S1:E26 Collective Grief and the Role of Female Leaders and Community Members
There have been many waves of collective grief over the last few years, and there are likely to be many more. So what role can we play as busy career women and female leaders, when we don't even know where to start in addressing so much human suffering? Let's talk about it.
Warmly,
Linda
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Read below for full transcript.
Intro by Linda: Hi, I'm Linda, self-love coach and hypnotherapist who loves a good yoga class in my pajamas, listening to the belly laughs of my baby boys, and hunting down the best vegan donuts. This podcast is for ambitious and soulful women who want to feel fulfilled in all areas of their life and are ready to dive deep into the mysteries and wonders of the subconscious mind in order to achieve that. So if you are ready to be let loose from the shackles of self-sabotage and design a life of emotional freedom and everyday abundance, you are in the perfect place. Because life can get even better than you imagine, and the biggest shifts start inside of you. Welcome.
[00:00:44]
It is so humbling to have someone who knows you look at you, listen to you talk, and tell you that you need to take a break. It's even more humbling when it's more than one person, and one of those people is your loving husband or partner. My husband is one of my external protectors. I have lots of internal protectors as well, but he is one of those external versions of the protections that I have around myself, and he loves me very deeply. He is one of my biggest fans, my biggest supporter, and he champions my dreams and my ambitions. We're very different in terms of how we approach work and the visions we have for our careers, but that difference doesn't get in the way of him being all in on the things I want for myself. However, he will step in and protect me from literally anyone — including myself — if he sees that I am not giving myself the rest or the pause that I need, and I'm starting to get a little crispy around the edges. He'll say, "Hey babe, what's going on?" He stops me for a moment, makes me pause, and talks to me about it because he loves me and he's concerned. Honestly, this isn't all that different from what my internal protectors do with me from time to time, if I am quiet enough and paying attention enough to listen.
So why am I sharing all this? I want to talk about why you need to take a break. This is going out to all my ambitious, hardworking, and incredibly creative, problem-solving women. I want you to consider why you may also need to take a break and what's in it for you if you decide to take up that call.
When it comes to effort — hard work, blood, sweat, and tears — I want to emphasize that my relationship with my husband did not come about as a result of blood, sweat, tears, and hard work. That's not to say there isn't effort put into it from time to time, and that we don't have to work through difficult things. But the actual birth of that relationship did not come about from me working really hard, being stressed out, or being burnt out. This relationship, much like really all the best things in my life, came about as a result of a combination of trust, vulnerable risk, and being authentically present. Those are some of the main ingredients that allowed that relationship to take shape several years ago. It also required that I move gently through my own fears. And that's just one example. My first business was also birthed as a result of those same ingredients. It really wasn't all of the hard work and the effort. Obviously, I put in the hard work and effort because I'm used to doing that, I'm conditioned to do those things. But that wasn't the magic ingredient — the thing that actually turned the wheel and produced the results that connected me with all the amazing clients I got to work with as a result of that business existing. It comes down to trust. It comes down to taking vulnerable risk and being authentically present.
This is why you need to take a break. Being able to engage with yourself in that way, being able to go after whatever goal you have set for yourself in that way, requires that you take a step back. It requires that you be deeply rooted within yourself, deeply connected to yourself, and attuned to your own intuition in order to get those kinds of results in a way that is long-lasting and, best of all, sustainable.
It makes me think about starting the way you mean to finish. If you're starting a new relationship and you find that you're having to fake it, that you have to pretend to be someone you're not, that you're doing things that are really draining to you — these are all things that are not going to be sustainable for the long term in that relationship. Something is going to have to drastically change or it's going to fall apart if it's going to work at all. And a lot of times, if we're starting that way, more than likely it's not going to work. I'm sorry if this is hitting you where it hurts today if you're in that spot yourself. But this is an opportunity to wake up, as I've had to wake up many times in the course of my life. This is an opportunity for you to realize that something needs to change right now for your own well-being and for the benefit of all those whose lives you touch. Because anytime that you upgrade your thinking, anytime that you enhance how you're taking care of yourself, anytime that you become more fulfilled and more whole, that is all going to ripple out to affect everyone around you too. It's not an isolated incident. This is why so much of our world is so broken — because folks weren't loved properly or they haven't yet learned to love themselves properly. I'm talking about things that were planted in us as little seeds when we were young children that then grow into really big problems later on. People become despots and just literally insane. So start now with yourself. Obviously, that's not the path you're on, but the path of impact that you can have — not only for how you feel in your own life, but how you influence everyone else who's watching you and who's affected by you — that's huge. I don't know if you see it, but I certainly see it for you. That's huge.
