The stories making us exhausted

Nat: We have been thinking a lot, and I think this is probably coming through in a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about in our many master classes, newsletters, podcasts about busyness, but also kind of really focusing on the gendered differences in how we operate and what we’ve sort of uncovered in the last couple of weeks. It’s just a couple of unhelpful stories that we all tend to tell ourselves that aren’t necessarily, they don’t feel personal. It’s not like I’m too old or I’m not smart enough. They’re more almost stories we tell ourselves about our roles as women in the world. And so we just thought this would be an interesting opportunity. We don’t have the answers necessarily. We just have some observations and some questions and some thoughts that we’ve developed over the last couple of weeks. So we just thought we would have take this as an opportunity to record a podcast while kind of trying to get to the bottom of some of these unhelpful stories.

We just had an interview in Powrsuit with Vinka Wong. She’s fabulous. She is a perimenopause, menopause hormone expert, does all sorts of fabulous things to help women, calls herself a what does she call herself? A medical detective. But anyway, the reason why I thought I would introduce this right up top is because we’ve been thinking about, she talks about that 40 to 55 year gap where women end up divorcing their husbands, they drop out of the workforce. There’s lots of mental health issues. Like there’s some real, there’s a real time in life that we go through. And what I thought was interesting and why I thought I’d lead with this because it’s almost like we carry on with our lives in this busyness and doing everything and Superwoman and other people owning my time. And then perimenopause is like the ultimate unmasker. And menopause, it is like unmasks how unsustainable our pace was all along. And so all of a sudden, we’re in this ironic moment where we’ve internalised our value and our busyness and our worth to others and what that means, our productivity. And then our bodies literally can’t produce at this level anymore. So we were going to chat about perimenopause later, but I’m like, is there’s no greater sign than our bodies medically going? No. Then what is there?

Kristen: Yeah, and I agree. And this is a really enlightening conversation. And one of the things I dropped very early on in the interview was I’ve been feeling tired. We, I’ve probably spoken a bit about that patch earlier on this year where I just really struggled to get off the couch and I sort of put it down to, oh, well, you know, we’ve started a new business. There’s a lot happening. And she immediately came back to me with, well, you’ve always been this busy. Why did it suddenly impact you differently? And I felt like that was such an interesting. And you continued on throughout the interview to point out how women have a tendency to undervalue our time, which is something that we have covered recently quite a bit. But also we don’t allow ourselves to never be busy. So we create this busyness cycle of as soon as one thing drops, we pick up another thing. And I’ve noticed it a lot with even talking to a lot of professionals at a similar level in their career. And there is a marked gender difference, like if you talk to an executive or even any man in a leadership position, a formal leadership position, they’re leaning back. They seem to have all the time in the world. They come across as completely in control. They utilise delegation effectively as it at all, maybe sometimes too effectively. They ponder things, they’re considerate, the answers. And when we have conversations with women in exactly the same boat, it feels that they’re frazzled, they’re running around like headless chickens. They feel overwhelmed and stressed and I think this is not a genetic thing. This is not something that is we’re in an innately more overwhelmed or unable to manage our time. When you look at socialisation and all the different cues we get throughout our lives, it drives this very, very significant way of almost thinking about ourselves and the world, which then of course drives behaviour quite differently. Do you notice that?

Nat: Well, when you were told what I tell you, what I didn’t notice, I noticed all of it. Yes, but what when you were chatting, I was thinking about these reels that I’ve seen that are talking about and it’s giving advice to younger people, particularly men. So it’s often men and who knows how I end up in these algorithms. But anyway, I do who knows, I watch something and so I’ve got Joe Jonas at the moment. I don’t know why Joe Jonas appeared on my feed, but he is now a massive part of it. I think it’s because that I’m going to bring him into the conversation. I think it’s because Pivot is my favourite podcast and that has got Scott Galloway and Kara god, perimenopause brain. But anyway, Kara, I’m going to bring it up later anyway. It’s fabulous. It’s all about the economy and tech and politics and whatever. They’re great. But he is quite controversial because he gives a lot of advice to men and it is controversial. It’s polarising advice. So I don’t listen to his men stuff because I’m not interested. But what I find are reels and guys like him are going double down in your 20s. Work your ass off in your 20s because it will pay off so that you can ease off exactly what you said in your later 30s, your 40s, your 50s, you can ease off because you front loaded that work and you’ve gone like mad. And then I’m and true to your point, I’m like, what woman is ever like work really hard in your 20s because in your thirties, 40s and 50s, it will get much easier.

