I really value freedom. That's like one of my big values. Right. And I just didn't have any of it. A because my parents were super conservative and really wanted to shelter us and be because of just where we were, right.

The suburbs and just the, the way things were positioned. So Dripping this information into my dad's ear through the years, I'd be like, you know, look at the kids here. They get to ride buses. And like, it felt like all the kids were going to Scouts and they had all this, like just like adventure and things in their life.

And I was just like, I don't want any of this. My life is so boring. Like, I don't like my life. And in that area, you sound like every teenage kid right there. So there is some [00:28:00] similarities despite your region. Right. But I S I was, here's the thing. I was not a typical teenager. I was not a rebellious kid. I mean, I was, but not in the way that you would think I was rebellious, not because I was a teenager, but more so because my parents were so over-protective that I felt like I had to sneak around just to have a life because they wouldn't let me do anything if I asked, oh, I got you.

I got you. Right. So it was just like, so I can have a little bit of fun with my friends. I'd have to just like, leave some details out. Right. But I really was a good kid. Like, I wasn't rebellious very much. Right. But I think you've got to give your kids some leeway and, and they didn't really understand that.

Right. They were just trying to protect and protect them, protect them was constant, like that survival piece. Right. So obviously I learned what to do as a parent differently, based on my experience growing up. And now I still have. [00:29:00] Bear the responsibility of making the decisions, but I try to involve my kids more and give them some options and talks to them and figure out what's going on for them.

And I interject when I need to. Right. Like, there's, there's just like a lot that I've learned from my childhood experience that has now informed my parenting. So yeah. I mean, there's just like a lot of pieces. I don't know how. Yeah, no, no, no. You're doing great. So w your dad made his million in America and he decides to go back to Israel and we're him and your mom both equally yoked.

Was it a decision they made together? No. So this is the interesting thing. So you would think if my dad's Canadian and my mom's Israeli, that she would be like, let's go back. Her whole family lived there. We had virtually no family in the states, other than my dad's mom, who after a few years decided to move to Las Vegas.

So we ended up with no family at all. [00:30:00] And yet it was my dad that was pulling us to go back. And I think it was because he had so much compassion for me and hearing about how unhappy I was, how I didn't fit in how much freedom I could have on the other side. The fact that we had family there, like he just did the math and he decided, you know what?

This is the best thing for our family. Now, interestingly, at that point, my sister was already so well weaved into the system here that she didn't want to move back. She was already a superstar. She was excelling at school and she was playing basketball and she had a million friends and like she was doing amazing.

Why would she want to then leave all that behind and start over? So she didn't want to go. And my mom didn't want to go because my mom, [00:31:00] even if she's unhappy would rather, and if you're listening to this, I want you to just take a moment and see if this sounds like you, because I've had a lot of clients like this, right?

Where even if you're unhappy, you would prefer to stay in your misery than take a chance, start over and have a potentially better scenario. Right? We have so many people that have anxiety about change, that they prefer to just stick with the status quo. And that's what happened with my mom. So she was not very happy about it, but fast forward with once we got there, she reestablish herself and then she was totally happy.

So it wasn't like I'm going from. Good to bad. It was just I'm going from what I know to what I don't know, because it'd been eight years at that point and that felt scary. But [00:32:00] once we were there, she was like, oh, this is actually really great because I have all this family here and this is home and blah, blah, blah, now it's also really interesting how it took my parents.

Like, we started out talking about how, when you go on vacation, it's 60 a while to kind of settle back in. Well, the same sort of thing happened when we moved back to Israel. So my parents had the same mindset in a new land, right? Like we, we moved to a new country and they brought their American mindset with them, which was, we got to be the helicopter parents.

So here's a really funny story. So at first we would ask my parents, like, can I take the bus to meet my friend too, by this point I'm like in high school. Right. And they'd be like, oh no, no, no buses, we're going to drive you. Right. And then about six months into that first year, I'd be like, Hey mom, can you [00:33:00] drive me to my friends?

She's like, take the bus. So it's funny how it takes us time to acclimate. But once we do, it's like, there's no going back. That's awesome. That's awesome. And so she understood you understood everybody just absorbed back into that culture where it's a lot safer, it's a different environment than within America, especially you were in Southern Florida or mid Florida, south Florida.

Yeah. So that was, you know, during the eighties and nineties, that, that still wasn't safe. So that was a good judgment call on your parents' part. Not letting you take the bus in America loan. Yeah. I mean, it's circumstantial, right. Also where we lived that wouldn't have even been an option because it was so suburban, there were no buses.

Right. So, so there's just like a lot of pieces here that brought this whole existence into being it was like a culmination of all these different factors. And I think [00:34:00] ultimately the point here is that sometimes things are hard, but it doesn't mean it's bad. Right. And I feel like it's shaped who I've become.

It's shaped how I show up now as an adult in so many ways, because it forced me to have thicker skin to be able to think for myself to. Feel confident in who I am and not try to be something somebody else wants me to be. Right. Like I learned that lesson so early on. And one of the things that I find with so many of my clients is that they really struggle with self esteem.

They might be amazing in their career and they might be fantastic parents and great friends and spouses and everything else. And they still feel less than, [00:35:00] and no matter how much they do, they're always still trying to figure out how to please and how to fit in. And I'm like so grateful that I don't have that struggle.

Now. It's almost like I've paid my dues and now I get to help other people not feel like that because I've had that experience. I, I can totally relate. And I'm like feeling so strong in how I show up. Like, I don't feel like I have to be anything to anyone. I can just show up myself as I am and just know that I'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea and that's totally fine.

I don't take it personally. And I teach my clients not to take things personally too, because I think that's one of the biggest things that I see is everybody's getting injured all. We're always like personalizing everything. Like if they did this or they said that it, you know, and then we're like making it [00:36:00] mean something.

It doesn't mean we're always making it about us. And I always tell my clients, 99% of the time, it's not about you. It's not about you. It's just the other person focusing on themselves, projecting that stuff onto you. And then you think that you're the center of the universe. Right. Cause that's what we all do.

And then we're like, well, it must mean this about me. And it's like, no, it doesn't. It means that about the other person. It doesn't mean anything about you, right? Like they're just going through whatever they're going through this this morning. And they're saying something and maybe that triggers you. And maybe the reason you're triggered has nothing to do with that person either.

Right. So then we get into all the dynamics of like, what are those triggers? Where do they come from? And just noticing these patterns. I think that is such an important piece for people to understand. So as we're talking about self-awareness and really like knowing [00:37:00] yourself, it's such an important piece of one of the biggest tools that I teach, which is emotional intelligence right before we know how to manage our feelings and to manage relationships with other people.

We have to understand who we are. We have to feel comfortable in our own skin. And there's so much inner work that has to happen for people to feel comfortable and relaxed. And I feel like, because nobody teaches us to do this. We don't learn this in school. We have, the onus is really on us and it's unfortunate as a society that we're not doing it in reverse, right.

That we're not actually focusing on EEQ rather than on IQ and memorizing things for tests and things like that, which has, you know, questionable ROI. Oh no. I'm tracking with you. I already said, I believe the school system is broken within America, most of the world, [00:38:00] but yeah, they don't teach you life skills.

They don't teach you communication. They don't teach you money management. They don't teach you conflict resolution. They don't teach you all the things that really matter. It's supposed to be taught in the home, but so is reading and math. So if we're going to say we're sending our kids for the majority of their life for the first 18 years to a building with strangers, we need to teach them the basics and the fundamentals of life.

Not just. Okay. Here's a book about blank, right? And now it's so corrupt. They're teaching things that no child should be considering. I don't care where you stand politically, spiritually. I don't care where you stand in the education system, but seven year olds should not be thinking about their sexuality period in the story.

This is an agenda from bad people who have bad intentions and no child should be thinking about this at that age. So our system is broken and exactly what you're saying. [00:39:00] They're not teaching people. I had a friend who's a head of a major corporation and he didn't even understand what emotional intelligence was and he was managing thousands of people.

So, I mean, it's just crazy how our system has been denied reality and common sense. And then we wonder why we're seeing this great resignation and everybody being burned out. It's like, because if you have people managing you who don't even know what emotional intelligence is, can you imagine the trickle-down effect?