[00:06:18]
The key takeaway from today is that you're not going to get to the place you want to be from an exhausted doing state. It's simply not going to happen. Or again, if it does, it won't be sustainable because you cannot live like that. You are not a human doing. So you will have to stop at some point. You will have to take a break at some point to reach that next level and to break through into that place of true creativity, inner peace, satisfaction, joy — operating from a place of joy. You will need to take a break. You will need to slow down in order to see that happen. And really, you already know that, but I'm just going to keep reminding you of it as we talk today.
Let's talk about breakthroughs with relationships, career, health, anything else. I'm sure that you've experienced in your own life, or you've seen it happen in somebody else's, where the biggest changes and the best results come after they finally take a step back and settle in and realize, "Okay, what I've been doing is not working. I can't do it this way anymore." And that is a form of trust, by the way — trusting that you can take an honest look at what's going on, take an honest look at the system you've created that is so broken, and be real with yourself that you don't want to do it this way anymore. And trusting that there will be some other option. You have to trust that there will be some other way that you can achieve your goal, or maybe an even better goal that you can create for yourself by doing it differently. That you don't have to burn yourself out and be exhausted in order to get there.
When it comes to your career, a lot of times we fall into this trap of feeling like we have to work harder than everybody else, outwork everyone else, be more excellent, go above and beyond, work more hours, take on more projects. And to be honest, in some settings, that might be rewarded in a short-term way. You may get temporary praise for some of those things, especially if the person you're working for operates that way themselves — which is probably a red flag. And yes, there are women who have been able to succeed and exceed any kind of prediction about where they were going to be able to go with their careers without doing all those things, or at least at some point stopping doing all those things and doing it differently. When you're rooted in your own worth, and you know the value of what you bring — the value of who you are, not just what you do, but who you are in essence — you approach your career path in a very different way. Your success becomes inevitable, whether it's here or somewhere else or something that you create on your own. It just levels up the way you think about what comes next, and the decisions and choices you make for yourself become very different. Because now you're honoring what you need, and you're honoring the goals you've set for yourself without sacrificing yourself as some sort of burnt offering in order to make it happen. Because you realize that if it costs that much, it's probably not worth it. And also, it's just not the only way.
It's hard to shift into that realization — that working really hard and giving it your all, that physical or mental labor, is not the only way to achieve. You really have to come to a place where you say, "Okay, I know there must be a way to do this differently, because I'm not going to last doing it this way. So I've got to get creative, I've got to be open. I've got to take vulnerable risk to see what will happen if I try something new. What will happen if I actually set a standard, if I actually set a boundary and I stick to it? What will happen if I protect my personal time and separate it from my professional time? Will I drown or will I float?" And I say, let's see, let's experiment and see. That's one of the many experiments that I've helped my clients walk through, because they really got to a place where if they didn't, they were going to drown. There were already health problems coming up. There was already lack of satisfaction in their relationships, disconnection growing. And so they had to sink or swim when it came to making these choices that were going to be more sustainable for the long run and help them not just lose passion for the thing they were doing altogether.
Because slowing down, taking a break from all the effort and all the exhaustion, gives you a moment to check in with yourself and remind yourself what is really important to you. What is it about this career path, this business, that actually matters? Let me check in with that and make sure I'm still aligned with it. Let me see if something has changed. Is it still in some way compatible with this path that I'm on? Maybe I just need to approach it differently. These are the kinds of checkpoints that we need to have for ourselves as career women very frequently along our paths, because things change. We change, people change. The things that motivate us will shift over time. It doesn't mean that we have to blow up our whole career, but it does mean we have to get realigned so that we can be authentically present wherever we are. So that we're not just going through the motions, but we're doing something that feels meaningful to us and we're doing it in a meaningful way.