And also just that concept of working really hard in your 20s, and that tends to play out in a gendered way as well. Of working really hard in your 20s and 30s for men tends to be your sole focus. Should be your career. You don’t have to turn up at the school events. You’re optional, optional as a as a society, not necessarily individual decisions, but as a society men are optional. You see it even in the way childcare is arranged, it’s sort of a woman’s arena still. There’s a lot, you know, men are optional, but they are meant to provide to focus on themselves. Whereas women have not had that same expectation to the point that even now I’ve had a conversation recently with someone who’s moved, kids are later teens, she’s moved to a different city. And I was really fascinated by how instantly the conversation moved to, oh, are you comfortable leaving your kids? How do you? And I was like, I don’t think this would have happened. This would not have been the first line of questioning when she’s talking about all sorts of very interesting things happening in her life and the expectation that we mean to be juggling a lot of things and spreading our mind and energy and time across all sorts of things. It’s just not an expectation that men have and therefore you see it playing out across multiple different things.

Kristen: Yeah, and the expectation of being capable of everything, being the caregiver, being the nurturer, but equally now introduced careers in the 60s, seventies, 80s and up till now. And all of a sudden like nothing has come off our plates. If anything more has come on digital, technical technology, cognitive load and we’re still project managing most aspects of our lives. And so there’s this real superwomen mindset that we have been told we have to manage it all, therefore we do. And therefore we wear exhaustion and sometimes bitterness like a badge of honour. And your concept of busyness, which we talk about quite a bit, but nothing is ever good enough. And two, kind of my point of menopause that our perceived value is one of productivity. Therefore, if I don’t have a million outputs and spilling spinning a million plates, then what value what? What worth am I therefore just drop out?

Nat: I have a couple of things on this. One is I think it is like even talking about perimenopause, I mentioned and I think a lot of us may maybe not all of us, but a lot of us identify with asking their mums around menopause and what their experiences and them sort of really minimising. It’s like that wasn’t really a thing for me. And even on this interview we just did like it wasn’t my experience of your menopause. It was outrageous. So we have been role modelled our entire lives, this idea of we have to pretend these things aren’t hard. I was talking to someone the other day about childbirth and their thing was to try and minimise the amount of interventions they had. And I was thinking, isn’t that funny? How in any other operational medical procedure, it would be about pain relief and looking after yourself. But when it comes to birth, we’re still expected to maximise the amount of pain we’re under. And I just feel like these are, these are stories. These are and that kind of leads back to this. These are the stories we tell ourselves and I think that wearing exhaustion and bitterness like a badge of honour, this is one of the damaging stories.

And I feel like we should start here because we talk to a lot of women and men. And there is a particular conversation that I’ve had a few times recently where the person turns up, they are clearly tired, they are clearly overwhelmed. They talk a lot about being busy. They talk a lot often about doing several jobs. And we’ve talked about this before, people who say I’m doing two people’s jobs or four people’s jobs. And I’m like running the maths on that. Being like you, you literally aren’t working 120 to 180 hours a week. You’re just not. So you’re actually not doing those jobs. You have just talked yourself into believing that you are really hard done by doing all of these jobs when you may be doing 40, 50 hours. And yes, there’s a lot of context switching and yes, three jobs may have been merged into one job because of redundancies, all that sort of stuff. But that to me, the way these conversations start and proceed has an undercurrent of bitterness and feeling hard done by and taking on everyone else’s load in a way that you often hear. It serves us psychologically at some level to appeal like that the challenges or to convey that the challenges. The way it comes across is actually quite career limiting because when you’re on the other side of that, you’re listening to someone lie, effectively exaggerate massively the amount of work they’re doing without realising it. Because if you’re not doing 120 hours work, you’re not doing three jobs. And we all know people who are in less privileged position to actually working three separate jobs. And it is a lot different to having three roles moved into one. But you do come across as someone who is sort of resistant or negative and unable to manage your time in a way that I think you don’t realise because you’re trying to convey how much you take on and how much you’re capable of. But how it’s received is often quite different. Does it? Does it? I know I’ve kind of just gone.