You can't manage yourself and they're managing you super poorly. You're in a culture where they're constantly pushing you to do more. You have little resources. I mean, is it any wonder that people are burning out left and right. Yeah. And let's do this cause we're going to get to where you're at, but let's finish.

Let's take your story from going back to Israel in high school. To where you are today, fill us in on those gaps, any highs, any lows, anything you want to do. And then let's get really deep into the burnout, how people can avoid it and how people can recover from it. So go back to your story in Israel, you [00:40:00] land you're in high school, your mom's acclimate and she's telling you to get out and take the bus.

Yeah. So, so here's an interesting thing. So I said, when I came to the states, it was hard socially and academically. And what was interesting was moving back. I was 16 years old from a social perspective. It was a lot easier because it was like, oh, here's the American kid. And that seems so fascinating to people.

So I was kind of like this rock star, all of a sudden of like tell us all the things about America. And like, I would share stories about my friends and my boyfriend or whatever. And they'd be like, Ooh, everybody listen up. You know, it was this weird attention. All of a sudden that I hadn't gotten. And on an academic level, I was so far behind.

I was like, not even close to figuring anything out. I mean, I remember [00:41:00] in the very first month in the classroom so I'm in 11th grade now and this in Israel, they take their academics like really seriously. So I thought I was an, a students in the states. It's a joke. I mean, no, I mean like seriously.

I needed tutoring, even just for math, like forget language studies for math, we were doing like college level stuff. I mean, it was hard. So all of a sudden, and people don't get that because they've never been exposed to it. I sent my kids to private school in America and I looked at their curriculums and I'm like, this is a freaking joke.

Like, and they switched curriculums. And one of them, the math was already substandard in my opinion. And then they went back four years and my kids are like, oh, this is great. I'm going to get straight. A's right. I'm like, yeah, you're going to be a, well, like a, your paper's going to look great, but you're going to be an [00:42:00] idiot in real life.

I'm like, come on. I'm like, so we pushed him privately because I was like, I don't want you to be the fast guy in the slow reading group. You need to be smart to run the world for God and help people. So I'm tracking with you. If people don't understand when other countries put an emphasis on education, it's such a difference.

Yes. And Israel is a small geographical place, but you have such an impact throughout the world for generations and history. And God, it has a lot to do with that. But Israel is a wonderful, wonderful place. And they lead in so many areas, but it's because they don't take education for granted. No, they're, they're very serious about a lot of things.

I mean, they're, I would say Israelis are interestingly. Very, let's just say they have a lot of characteristics. Some of them are good. Some of them are bad. I would describe them as very [00:43:00] warm people in the sense that like, they, if they love you, like they'll embrace, you. They'll do, they'll take their shirts off their back for you.

But if they don't know you, they're very aggressive and it's not against you. It's just, they're thinking about themselves. So God help you. If you get on the road and you're trying to drive because there are some of the most aggressive drivers in the world, right? So I, when we land and I rent a car and just the drive, the 20 minutes from the airport to my mom's place, I'm like in high stress levels, just getting to her house after an international flight, because they're just unbelievably crazy on the road.

Right. And that translates into an, a, a great analogy for this is I play, I played tennis with this guy, Pete, and he was [00:44:00] telling me how. As part of his company, he went to visit and had some sort of business contract with a group of Israelis. And he said, you know, they're very smart people, but they pretty much ate me for breakfast the first time.

So, and that's because they were like basically barking at him and he was like, okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. You know, he wasn't prepared and they're just like, that's every day. And that's just like having a conversation and it wasn't personal. Right. But he said, but the second time he went, he was prepared.

So they'd be like rubber and then he'd be like rubber run right back. And they're like, okay, like he spoke their language. Like he met them where they are and then everything was great. He didn't feel intimidated. So it's kind of like that, like, they're very hot, if you will. Right. They run really hot.

Which is like very lovely in some respects and very aggressive in other respects. And they're very passionate people and they're like constantly traveling and spending money on things and [00:45:00] they want to see the world and they want to take everything in. So there's all of this passion and energy.

Right. And it can be exhausting, but it can also be like incredible. It's all, it's all the things, right. It happens within America. It happens within every country, but you're right. Overall the general personality from Israel is very. Very very aggressive. And I think it's fantastic, but I grew up in new England.

So, you know, there's people who grew up in other regions, they're very soft and polite and they just don't get it. They think you're rude. They think you're nauseous or they think you're scary, but they're just people, man. You just talking. Yeah. So I think, I think there's definitely like that cultural difference and we can make generalities where like, this is how I see Israelis.

Right. And Americans overall tend to be not as direct and if they don't like you, they'll probably not tell you to your face, but they'll talk behind your back. [00:46:00] But at the end it depends. That is a guy from New York or is the girl from Idaho. It's a different response I'm doing, yeah. I'm doing a big generality here.

Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes. I think people, I think people in the Northeast are quite the exception. Right? Yeah. And, and that's a whole other conversation, but but yeah, I mean, when you go to New York, it's like, you know, the energy when you're in Manhattan, that's, that's the energy in Israel. It's almost as good as the energy in Boston where I'm from.

Okay. Yeah. Right. So it's like that big city energy, but it's like that in Israel and most parts. Right. Because that's the energy of the people. Whereas if you go to like the Midwest, it's like slow and. It's very like, we take our time and there's like formalities and you know, like it's just different.

It's not good or bad. They're just very different. So what I'm, what I'm saying is when you go from one to the other, you've got to shift along with [00:47:00] it, right? Because you can't show, like, if I went to the Midwest, I would have to slow down. I would not be able to be my usual kind of fast paced. Like when I'm listening to podcasts, I'm on like one and a half speeds.

Right? Like my brain just is like a million miles a minute and I would have to just find a different rhythm if I was somewhere else. So the point being is that culturally it's very different. And so from a social perspective, I didn't have a problem from an academic perspective. It was a disaster on wheels.

All right. So they ended up putting me in a separate class for certain subjects, like all the language subjects. And at the time this was in the nineties, we had a lot of Russian immigrants come to Israel. So it was me [00:48:00] and a whole bunch of other Russian immigrants in a classroom. Yeah. And I'm not just saying this, my kindergarten was like this.

You were to like that in high school, I was quiet and introverted. So people thought I was. And there was a bunch of Hispanic people who just moved to America, highly intelligent, but because they didn't speak English, they thought they were stupid. So we were all in the stupid class and that was like kindergarten, first, second grade.

So you're doing that now in Israel, we are highly intelligent, but because you're behind culturally, they're putting you in with foreigners. So what was that like? How did you even process that? Well, in a sense it was a relief, like not from a social perspective, cause I couldn't really befriend any of them.

Like we just didn't have anything in common. So I was friends with the people from my regular classroom. And then for academically it was a relief because I didn't have to kill myself. Like it was hard enough just trying to keep up with math and chemistry and all [00:49:00] these things that were like super high level.

But then the language stuff, it was like, I didn't stand a chance before they moved me into this classroom. I was in the regular class with everybody and they give us a book to read and it was like a novel. And I literally hadn't read a book in Hebrew since I was in third grade or second grade. Really.

So now I'm in 11th grade. So can you imagine the difference in the language? And it's like, the way they write is not the way you speak so I can have really great conversational skill. That doesn't mean I know how to read on that level. And I sat there. With a dictionary translating literally every third word on the page.

It took me over an hour just to get through the first page. And by the time I got to the end of it, I didn't even remember what I read. It was so much work. I was like, there's no way in hell I can do this. There's no way I could do that. I can not read this book. [00:50:00] I cannot keep up with this pace. Like the expectation was just completely not realistic for my level.

It's like taking a third grader and putting them in high school. It's never going to happen. So it was actually a relief to have a break and have something that fits my level for the, the language related courses, the things that I needed to study, whether it was grammar, literature, whatever it was, you know, it was just like having a bit of a break from that perspective.

