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SIMPLE + INTENTIONAL, decluttering, intentional living, habits, decluttering tips, minimalism
The simple + intentional podcast is here to support you, whether it’s to clear clutter, ditch the overwhelm + create ease + simplicity , figure out how to be more intentional in your life or inspire you to into action.
Each week I will share things like practical + actionable tips you can start using immediately to start living more intentionally and create YOUR life as well interviews with people that will inspire and educate you
SIMPLE + INTENTIONAL, decluttering, intentional living, habits, decluttering tips, minimalism
179// Finding and Embracing Enoughness with Mandy Lehto
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Have you ever had that heavy feeling of not being/doing/having enough? Chasing enoughness, like we'll finally get there when we [fill in the blank], is something we can likely all relate to.
In this week's episode I have the pleasure of speaking with Mandy Lehto, host of Enough, the Podcast and coach for the past 18 years, about enoughness. How can we shift our perspectives on this and find our way to feeling whole?
Find out more about Mandy here: https://mandylehto.com/
Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mandylehto/
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Do you feel overwhelmed by clutter when you walk through the door? Are you tired all the time and stuck just getting by? With each day being a carbon copy of the next and no time or space for yourself? Hi, I'm Sarah, and I was you, so I understand. You're a busy mom, whether at home or working full-time, feeling like you're in survival mode. There isn't time for more because you're just putting out fires, overwhelmed by all the stuff, and aching for something more. That's what the Simple Intentional Podcast is here for: to support you. Whether it's to clear clutter, ditch the overwhelm, and create ease and simplicity. Figure out how to be more intentional in your life or inspire you into action. Each week I'll share things like practical and actionable tips you can start using immediately, to start living more intentionally and create your life, as well as interviews with people that will inspire and educate you. I'm a full-time working mom, wife, and lover of all things simple. After a stage four cancer diagnosis in 2014, I started on a path to change how I was living. And I'm sharing with you everything that has helped me move from a stressed-out, people-pleasing perfectionist to calm, in control, and feeling like the best version of myself. So grab your earbuds, a cup of tea, and join me to start making powerful shifts in your life today. This is about so much more than stuff. Hello and welcome back to the Simple and Intentional Podcast. Today we're diving into something that I think sits quietly underneath so much of what we struggle with. This nagging feeling that we're just not enough. Not doing enough, not being productive enough, not worthy enough. And for a lot of us, that feeling doesn't just live in our heads. It shows up in our homes, our schedules, our shopping carts, and the way we move through the world. I think this is an important conversation because I know so many of you listening are working on simplifying your lives and spaces. And I've learned over the years that a lot of the work is really about coming home to yourself, letting go of the weight of external markers of enoughness, and finding your worthiness no matter what you do, have, or produce. And those internal feelings of worthiness and enoughness reflect outwards in our lives. My guest today, Dr. Mandy Leto, helps people untangle their sense of worth from the relentless pressure to prove themselves. She hosts the popular Enough, the podcast, where she shares conversations that swap perfectionism, people pleasing, and overachieving for a juicier, more easeful life. She spent years exploring what she calls enoughness. That quiet, grounded sense of who you are right now is sufficient. Not because of what you've done or what you own, but simply because you exist. Mandy is an ex-investment banker who swapped spreadsheets for soul work as an executive coach. For the past 18 years, she's been coaching and sparring with senior leaders, including plenty in Fortune 500 boardrooms. She's got a Cambridge doctorate, a fellowship with the Association for Coaching, and her insights have appeared in Forbes, The Times, Fast Company, Psychology's Inc., and on CNBC. She lives in Wimbledon with her husband, two adult children, and Herbie the toy poodle, who's the real boss. Welcome, Andy. So I'm so grateful that you could be here.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. I'm so looking forward to playing. And actually, that is so true. Herbie is the real boss of our household. You know, he's like the size of a tissue box. And it just, yeah. I don't think you're alone in that. Yeah, indeed. And I'm really excited to dive into this today because, as you said, I think it's one of those yokes that sits on our shoulders and we kind of don't feel the weight of it until it starts to shift or lift.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So these are really important conversations. Thanks for playing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that that's a really great way that you framed it because it's true. What we don't know, we can't shift. And once we know it, it's like, oh wow, that's everything. You know, I that's at least what I found in my own life. And so I think um this is going to be a really important conversation for those listening. I know it comes up with everybody that I work with, so it's a big one. Um, I wondered if we could start with just a little bit more about you and what started you on this enoughness journey.