Kristen: No, no, it all, it all makes sense and I can relate having had those chats and we see it with Powrsuit when women don’t put themselves first, be it their health, their professional development, investing in future you effectively. It can be really problematic in terms of burning the candles at both ends and burnout is what I hear when you talk about that because there’s only so long that we can sustain that level of intensity and context switching. And you know, but what I am curious about is the double edged sword for women and maybe we can chat about that. So first of all, there’s this weakness in asking for help. And if I were in the workplace and a man asked for help and a woman asked for help, there would be different judgments placed on that. So there’s a sense of our personal brands and our personal brands are diminished more probably for women when we are in a position where we maybe set a boundary, possibly going to question mark that and ask your opinion. Certainly when we ask for help because you know, a label of can’t handle it, can’t you know, we’ve got to give this work. She’s under a lot of pressure at the moment, you know those kinds of things. And then I what was the other thing I was thinking? Yeah, that the alignment of kind of weakness and asking for help. And then finally the scarcity thing, like you have fought tooth and nail to get where you are. It’s often with more men than women and who like you’re the first person that can’t do it because of everything else you’re doing out and around it. Thoughts on that? Because there is this real double edged sword.

Nat: Yeah, I was just thinking about how I’ve tackled that recently and we actually had a conversation this morning where I was complaining about something. And one of the things that I want to practice more and did in this context, but through frustration is rather than saying can I take it on or I should take it on or I’m able to take it on, ask why should I take it on? And I think that has been something that I have often found myself getting grumpy about that I’m like, I feel someone’s expected me to take something on that I feel like is an unfair load. And I grumble, grumble, grumble, ring, you complain a bit. And what I learned this morning afterwards is the question I really should be asking myself without judgement or frustration to the other person because they don’t know. They’re not pushing us on me. They’re just asked. And I don’t have to turn it into this massive story about expectations and pressure is to just go, do I want to take this on? And should I take it on? And if I ask myself those two questions instead of can I or, you know, I feel like I need to, I come up with a very different result and I can very comfortably go, nah, it’s not actually like we often say, I’m not on that committee. I’m quite happy being like, nah, thanks. No, not for me. And I think maybe that’s something we could all practice a bit more rather than seeing it as a test of what we can take on, take back control and say, should I? Do I want to?

Kristen: I like that because it moves it from being out of control of my own time and my own calendar to being back in control of my time. I own my time and I very. What did you say? It wasn’t diplomatically, but it was without emotion going oh no, I’m going to own my time here, therefore I’m not going to do that thing.

Nat: Yeah, because I think we sometimes make, we get really angry with other people and we put it on them and they’re actually not the problem. It’s us who feel the pressure is not necessarily been putting the pressure on us. It’s just that we’ve been so socialised to think that pressure is there.

Kristen: And what about let’s talk about a woman who has busted through into the senior ranks of an organisation and possibly surrounded by six dudes who maybe don’t have the external pressures and responsibilities that this woman has? How might one navigate that environment?