So that was good. Actually. It's kind of like when you have special needs, like ADHD or something and they give you extra time on a test, right? It's like, you're not, it's not that you're in the stupid class. It's just that you get an adjustment based on your knees. And what's so interesting. It's kind of like, there's this parallel that happened where, when I moved to the states, I remember [00:51:00] once I got caught up.

On a conversational level by fourth grade, I was already speaking and everything, but I couldn't, my reading hadn't caught up. Like I wasn't reading at a fourth grade level. So everybody's reading these novels and books and doing book reports and I'm going to the really young children's section of the library to get my books.

You know, I'm doing like Cinderella, right. I'm doing those kinds of books for my book reports because I just that's the level of English that I had. Right. So then I get to Israel and now I'm like, again, kind of had the dumbed down version of books that I had to read because of my level. So kind of an interesting thing that happened on both sides of the coin.

Yeah. It's a parallel different like different world and different cultures and different languages and your experience, the same thing in bold. So it's crazy. Yeah, totally. So now how did you get through [00:52:00] it? How did you finish your high school? Where did your life go from there? So high school was refreshing in some levels because I did have more freedom.

I could walk to school. We lived only about 10, 15 minutes away. So I could walk, which was really lovely. I could take the bus, I had friends. So from that perspective, it felt amazing, right? Like it felt really great to have friends and to just have that freedom that I've been wanting. From an academic perspective, it was a total struggle, but my parents got me a tutor and they supported me in whatever I needed and helped me get through it as much as possible.

And I was also engaging in things outside of school. So I took dance classes and I, I did what I could to enrich my life outside of the academics and the social. And [00:53:00] then as happens, when you finish high school in Israel, they draft you into the army. So then it was about going into that next phase of my life, where that was really challenging because I hadn't grown up with that as my culture.

Right. I grew up American where nobody's talking about this stuff. They only talk about high school and then college and all of a sudden it's like, oh, but there's that thing in between that you got to do? Is it two years in Israel? It's two years for girls and three years for boys. Okay. And explain that some people like in America, we're spoiled.

I, I personally think by having required service, it makes you appreciate your country more, but everybody has a different opinion on that. So talk about that because some people have no idea what you're talking about and to be blunt I didn't know that women had to serve in Israel so that that's new to me.

Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So this is the interesting piece is. [00:54:00] Everybody serves. And it's partially because that's what we need as a country to protect ourselves because Israel is such a small country surrounded by a lot of neighboring threats. And it honestly, wouldn't be on the map today.

If it didn't have that mandatory service, right. Like if we made it voluntary, very few people would raise their hand and say, yes, please take me. So it's just something that we had to do, right. As a country, which I get. But for me, it was like, you gotta be kidding me. I gotta do two years. Yeah. I got to spend two years doing what?

Yeah. In America. My problem is finding discount dresses. And here I'm holding a 50 caliber desert Eagle. It's crazy. It's crazy right now, again, this is a, an interesting piece of my life where I felt like I was quite different again, because everybody around me was excited. They were talking about like, oh, what do you [00:55:00] want to do in the army?

And what are you going to do? And they had all embraced it because they grew up with it. It wasn't of course this is of course what you do after high school. Right. There's no question for me. It was like, oh wait, what am I supposed to do now? I didn't have that in the cards. Like, I didn't realize this was part of the package.

Right. So it was like having to contend with that. And it was harder for me to embrace. Let's put it that way. That said, and here's what I would say has been my philosophy and my strategy for life pretty much started at that point. And I still hold that today, which is I lead with my values and my value is having a certain balanced lifestyle.

So when I thought about the army, there's really, you can think about it as two different [00:56:00] options. You can have a job where you go and you're in some sort of a closed base and you serve. And it's kind of think about it, like sleep away camp, right? You go away, they feed you, you have a place to sleep, you do what you do.

And then every once in a while you come home and visit that's what a closed base experience is like. And then they have an open base situation, which is kind of like having a day job. You go to the office, you do your thing. You come home at the end of every day. Okay. And so I was very adamant not to go to a closed base because it just didn't feel right for me.

Like, it didn't feel like I would have that freedom. I was like, it's hard enough for me already to think about spending two years of my life doing this, let alone. Like being a hundred percent in and having no time for myself. Right. How do they choose? Who gets which [00:57:00] service? So this is the interesting thing.

So when you're in high school, they take you through all of these different exams and they're asking you all of these questions. So as they're asking me all of these questions, I'm trying to decipher what does this really mean? And I'm very blessed because I have a very analytical brain. So I was able to sit there and kind of like tease it out.

So they said, I'll ask you a question on the questionnaire. Something like, are you really good at folding things or doing things with your hands? Right. So for me that meant that you're in some sort of like a factory folding up parachutes and packaging them up. Right. Or dream job, dream job, dream job. I'm exactly, you know, there's something almost, it's like a production line kind of a thing, you know?

So the, as they're asking these questions, I'm trying to imagine, like what kind of a job would that translate into? And [00:58:00] ultimately I would say no to like all the things that I thought would be a terrible job. Even though they're not, they're not asking you, would you like this job? They're just asking you about your skills and preferences and things like that.

They're trying to, it's kind of like when you do a personality test on someone, right. It's asking them about their preferences and their values. It was like that. But more so about specific tasks. And so what came out of that as they realized that my biggest asset is my English language skills, so then they want, right.

So then they wanted me to be in the intelligence unit. And what was great about that is the intelligence unit. So happened to be an open base. So I didn't really get to choose. Right. And I didn't really know how everything is structured, but as luck would have it, that's where I ended up that boggles my mind that the intelligence unit was at the open base [00:59:00] because in, if I work through it in a logical step, based on the information I have you'd think you'd want the people working with secrets to not have as much access to the outside world unless they were on a mission.

So what was their thought process on that? Why they let you be in an open base for that? No, I would think about it differently. I would say that's what I'm saying. I'm wrong. I want to be educated. So that's, that was my initial reaction. So what, what's their thought process? So think of the people on a closed based more or less as being the fighters, they're the soldiers and the people in the open base as being the admin, people who have the meetings and they send the information.

And then based on that, you tell the soldiers where to go, something like that. That's my simplified version. Yes. Got you. So they want you into the society acclimated. Up-to-date figuring everything out and then you can be a better director for the, I think, I think there's people who make it their career [01:00:00] to be a military person and those people, a lot of them end up in intelligence.

So there's a lot of people that were like in their forties and fifties that were working there alongside us 18, 19 and 20 year olds. Right. So it's, if that's your career, it makes sense that it would be, and it is kind of an administrative sort of a role because you're having to read through papers and have meetings and code things and that sort of thing.

So there's no need for you to be in a closed base. It's not like there's security on your life. You're just trying to make the soldiers be safe. If that makes sense. Totally. So it turned out really well for me because that's like I wanted, I was like, if this is my mentality, right? I was like, if I'm going to give them two years of my life, I want a little piece for myself every day.

And so [01:01:00] here's again, how I was really different and how I showed up. Everybody that I worked with would come home and call it a. So basically what that meant is you go home, you watch some television, you have dinner, you go to sleep, you wake up the next day, do it all over again. And I said, no way. I said that would be taking a hundred percent of the pie just to this job.

That's kind of how I thought of it. Right. I said, I'm going to do something for me. So I would come home, have dinner and then run out and catch a dance class so that I had at least some piece of my soul and tasks that smart keep in balance. Right. And so I would, I would go to the gym or I would do something that gave me like a piece that felt like it was for me.

I would go take a course, like at an open [01:02:00] university place or at a community center where I could stimulate my mind and focus on things that were interesting and fun and not just be in this role, because I have to say, even with that, this whole experience really took a toll on me that I had to spend two years doing this work that I gained a lot of weight, which a lot of soldiers do a lot of.

Are kind of unhappy during the time of their service. And they're just eating a lot of unhealthy foods and they're eating a lot. So we all kind of gain weight. So I gained a bunch of weight. I was like the heaviest I'd ever been by the time I finished my two years. And, and then of course, you know, what every Israeli does when they finished the army, as they go traveling the world.

And so I was like, yay, more freedom. I get to choose where [01:03:00] I go and I get to choose like how I can go for and who I go with and what, you know, like all the things. So that was really exciting. And that's really where my life, I feel like began where I had all the control. I could make all the decisions for myself.

