EP58 | The pressure to do it all

Annie
Well, hey there, Leah.

Leah
Hey, Annie, how are you doing today?

Annie
I am under pressure today. I am wrapping up all of the prep for Clinical Complexities in Private Practice, which by the time listeners are hearing this episode, the doors are open. There's still time to join before all of our lives start. But I have been hustling around the clock to get all these recordings prepared, the course area ready. It's like dusting all the corners and also managing my private practice and I have a family so it's been a lot this week. But I have to take some intentional time off next week, two full days where I'm not permitting myself to do any work at all, and I cannot wait.

Leah
Oh, that's so nice to have that reward at the end of all your hard labors. It's like, okay, I can keep pushing, because I know my time is coming to just relax and rest. That's awesome and I'm so excited about this clinical complexities conference. It's just gonna be amazing and all the speakers that you've told me about and all the content that I've got to hear about, I'm just like, I can't wait, open hurry up.

Annie
I know and we've got you in there too. You are doing like literal clinical complexities. Leah's got these case studies that are from her own private practice that are the things where you're like, nobody ever sees that except Leah. She has videos. It's really exciting. I love case studies. I feel like I can't get enough of them so I'm super excited for everyone else to see yours. It has been really fun working on this conference. For the first time, we are including deeper dives as part of the conference. So, for anyone who's registered in Clinical Complexities in Private Practice, the full course is going to get automatically registered for two deeper dives with me and Leah. We've got our deeper dive into nurturing your business and that's on November 23rd at 4pm Eastern and deeper dive into clinical complexities in December. So if you're just interested in the lactation business coaching deeper dives, you can go to paperlesslactation.com/lactationbusinesscoaching to find out about our memberships. To find out about our deeper dive vault going back to January 2020, which also has its own private podcast feed so anyone who's got access to the vault, or membership that includes vault access, you can pull audio from all of our deeper dives into your favorite podcast player, listen to it on the go. I'm super excited about that. I'm an auditory learner and the course is also going to have its own private podcast feed. So if you're interested in registering for the course, and getting access to these deeper dives that are included, and all the other great things that come along with the course it's paperlesslactation.com/course. It's a whole bunch of SERPs and some great speakers, including Leah.

Leah
I'm super excited about that. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the whole audio feed thing. I'm actually attending a conference right now. It's going on this week and I was like me, man, I'm about to leave from my walk so I'm going to have to stop this conference that I'm trying to listen to. Then I was like, man, if they had only just had a feed that I could like, keep walking, do my exercise and listen at the same time like that would be genius and look, Annie, your genius. I appreciate it so much. So I know what I'm going to be doing for my walks starting here shortly once everything gets going. I'm super excited about it. Today, we are talking about that kind of cultural pressure, I think we get or even internal pressure to really do it all. I think the culture has started to make a shift but for the longest time, I think we have been living in this air of like hustle culture. I know you've probably felt this too, especially when I first got into this space of personal development and was kind of looking at stuff like that. I felt like the answer was you only need four hours asleep. You can make this happen. You can be an entrepreneur and have millions and billions of dollars if you just push hard enough. I feel like sometimes that's really where in my entrepreneurial startup like I thought that's what was required. Have you felt this kind of hustle culture through your journey as an entrepreneur and has it shifted for you, Annie?

Annie
Definitely, I've felt it. As you know, I've been freelancing since I can't even remember when I started, I think the last time I had a full-time job was in 1999. So I jumped right into freelancing and even when I had my full-time job, I had a full-time job, this is when I first moved to New York, I had a full-time job working for a film producer. I would then leave that job and go work my second full-time job at a video store and it was a lot. Then I left the video store but I was still babysitting because my day job just didn't make enough money to pay the rent. So I was still babysitting and then I was writing a screenplay.

Leah
Oh my God.

Annie
When I wasn't working or babysitting. I'm already kind of inclined to be that way. If I'm not interested in something, I really won't put that kind of effort into it. But if there's something where I'm super invested in, like, making enough money to live in New York City or becoming a screenwriter, I'm all in and I'm like, yeah, bring it. Lean In came out a while later, but I definitely felt a lot of internal pressure on myself, when I read that book, even where I was, like, this is bad for families. But I was like, inside I was like, but this is when the time of my life when I have the most earning potential and all these ideas. I can't miss my chance.

