I think all of us feel like it's never enough. We've got to do more. We've got to move, you know, faster, smarter, quicker. To start off, what is toxic productivity in just plain and simple language? It is a mindset that we have where we become completely obsessed with outcome and achievement and getting something and it becomes a way for us to feel good about ourselves.So we're not being busy to be busy. We're being busy and productive to feel good about ourselves. So we want the end goal in order to just feel better. Exactly. Okay.
So how good you feel becomes completely dependent on whether you get the achievement or the outcome or the check mark. And that's why we continue to just pursue it over and over and over again. By the end of this, I know you're going to give us an answer so that we say, "Okay, you're not going to always feel like this because it it could feel like an endless pattern." It's, you know, I I've said before, it's never enough, right? Like you keep going and going and going. So, did it look like that in your own life?
How did you get here to be talking about this topic? Yeah, it definitely did look like that. I'm in my 20s like you know the standard like overachieving high functioning getting the grades getting the things but not only just in academics and my career but the pressure is also in your personal life in your relationships the kind of friend you are the kind of daughter you are and so in all of your roles you start pursuing like just getting the outcome and that's what I was doing but the promise here is you're going to get to that last check mark and then you're going to feel good but what What's happening with me and that happens with everyone is you get to that place and it doesn't feel good enough and another check mark appears on the horizon that you start working towards and so I started feeling really disconnected. I was feeling very disillusioned by this idea that I had spent so much time getting all the things and you know outwardly it really felt like I did have it all. People would say, "Wow, like you're doing all these things and how amazing." But there was such a big disconnect about how I felt about my life, which was things are not good enough.
I need more. And how other people felt about it, which was, wow, this was so incredible. I feel like you're in my brain. Yeah. Because I I think my husband's going to be the happiest with this because he's like, "What is going on?" Like, and I don't celebrate the achievements.
Like often time I'll have the achievements and not celebrate them. So I I want to get back to that. Are there for somebody listening right now that's like, "Oh, she's in my head, too." Are there signs that someone has crossed over from being busy into toxic productivity? The biggest sign is you're ignoring your wellness. So, you're skipping lunch, you're not sleeping well, you're not eating properly, you're flaking on friends or relationships cuz you want to do more other things that make you feel like that's the check mark.
So that's the biggest one is you are, you know, ignoring your wellness or your productivity is coming at the expense of your wellness. So for example, you're staying up later to stay on the computer. You're getting up earlier, maybe not going on your walk. Is that I mean, is that what you're talking about? Yeah.
Or you're skipping lunch while you're working or you choose to, you know, leave dinners or cancel dinners because you think you should be doing something more productive. Instead of resting, you put pressure on yourself to do something with that time. You don't give yourself a break. Like vacations have to be extremely organized and you have to hit all the check marks on your vacation list when really we're supposed to be relaxing. It's it's in these really subtle ways that we start pursuing something that feels validating that's bigger than us.
How often do you see this in your line of work? And is it everybody that that has a little bit of this to an extent? I think everybody has a little bit of this to an extent right now because of the culture we're in. We are in a very hyperoptimized culture. We are in a culture where we are being told everything needs to be at its optimal level and you can always do more.
So you can see this in self-care culture. Your self-care can be more streamlined. It can be more efficient. You know, you need to drink like loaded coffee or loaded waters. You need to count your macros and people are counting how much they sleep and the metrics on it.
We do this with our friendships. We do this with the kind of dinners we go to, the places we go to. And so essentially what's happening is every area of our life is like barreling towards perfection because we want to like meet this level. But that's not possible and it's not healthy and it's also not necessarily value aligned. So that's the other thing.
When we are in toxic productivity and we are like racing towards outcomes, a lot of times we're pursuing things that are not value aligned. Value aligned meaning they don't fit your value system or value aligned meaning that doesn't really reach that end goal of wellness even if you think it's a self-help whatever it is. So what I mean by that is it's not actually leading you to the life that you want. It's not connected to your values, but you might be pursuing it because you saw it on Instagram, because you heard someone talk about it, you know, you went to a party and someone said it, or you feel like you should. Many of us are trapped in that I should mindset, you know, like I definitely feel this when I have free time.