So it wasn't really until I was 20 or 21 at that point that I really could start living my life in the way that I wanted, where I didn't have my parents to make the decisions for me. And I didn't have to be in any environment where something was forced on me or that I had to show up in a certain way.

It was like, I get to choose. And I think that's the most refreshing thing about being an adult that we so take for granted is how much freedom we get. Like when I remember when I got to college and they said, you can choose your major. And I was like, whoa, Mindblowing. Hello. I get to choose what I study.

Like how amazing is that? I don't have to take, [01:04:00] I mean, you know, in undergrad it's still not great because at least in the states, they still make you take all the things you studied in high school and doing all over again. So you still have to take the biology and the English and the math, like do all. I was like, oh great.

But I got to grad school eventually. And then I could choose anything I want. And it was the thing that it was going to lead to my career. So I did not take that lightly. Yeah. And you're surrounded by people, like-minded with similar goals and the life path. So I kind of just, even if you're at taking a basic English or math class, it makes it just more enjoyable.

Right. I mean, an undergrad, I still felt like I didn't go to where a lot of American kids go, which again, I think you'd say is a differentiating factor. Right? Like I met my husband, my husband's American, and he went to one of those, all American colleges where it's like [01:05:00] that sleepaway camp experience, where you're away from your parents, you live on dorm, you meet friends or partying and doing all these things.

I'm going to commuter school. Right. And I'm working on days that I'm not in school. And I'm just trying to like get through. This degree, like I'm not really there to socialize and party. Like, it was a very different experience. But when I got to grad school, all of a sudden it was like, oh, I get to choose what I study.

And I don't have to do all those things all over again. I don't have to do the math and the English and the science and all these things. Like I can just focus on what I want to focus on. Right. So I feel like as I've been evolving and growing and going through all the hoops of society, I've gotten more and more freedom under my belt, which has felt amazing.

And then where do you take it from there? So now you finish grad school and you met your husband in grad school or under [01:06:00] study undergrad. So I met him. So here, my plan was I'm going to go and get a master's degree and then start seeing clients as a therapist. Right. I'm studying psychology. We're going to just go get a job somewhere and start seeing clients.

And I finished. And the reason I didn't want to get a PhD was because I was like, I don't need that. Like, I could still do this work with a master's who needs a PhD. It's just more time or money. Like, I don't need the prestige of it all. Like it's not, it's not really something that interests me. But I finished my master's degree and I was like, dude, I didn't learn anything.

I can't take off. Somebody that is so much responsibility when I don't feel like I've been properly trained to deal with these situations. I just feel like I spent two years studying whatever it is that they feed you. And not really, like you were saying earlier, there's certain things they don't teach you in school.[01:07:00] 

It wasn't very practical. It was a lot of Fieri and developmental stuff. And I'm like, this is great. Cause I'm not working with kids. So like this isn't really relevant. And then, you know, I finished the two years. I was like, I have no choice. I got to keep going. I've got to go to the next degree just to learn how to do my job.

So then I enroll in a doctoral program and at that point where I'm applying and that's when I met my husband. Got you. So he's in the same career path or did you use it during that same time? No, I just met him. He was not in school. He was working he's he's five years older than me, so had nothing to do with psychology at all.

And that's probably a good thing. Two psychologists in the house rarely work. Right. So, so no, it was, it was a good thing. And that's a whole other story with my husband because there's, there's a lot there as [01:08:00] well, but I did end up getting a PhD, finishing that up, getting, and then, and then at that point, We'd been together.

Cause the doctoral program was five years. So at that point we'd been together for a while. We were living together and we decided that it didn't make sense for us to, this was in New York, by the way, did it make sense to start a family in a place where we have no family at the time, my folks were in Israel still and his parents were in LA.

So we would be living in New York where things were very expensive. This is in the two thousands. Things were very expensive. You know, you had to deal with winters and just life in New York is hard. And I said to my [01:09:00] husband, there is no way I'm going to be one of those moms. Who's taking a stroller down the subway stairs.

Like that is not the life I envisioned for myself. Like that's too much work. Life is hard as it is. Like I don't, I don't want to be that mom and I don't want to deal with no family nearby, no help, blah, blah, blah. So we decide, we got to look into another scenario and it was too much to say, let's move to Israel.

Like he's American, you know, like it was just too much of a stretch. Now, this is the thing that you need to know. So my husband, at the time, when I met him, had a degenerative like like a degenerative disease that affected his eyesight. So at the time when I met him, he had a 10% central vision and pretty much no peripheral vision left.

So he could see me in the daylight and that was about it. And the way he described it [01:10:00] was, if you look through a paper like a toilet paper roll, that's how much vision he had, right? So if you are below, above, or on the side of that toilet paper roll, he could not see you. And if it was nighttime, he could not see you.

Wow. And then of course, he developed these cataracts and we had cataract surgery, which then removed the remaining 10% and then he was completely blind. So now we have to figure out how can we be close to family and have some mobility for him? Because living in LA is just no bueno, right? There's no, it's very hard with public transit.

It's very dispersed. Like it's like very, very difficult to maneuver. I agree with you completely. And my son loves LA. He's actually moving there for film school and in September, and I'm just. That's where the last place is. I want to [01:11:00] be, so I'm tracking right with you, but some people love it. Right? It's just there's that if you, if you can drive fantastic.

But if you can't drive, if you're blind. Yeah. No, that's hard. Really hard. Right. You're basically confined and might use this is before Uber and Lyft. Like nowadays everybody would be like, oh, I can live anywhere. I just Uber everywhere. Right? Yes. That's expensive, but it makes it doable. But this was before we even had that.

Yes. Yes. Now your husband's condition. And I don't want to jump ahead in the story, but is it something that with today's technology is correctable or is it he's blind to this day? He's blind to this day. Okay. They're still doing research. So he's got some, something called retinitis pigmentosa. And I had a guest on with that wine, the blind blogger, max Ivy.

And he had that same condition. He has the same condition. He's completely blind now. Yeah. So that's like basically my husband except he doesn't blog. Yeah. All [01:12:00] right. Well go, go ahead. So pick up your story. So you and your husband, you're like, I'm not going to be the mom carrying the sub the stroller in the subway.

Now he's got this condition that is, you need to take into consideration. So what are you to decide? We decided to move to San Francisco because it's close enough to LA that you can drive or fly to within an hour, right? So we have proximity to family. It's not perfect, but it's better. And he can still take public transit and the climate conditions are a little bit more forgiving, right?

So it's an easier life than Manhattan. So we decided to do that, but I said to him like this, I said, before we move, we have an opportunity that we cannot pass up. I said, this is going to be the only time in your life until retirement, where you don't have kids and you can [01:13:00] travel. So what we did was, and I said, since we're moving anyway, right, we got to move.

Let's put all our stuff in storage and let's hit the road. So we did exactly that. We put all our things in storage. We traveled through Southeast Asia for about four and a half months and ended up back in California and started a life in San Francisco. That was in 2009. So while we're traveling the world, the crazy crash happens.

Right. And so now all of a sudden, the world's in an upheaval. And so my whole plan was we're going to settle in. I'm going to get a job and then I'll get pregnant and I'll have a little bit of a leave and I'll have a [01:14:00] job to go back to nice and clean. Well, turns out I get to San Francisco at the beginning of 2009, and there's a hiring freeze everywhere you look nobody's hiring.

So I was like, I guess we have to go to plan B, which I didn't have plan B, but I had to make a plan B, which was you have the baby first. And then you figure out the work thing when people are ready to hire. And so in 2010, I had my daughter. And then at that point I was. Who needs to work. It's so great being home with the baby.

So I spent the whole first year just raising my daughter. And at the end of that, I was like, I am itching to get out of the house. So she's got to go, like, I'll put her in daycare. And I finally got my first job and the rest is history because that's when I actually started really outside of school doing the work that [01:15:00] I'd been doing as a psychologist.

So there's a lot of buildup to that, to that point, obviously. And a lot of things that have shaped me along the way. And then also, obviously since, because we're talking now, it's been since 2011, right. That I'd been working and going through different positions and evolving to where I am today. So I started out in a nonprofit and I worked my way up to, I was a supervisor and then the only place left to go from there was management.