Leah
I feel like it's kind of like the American dream of you can own a business and you can have all these amazing opportunities if you can just do it all. I feel like our American Dream kind of went sideways. But I will say that I have definitely noticed a movement for some pushback on this hustle culture. A lot of influencers now are talking about doing less and having more thoughtful, you know, picking out what exactly are you needing to focus on and not trying to do everything and really pull in a little bit more into what is essential in your life and your business and not just trying to be everything for everyone on every level of your entire life. So I really read a lot of books recently, and over the last several years about that. There's so many good books out there, like Essentialism comes to mind. There's a couple of others that just really were poignant on this kind of pushback on the hustle culture. But I feel like it's hard though, as an entrepreneur and owning a business, you do still have a lot of pressure and we don't think about, do I need to rest? Should I rest? Is it not right to rest? Because I could be doing more. How have you thought about that through your journey, this idea of building in time to rest are really getting more focused on what is essential for your work for your life? How's that evolved for you Annie?

Annie
You know, that's something that I feel like is always something I have to grapple with. I feel like, personally, I have definitely bought into this idea that rest is something that I have to earn not something that is a basic right or need or is essential like breathing, eating, and rest. I'm kind of like, yeah, I can do without that. It's this idea, though, that there is a place in the future, where I will be able to rest, but it's after I get all of this stuff done.

Leah
Exactly I feel that same way. I'm like, oh it's coming, but I can just keep pushing because like someday I'll retire and then I'll start resting.

Annie
Right? It's the whole, like, you'll sleep when you're dead mentality.

Leah
Which is terrible because gosh, in the end, makes you less effective, less productive than you really imagine yourself being because spinning your wheels 24 hours a day actually doesn't make you a better person.

Annie
It really doesn't. I mean, and we see this in the work we do with clients. I'll tell clients who are needing to pump eight times a day to bring up their milk supply and I'll tell them if you need to skip a pump because it'll help you'll actually do the next one. Because if you're sitting here feeling like if I pump right now, I'm never gonna pump again. It's better to skip that pump and take that rest break so you can get back into it. I'm like, why can't I listen to this for myself? I get so hyper focused on my projects that, it really is hard for me to end in the middle of something. Then I feel like if I don't finish it now, then it's never gonna get finished or like I need to move on to the next thing. I was even thinking about this last night, I was listening to a podcast that I really love called Duped: The Dark Side of Online Business and they had their first episode of season two, and they were talking about courses, people who create courses and the kind of claims they make. That they say like, oh yeah, if you make a course then you're going to be working 10 hours a week but making seven figures and this is in the online marketing space. They make crazy big income claims, but the whole idea that there is a Nirvana out there where I am not working at all and I'm a multimillionaire, that that's achievable.

Leah
That’s out there and if you could just work hard enough to make it all come together, then you're gonna get there. It's like that kind of carrot hanging in front of us. We just keep running towards it, like we're gonna make it. We're just gonna work harder until we get there but you just feel like you are being duped.

Annie
It's not something that one person can do. When you look at businesses, the real businesses that actually do scale, it's because they get outside investment, or the people running them have access to money that they can be their own investors. This whole idea that you're going to bootstrap your way to be a gazillionaire when you start with nothing is not right. So what you have to always be looking at, I think is like, what's working right now. Let's not think about buying into some dream of a future that may never come true but how can I scale what I'm doing or manage what I'm doing right now so that I am building in that intentional rest because I only have right now. I don't have that future I just have right now.