SPEAKER_03Uh, well, it wasn't birth, but it wasn't long after that. I mean, this I think a lot of this stuff that we end up processing later, where we're holding that yoke that I was talking about, a lot of this is the residue of childhood. And I'm a coach, I am not a psychologist, I very much know my lane, but so much has become clear to me having lots and lots of conversations with psychologists, having therapy myself, immersing myself in hundreds, probably thousands of books, many of which are on my bedside table, like the teetering tower of Pisa. And um, it's something that I've spent my life really trying to wrap my head around. I've lived it. I've lived the experience of it, which is probably why I've got such deep interest in it. So I think there's definitely been residue from childhood, which we can or don't need to get into depending where you want to go in this conversation. But in a nutshell, I learned very, very young that my worth was dependent on how much I was achieving, if I was bringing home great report cards, and that love could be taken away very, very quickly if I didn't perform. And whether that was on my morning calligraphy sheet that we had in class is just kind of a warm-up as people came into the classroom, like whether I was getting eight out of 10 or 10 out of 10, or whether it was math tests, spelling tests, the Gates McGinnity IQ tests that they used to do, that you know, ski races, you name it, it was all opportunities to excel or not. So learning really, really quickly, because my father was a school teacher in the school where I went, so there was nowhere to hide. It was very much that my young life was pretty much a Petri dish for learning all of this stuff. So I learned how to adapt. I learned that achievement was a form of emotional regulation. So the fact that as long as I could achieve and be a good girl, not be a not be have too many needs, be prematurely mature and you know, not be underfoot making demands. I knew how to accommodate what was being asked of me and kind of contort myself accordingly, although it wasn't until I became a very adult person that, you know, with a lot of work, I figured that out. It just felt like the fish that we swim in in the fish tank of society. That was just how it was. So I am long steeped in these waters, Sarah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, I've never heard anybody say the achievement as emotional regulation before, but that is really profound because I think I mean, everything you said, I think a lot of people listening can relate to on some level. This sort of whatever the way that they hustled for love was. But I think that that's a common experience, you know, feeling that there had to be something you did or something, some way you appeared, or how you showed up, or what your identity looked like um in order to receive love. And you know, I mean, I see it in the women that come to me because it shows up in clutter in their homes and you know, this this sort of the way that our inner world manifests in our outer world. And, you know, that I think exactly what you said, the link to our childhood experiences, whatever they were, is sort of the key to figuring out how to shift those things. Like once you have the understanding, like you said about the yoke, like when you have the understanding, then you can start to sort of tackle it in a real way.
SPEAKER_03And as you said, I think it's a very common experience, not only with women, but maybe we're more willing to talk about it. Maybe we're I don't know. I haven't done that that research, but so many people who come to coaching, for example, will say things like, I now have a glass box office and I'm a managing director or a partner or a board member or whatever else. And all I'm still trying to do, and this takes, it might take us six months to get there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03This is doesn't pop out in the first conversation, but it'll end up being something like, I still hear my father's voice telling me it's not good enough, or I still hear my mother picking through things, looking for all the mistakes that I made. So I think the residue of our childhood is something that we don't think to look there, because often when people come to coaching, and I I mean I'm guilty, I've did this myself. Like, I need I need better time management skills, like I need tips and hacks and tools to be more productive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But in hindsight, I just realized like it's not a criticism because I think it's it's about meeting ourselves where we are. But it never really occurred to me how those puzzle pieces fit together that I was constantly in romantic relationships, in work relationships, in friendships, in all sorts of places. I was kind of coming back, still addressing unknowingly some of those patterns of can I just be enough for me? Do I need to tap dance for approval? Do I need to overgive, overdo, overtork just to get baseline enough compared to other people? And the insidious thing about this is it sort of operates silently. You know, it's like this cold sore virus that's in your system that you can never really get rid of. And every once in a while there's just certain circumstances that make it rear its ugly head, and you're like, oh, here it is again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I I think too, what you were just saying about when you come to coaching, you're looking for strategies. I I think that that's so relatable too, because it's like the the discomfort of unpacking this stuff often doesn't have anything to do with being productive, you know, and but the productivity is what's comfortable. It's like where we we think we need to go when we're trying to solve a problem. And I I don't know, like I've definitely found that a lot of times this actually comes with sort of slowing down, being a little more quiet with yourself, letting go of some of those things and sort of seeing what's there when you're not being super productive. And um, that is a really hard place to be too when you're used to this sort of pace of trying to achieve all the time.