And I said, no way, do I want to go into management because. What that translates into is just meeting after meeting, after meeting. And I'm like, that sounds so boring. Like I don't, I don't want to spend, I did not go to school to get a PhD in psychology, so I can sit in a bunch of meetings with people on talk about budget.

Like that is not sound like me at [01:16:00] all. So I started looking around and thinking about what can I do if I leave here? Where else can I go? And I explore different options, whatever was available to me at the time. And then it became very evident that none of the options were a fit. It wasn't a good fit because again, I was leading with values, so I wanted to have a certain lifestyle and I didn't want to work late into the evenings and work on weekends.

And I didn't want to work really far from my home where I'd have to have long commutes and take bridges and tunnels. And just all that sounded like a nightmare. I wanted to have that work-life balance. It's I'm like I have to be really smart about this. And ultimately what it came down to was I have to make it my own.

Like I have to create my own solution because the solution that I'm going after does not exist. [01:17:00] And I was really resistant to starting my own practice because when I was in grad school and I would go to those conferences, all I heard was when you're in private practice, everybody burns out. And I was like, I don't want to be a statistic.

I don't want to be one of those people that just sees client after client, after client. And then you're just ready to like jump off the bridge yourself. You know what I mean? Like that was not how I envisioned my career. So I said, well, if that's the only answer, then I have to do it and I have to do it smart.

I have to be strategic about this. So the way I did it was I set it up in such a way where I only worked until five o'clock. So I didn't start really early and I didn't stay late. I didn't work weekends. I created my own schedule, which is really nice, nice part of [01:18:00] entrepreneurship. Right. I also made sure that I clustered my clients and then did all of the paperwork for them immediately after the sessions.

And one of the things as I work with a lot of physicians I find is that they don't do that. They wait until the end of the day, and then they try to catch up on their notes and then they have so much resentment. For the paperwork and they say, that's the biggest thing that burns them out. And I feel like you got to be more strategic about getting it done throughout the day so that it doesn't pile up.

And now you have to like, recall what did I talk to that person about? You know, at nine in the morning, it's like, forget it. I don't have that good. A memory. Yeah. And God forbid, something happens that you get called away at the end of the day. Then you either think about it all night. Have to come back at the office at 10 o'clock or you get to get there early.

And it's a nightmare, right? That was not going to be an option. So I was like, there's no way I'm going into [01:19:00] private practice if that's on the table. So I, so number one, as I did that, I clustered my patients. I did all of my paperwork throughout the day, so I could leave on time and I didn't have to take work home.

Number two is I also positioned in my office, walking distance from the gym. So rather than say, oh, I don't have time to work out. I would actually carve out time in the middle of the day to go work out. So that by the end of the day, when I finished my work, I'm also done with my workout. It doesn't have to take time away from time with my family.

And obviously I'm very fortunate that I'm able to do that. Not everybody is able to do that, especially if you work in. Job for someone else, you have less flexibility, less, you know, opportunity to do that. But I think it's also a mindset thing, right? Because you could have said also, why are you [01:20:00] taking that time away from work?

Like work time, you could be making more money, say more clients during that time. Why would you not use that time to make more money and spend it going on yoga class or going swimming or whatever it was. Right. And the answer is because I didn't want to burn out it wasn't about more money. It was about balance for me personally.

Now everybody's situation looks quite different. Now I'd been doing that work since 2015. And then at some point in that process, I also started to do some coaching on the side. And then in the back of my mind, I was like, there has got to be a point where I completely pivot into the coaching because that gives me even more flexibility.

Right. Then we're not dealing with state licensures and you [01:21:00] can only work with people in this region and I can work with different clientele. I can focus on things outside of. Mental illness. I can work with people on optimal performance and I can work with people on how to be stronger, better, faster, like at, you know, just have more balanced, like get back into themselves, like feel more fulfilled and passionate, like all of these things.

Right. And it's like, that's the world of coaching. And it's like, but what kind of a coach, what am I going to offer? Who am I going to work with? Like even all of those questions were kind of looming in the background. So as working with therapy clients, and at that time, I basically took whoever walked through the door because I was seeing people through insurance.

So I didn't really have a choice in who I was saying, but I did have a wide range of people from different professions. I had some executives and some unemployed people. I had [01:22:00] people who were physicians. And then I had some graduate students. They was like everything in between. And then I thought, who are the people that I enjoy working with the most?

And those were the super high achievers that were either in really high stress industries, like medicine. Or the entrepreneurs who are like those go getters, who are trying to do something in the world, kind of like I am, but are wearing all the hats and falling into all the traps that entrepreneurship offers us.

Right. That it's so easy for us to really get swallowed up whole in right where you're trying to build a business. And you're like, I don't have time for my personal life now. I thought, what can I offer this clientele? What can I offer? The people that I enjoy working with the most? And I came across burnout.

I started to do some research to see what else has been written on the [01:23:00] subject. What are other people talking about? And this is back a few years. So at that time, everything I came across was more or less about talking about organizational change. You know, it's the culture, it's a, it's a responsibility that you have as an organization to make sure that you create a different environment, that people are able to do their work and not burn out.

And I thought that's actually quite disempowering because if you are working for someone else and you have to wait around for them to make organizational change, well, good luck because that can take years if forever. And I'm like, well, what do you do in the meantime? How can you help yourself? That was one piece.

And the other piece is also that you notice that some people in the same exact profession, burnout will other people don't and you're like, okay, well maybe there's an environmental component here, but [01:24:00] what else is going on that nobody's talking about? And that's the pieces that you bring of yourself to the job.

So I started to do a little bit more digging. I'm like, that's where the psychology really comes in. That's where I can talk about all the things that I've been teaching my clients all these years. And I can share all the resources that I've been really customizing for my clients to help them in their relationship with themselves.

So we were talking earlier about emotional intelligence, perfect example of something that's very much needed to avoid burnout because so much of the stress that people go through isn't about what's going on out there. It's about what's going on in here. It's all the negative thinking and the judgments and the worries, the anxiety, the perfectionism, the imposter syndrome, the need to prove yourself.

The self-worth that is a little bit shaky. The [01:25:00] self-esteem like all of these issues that really you bring to the job. That make you work harder that make you put in more time than make you say yes to things that you don't want to say yes. To. Those are the things that really contribute to burnout. So I'm not here to minimize how much the environment can be stressful.

Right? Because there, I mean, there's things that are unacceptable, like when there's discrimination on the work force and there's sexual harassment and there's just racism, all kinds of things. Right. And that's on top of just unrealistic job demands and things like that. And even if you have a, micro-managing kind of a boss and there's all these things that are true.

And even when those things aren't there, people burn out and that's because of a lot of the stuff that they bring to the table. So I said, you know what? I want to help people [01:26:00] make the best of their situation. And what was so fascinating was that I started to talk to my therapy clients as they were describing what they're going through at work.

I would say, you know, it sounds like you're burned out and they're like, huh, I never really considered that. But that makes sense. And it, and come to find out this is actually a phenomenon where people are burning out. And they don't realize it's happening as it's happening. So they only can see it in retrospect.

So they'll say, you know, that job I had three years ago now I realized that was burnout. So I decided that it's my mission to go on these kinds of shows to help people identify burnout early on so that they can prevent it from getting worse and catch themselves in the act. And the reason why it's so hard, I think for people to understand that what they're going through is burnout as a, [01:27:00] because maybe they don't really know what to look out for, but B it's because Burnham is a stress disorder and there's a continuum.

I call it the stress burnout continuum, and you can be anywhere on that continuum. So some people are going to be like burnout, light, where they're showing some symptoms of stress. They're exhausted. You know, you're starting to kind of notice a slow down, things are happening. Then you get further down the line and things start to break down.

So burnout shows up very differently for everybody. For some people it's that they can't turn their mind off, which means that they don't sleep, which means that they don't have the energy. And then that becomes a chronic issue. Over time, they get exhausted and like their health starts to deteriorate for other people.