Leah
Gosh, it's so hard. I think there is a serious social media curse around this because the other thing that I see, and I get sucked into this all the time. I'll get on social media. I already have plenty of projects and plenty of things to do to fill my entire day and then some, but I'll get on social media and I'll say like, ooh, okay, I love what she's doing. Then I start brainstorming this whole project that I'm gonna do what she's doing and try to make it my own and a new thing, like oh, I got this idea from that. Then I'm like, oh, wait, these people are making a course and those people are doing this thing and these people are doing this. And I'm like, oh my gosh, and then not to mention, unrelated to businesses, I'm like ooh, they're traveling with their kids now. Okay, we got to book a trip. Okay, wait, they're remodeling their kitchen, or they're making this amazing dinner. I'm just like, oh my gosh, I have to do it all and like on every aspect of my life, I have to look social, not look social media, but like attain that social media perfection. It is consuming to where sometimes I literally just throw my phone down on the bed, like get away from me, you demon out of my hands. It feels like it's just sucking you in like you must do it, you must do it, all the things. Look at what they're doing, look at what they're doing. It is such a curse. You really have to be so mindful as you consume media, social media, I feel like when you're an entrepreneur, we're almost forced to be on some way in social media. You're just not gonna grab the market that you might want to, you know, but you also have to be so mindful about it. But I think this is where this hustle culture and this kind of internal nagging of like, I could do a little more, I need to do a little more, I'm not doing everything. I'm not doing what that lactation consultant, she posts 20 times a day, maybe I should be doing that. Oh, look that lactation consultant made a whole latch course. Okay, I've got to do that. That lactation consultant is going live every week to explain something. It can like, consume you with thinking that that's what you need to be doing to be successful. But remember each of those people are doing one thing, and you're seeing 100 things and you're thinking you need to do all 100 things. Where really each of those one people is doing maybe one thing. That's where we have to really start to hone in it's like, what's our one thing? What's the something that really works for you, you know, and really could get some enjoyment, but also build your business from but doesn't suck the life out of you. I think that's what we all need to figure out.

Annie
I love that because when you look at these people, and you do realize when you do one thing, and you do it really well, that's better than doing a whole bunch of things and having them half-finished. There definitely have been things that I've attempted in my life where I was like, this is not the right direction that I want to go in. This is not working for me and being able to identify when it's time to pack up an idea when it's time to just drop something halfway done. That's something where I don't necessarily have the social media thing because I don't spend a lot of time on Instagram and I'm not on Tik Tok. That's just not a format that pulls me in. But I have this really internalized fear of being seen as a quitter, or as a failure, that that's something that is so like, can drive me and part of it is like you move to New York City. I moved here when I was 21 years old, and it's so hard to live here and you're just like, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna beat this city. I'm gonna stay here forever. My husband and I would joke as our friends over the years would leave the city and then report back from the suburbs. What we get is all bunch of John's College friends who move back to Austin and they're like, y'all should move here. You could have a house. We call them quitters. We totally call them quitters and to their face and it's like a joke.

Leah
It's a joke. Yeah, but it is like a slight kind of twinge of truth in there too.

Annie
A little bit. When John's final best friend moved to Texas from New York, he actually said to John, he was like, you win. You officially won. You're the last one here. But it comes out and I joke, but I do love New York City. I feel like we are here to stay but I don't know. I hear it's easy out there but I really invested a lot of the first part of my 20s and early 30s, were all about becoming a screenwriter. I pushed myself so hard. I would run on the treadmill and I would be getting myself amped up for a call with a producer or a meeting to pitch a project. I would listen to Lose Yourself by Eminem over and over and over again because that was my mantra. You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime so resonant to me. I was like, yes, but every call was the one opportunity. Everything that I was doing was like the one moment make or break and I would bring that energy into everything that I was doing, and really put it out there. I know that when you are pursuing a passion, and that was my passion at that time, you do want to go all in. You don't want to sell yourself short. house. But there's a mindset where at a certain point, I didn't feel free to make changes based on what I wanted out of my life because I was so invested in this narrative of success on the terms that I had defined for myself before I had kids. Before I had some life experience, it depends on when you asked me, did I leave screenwriting or did I just fail at screenwriting? For me, it's kind of being comfortable with that idea that I quit, because I either was done trying, and that's okay or I quit because I wasn't good enough and that's also okay. It's fine.