That was one of one of like a big red flag for me is I would get some free time and I'd be like, "Oh, I should like I should do something else. Like I should do this and the thing that I should do needs to be like cute and perfect. So what do you do when you have that free time now compared to when you were doing your I shoulds. What I do right now is I mean sometimes the voice will come up in your head. It's the world we're in.
It's the way you've been raised. You know, it's the people around you. So that still does happen, but I'm much better at talking myself out of it. So there's this habit of learning to fact check yourself and something I call like the title swap. So instead of giving myself the title of oh you know I have free time I should be productive like my title is productive I will swap that internally to myself and say oh I have free time I want to be restful.
So, I'm changing that to align with my value or I want to be creative or I want to have connection and that can guide me to slowing down when I'm when I have time instead of speeding up when I have time. Why do so many of us do you think feel like we have to earn our worth by doing more? It's a big feeling and it's so deeply embedded in so many people. Okay. And one of the biggest reasons is if you grow up in a home culture where you were constantly rewarded for achievements, you just learn that you are more lovable and you are more valuable and you are more worthy when you're achieving something.
And so rest becomes a threat to that. And then rest comes with the label of lazy. You're not achieving something. You're wasting time. Those are things that I call the unwanted identity.
We don't want to be labeled as that. No. And we learn early on that we can actually barter affection with achievement. So we can get more love if we are achieving something. You know, it's funny when you say that about lazy and I hear I hear hear a lot of people do it often is like, "Oh, I'm being so lazy today or I love being lazy as if we have to pro proclaim that so somebody says it's okay." Exactly.
I mean, that's that's how I feel often times on a on a Sunday. I'm like, "I'm just going to be lazy today." Am I still accepted by being like that? Okay. So, you write in the book about the wanted and unwanted identities that you were talking about. I really want people to hear this.
I want listeners to hear this because I think it's something that so many of us as women, especially, you know, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, sandwich generation, are dealing with. Why does that resonate so much with women when it comes to identities? Cuz I think we we hear it more in our heads than men do. Yeah. I think it starts from like the way women are socialized right from an early age.
Like there are a lot of labels put on young girls, you know, to be the good girl, the smart girl, the polite girl. And often times those labels if they come to men come much later in life, okay? You know, boys can be rambunctious and they can break things and people don't actually have labels for that. But if a girl is very polite, like people will name it immediately, like, "Oh, you're such a polite little girl." Right? And you'll see people call little girls very pretty.
Very rarely do you see that for little boys. Maybe it's on their birthday or like some event that's happening, right? So, I think that's the first thing we learn to understand and identify with labels very quickly as women. And then as soon as we kind of hit like I want to say like early tween, like not even teens, our labels are used to really kind of police and control our behavior and what's expected of us. Because in the very typical gender dynamic, young girls are it's demanded that they kind of rise to the occasion and be responsible and care for their siblings and be ladike.
Yeah, exactly. And that still happens like we want to say it's 2025 and people are different, but unfortunately that does still happen. What are the labels that you hear women get, girls get versus guys get? I think if you look at the work environment, right, a lot of times men can be very assertive and they're called assertive. And when women are assertive, they're called cold, calculating, the b- word, all of those things, right?
Harsh, too much, you know, kind of edgy. And the behavior is the same. When a woman makes really good notes in the workplace, she is correctly perhaps labeled as conscientious, but that label comes with subservience, like you'll make the notes cuz you're just good at it, right? But nobody questions whether a man even makes good notes or not. No.
And I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but this has happened to me where I at a workplace, we were peers, and the expectation was that I would just make the notes cuz I was the girl at the table completely. Completely. And I think that's societal. I think that's dating back to the 1950s or whatever it is that the the woman's a noteaker and the guy sits there and is the thinker. Exactly.
Which is so bizarre to me that we still have that conversation, but Yeah. And then there's like the label of nurturer, the label of the person who keeps the home together. Like often times you'll hear men talk about their wives as like the soul of the house. What they really mean to say is you're the project manager, right? And you're keeping it running, but you don't see those labels for men.
They're they're limited labels for men. I hope people can hear this because I I really I agree with you and I don't know that it's ever been kind of broken down quite so so simply in understanding, but you start to hear those words if you're paying attention to them now. I hope after listening to this people hear that and I hope they hear the wanted versus unwanted labels cuz or identities. Yeah. So, I'll quickly just share a little about that.