SPEAKER_03And I think some of the achievement when you get curious about it is it looks really impressive to the outside world, and it is. And it can be so easily be perceived as this, you know, so ambitious, so independent, so this that, you know, it is it's it's an a compulsion, maybe even an addiction for some people that we're rewarded for, we're praised for. And depending on our places of work, they love this quality. Plus, when you're in those environments, everybody else is doing the same thing. So it further normalizes all of it. And when the wheels start coming off at some stage for those for whom that happens, the first natural place, which again goes back to the residue of childhood, is it must be me. There's something wrong with me, hence that relentless optimization and self-improvement. And again, none of those things are bad things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But it's sort of understanding like the line. Like, I I think this has been something that you know um I've certainly struggled with is where's the line between because for me it was like unpacking my perfectionism and you know, working with that. And what's the line between you know having um high standards and when you're getting caught up in the perfectionism and that sort of balance of figuring it out, like what's the motivation and you know, knowing when to slow down and knowing when to push yourself and figuring that balance out. And I think that that's a really hard thing to do.
SPEAKER_03And I think a lot of it depends on the circumstances, right? Like if I'm having surgery, I want my cardiologist or whoever is doing that work to be on their A game. I want them to be as perfectionistic as possible. I think it depends on the circumstances, but there's definitely a tipping point if we look at the pursuit of greatness as a spectrum. There comes a point where it's, and I don't want to psychologize or pathologize this. As I said, I know my lane very, very clearly, but there is a tipping point where something adaptive becomes maladaptive and any strength overused becomes a weakness or it becomes a challenge and maybe starts to work against the purpose that we initially used it for. So I think there's first of all a realization that that's even a thing. And then there's the uncomfortable work of looking at a very, very successful winning strategy where there might be a lot of questions attached to uh why do I need to adapt this strategy again? Like look at look at the the wake of success I have. Like the whether it's like the blue ribbons and gold stars from childhood or the corner office and shiny gadgets and kitchen renovations or abs or whatever that might be now, it can be very difficult unless somebody has hit a wall.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And they don't always have to hit a wall.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I would hope that there would be an awareness of that, but I think sometimes people have to because they are devoted, devoted to that strategy and that way of being in the world. And nothing else actually feels available. That's my experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and and change too, I mean, for a lot of us, um is hard to push ourselves towards unless we do have something that we've hit a wall with, you know, like we tend not to like um any kind of change for for some of us, you know. Like I know, I know people who, you know, even just moving furniture in a room, you know, and shifting things around in a room suddenly feels really scary. So, you know, whatever you're where you are on the spectrum, but um it it is hard to get there. So I think that it's true that a lot of people end up hitting the wall before they are able to access those changes.
SPEAKER_03It's also very important to give ourselves compassion around this, which is probably not something that a lot of overachievers do very often. Remember, we are wired to feel pain, loss, and failure way more than we are the upside of winning at something. So, this whole thing about achievement or comfort or anything being the way that it was, we are actually wired, if you think about it. We are wired to stay in sameness, in which equals safety. And for anybody who actually wants to overachieve or to be different or to push their potential, they have to go against all the wiring of comfort and conformity and to choose consciously to strive for something. So there is something admirable there of when we think about what each of us has the potential to do, to achieve. And again, if we were thinking about that, like a vertically, like a ladder of how much of our potential are we actually tapping into, and how much is left untapped, like that is a very exciting thing for people like me to be thinking about. Like, how much more could I be pushing myself? What results could I be getting? But the sandbag holding that that down, and we all have ways of keeping ourselves stuck and smaller and in safety. I really want to make sure that people get that there's that tension to conform, to stay safe, to be comfortable, which is what we're wired to do, versus those of us who actually want to go out there and change the world or do amazing things. We're going against all of the wiring to stay safe. So there is definitely something there to be celebrated. But as you said, it's starting to really pay attention to where is the tipping point? And that might be different with different people, different circumstances, different seasons of your life, but bringing that awareness that maybe, like Tabasco, maybe a little bit is good, but too much becomes unpalatable for self and others. And that's the tricky part is being able to nuance and calibrate that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I like that you brought up season as well and the the nuance, because I I think that that's um really important for people listening to hear, is especially, you know, not all of my listeners, but a lot of my listeners are parents. And, you know, so there is um a seasonality to life where, you know, you're pouring into your kids, or maybe you're pouring into a job or or certain things, like something's taking priority. And so that you may not have this um, you know, greatness to give to all areas or to, you know, some areas you may have to let go. And I think that that balance when it comes to that sort of perfectionist mindset is really important to start to adopt because it's so hard. I think even when you know it, it's so hard to still not try to strive in all these different areas. But um, that that self-compassion that you talked about, like giving yourself that sort of grace to know, okay, right now I'm not gonna be optimal at this, even though I want to eventually, like understanding that nuance is is so important. That's such a good point you bring up.