It's just like the negative mental thing that happens where that wears you down, or like the anxiety that is constant, where you can't [01:28:00] stop thinking about all those horrible things that are gonna happen. And when something good happens, you don't allow yourself to indulge in that because then you have the superstition that if you allow yourself to relax, that's when the bad is going to happen, you have to stay hypervigilant, right?

Like we all have our version of what leads us to burnout. It's different for everybody. And we're all at a different place on that continuum. So it's so hard for people to self-diagnose. Right. And so I kind of saw it as my mission to go out there and to help people understand what this is all about. So they can say, yes, I think this is what I'm going through.

What do I do now? And that can help them prevent from their situation, from getting worse and if they are burned out and they don't understand that, that's what they're dealing with to give them the tools to get back on their feet. Yeah. And I think we've all seen that in our own lives. [01:29:00] And especially in those around us, if you haven't had experience your own life, but I think most people.

Like you said there's a spectrum of from low to severe and we've all experienced that somehow. So my first question is this. You talked about ways to avoid burnout, having a proper work-life excuse me, having a proper work-life balance. Making sure you're intentional about your decisions, where sometimes we have few decisions.

Sometimes we have many, you know, sometimes we have light resources. Sometimes we have heavy resources, but do everything we can to structure our life or be moving the right direction for that ideal lifestyle. But for those of our listeners, myself included who are recovering from burnout or experiencing burnout, what are the steps Sharon for you to say, Hey, this isn't the whole solution, but here's where to start 1, 2, 3, what are some steps to recover from burnout?

[01:30:00] Well, again, I think it's going to really depend on what you're experiencing right now. So do you mind if we use you as an example? No, go ahead. I'm totally open. So you were, you were using herself, I'm assuming you have some level of burnout? Yeah, absolutely. There was times in my career where I was professionally burned out there's times in my life where I was just emotionally burned out from, from personal.

So yeah, right now I have pretty much an ideal life. Okay. But in 2014 to 2016, my personal life was chaos. I got diagnosed with PTSD, which I fought. I thought only soldiers get that. And then I finally broke down after a hearing test and the lady's like, you have PTSD. I'm like, why do people keep saying that?

And she said, because your hearing's perfect, but the connection between your brain and your ears isn't there. So finally I looked up PTSD and I have like almost every symptom. Right. So that was my burnout was just emotional life [01:31:00] burnout. So now I'm just moving forward, doing what I can each day and recovering, and it's, it's moving forward, but it's of course I want to accelerate.

Right. Everybody wants to accelerate and get well faster. So yeah, you use me as an example. I'm totally fine with that. Yeah. So if you don't mind sharing at that time, when you had PTSD, like what brought you to that place where you felt emotionally exhausted? Just like searching life circumstances in my personal life.

My family was going through a lot. So I was putting all my energy in keeping the family together and keeping it stable and making sure the kids are as okay as they could be under the circumstances. And I made bad choices where I didn't understand what you're talking about. And I was sacrificing my whole wellbeing.

I wasn't sleeping. Right. I wasn't eating right. I wasn't exercising. I wasn't taking care of myself. I put [01:32:00] my kids in everybody else above and I just wore my battery down to nothing. And so that was, I had it totally backwards. Now I understand it's not selfish to take care of yourself. And in fact, you have more energy and you have more focus and you have more ability if you are sleeping and eating and working out.

So I learned a lot. I just learned it the hard way. I wish we met back in 2014. Well, if I'm sure there's somebody out there listening to this, who's probably where you were now. And I think it's still fruitful for us to talk about it. Right? But that lesson learned that you talked about is one of the things that I teach.

So I think a big piece of it is energy management and we talk about being strategic, right? So when you talk about. Giving yourself that time and how you felt like it was selfish. There's a mindset component that has to shift before we can do anything [01:33:00] else. So I work with people on that because so much of our decisions are a result of our programming, right?

You were probably raised to be in service of other people, right. Which is why you do this podcast, which is why you put yourself on the back burner. Like people that I work with are highly in, in that area. That's why I work with a lot of physicians that have burnout because they are in the service industry and they're taking care of everybody and everything.

And they put themselves last. And this is what happens, right? Not only is it a very demanding job, physically, emotionally, mentally, but then if you're not recharging your battery, you can only go so far. Right. And so, yes, there's like the mental shift that has to happen about, I have to give back to myself and, you know, we don't think about this [01:34:00] twice when we consider our phones.

You know, that if your phone's out of juice, the first thing you do is you plug it in. You're not like, well, that's selfish. Like I'm taking away from somebody else's electricity or my phone. Should be able to last forever. Like, I don't understand, like why is the stupid phone not working? Right. Like, we don't think like that, but when it comes to us, we all of a sudden expect the unimaginable, right.

We should be able to function without sleep 24 7. And if we do take some time to slow down and focus on ourselves, it's actually really selfish. Like how dare you do that? Right. We all have this mentality that it's, it's other people first. And I think that's very noble, but I also don't think it's very realistic and it's very shortsighted.

I can do that for only so long. And then when [01:35:00] you're burned out, because you haven't taken care of yourself this entire time, you know, what's going to happen is you're going to be bedridden. You're going to be unemployed because you're not going to be able to focus at work. You're going to be miserable and probably depressed, highly anxious.

And then you can't help anybody from that place. So why not find a more balanced equation where you give and you get, you give yourself a little and you give other people a little, right. And that keeps it going. Long-term not in the short term. Then you can do that forever. As long as you've got, you know, your battery charged.

On your phone, it's going to work for you. And as long as you've got energy, you can give to other people. So I think there is that mental piece that has to shift first and foremost, then we have to talk about how to manage your energy. And that's only one piece of the puzzle, but I'll share a story that kind of exemplifies what this looks like.

So sometimes [01:36:00] we have these ideas of like we talked about in the beginning, you know, I'm really exhausted. I just need to take a break from work. So I'm going to go on vacation. And when I get back, everything's going to be great. So when people are burned out and they take time off, and sometimes it's more than a week, sometimes it's a couple of weeks, three weeks, even, maybe they take a sabbatical, which we're seeing a lot happening now.

And then you come back. If you haven't changed any of the ways in which you engage with your work, guess what's going to happen. You're going to burn out a second time and the third time, and this is what I see. It's kind of like the people who, you know, don't know how to be in a relationship with someone else.

Right. And so they get married and then they get divorced because the person left them because they're. Completely selfish and like not willing to compromise on anything. [01:37:00] Then they get married a second time and they do the same sort of thing. And then they're divorced a third time and a fourth time. And you're like, when are you going to get the picture?

Right. Something has to change. I think it's like that with work. Right. So we have to be really strategic. And that's why I say it really depends. Like what's going on, that's leading you specifically to burn out. And based on that, we can have some really customized tools, but more generically speaking, as we're thinking about energy, one of the things you can ask yourself is what do I need right now?

Right. So I had a client who was a physician and every Monday he would come home late. That was his day that he would work overtime. At the time he got home, it was eight o'clock. He was absolutely exhausted. He also happened to be an introvert, which meant that if he spent all day working with patients, he was even more exhausted, right.

It wasn't just a long day, but it was a long day of having an introvert in an extroverted world. So he really needed to recharge his batteries. So [01:38:00] he said, when I come home on a Monday night, I don't want to be with the kids. I don't want to talk to my wife. I just want to have my dinner. And I want to watch Netflix.

Like everybody leave me alone. Just give me that space. That's what I need. And I said, that's cool. That's cool. No judgment, but let me ask you this question. When you get up off that couch, after watching Netflix, do you feel more energized, less energized, or just as energized as when you sat down? And he said, you know, he's like, I never really thought about that.

It took a moment. And then he said, you know, actually I think I feel less energized when I get up off the couch. Right? So the lesson there was, it's not that you could never watch Netflix. It's not that Netflix is a bad idea, but you want to be really strategic about what do I need right now, if right now I need a boost and I'm going to watch Netflix and that's going to actually have diminishing returns, [01:39:00] then I probably should be doing something else.

And what that is, I don't know because everybody's different, right. It might be, I go for a walk, I take a bath. I listen to some music. I mean, I could read a book. There's so many things I could call a friend. Right. There's a million things. Yeah. Whatever works for that individual. I used to know a physician that would widdle pens.