Leah
Maybe not good enough but like, because I think you're amazing, maybe life pulls us in a different direction. Sometimes we're holding so tight to the thing that we think is our direction, and life is tugging on the other end of that rope going, no, you're supposed to be over here, you're supposed to be over here. It is not until we can release that thing that we think we're supposed to be involved in or doing or our passion and get pulled into the direction. So I'm so grateful that life tugged you hard enough out of it so that we could be sitting here today. But it is so crazy when we can reflect back on those things and say, oh wow, I see what happened. But I also think, how can we see that forward? Is there something tugging right now that is not a fit? Is there something right now that feels like you're pushing a square peg in a round hole all day long to make it work, make it work because there's this idea that like, if you don't post 20 times on Instagram, or if you don't see 50 clients a week, or all these things, ideas that we get in our head. If you don't make a beautiful home-cooked meal for your family every single day, there's all these pressures we put on ourselves that aren't fitting, but we think we have to keep going. Maybe life is tugging us in another way because we're supposed to, like someday be sitting on a podcast with Annie and Leah. What can we see in the present that isn't fitting and try to follow that life's tugging us and maybe not see it as like, I'm failing at this, I suck at this but like, Hmm, you know, this isn't really inflow, I am not getting joy. I am feeling like I'm pushing constantly from a source of like, I have to do this. Not like I woke up today so excited that this is the next step for me. Maybe take that as a little nudge, a little tug on that rope from life saying, hey, I got something over here I want you to pay attention to maybe we can turn our attention to those things. Maybe sometimes that means letting go of things that we've invested so much time in. I mean, you said 10 plus years of your life you invested on that dream. That's really, really hard to let go. But we're so grateful for all the lessons that you learned because I know you've shared countless lessons that work taught you that have really been valuable to me and have made you the really amazing person that you are today. So I think it's really cool how we can have that hindsight but also maybe we can start looking at some forward-facing how is that impacting us now or is there something like that going on now. So we've talked about why we have all this hustle culture, all this pressure to do it all. What are some of the things that have resonated with you to kind of combat that to say, you know what, I can't do it all? How am I going to step away from all this pressure to be everything to everyone and do it all perfectly? What has worked for you, Annie? What are some of the things that you've kind of been cultivating in your life to maybe not have all that pressure?

Annie
Let me ask my therapist how I'm doing with that. I mean, really, though, it's coming back to this whole idea of nurture, and that what I'm building in my life, and where I'm putting my time, and my energy needs to be focused around nurturing myself, my family, and my clients and my career. So really looking at where I'm putting my energy and saying, is this building something or is it really just diffusing my energy and scattering me, and do I have to do it right now. That has really involved conversations with my family, including my kids, but also with my friends and my colleagues. I'm really listening when people say things to you, about yourself, it's good to listen to them people that you trust. I remember, like, a lot of times, people would say to me, I just don't know how you do it. I just don't know how you do everything. Every time that was said to me, I would be like, but I don't, but I'm not, I can't, I can't, and just feeling that inner stress. Just saying, I don't want to be a person that people look at and say, I don't know how she does it because I know what it's like inside and it's not good. So how can I be like, that I'm not going to do this and I'm not going to do that. I'm going to whittle it down to the essentials that nurture me and my business and are about building something that takes care of me and my family.

Leah
Yeah, I think that's so, so important. I think you have to give yourself some space to really, really look at all the pressure you're putting on yourself because there are some times that we do need to push ourselves because it is a true passion and desire and dream. I mean, there are some days where I'm like, I got to push myself to finish work that I'm like, I really don't want to do this right now but I've got to do it. In the end, my outcome is something that is really important to me or is going to have some benefit to me or my family or my clients and so it's important. I think sometimes in the hustle and bustle of life, we just get to doing and we’ve just become doers of all the things. In that, we can't lose sight of evaluating what are we exactly doing? You know, it's like you're just spinning your wheels, you're doing all the things, throw a bunch of balls up in the air, and everything's staying up so you're just keeping them up. But it's like looking back and or not looking back, but looking inward to say like, okay, what really is what I want to be doing with my time and then narrowing in your focus. Because like you were saying, you just can't do everything, there's no way to do it all. When you do try to do it all, you're going to be doing a whole bunch of things, but not really well. And I have definitely experienced that in my life, where I'm like, oh man, I really got to get some pruning in here because I'm letting myself and a whole lot of people down when I'm not giving myself more time to be really good at the things that I really want to be good at. That's hard lessons to learn. The other thing is that I have found important is that remembering things are going to be constantly shifting. So in this busyness in this like, okay, this right now I want to be doing these 20 things but maybe I don't need to be doing those in a year or a couple of months and to be continuously evaluating, especially when you're feeling that like just bogged down, and you're not finding the joy in the things that you are doing. I think that's a real alarm bell going off that, like let's evaluate what's going on where am I putting my energy? Is this something that's going to have a positive impact that I desire? Those are all hard things to do when you're just busy with life. I mean, I'm like quiet moment to sit and think like, when am I going to do that? Okay, I already wake up at 530. So what am I gonna wake up at five, so I can have a quiet moment, guess what that's gonna be me sleeping for 30 minutes. That's my quiet moment. It's hard to really force ourselves to shut down the what I could do what I should do and really find the moment to have the peace enough to say, okay, what do I want to do? What's really important right now?