So the wanted identity is the identity in your home that was highly rewarded. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a good or a bad identity. It's just the one that you learned as a child is going to give you affection. So sometimes in families that could be the rebellious kid cuz they're getting attention, right? And so what you learn inside is this is who I have to be always.
And that's what I always always have to strive for. And the reason women struggle so much more with toxic productivity in certain ways is that the wanted identities that we develop in the home are often around doing things and doing more and doing for others and we don't really pause to think about whether that's something we want or not. How do parents influence whether or not you have toxic productivity? Parents can certainly name certain things inadvertently. Like they're not even trying, but they might be like, "Oh, you're so good for like getting all the grades.
Here's an extra cookie." Or they might, you know, brag about you. And these are good things, but if that's the only way you're receiving validation from your parents, then then that connection sticks. So for parents, you can definitely validate the external efforts of your child, but diversify the things you value in them. Instead of just the achievement, perhaps value their creativity or their problem solving or just their presence, their kindness. And so parents like depending on what you are praising your kid on, they learn that that's the most important thing.
And the second biggest way is how the children see you, you know. So I grew up in a home where my mom I have no memories of my mom sleeping in ever. Zero. And if I ever saw her, up until the last 10 years, if I ever saw her lying on the couch, it's cuz she was sick. I was just going to say that that's the only time I remember my mother on the couch.
Otherwise, I remember her in the kitchen or putting us to bed or going grocery shopping. Yeah. Even days off, my mom would be like, "Oh, it's my day off. I'm going to take out everything from the cabinets and reorganize it." It's constantly move. It's it's constant constant movement. [snorts] Does toxic productivity show up in our relationships too with other people aside from just our relationship with how we relate outward?
That is the most interesting thing that I shared in the book because a lot of times people think that productivity is workrelated but the truth is you can burn out at work and you can also burn out in your romantic relationships. How so? Because toxic productivity shows up in romantic relationships in a way that if there is too much caregiving on one side, right? Yes, that's the social structure, but internally, are you putting milestones in your head about the romantic relationship? Are you adding pressure on yourself to achieve those milestones?
Do you only feel good when the external milestones are met that you've put in the relationship? And is the me like the mechanics of pursuing it coming from shame from the fear of missing out or being left behind or not feeling good enough. So these powerful drivers push us to pursuing our romantic relationships at a speed and like at a magnitude that's perhaps not healthy. Is it hard to tell the difference when you're in a relationship? Because you do want to hit certain benchmarks, right?
Deciding whether or not if you both decide this is something that you want to move forward with, you know, how long before you know whether or not this is, you know, going to be long term, you know, maybe if you if you're talking about children, when you want to have children, when you might be getting married, what's the difference between, you know, normally being cons being concerned on a normal level about what's going on in the relationship and then overdoing it where it gets to be toxic? It's the line between are your decisions based on your values. So, I I mentioned that a little bit earlier, but the way it shows up in romantic relationships is, you know, we all grow up with being told that relationships need to look this way and you need to follow this timeline. I think doing the work inside and saying, "Is this something I really want? Is this going to like bring me closer to the life I want?
Is this the value I want? Like, do I actually care about long-term relationships or is it because I feel like I'm behind from my friends? Do I actually want children or do I just think I'm supposed to have them and therefore I need to have them with this person? And I think that exploration might lead you to the same milestones, but the way you get there will be from a place of healthy pace versus speeding through it and adding pressure and then things can get really confusing. So, I think like how do you know if you're wanting this relationship from a place of value is noticing how quickly you get triggered by other people's news?
Social media. Whether somebody gets married, somebody's getting engaged, somebody's having a baby. So, what does that So, when you get triggered, how does that how does that manifest and how does that show up? It a shows up in your body immediately. So, you might feel tense like your jaw, your shoulders, then you start saying a story to yourself.
So, your body then your thoughts. If your automatic thought is, I'm such a loser or my partner actually doesn't love me, right? Because this thing hasn't happened, like the quality of your automatic thoughts will tell you if it's coming from a place of shame, fear, or being behind or like a genuine desire. And so, you know, pushing against toxic productivity, whether in romance or work, is not to not be productive. It's to get there at a healthier pace in a healthier way.