These things can all apply to whatever situation we're talking about. When it comes to finding the love of your life or rekindling that romance with the person you're already with, you have to get to a place where you say, "Okay, wait, why are we here again? What was it that was so important to me about this relationship? Is that still relevant, or is it something else? Maybe it shifted why this relationship matters so much to me." And that's okay for things to shift, but just being able to recognize what those things are, honor that, and get reconnected to it — get reconnected with each other — take that slow down, that pause so you can see each other again. And that's why it's so important to be authentically present in our relationships too, because if we're not really seeing each other, if we're just sort of seeing around each other or seeing through each other, if we're not even really there when we're spending time together — yeah, that relationship is going to deteriorate pretty quickly.
This matters to me because it's not just what I walk clients through. It's not just how I stay rejuvenated and refreshed. It's also what I want to invite you into as someone who very likely is experiencing a high level of stress in multiple dimensions of your life. Because a lot of times if we're feeling it at work, we're probably feeling it at home, we're probably feeling it in different parts of our community that we're involved with. Because when we're starting to burn out, it really does affect everything. It doesn't matter where the burnout started. It doesn't matter where the disconnection started. It drains us and it starts to affect every part of our lives.
And why is that? Because we are interconnected, multi-dimensional, integrated beings. Our physical body is not divorced from our emotional body, which is not divorced from our spiritual body, which is not divorced from our mental capacity. All these things are connected. And so when our relationships are a mess, yeah, it's going to affect your health. When your emotions are a mess, it's going to affect the way that you're able to think, or if you can think clearly at all. These things all have a relationship with each other. And if we don't attend to that, if we don't admit that, then we are going to suffer — usually in multiple ways. But for some of us, it comes up first in one part of our body versus another. It's a sign for us to pay attention, a sign for us to reassess what's going on, try to pinpoint what that issue is, and find a way to come back to the type of lifestyle that actually works for us and will help us to feel refreshed, rejuvenated, connected, and grounded on a regular basis.
My passion really is to see you — as someone who is highly stressed, highly capable, highly talented, but also highly stressed out — really put aside all the behaviors and the patterns that are creating that result in your life, and help you get back to a place that is rested and protected, where you feel like a queen. I mean that very seriously, because I do believe that you are royalty, that we are royalty. And we do our best when we live our lives in that way. And we actually believe that we are worthy of all the best things — because you are. I can tell you that. I don't even need to know your name; I know that you're worthy of all the best things.
That's why I take this very holistic approach with the work that I do, because I've seen over the years that you can't just solve one problem. Okay, let's just fix your health. Well, why was that person's health deteriorating in the first place? Of course, we have our genetic markers, we have our family histories and things of that nature. And sometimes the people who are doing all the healthiest things still end up getting very sick. I will also point out, though, that a lot of those same people will say, "You know what, yeah, I was super healthy, but I actually wasn't taking care of my internal self. I wasn't taking care of my emotions. I wasn't resting." Some of these people who were very, very healthy — quote unquote — on the outside, they didn't know how to pause, they didn't know how to stop, they didn't know how to listen to their bodies when their bodies were saying, "Oh my gosh, I can't take this anymore," or "I need space," or "I need to reevaluate some things." So all these parts of us are connected. And when you want to resolve burnout and high-stress functioning — just operating under that level of stress and doing it very well, it seems to everybody else on the outside, but suffering on the inside — that's why you'll need to slow down and find a different way, find a different lifestyle that's really redesigned to accommodate the needs you have and what actually fills you up enough so that you can show up as your best in all areas of your life.
[00:16:35]
One of the most powerful ways to get to that new state, that new frame of mind, the most quickly is to actually do subconscious work. And that's just dealing with the unconscious mind. It's nothing magical and mysterious — it's just dealing with your unconscious mind and figuring out where all these patterns are originating from in the first place. And yet again, if we don't slow down, if we don't take a pause to actually make time for something like this, we won't reach that level of understanding about ourselves and why we operate the way that we do, that can give us the freedom to choose differently.