Nat: So this is another story that I feel like I don’t know if this is what you’re alluding to, but something else we’ve discussed recently. Sometimes we will say things like the effects, but we haven’t actually got any evidence. So it could be if I don’t take this on, it’s not going to end well for me. If I don’t take this on, I’m not going to be seen as a team player. And often that is phrased not as like a, I’m worried about it. It is phrased as a in this environment, and you can see it in very high performing environments like consultancies, big corporates. If I don’t say yes to this, I will be impacted. And the question we’ve started asking is, can you explain a situation where it did impact you? And most of the time they don’t have one because they’ve never actually tested that theory. They’ve just created the story in their heads that they must say yes to everything, otherwise they’ll be negatively impacted. And I don’t think the men they’re surrounded by have that same story. So they have been merely testing this and just saying no to stuff all along and not seeing. And there are some biases there, obviously, like you say, and we do have a double edged sword. But I do think we should challenge ourselves if we have a story about inability to say no, inability to turn things down or delegate or reduce things from our load to really test ourselves to go, when have I, what evidence do I have that this is true? And how much of this is a story that I may have picked up from some subtle signals or cues or life experiences that has made me to believe this is fact where it may not be?

Kristen: Yeah, yeah, I like it. I remember so many instances, I think I’ve talked about it before where projects would come down from very senior men. I only seem to have reported into men and these like projects would come down and they just postially whiffed of like make work projects. Like it was just some random thought bubble that came up for the guy in a meeting. And oh, I know we’ll get Kristen on that. And I got really good in my early career just not doing the work because I was like, I can guarantee you, I could smell it. And I was like, I know this is never going to come to anything. I know I’m probably not even going to be asked for this analysis or this report or this thing in one week’s time. And so I always pushed it to your point. I was actually like, I’m going to do an experiment. I’m just simply not going to do this thing. And this is my personal brand. I’m testing and experimenting. Invariably never heard another peep about it ever. So I learned really early to test those things and be like, I don’t know if this has to be done. And we talk a lot about strategic yeses as well now, like methodically going through what’s a strategic yes, what moves the needle. But I just remember doing that and testing it a little bit more.

Nat: I think the other I have developed another tactic that I think my girlfriend Kyla has picked up on or has developed herself. And we always ask what’s the problem this is solving? Because as soon as you ask that nine times out of 10 with busy work, actually 10 times out of 10 with busy work, there is no problem. They can’t articulate it. You do risk, I mean, both situations there is a risk. You risk looking like you’ve dropped the ball. I risk looking like I’m difficult and constantly challenging things. But there are professional and diplomatic ways of doing both things that actually can lead you to be perceived as more helpful and more of a strategic thinker than racing off and just following instructions. And again, that’s something we’ve experienced too, that you sort of have a brain fart. You say something out loud. We’re used to operating in small teams and being able to say things and just kind of get them out. And you suddenly notice people jumping up to action and you’re like, I didn’t ask you to act on that. Like what? Why did you say I feel like that? That again, is like, you can run these experiments and just see what happens. And if you’re someone who always over delivers and you drop the ball once, I guarantee it’s not going to ruin your career. So especially if it’s something that you’re pretty confident isn’t moving the needle.

Kristen: I kind of liked how you started with stories rather than we’re talking a lot about like obviously right now we’re talking about strategic yeses and prioritisation and calendars and time management and taking that, you know, but I love how actually you started with mindset and the stories we tell ourselves. Because if I just think of an example of like story I’d tell myself of me saying no in that scenario, I’m at the table bunch of people who typically would say yes. And there’s a lot of social pressure to say yes and to take that on what? And so, you know, we’re like, oh my God, I’ve taken, it’s gotten taken me all these years and all this hard work to get here. What if I mess up? I’m going to say yes. What if the story we’re telling ourselves is like, what if saying no is being a team player because I just happen to then over deliver on the important work that I’ve been tasked to do? Like what if it is the mindset shift, isn’t it?

Nat: Yeah, it goes back to those fundamentals. And I think that’s why this topic, granted, we’re not going to cover it all today, but it’s so interesting that when we talked about those two groups of like, you could ring most men at a senior level and they’re relaxed and they’ve got time for thinking. And then women are almost the exact opposite. And most of the time, you know, hashtag not all men, hashtag not all women, but there is a mindset shift and it’s underlying everything. And granted, our mindsets are very much shaped by our experiences and biases and social norms, but they do lead us to create stories. And we do have to, if we want to make our own lives easier, address those stories.