You know, I I hit how to menopause the book hit the New York Times and I was so excited by it and then I was like, okay, we got to do what's the next thing we have to do and never never, you know, celebrated it, never paid attent, you know, didn't didn't say that was enough or that was okay. I was on to the next already. And I've noticed that as a pattern throughout my whole life. And so that's why this was, you know, so interesting to me to understand the fact that it isn't about doing less, it's about doing it and getting there in a healthy way. I didn't understand what the definition of a healthy a healthy way look like.
Yeah. When you have people come into you to talk to you, how do you define whether or not somebody is burned out, whether or not somebody is just working too much or maybe that's the same thing or they've they've gone into an area of being toxic in their productivity. So toxic productivity is the mechanism through which we get to burnout. So if you don't solve for it, you are definitely going to get there. And you know it's like how connected is this person to the things that bring them joy.
That's why burnout can sometimes look like depression because the same idea of like not feeling joy anymore is like the common symptom between the two. And that's also a big red flag of toxic productivity. It just becomes super amplified when you're burnt out. You know, when I work with people who are struggling with this, the pattern is I'm doing so much and it's never enough. I've done all the things and nothing feels good enough.
And you know, similar to something you said is like I got the best seller and it wasn't enough. I suddenly was like, where do I put my energy next? And that's distinctly different than saying, wow, I met a goal and now where am I going to direct myself? Right? Which is it's like there's it's like I met the goal and it's enough or it's just not enough and I have to do something else to get that feeling.
I was so excited like I'm I'm so happy for a number of reasons but in particular the number of women that it helps. Congratulations. Thank you. But it was really the number of women that you know it helped but then it was like what do I do with my energy? It was less about that and more about what am I supposed to do now?
Like I'm supposed to constantly feel this feeling of uncertainty, frantic, you know, doing something next. And I think that a lot of women in particular in midlife feel like that. And whether that's because, you know, kids have grown up, whether they're dealing with, you know, pmenopause, menopause, whether they're dealing with reinvention, do you notice that time in life bringing this more to the surface? Yeah, I mean, it brings it to the surface in like a very interesting and unique way because it intersects with like an identity transition. You know, midlife is like a place where we start questioning the decisions we've made.
Did they serve us? And do they serve us now? And a lot of us are not doing it in this like methodical way. We might just be like, "Oh, I don't like this anymore or I'm feeling very disconnected. It's very like, you know, thoughts are very different." But that's essentially the question we're answering is the things I used to do, do they still serve me?
And because in this like hyperproductive culture, so much of our identity is around doing, all the milestones have been met because they've been done. The question starts to feel like a void. Yeah. And now what? Now what am I supposed to do?
Right. And so then what happens is you just start throwing paint at the wall cuz you want to do something. You want to feel useful. You want to feel connected. You might be comparing yourself to your old self.
You know, I find myself saying like, "Wow, like I used to not need this much sleep on a Saturday night, but now I like I need to sleep. I could go 2 days without sleeping and being out and about, but now that would like I would get sick, right? I'm with you." And so sometimes I compare myself to that past version of myself. And I think in midlife a lot of women do that and then we set goals to achieve based on the old versions of ourselves. So we're setting our goals at 50 to what we were able to accomplish, do felt like we accomplished at 20 years old or even wanted or wanted.
And so you know to kind of like if productivity and the things you achieve are a core part of your identity. That identity shift that happens in midlife requires you to write a new story. And that means you have to actually take a step back which means you have to be unproductive for a little bit of time so that you can kind of let yourself imagine a new story for yourself. What is that step back look like? How do you step back and be unproductive without feeling shame, disappointment, and you know repeat the words I'm being lazy?
Well, one of the things is to create a regular habit of having free time for yourself. Now I I can hear like a collective gas. I was just going to say everyone's like stop it. I know. Who is this woman?
Get her off. No, but you know that habit is what's going to allow you that psychological flexibility of sitting in nothingness. Okay. So how do we sit in nothingness? We start very small.
We start super super small because people are busy. Especially if you're sandwich generation. You don't have like 40 minutes a day to be doing nothing. Absolutely not. And that's not the recommendation either.