The great thing, though, is that when you do subconscious work — that is very powerful subconscious work — it actually doesn't take a lot of time. It's not like you have to commit years or go travel to the Himalayas or sit at the feet of a spiritual master to find these kinds of breakthroughs. It can happen in a way that is very gentle, very kind to all of your body's systems, and happens quickly. But not because it's being rushed — because there's a space where you are relaxed enough, engaged enough, attuned enough to yourself to actually listen to all those whispers that have been there the whole time.
So to wrap this up, the too-long-didn't-read version: yes, you need to take a break, period. If you're watching this, just period. There are multiple reasons for it. Number one being that you are an interconnected being and that the way you are feeling in one area of your life, if it's not addressed, is going to bleed into everything else if it hasn't already. And that there's a way through it. This is not inevitable. Your burnout is not inevitable. Your stress is not inevitable. Yes, everything's going on in the world, but trust me, you just sitting in the stress and stewing in it is not going to help anybody else. I can promise you that.
So find a way to get connected back to yourself, to take that break that you need, so that you can honor the protectors in your life — the external protectors, like I have with my husband, and the internal protectors, because we all walk around with those. We have parts of ourselves that are saying, "Hey, please listen to me. I've got something to tell you. Please slow down. Please be here with me. I have important information for you." The longer we walk away from that voice, the longer it is likely going to take for us to get back to the place we were meant to be. And I promise that where you were meant to be is so much better than the spot that you're hard-driving yourself into. The place that you're meant to be feels so much better than the place that is requiring you to work your bottom off just to get anywhere, just to make any progress. That's not the best, most fulfilling spot for you. And there's so much more that's possible.
Just remember that when you're trying to resolve your problems with techniques like breath work or more exercise or assertive communication — these things are all incredibly powerful, they're all wonderful — if you do not start with the subconscious mind first, if you do not start with all those core beliefs that you hold that you maybe don't even realize, if you don't start there on the inside, a lot of these other techniques are really not going to get you very far, or they're going to provide temporary relief, temporary results, because the root of the issue hasn't been dealt with yet. And so that tree is going to keep bearing the same fruit eventually. It just might take a season. Maybe it only produces fruit in the summer or in the fall. So you may not know until you get back there again, but it will happen and you'll realize, "Oh, wait, that wasn't actually a long-term solution that I thought it was going to be." So don't ignore that deeper inner level when it comes to taking that pause, taking that break in order to reassess your life, recreate your life, redesign your life. Because I promise you — I've seen it and I've felt it — you will only get so far until you do that subconscious work. And then game changer, it's a whole new ballgame at that point. And that's what I want for you. I don't want you to waste your time. I know you don't even have the time, and I get it because I don't either. You don't have the time to waste. So you want to go with the things that are going to give you the biggest value for the least amount of time and effort and doing. You want it to have an impact quickly and you want it to last.
[00:21:16]
It's been a pleasure talking with you. Applications are being reviewed and, if appropriate, accepted for my group coaching program, Love Yourself Liberated, that helps you to do all of what we're talking about in this talk today. If you are interested, if you're curious, make sure that you check out the link and explore more about the program there. I'll talk with you soon.
[Editing Note: This program is not currently available. If you are interested in this content and guidance, it is now exclusively provided through my concierge psychotherapy practice, Satya Counseling & Yoga.]
You hung with me to the end, my shero. If you benefited from this episode, please say thanks by leaving a wonderful review. It helps me know what's helping you the most and allows more like-minded women to find and learn from this podcast. We don't want to keep all the good stuff for ourselves. See you next time.
Meet Your Host!
Linda Sanderville, LCSW, RYT-200 is the founder of Satya Counseling & Yoga LLC. She specializes in concierge therapy for female founders and public figures, helping high-profile women navigate public scandal, executive burnout, and the values that will define the second half of life. Based in Albuquerque and serving clients virtually in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and beyond, Linda combines clinical expertise with somatic wisdom to help leaders reclaim their truth.
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