SPEAKER_03I think it's very hard to learn that depending on what environment you're in. Because I know when I was still in my banking era or any of these hyper competitive environments, environment is huge. Huge. I can't underestimate the environment, like whether it's our home, whether it's our workplace, it's the people that we hang out with. If you are hanging out with other people who are burning the midnight oil on a very regular basis, who are pushing, who pride themselves in getting up at four o'clock in the morning after still taking calls at midnight so that they can go and do their crossfit and get into the office by 6:30 to get ahead of the game or what have you. It feels normal. And then it can feel like this little dirty secret of like, why can't I keep this up? So it's just I must do, push harder, do more. That feels like the instinct. So there's something too about it's hard to practice or even be open to the idea of self-compassion in that kind of an environment. And one thing that I've found that could be very, very helpful because otherwise self-compassion can just be another thing that goes on the list, like a box to be ticked or something to be gross, which isn't actually the purpose of it at all. Or it can actually feel a little bit gross.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's like if part of pushing oneself beyond all the red flags that your body is sending up, if compassion would have kicked in, it would have kicked in by now. So I think often part of the perfect system for pushing that hard is I will ignore that interoception from my body when my body is telling me I need to rest. I will take pride in pushing through it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it I think it can be very difficult when a person is in that environment as well and with other people who operate in this way to practice self-compassion. And sometimes that can come from diversifying the groups with which you hang around. Like if there are, you know, if you belong to, I don't know, not that people have loads of time for hobbies and these kind of jobs either, but like really getting yourself, whether it's a support group or some people will go to therapy groups, or they will have some kind of a mastermind that they belong to, or some kind of community where not everybody is running at that pace, operating in that kind of an environment can slowly start to chip away and offer some perspective. It can be so helpful to see ourselves through the eyes. Of other people who we respect and trust that are not necessarily in the same fish tank that we're caught in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's too, I mean, two things you say there. One environment, which I mean, I'm a huge advocate of. It's something that I talk about a lot when it comes to the decluttering, you know, it in a different way than a work environment, but that, you know, what's around you. And I can speak to this because I'm about to move. And it's funny because I've been reflecting on this as I'm sitting in this space and it's full of boxes and it's very chaotic. And so I've been dipped back into this um chaotic space that I, you know, got rid of a long time ago. And I've really noticed how it's impacting me, my focus, my energy, all of these things. And um, so I I a hundred percent think that the environment is huge and people, everything that comes into your environment affects you so much. And and then the other piece of it that you that you brought up is the perspective, because in that, you know, what gets what's around us gets so normalized that, like, oh, this is just the way things are, this is the way I think, this is the way others think. And you forget that, you know, there are millions of people living millions of different experiences that you're not, and so that you could shift something and have a really different experience and you could change things in your life and and you know, have more time for rest or have a hobby, or you know, just think differently about things and not always have that that sort of um striving all the time, like that optimization.
SPEAKER_03I think there's also something think about when you come back from holiday when you've been in a different environment and your rhythm has changed and the people around you have changed, and maybe there's rum punch and hammocks or nature walks or whatever your jam is when you go on holiday. Have you noticed how it just increases your perspective? Yeah, and sometimes we come back almost feeling like oh, I have to go back into the fish tank. And we have all these ideas of how we're gonna commit to being different because our perspective has broadened, our environment has changed, and then it can be so easy you go back into it, and it feels like the perspective shrinks down to a very, very specific focus. Like I call this imagine being in the body of a cheetah and you're hunting and you're moving purposely and you're kind of low to the ground, and you are locked and loaded on this target, and everything just everything around you just disappears. It's just this single focus that you are then moving at speed when it starts to gallop. You are moving at speed towards this thing. So all the, and I mean, this is a not a necessary thing to be able to move through those those ways of being, emo, the way those ways of moving through the world. The challenge, I think, is when we're in that cheetah space too long that we're running and we everything else is kind of blurred out, and we are just focused on the target and moving at pace. I don't know about you, Sarah, but like I lose perspective, I lose touch with what my physical needs are. Uh you know, you can easily spend 12 hours in your chair and thinking, like, oh my god, I need to go to the bathroom and I need to drink some water. And so I think there's something about just the self-awareness piece that we talked about, huge. The environment piece, shaking those environments up, even if you can't get out of the job, but like increasing the types of people that you spend time with on a regular basis. I'm talking about some kind of community that can be very, very useful. Some people sing in a choir.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I was talking one on my own podcast. There was a guy on my show called Nick Petrie who was talking about why some high achievers burn out and why others don't. And one of the things he said that was a core habit of people who didn't burn out was they had an opposite world.