So start with 5 minutes in the morning where you're not reading anything. You're not listening to anything. You're not doing anything. And you're also not planning anything in your head. Okay?
Can you just sit by the window or at your table or like if you have a kitchen nook, whatever, or sit outside just for 5 minutes and just stare. That's the first thing. I mean, I can't Can you remember the last time you did that? No. But I was just telling somebody today before you came in.
I was sitting there and I thought I just got to chill out for a little bit in December like once the holidays start. And the last time I remember doing it was August and I brought a hard coverver book with me on vacation and I I literally had to force myself every day to sit down and read the book you know it was like a fiction book so I wasn't necessarily learning something and that was my moment of doing nothing and that and I was doing something but no I don't remember any time I've done that just completely unstimulated time cuz if you think about it our brains are very overloaded right now because of the world like we're hyper stimulated Then of course you've got like whatever's going on in the body anyway like at you know life transition spaces. Then you've got toxic productivity like hiding in the shadows telling you that you're you know shameful or you're whatever. And so we're very overstimulated and we have to learn how to be unstimulated. And 5 minutes a day if you can just commit to that for a whole month that will start shifting your ideas a little bit.
And it's an incremental change. Okay. So wait five minutes. M so we we make a pro we're going to all make a promise together. So 5 minutes whatever time in the you get up in the morning drink your coffee tea whatever it is and sit by the window and just what do you think about let your thoughts come you me I exact so you okay okay so it's like from the the science of meditation they call it like the observer mind and so it's essentially like watching clouds come and go or if you're a little bit more concrete like watching cars on the highway like you don't want to get stuck on one car and like get into the make and the model you just like notice your thought.
It comes and it goes and it's like a practice. Okay? So, you're observing. You're not engaging with your thoughts, which which kind of takes you out of planning mode. Okay?
And so, that's like the fir, let's say, the first 30 days. What you're trying to build up to is the habit of being unstimulated on your own regularly. I have to imagine this would be really good for kids, too, because they're stim they they're stimulated, you know, the minute they're born in this in this world that we're in, honestly. Yes. All right.
So, we're going to do 5 minutes, God willing. And then what are we doing next? And then you want to do something that I call the Chanel rule, which is once you Did you say Chanel rule? Yeah. Chanel like Chanel.
Coco Chanel. So, let me tell you. So, Coco Chanel was very famous to have said that when you are leaving your house, take off one piece of accessory cuz in the vacuum of your bathroom or your vanity, you put on a lot and you don't really understand the context you're going to be in, right? So, I love that you know that because I I I've known that for a long time and I I'm glad you're putting it into play here. Yeah.
You know, she's a underrated woman. Complicated. Yes. But but underrated for the time she lived in. But so what I did is like I took this to my own calendar.
I tend to overbook and overdo and overcommit without looking at the context of my life in that week. I'm just saying yes. You're saying something to me. I'm saying yes. I'm slotting it in.
And so the Chanel rule is taking one thing off your calendar week after week. Okay, I like that. So you're under committing instead of overcommitting. And so once you get in the habit of sitting with yourself for 5 minutes a day, then you build a habit of taking something off your calendar, you will then build the habit of spending that free time on your own. Now, I'm imagining there are a lot of people listening going, "Hey, I'd love to take something off my calendar, but there's nothing I can take off because between picking up kids or or making dinner or I have family coming into town.
So, where do you go to look for that?" So, I like to do like audits. And so, I call this the time energy audit where you list down the last 3 weeks of everything you've done. Every single thing, work, personal life, romantic, friendship, children, physical stuff, right? And then write a column and ask yourself, okay, how did I feel before I did this? How did I feel after?
Very important. Then ask yourself three questions. Did I have to do this? Yeah. Did I have to do it when I did it?
Okay. Yep. Right. And what would have happened if I didn't do it? Those are great questions, right?
What would have happened if I didn't do it fully? So tell me it again. Yeah. So did I have to do it? Mhm.
Me being I have to do I physically could I had my partner, my child, my mom. Okay. Yeah. Did I have to do it the time I did it? Sometimes I have this like urgency.
I got to do something. And then I'm like, wow, this could have waited till next week. Oh my gosh. It would have eased my week a little bit. 100%. [gasps] And the last one is, you know, what would have happened if I didn't do it fully? Like if I gave it my 20%, if I just didn't do it at all.