The other one that’s been really playing on my mind recently is so in New Zealand, we have summer holidays at Christmas time. So there’s like a big, most of the country sort of disappears for a month or two. And there was an article on, well, it was kind of across the news the other day about how should we close down the country for so long. We are a small economy, has been struggling. One of the best things potentially we could do for our economy is to like, work more over this, to patch the amount of vitriol and anger. Every time I’ve raised this because I’m always curious what people think, people are so angry at that idea because they are in quotation marks almost verbatim from everyone I’ve spoken to, crawling towards the finish line. I do not feel that this year. There are some years I feel that there are some years I don’t. I feel like I am betraying people by saying I’m not crawling towards the finish line because we’re all meant to feel so miserable and tired and down by the end of the year that it feels like bad to say no. I’m pretty good and working on a sustainable level. Life is fine. And that’s not to undermine people who are crawling to the finish line. It’s just that I notice that every year everyone sees it. Not everyone, but a lot of people say every year. So there’s never a year they’re not crawling to the finish line. And I’ve done a fair few half marathons and whatever distance I run, if I’m running 21 Ks, I guarantee at 19 Ks I’m going to feel exhausted. I won’t feel at all tired at 5. If I’m running 5 Ks, I’m going to be exhausted at 3 Ks. Same as walking the Queen Charlotte track when you know there’s an hour left to go. That last hour feels long and hard. And I feel like, again, this is another story we tell ourselves that when you have a deadline or when you have an end in sight, of course you’re going to feel tired. It’s how our brains work. But we’ve now created this national story of and particularly women who’ve had to take on a lot of the balance and the juggle. It’s become like this really this, this is the end. Rather than telling, retelling a story, which is what I’ve been telling myself for the last couple of years, is I’m just doing a two week holiday and then life continues. There’s no hard finish and hard start. It’s just another gap where I get to have a bit of downtime.

Kristen: I love that now you just strike me as like the defiant two year old, the two year old that. Is what is the. Contrarian. You’re like the contrarian that’s never had to adopt, you know, everyone else’s. You’re just like, good morning. It isn’t morning, it’s evening.

Nat: And like I say, it’s not, I know some individuals are crawling quite rightly. There are some big hard years that have been had. It’s just that I’ve noticed that there are some people who every year they’re crawling and I’m like, well, shouldn’t we kind of resolve why? You know I.

Kristen: Think it’s great. I think it’s great and that’s my invitation and I’m going to end on this is that the invitation is what if we could two things actually. The first is be contrarian. Don’t be you know that. Don’t be that frazzled person, flip the mindset. And actually we did have a session about a year ago is what if when people asked us how we were doing, we responded with positive adjectives. So be the contrarian, number one. Second one is just like and we’ve done a podcast before. I don’t remember the episode, is way back when on self limiting beliefs. The same, the same rules apply to get ourselves out of the stories we tell ourselves in the beliefs we tell ourselves. Number one, awareness. Just be aware how you are thinking about things in the coming weeks, how you respond to people, the invisible yeses you’re making yourself do. So that’s it. Just the first one is be the contrarian and the second one is just be aware of the stories that you’re telling yourself and then move to test.

Nat: And not because it’s annoying to anyone else, because I didn’t keep. Yeah, I don’t. I honestly like if you are definitely crawling towards the end of the year, absolutely that like this is not about other people. This is about when we suddenly realise, and sometimes what we see, that those stories are actually not serving you. Like they are hurting you more than they’re helping you. And it may feel comfortable to stick with them. And it may feel like it’s a story that has served you well in the past. But if it’s no longer serving you now, try and challenge it and build that evidence because they could actually make your life a little bit nicer. Like the perimenopause talk. And she’s like, you’re going to complain about being busy forever because I guarantee the moment you take something off your plate, you’re going to add two more things. This is a mindset for you. You have to actually learn how to not do that. And I was like, yeah, so true. Got to stop.

Kristen: Yeah, love it. On that, thank you, everyone. Check out powrsuit.com and we will catch you next time. Bye.