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's so I like the term.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, me too. And you know, there were people who were in these extremely high pressure jobs, but his whole premise that he wrote about in his book that we talked about on the episode was how to separate pressure from stress.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I think when we're in that maladaptive place that we were talking about, whereas there's that tipping point, it can be really hard to separate pressure from stress because they're almost like DNA strands, like pulled tightly coiled together. And one of the things that he said that he found in his research of looking at these high achievers was they spent time in an opposite world. So, you know, there was a very, very busy, I can't remember his profession. Let's say he was a banker, and then he would go and do Argentinian tango every week. So for two hours, yeah, nobody cared what his job title was. Yeah, nobody even cared that he had a job. It was just like, can you move?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So he got to lay that identity down for a couple of hours a week. And he was talking about another woman who, I don't know, let's say she worked for a hedge fund, and a couple of hours a week, she did quilting with this community of other women who were super jazzed about quilting. Yeah. So they had these opposite worlds. And I think there's something about diversifying our identity that I am not just this. I am not just this superachiever or this banker or this mother or this, you know, whatever, fill in the blank. That it's putting more legs on the stool, identity-wise.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And like the immersion in something. Like I imagine with like tango and quilting, like you're there's a mindfulness to that too, because you're you're in something. Yeah. You're doing it, and it's not like you're really thinking, I mean, you're not thinking about a lot of other things when you're doing that necessarily, you know, because you're immersed in it. And I I don't know, I think that mindfulness piece, because just to go back to the nuance and like understanding the nuance of of you know, the self-awareness and the perfectionism and the striving and all of that, there has to be a mindfulness piece where you can sort of come back into yourself and and you know, figure out where you are and ground yourself and and you know, just be able to take that perspective. And I I just don't know how you do it without some kind of grounding to to like slow down and pay attention and be like, okay, I'm doing this thing right now. Is this what I want to be doing? And like to be able to sort of pull it apart.
SPEAKER_03And I think there's there's interesting research around people who are who become really masterful at what it is that they do, which is often what high achievers are are thinking, at least that they're moving towards. And I think that piece about the residue of childhood of it's hard. It's hard, and a lot of people think, oh, I don't, I don't have any trauma or you know, whatever that is. But I think therapy can be such a useful, useful tool for exploring what might be going on there. Is there a hot little motor burning beneath my outsized drive? And could I find a way, different way of being in relationship with that? And then there's the point about the the people who become really masterful, like the top of the tops. Often they're not doing it to get a result. The result is often because you're doing something that you love and you're in the flow of it and you're doing something for the joy of it. Like you don't do tango to be done, yeah, yeah, to achieve it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's the same thing with quilting. Like the purpose of quilting is not I'm gonna make 622 quilts that have this, I'm gonna master these stitches. Like, there's something about being in the joy of doing the thing that's probably more embodied, yeah, and that there's pleasure in actually doing it, and the mastery, the outcome of it happens kind of anyway, you know, as opposed to I'm I'm gonna pursue this because it will bestow some kind of status or safety or you know, whatever else onto me. I think that's the distinction I personally see between people who don't burn out or find a healthier way of being in relation to their achieving and their enoughness, is they're they're also doing the thing, the job, and maybe their opposite world, uh, where there's actually some joy in doing it, that it's not I'm simply yeah, I'm gonna be a banker so that I can outrun my childhood that was riddled with poverty and shame and humiliation or or what have you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So that's awareness too, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And I think like the, you know, it like to the childhood piece, like I don't think it's always just about trauma, like in the big sense or the little sense, like sometimes it's just what you learned, you know, what you think about yourself, how you how you learn to be in the world, and and that maybe that's not the way you want to continue going, you know, and maybe it's not actually serving you. And I mean, I think it often does, you know, connect to some kind of trauma, whether that's big or little, but that maybe you just want to do something different and you want to pull back to have that perspective on how you are behaving, thinking and being in the world, and then to build that self-awareness so that then you can make conscious choices um with that compassionate lens about how you you want to go forward. And is this, you know, like is what you're doing for work joyful? Is it something you get into the flow of doing? Is it something that you love, or is it rooted in trying to get to that enoughness?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and I wonder, like, just to go back to the enoughness, um if there's a way that you define that, or maybe like how do you know the difference between um feeling enough and when you're sort of intellectualizing it, you know what I mean? Like how can people kind of get a sense of that?