Like he made these beautiful wood pens, and that was his. Yeah. So, so this physician would have these kits that he would build almost like a Lego version of things for an adult. Right? Like he would build things. It was like these little construction kits. So that was his way of, you know, if you think of an introvert, like they're just focused on what they're doing, they don't have any outside things.

They can just be in the zone. Right. And he would do that. So that's one piece is the, what do I need right now? Right. And based on that, figure out what to focus on. And [01:40:00] I think the other piece is even if you're going to go down the road of Netflix, you might also think even further down about what kind of programming do I watch right now, because if you're really, really exhausted and I was going to put on an action film, it would probably take a lot out of you.

Or if I put on, on a horror movie, it would probably take whatever you've got left and squeeze it out. But maybe if you watch some standup comedy and you had some comic relief, it would actually help with all the stress, right? So it's about what you do. And when you do it, it's like really, really being strategic about these things.

And the only way you can answer those questions is when you have a lot of self-awareness. When you know yourself when you're asking the right questions and that's what coaching helps you do, is it, you [01:41:00] know, we challenge people. We ask them really powerful questions so that they can start to examine their lives and their decisions and be like, hi, I never really thought about that.

And all of a sudden I realized that what I'm doing, isn't really helpful. It's actually making it worse. I couldn't agree more. I think it doesn't even matter what country you're from at this point for the general population, we're told an ideal that we're supposed to be working towards, which someone else created.

Like you said, they put you in kindergarten, they put you in school. Then you go to whether it's the workforce or trade or whether it's college and university, it's just like, go, go, go, go, go. And then in your twenties or thirties, most people start having kids and they're trying to pay for the kids and they're trying to, you know, just stay ahead.

And then at the end of the day, they're in their forties, they look back and like, what the hell just happened. And that's what I think is the midlife crisis for most people. So what you're saying is they should be asking themselves these questions early on in life. So they [01:42:00] have that path and direction, so they don't get burned out and they don't get to 40.

And like, what did I just do with my life? Who am I? Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. I think that so many times we make our decision based on the culture based on other people's expectations of us. In fact, I'm working with a client right now who. Says, like she specialized in this one area and she's really good at what she does, but she got so burned out that now she's like really rethinking the whole thing.

And she's like, I'm really angry that I'm not able to do that anymore, but I don't even know that I really want to do that anymore. Like I don't, I don't really know that that was the right decision for me. Right. So I think that what, even though burnout is not a pleasant experience for people. I like to think about it as a wake up call where you get to take a step back and [01:43:00] examine your life and think about not just going into life on autopilot and being really reactive and doing what other people expect of you, but really having an opportunity to reflect on is this the life that I want to live.

And, you know, a lot of times people have a hard time with that. Like even this client that I'm talking about, she has this guilt about not getting back into her profession and the exact format that she was quote unquote supposed to, because she says, well, I took up a spot in a highly desired residency program.

I owe it to them. Right. It's my duty. It's my job. Like I basically made a promise to do this work. I'm here to help. And if I don't do this, then I'm just [01:44:00] sucking up resources and it's not fair to the people who missed out. Oh man, I'm hearing some nobility and hiding. I don't know what your opinion is. I know what you're saying, but I'm hearing that first and trying to act noble.

What they're really hiding from facing their own self. Is that what you heard or what did you hear on that one? Well, I think that so many of us live our lives, trying to please other people and meeting the expectations that our brain makes up, like all of these rules and sheds. Yep. That's basically how she lives.

Her life is what do other people want from me? And if I've already invested this much, then I should see it through. And I said to her, you know what? There is no right answer here. In other words, you can't really get this wrong. It's whatever feels good to you, but a reason, if that's the reason for you to go back, then that's not a reason [01:45:00] living just to satisfy some sort of rule that your brain made up is just a waste of your energy.

You're much better off serving where you feel. You're being called to serve then somewhere where your brain tells you where you should be. Yep. That is burnout prevention, right? So if you went into medicine or law, because your parents said you should be a doctor or a lawyer and you hate it, chances are, it's not a good fit for you.

And the longer you stay, the more burned out you're going to get. So sometimes it's about changing careers and sometimes it's just about pivoting, but until you ask the right questions, you're not going to know what the right thing is for you. And people have so much fear. Like we talked about, they have so much fear about change and the unknown, and then they have to [01:46:00] sit with themselves, which is the hardest part.

I once had a client who said to me, he was driving the company car. And he said, I hate going into that company car. And I said, why do you hate it so much? And he said, because the radio doesn't work. And I have to sit with my thoughts and that's like the most brutal thing ever. Cause his brain was just brutal, brutal, so negative, so critical because that's how his mom was.

And he's now inserted her voice and he hears it all day long. But when he's got the radio on, he doesn't have to listen to it anymore. And it's kind of like a distraction, right? What I do. The work that I'm trying to do with people is not to help them avoid life and by life. I mean, like if that's the voice you're hearing in your head, but rather to change the record, to make it more [01:47:00] pleasant to listen to, like, you don't have to go through life like this.

It doesn't have to be this miserable experience. I have people who say, you know, I was working like all these hours trying to raise three, four kids and had a dog and a puppy and like all the things, right? Like they're, they're making themselves nuts. They're working so hard and they're not sleeping. And they're absolutely miserable.

They're bone tired. And their mentality is, you know, my kids are gonna move out 18 years and that's when things will be all right. And I'm like, you're not going to make it 18 years. And that's exactly what happened. Right? But it's like, you don't have to suffer for 18 years while your kids are at home. In fact, enjoy this time, enjoy the time with your kids.

And the only way you're really going to be able to do that is if you get your life in order, which means your mind, your job, like your relationships, everything like you don't have to live [01:48:00] this mediocre life, this miserable life. Like it doesn't have to be like that. You have choices and that's the empowerment.

That's what. That's my message that I want to share with people. I want people to feel like they do have a choice that if they've been asleep at the wheel and doing everything because of expectations, because of their programming, that they realize that, you know what? Yeah. Maybe I don't have to do this anymore.

Yeah. And have you noticed, and you can agree or disagree with me. I mean, this is your show, but have you noticed that people with a strong religious persuasion have a harder time with finding their purpose? Cause I've seen with people, I personally know myself, people I've worked with who are my clients, the ones that have that strong, foundational belief in God, they cling to wanting to know his purpose for their life.

And [01:49:00] they stress about it so much that they miss the now and they miss what he probably really has for them. Cause they're worried for them, they're waiting for the sky to open. So do you see that a lot in your career too? What I find is that it can go either way because sometimes people can find a lot of comfort and structure and religion that hopes them.

Whereas when people aren't religious, they don't have that. They don't have that community support often because they're not going to church or they don't have the fake. That things will work out and they're very cynical and pessimistic and they're stuck in the negativity and they don't have the rules that religion provides and the structures of like, you're supposed to do this and you're not supposed to do that.

Like we need structure as human beings because without it there's chaos. So if you don't know how to do it for yourself, which is why, if you're starting a business, [01:50:00] for instance, we talk about having an accountability partner, right? If you're working on goals, having somebody that you can check in with, if you don't have some sort of structure it's chaos.

So one of the benefits of religion you could say is that it offers you the social support. It offers you the faith that things will work out. It offers you the structures that you need to live within. Now, it's not for everybody. Some people are really good at creating their own structure. Some people don't like accountability even, and they want to hold themselves accountable.

Now, not everybody's capable of holding themselves accountable. So you have to know yourself like everybody needs something different. Right. But I think ultimately it can go either way, like it can serve you or you could rely so heavily on it that you're not independent. You're not standing on your own two feet.

Lack clarity. You're [01:51:00] so into the religion that you have no other identity for your life. I mean, it's very individual, right. But it could go either way. And that's why I always say it's not the circumstances that contribute to your issue often. It's what you do with your circumstances, right? Religion can serve you and it can also hinder you.

And it's just a matter of what do you do with that? No, and I agree with that completely. I mean, I believe in God, I believe in the Bible, I believe that the structure and the accountability, the hierarchy is perfect. What I was saying as I've just known so many fantastic humans who were so worried about pleasing God that they got stuck and they didn't move.