Annie
That's definitely something that getting older helps with having that perspective of time. Being able to look back and say that the urgency I felt around certain things, going back again to the screenwriting career that I had and working in the film industry, and just feeling that kind of do-or-die urgency. To do everything and looking back and being able to say, from the perspective of, it's been almost 10 years since I wrote my last screenplay, had my last paid screenwriting job and looking back and being like, wow, that was amazing that I got to do that. For the time that I got to do it, I had some great experiences. I met some awesome people. I met my husband. Now my child is super into movies and is going to a film High School and so that's really fun. Just realizing that life isn't this catastrophic distillation of all of my energy into one moment that's going to then fulfill me. What happens on the other side of losing yourself? On the other side of that, that one moment is the rest of your life. What do you want the rest of your life to be? It can start right now. It doesn't have to wait, just like that rest doesn't have to wait. You don't have to earn the right to rest. You don't have to earn the right to be satisfied with what you've already done and say, you know what, this isn't working that goes. This is working, and I love it, and how can I structure what I'm doing to support more of this in my life? That's what it's never too late for.

Leah
Yeah, I 100% agree. And to kind of pull this into the world of lactation, I think we get a lot of pressure to see everyone. If you have a practice where you feel like you cannot meet the demands, I mean, that's where pressure to do it all can really be hard to work through, because you've got real people in front of you with real serious needs and begging for your help. We can sometimes get caught up. I know I've totally done this in my business where I haven't even stopped to breathe because I'm like, everybody needs to be seen. Like that really intentional moment of rest is not going to be at the end of you saw every lactating family in your county, you know what I mean? That's where that rest moment doesn't come, then it really has to be built in because it'll just make you a better human in general. Burned out humans are oftentimes you know, hard on themselves, but hard to give and to be present with the people that they love. So we are encouraging you to step back from the pressure of doing it all to really look inward, narrow down your focus so that you can be amazing at the things that you love and do amazing at, and put your energy even if that means you're letting go of some things that you thought you really wanted.

Annie
Definitely. If you can think of someone in your life, when you're done listening to this podcast, think of somebody in your life, who you can tell, I see what you're doing. I see the work you're doing and I'm so proud of you and so happy for you, and what can I do to support you? I know you can think of somebody that just needs to hear that today. To hear that they've got someone on their side cheerleading them, and who wants to support them emotionally or physically? You know, maybe they'll be like, yes, can you please like bring me some food right now I'm very hungry. It's like somebody in your house working in the next room but just to think about maybe you can't do it for yourself, but I bet you could do it for somebody else. Let's just make those that circle of care ripple by nurturing us and get out of the pressure to do it all.

Leah
Step out of that pressure cooker. Know that there is life outside of the pressure cooker and a beautiful business and a beautiful life is there for us all. We just always are going to be on this journey of figuring that out. It's been really fun talking to you today about this Annie and as usual, I'm going to be leaving here with some I think some journal prompts. I'm like, I need to journal about some of this. Some really poignant thoughts came up for me and I'm like, I really want to hold on to this because I think this is such an important conversation to have. So thank you for spending this time today. It was awesome getting to chat about this and I look forward to seeing you again soon on our next podcast.

Annie
I know it's always great. Some of these episodes are like little mini therapy in this definitely felt like that. Alright, have a great day. Leah. I'll talk to you soon.

Leah
Talk soon. Bye-bye.