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna, for the purposes of time and space, I'm gonna grossly simplify how I see enoughness. So we are born whole. I don't think anybody would debate that. You know, we are born this little being who is merits the title of wholeness simply by existing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And enoughness is our felt sense, the way I define it, is our felt sense of that wholeness. And that unlike wholeness comes and goes. It's like weather. So sometimes we might feel really enough, and we might feel like I am doing a good enough job at juggling all the things, and I can give myself a little slack here, and uh, I'm not I'm not being prodded along by feeling that I have to achieve X, Y, and Z if achievement is your action of choice. Uh, so that there is a kind of balance to it. And sometimes that will shift depending on if there's somebody that you see on Instagram and you compare yourself, and then you're on the short end of the comparison stick, and it's extremely human to go down that rabbit hole. So the sense of enough, the sense of feeling enough comes and goes, it toggles between feeling enough, not feeling enough. And that is also part of wholeness, because the way I describe wholeness, wholeness is the whole mess. It's the feeling of being on top of the world and feeling connected to the divine, or however you want to define that. And it also includes feeling not enough, feeling less than, judging ourselves. Like it's wholeness. Wholeness isn't only the good notes, right? Like it's it's all of it, it's the mess, it's the it's the sense of inadequacy. And I think that felt sense of it can shift depending on circumstances, life stage, all kinds of different factors. And I think it's information. It can be another way of self-flagellating if we let let it be. And for some people, that's how they've gotten themselves into action because it's like they they need to hit a rock bottom to push themselves back off, yeah, to propulse themselves back into action. Um, but I'm really curious about finding other ways. What if we didn't have to hit a wall? What in what if we didn't have to be disgusted with ourselves? What if we could stay in that feeling of right now? I feel really grotty and I'm being a real jerk to myself. And I don't have to immediately propulse myself out of here. I don't have to go down the whole rabbit hole of I suck, and you know, all of that. Like it's growing the capacity, the practices around enoughness. How do we grow our capacity to be in the discomfort of temporarily feeling not enough?
SPEAKER_00I love that. I love that so much. I think that that's wow, like you you've said it so nicely, and the discomfort I think is so important for so many of us to build exactly as you said, the capacity for it.
SPEAKER_03Because I think But hang on, I want to share one more thing. It's not that people who are high achievers have a super high bar for discomfort because they're achieving and they're pushing down those red flags from the body. What's different in what I'm trying to say is applying it in a different area, applying the ability to be in discomfort as opposed to, I'll give you a real example. My mom passed away right before Christmas, a couple months ago. Thank you. And my automatic response was I need to just function as if everything's BAU. I need to keep going. And partially it was because we did, because my siblings and I were emptying out her apartment. She was never going back to it. We were staying in her apartment while she was in hospice. So by day we would sit with her, and then by night, over greasy pizza and a bottle of cheap wine or what have you, we would go and we would sort through tubs and tubs of stuff, bed sheets, bags of other plastic bags, recipes, pictures, articles clipped from Good Housekeeping magazine, 16 pairs of rubber gloves under the sink, like you name it, we are going through it. So it's there's so much going on there. So, in some ways, I can have the compassion for myself that I had to be in business as usual mode and not let myself go completely to shambles because we had to get stuff done at pace.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So there is a time and place for pushing things down. But then I came back to London after she passed. I was in Canada with her, and it's kind of like I never let I never let myself be in the real discomfort of that. Because I was just like, okay, well, now I have other things to be taken care of. Yeah. So these big moments, I'm still practicing this too. I don't have this figured out. Like I'm a student of how do I stay in the discomfort? So the discomfort I'm currently in is the discomfort of I haven't moved on from this clearly. Have I suppressed this? I don't know. Maybe. Is there going to be some event that like cleaves me in half like an axe through a dry log at some stage? I don't know. Maybe. I'm in curiosity. So for me, curiosity is a huge part of compassion.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And also, I don't want to just find another way to beat myself up, like, oh, I haven't fallen apart because my mom died and I was too busy doing things. But I have to admit, when people were like, oh, you're handling this so well, that part of me didn't just blossom inside, but that's the achiever part. And I'm being with that other part that is kind of like sitting there going, I don't know what, like I know it's affecting me in some way. And I don't know how to be compassionate. Like, does that mean I have more massages or pedicures or walk in the woods? Or I don't have a prescription for that. So my applied compassion in this moment is just holding that part with curiosity of like, huh, interesting. I'm in this, I am here, like on a mall map. I am here, and I don't have to have this all figured out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, that is um I so I lost my mom two years ago, and similarly to you, I then got into this very because I had to clear out her house with my brother. And um went yeah, we're we're was in the hospital with her. I and yeah, I think the curiosity piece is really a good one because I've had the the waves of grief come and hit me at different times in different ways. And um, you know, her house still is is there and I've been doing more work on it. And I actually found now almost two years later, you know, a lot of the grief is sort of coming up in a different way. Um, but that it is it is like having the space for it too, I think, you know. And so I I like how you explain that because you know, grief is a complicated thing. And um, it's something I that I actually talk a lot about on this podcast because I think it relates to clutter, it relates to our spaces, it relates to our environment, it relates to how we live intentionally, it relates to all of these things because we've all experienced grief in different ways. Um and so I I love that example you brought up because I I think that a lot of people can access that, you know, to know we feel like we're not doing grief well enough. You know, it's like yeah.