And I think whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, wherever you are in. One of the keys is we need to take action. So listen to what you're saying and just start movement. And if we were moving the wrong direction, you know, God will redirect us, but the key is [01:52:00] movement and taking the steps you're talking about to grow and to move forward and to become unstuck.

And, and just to find that balance. So I think that's, that's where I was going. Did you find people who are so worried about doing the quote unquote right thing, that they get a mobilized? I think that happens also outside of religion, right? When your brain thinks very black and white about things, you get really fearful of failure of making mistakes of doing the wrong thing, that you don't want to move.

You don't want to make, take any sort of risks. You don't want to make that move. Right. And you're playing it safe. That fear is so strong for people. Sometimes that's why we have perfectionists in the world. Right. That's an overcompensation. So I think that it can happen in, in religion and outside of religion.

It's all about how do you think about what you're being given? Right. If I'm giving you the Bible or I'm giving you some sort [01:53:00] of religious structure to follow. And you then interpret that as being like, if I make one mistake, I'll be struck down by lightning, then you're not going to want to do anything unless, you know, it's a hundred percent safe.

Right. And even if you didn't have religion and you think if I make one mistake, I'm going to lose my job or people aren't going to like me or whatever it is you fill in the blank. You're just going to be, you're going to be just as fearful and just as stuck as the person with the religion. Yes. I completely agree.

Completely agree. So let's do this Sharon between your birth and today, is there anything we missed in your life story that you want to cover or focus on to communicate a value to our audience that you think they need to know that you want to leave them with? Or are we ready to move forward? Where is Sharon today and where she had it?

I think just to recap, the biggest [01:54:00] values for me have been freedom balance. And that allows me to have a certain lifestyle. Now it's not for everybody. So I think each person needs to decide what values they have and how to construct their life and make decisions that are led by those values. Right. And what we do often as we do it backwards, we'll say, well, I wish I had time to exercise or meditate or whatever, but I don't have time.

And it's because we're not prioritizing that. So what we're basically saying is it's more important for me to be productive, to be successful. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if that doesn't feel good, right? Cause sometimes there's like the side of your brain that says you should do this, but there's the other side of this is I want to do this other thing.

And we say, you know what? The want isn't as important as the should. So we prioritize the [01:55:00] should. And if that's kind of, what's driving the show for you, then burnout might be your wake up call to redo it. But I'm also here to say that it doesn't have to go that far. And if you're hearing this and this resonates for you, this could be your wake up call where you prevent burnout from happening.

And you say, you know what, let me take that step back, let me reevaluate and let me do something different with my life. So I don't get there. Yeah. And I recommend if you're stuck, you know, we're going to talk about how you can get ahold of Sharon and how you can reach out or maybe connect for some coaches.

But you can get discouraged from burnout, but you can also get the legitimate sick physically ill. You can invite diseases and cancers and all sorts of crazy things into our lives, by not dealing with the stress and the [01:56:00] mental things that torment us. So what Sharon is talking about is super important. I mean, it's really important.

The Bible says a false balance is abomination to the Lord, but adjust, wait, it says the light. I mean, there's dozens, if not hundreds of verses throughout the Bible on balance. So Sharon, his whole life is dedicated to helping you find that balance and getting rid of that burnout. So you're just finding joy and peace and fulfillment in each day.

So Sharon, if someone does want to get ahold of you, what's the best way for them to reach you. So if you're listening to this and you think that, you know, you're ready to have a conversation to examine your situation and start doing some work on herself, then I invite you to sign up for a. Complimentary session with me.

I have a breakthrough session where in 30 minutes, we're going to look at your exact situation. We're going [01:57:00] to figure out exactly where you're at, where you want to be. What's keeping you stuck and give you a blueprint for what you need to do to really make the kinds of changes that you need to live the kind of life that you want.

Now, whether or not you end up signing up for coaching with me, you can walk away with that value piece, where you have a plan of what you need to focus on. And I will say that I've come to a point in my business where I now have multiple offers. So I have something for probably everyone, depending on your budget and your dedication to the work, how much time and energy want to invest.

So I always encourage people to just reach out and book a consult. And that is the biggest value add that I can offer, man. Thank you so much, Sharon. And I want to speak on Sharon's behalf. What she's offering you is incredible and valuable, but please don't waste your time. [01:58:00] If she is giving you 30 minutes of her life to help your life call if you're serious, but don't call if you're not, because there's people out there who could use that time slot, but if you're not, you know, sure.

You know, take, take the offer, but if you're like, I'll do it cause it's free. Don't waste your time. So, I mean, I don't want to speak on your behalf, but I don't want you to have people who aren't committed because what you do is valuable and people need to have, they need to be dedicated and they need to be committed, correct to the change because you can teach them all the truth in the world, but if they don't implement it, it means nothing.

Yeah. So I would, I would like to say it does have a value, even though I'm not charging for it, it's it is a $250 value. And I don't want that to keep people from signing up, but I will say that if you're like not really a. [01:59:00] Ready for coaching, but you still want some resources. First of all I have a book which is a way for you to coach yourself.

I've got an entire list of exercises and things that you can do to take yourself through a lot of the same content. It comes with a workbook and that is very affordable. So that's a great way to get some sort of help to get you started. And sometimes people will buy the book before they reach out, because they want to get a sense of like, what do you offer and what is it like to work with you?

And so they're getting a piece of my content that way. I'm also on my website, I've got a lot of other free resources. We, we also have a newsletter that comes out every week. I've got a podcast, we've got a blog. So there's lots of free stuff for you to look at and kind of dive deeper into the burnout field and see what you can learn, what you can take away.

And then at whatever point, if you're [02:00:00] feeling like you're ready, then you can go ahead and book. And if you, you know, if you are ready for that, it's simply book a chat with sharon.com. Isn't there. Remember? And like I said, I've got times on my schedule that I make available every single week to speak with people.

And I would love to hear your story and what you're going through and see how I can help. Awesome. And we will put all those links in the show notes. So, if you want to reach out to Sharon, if you want to check out our website or the book, these are things that are not just to help her it's to help you.

We love you. Sharon gave a couple of hours of her time today for this podcast, so she can help you grow. And like our slogan says, don't just listen to the podcast, but do the good each day. Repeat it every day. So you can have a great life in this world in an attorney to come. So, Sharon, thank you so much for being on the phone today.

Is there anything else we miss or [02:01:00] any closing thoughts that you want to leave with our audience before we end this interview? Well, I do, I do want to just say that people who are listening to this are clearly people who are interested in personal development and your podcast is called remarkable people, because I think you really believe in your mission.

I think it's also very telling because you are a remarkable person yourself. So thank you so much for having me. And if there's any other way that I can help any other resources, I'm always here always happy to do so. And like I said, I also have a podcast that has weekly episodes and it's very specific about burnout.

So if you want to dive deeper there, it's just called decode your burnout. And we talk about people's programming and personality and environmental stressors that have contributed to their burnout so that you can find the version of [02:02:00] burnout that matches your own and therefore customize your solutions based on what has worked with people who have very similar profiles.

So that's my kind of unique contribution to the burnout field. That's fantastic. And what repeat the name of the podcast? It's called decode your burnout. Okay. And we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well, but when this episode is over typing in your favorite, a directory in and check out an episode or two, all right, well, Sharon, it truly has been a pleasure.

I know I've learned, I know it's inspired me to learn more our audience. I hope they reach out to you and take those steps to move their life forward. And if there's anything we can do for you, please let us know. But to our listeners, we love you. Please continue to listen and apply what you're learning so you can have the best life possible.

Reach out to Sharon. I, if we can help you in any way and just keep checking out these episodes, sharing them with your friends, [02:03:00] like us, Ray, and review the podcast. And then at the end of the day, just keep looking forward and don't quit. So I'm David Pascoe alone. This was Sharon Grossman. Thank you for listening to the remarkable people podcast and we'll catch you in the next episode.

Ciao.

 The remarkable people podcast. Check it out.

the remarkable people podcast. Listen, do repeat for life.