SPEAKER_03Or fast enough or deep enough, or exactly, you know, outwardly focused enough or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00And then you get those accolades from people who exactly who are like, wow, you're really handling this well. And and it's you know, I think grief is such a personal thing, and um we we come to the the moments where we need to feel certain things when we need to feel it, and um when you have the time and space for that, you know, I I found personally that it comes up and um and you get to experience it in little snippets, but that it is having the compassion to know that um you're gonna do this your own way, you know, and that you were able to do the things that you needed to do when you needed to do them. And and so I think that's just such a great example that a lot of people are gonna be able to connect to. Um yeah, because I think that it's really relatable.
SPEAKER_03So the capacity for discomfort that I was talking about is me currently in the discomfort of not knowing where this grief is, how it's morphing, what kind of root system might be taking place. Have I processed this? Did I do so much pre-grief that this version is light? Did I allow myself to not know? Yeah, because I have huge capacity for discomfort. Yeah, but it's generally been tipping on exhaustion, it's been pushing myself. But discomfort, if we actually think about discomfort, it's being out of comfort. It doesn't have to be physically pushing yourself. It could also be, I don't know. I don't know if I'm doing air quotes a good job at this, and then realizing that's probably not the right metric. So then my brain goes, well, what is a good metric for grief? I mean, what should I be? How how am I moving along? Like on a spectrum of one to ten, ten being I'm done, one being I'm just at the beginning. Where and I just notice myself going into these unanswerable loops, trying to find certainty. And I think the whole point about being in relationship to feeling enough is being okay with not having a lot of certainty on certain things and just letting it be and trusting that if I'm not in control of all the things, yeah, as you said, like two years on, when you're still in relationship to that house and all that it represented and symbolized your feeling that grief is finding different ways to move through you and or whatever that looks like for you. So that's not something that you could have put on a to-do list.
SPEAKER_00No. Definitely not. Yeah. Yeah. But it I mean, yeah, it that certainty piece is a big one to sort of sit with as well. Because um you know we I think we all kind of reach for certainty. We all really want it. And um learning to sit with the uncertainty I think is a really is a really great tool to develop for yourself, you know, because it it does allow you um to be curious like you said. And it's like when we I I don't know I related all a lot of it back to mindfulness too because I think some kind of mindfulness practice is really important because it does help you kind of get to that place where you can kind of sit and be like okay I'm feeling this right now. You know, what's going on and just sort of ask yourself some questions.
SPEAKER_03And the discomfort of being in some sort of mindfulness practice is also you don't have to answer every unreasonable calling that your your mind is spewing out. And I think this thing about I should be doing something constantly that's what I mean by it's achievement and doing our emotional regulation. They help us to stay a few steps ahead of the things we don't want to think about or the things we don't want to know or feel. So if I just keep myself distracted and busy instead of being present. So I think I don't know I'm just processing and thinking about I think about enoughness a lot and I think there's so much presence in enoughness like just sitting in the fact that it's not that you feel enough when everything is done and the kitchen counter is wiped and the fridge is clean and your to-do list is empty which is like never ever right never ever right and everything will never be sorted ever again. Yeah so how can I be in the imperfection of what is and with the lumpiness of life and be okay in this moment. And I think that's a practice that's why I think enoughness is a choice it's also a practice it's something that and sometimes being in the most hideous uncertain places that you want desperately to ricochet out of to get into action so you don't have to feel it that's also what I mean about it's not when you're in a I just had a really profound conversation with somebody else on my podcast who was talking about she's written a book about being on your knees Mama Gina Regina Thomas Shower and she said that when we're on our knees in certain situations when something devastating has happened there's been a loss or a breakup or whatever it might be. And this was my contribution I was like yes some many of us high achievers we just want to get out of there as quickly as possible. And what was really super interesting was her take on those on your knees moments where those are invitations they're initiations she said that the floor is a door I was like I can't stop thinking about that statement the floor is a door if we just let ourselves be down there and we we can trust that we this is my language now but like we trust that we have the capacity to hold ourselves in uncertainty in big feelings that we don't want to be having and not immediately eject out of them. And that's what I mean that achievement is also emotional regulation. Like the work is being in the muck and not rushing ourselves to propulse out of it because you know what she said this is an in initiation like something new could be birthed down here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah yeah I think that that is really true. I um I shared you know my mom passed away two years ago um I'm going through a divorce I'm moving I've had this sort of this window of time that's been all these things and I think that is so true because the more you can lean into um yeah just being with what's happening um as sucky as it is you really do get a lot out of it. But I think you gain knowing that you can be with the feelings and you can be with it and that you're gonna be okay and that you know what comes next you can handle and you know that you can move through things and that as real and strong as something feels in a moment it's a moment and that feelings pass. Like you know I'm I think this with grief too like I remember being you know at my mom's bedside in the hospital and just feeling this like gutted feeling you know crying as hard as I've ever cried and just feeling so much sorrow and so much sadness. And then you know like an hour later I might have been getting myself a salad. You know what I mean? Like it's yeah it's like that's life though is like that messiness that you were talking about right like there it's you're moving through it all the time.
SPEAKER_03And so knowing that you have the capacity to be in a moment with something um and I think the dance to build on what you just said is moving through we're moving through things but we can also allow things to move through us.
SPEAKER_00That is a really good point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah absolutely yeah just and that's the capacity work of like this can pass through me and it feels like it will pull me into the undertow never to be seen again and it can feel so awful so all-encompassing I will never rise from this situation or this breakup or this death or this loss or this humiliation and the self-trust in this season of our lives that I can move through things in other words take action but I can also let things move through me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah beautifully put absolutely and there's a time for both right yeah yeah and the seasonality of things and knowing yeah that sometimes we're all in on something in a moment and then you know we have that that capacity shifts and we can be more varied and then we go back to you know all in on something and yeah but it is that sort of dance of of life and um yeah you put it so well.
SPEAKER_03Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah well I I have three final questions that are kind of just for fun questions. Okay.
SPEAKER_03And uh the the first one is what is something you can't live without I have recently purchased I don't have them here but those wireless headphones like the big princess Leia style headphones and every day around this time my energy isn't what I would like it to be. So it's a combination of those headphones and um I subscribe to the Insight Timer app and on the Insight Timer app I do an NSDR non-sleep deep rest which has changed my life and also just doing it with those really good quality headphones and doing that 30 minute non-sleep deep rest game changer. Wow wow so immersive I'm sure like just totally wow that's great um and what about a favorite quote or saying I always keep coming back to Brene Brown where she says clear is kind and unclear is unkind. I think that has been the key and the lock of so many of my own personal moments where I've fallen back into some of those old behaviors from yesteryear that residual stuff from childhood where I thought I need to compress myself I need to round the edges off I need to put emojis on that I can't be direct because what would people think they'd clutch their pearls and think who does she think she is all of this stuff.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And actually realizing that most people would just prefer clarity and directness doesn't have to be delivered in a jerky way but the that is such profound truth clear is kind unclear is unkind that is one of my favorites too and it's funny I was just talking to somebody about this the other day how I like direct people who can be direct are such a gift because it's so hard and I think a lot of people aren't good at and I've gotten really good at it but it definitely is uncomfortable for a lot of people too so it's it's a hard balance but I love that one.
SPEAKER_00I think it's so true.
SPEAKER_03And the last one is um an easy go-to dinner I love a salad with some kind of protein so I have literally been doing a big salad with as many vegetables as I can jam into there because I'm really trying to increase my iron I've recently been diagnosed with low iron that could be part of the mystery of my low energy so I dump in loads of different green vegetables some kind of vitamin C. So even oranges or blood oranges cut up in the salad and then loads of some kind of iron based thing pumpkin seeds handfuls of pumpkin seeds and I find especially when it's super hot just a nice salad like that that's been well thought through and kind of nodding towards me trying to get more ferritin rich foods into my life that's something that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah it's a big one though you know it is like it really does affect your energy a lot and I yeah I've gone through those ups and downs too I even have a friend she has to supplement like get infusions because it and yeah it's a big deal.
SPEAKER_03So yeah I'm in that place. I'm taking the supplements first and then they'll measure to see if it's made a meaningful difference. But it just kind of brings me back to awareness around eating and how it's such an act of self-compassion as well to fuel oneself. And I'm not just talking about eating your five a day but like with real self-awareness in terms of what your specific needs are in this moment.
SPEAKER_00It's like that interoception you mentioned before you know really yeah totally oh well thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03This has been such a great conversation can you share where people can find you if they're interested to learn more and they or they'd like to get in touch come and play on Instagram that is the social media where I am most active and if you like these kind of enoughness conversations you can also find me on my podcast which is called Enough the Podcast which is on Spotify and uh Apple Podcasts so plenty more like this where uh over there. Awesome thanks for having me Sarah it was really fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah thank you no this was a wonderful conversation that's all for today I'll see you again next week and if you liked today's episode and found it helpful I'd be so grateful if you would write a review. If you do your name will be entered for this month's giveaway. You can also share with another mom who would be helped by listening. And be sure to follow me on Instagram at Simpleintenal. Thanks for listening