And when I did this before writing the book actually as part of my journaling, I realized that I was actually committing to a lot of things that were not making me feel good before and after. And I was doing a lot of things that I could have asked my partner to do, but I was locked in that should. Yeah. And there were many things that I actually just took off and the world didn't end. And so you want to do this like seasonally.
There are some seasons that are very [clears throat] like holidays are a very packed season for people. Summers for kids people who have kids are very packed, right? And so seasonally you can adjust, but sometimes you might have these legacy things on your calendar. A thing you volunteered for like 3 months ago, but it's not serving you anymore. A committee you're on at work, but like do you have to right there expectations of yourself?
Of yourself. Do your kids have to be in four after school activities? Can they be in two? Right? Can you actually maybe get store-bought cupcakes instead of bake them yourself?
Like, it's all of these things. And we all do it. Like, when I have dinner parties at home, I put so much pressure on myself to just make everything myself. And it's like I'm not even like somebody who cooks. I can tell you how to release that.
Good. Yeah. I mean, I enjoy cooking, but it's like do I have can I not just buy the bag of chips? Right. Like and it's these little ways that we are draining our energy and up top we're like oh my gosh I have no time I have no energy and so it's like that what does it look like so those are two habits I tools I think that are really important are there any other ones that you think if if someone's listening right now and says okay I'd like to put those two into into practice in the next two months is there a third tool that would be a good one to add to that a third one this is also going to get a collective gasp it's called to embrace mediocrity in your life.
Okay, that is going to get a gas abstract concept but in reality what it means is assess which parts of your life need the best version of you and which parts will survive with the good enough version of you or the thing that you do and before you commit to anything decide is this the thing I'm going to be the best at or can I give it a little bit of like a half effort and it's still okay and save that complete effort for something else. Yes. It's just it's great and I think it's I think this is like the perfect time because we just feel like everything's moving. I I don't know about you, but I feel like everything's moving faster. Every day I wake up, there's more to know, more to do to where you finally just go, I just give up, you know, and you don't want to be you don't want to be in that place.
Yeah. And you know what? You know, research shows right now that our like attention span is at 47 seconds, which is down from like a few minutes that people can stay focused on something. So our brain is unbelievable. 47 seconds is very low. I actually think it sounds like a lot.
That's true. Like you're trying to watch a video and you hold it. 47 seconds is a lifetime. But that's the thing, right? Like we used to be able to pay attention for 3 minutes at a time in the 2000s. Like and now we can't do that.
And that is because we're so like in demand like things are constantly being asked of us. And so that's why, you know, having some unstimulated time, really assessing where you're putting your energy and then choosing to give your 100% where it matters is so important. So you said this earlier, you said you realize that if you didn't do something, the world wasn't going to end, but it took you a long time to realize that. So what do you tell a woman that is listening there today that is worried that if she doesn't get something done or accomplished or handled that the world's not going to end? I think that the fear is that it won't happen the way I need it to or you know and there is a truth that sometimes if a woman is not doing the thing it won't happen.
However, if you're somebody who's struggling with this, what I would recommend is try to pull back in the smallest way [snorts] in the safest relationship because the thing that we have to get better at is sitting with that discomfort. Like for me it was very uncomfortable for me to like not do the thing because I felt like the world was going to end, right? And so that discomfort needs to we need to learn how to tolerate it and we can do that by exposing ourselves to it. So if you have a friend that you can practice this with and just kind of don't make the dinner reservation, let them just, you know, on the group chat if you're the first person who's like, "Oh, I got the spot in the village, right?" just don't do it and see what happens. That's the safest environment.
It's a group of friends, it's a dinner, the stakes are very low, right? You don't feel like you're going to get the blame or Yeah. Because be the cause of something not working. Exactly. And so like in these small areas like look in your life where it can, you know, really help you and just practice it.
Once you practice it and you see that, oh, the world didn't end. We ended up having a dinner. Maybe it wasn't like very well organized, but we got together, we had a conversation, all of those things happened. We connected and so that will start building that muscle and then you can actually bump it up a little bit more to something that's a little bit more high stakes maybe in your relationship maybe with your children right and then you bump it even more a little bit and that slowly gives you more agency okay that's the biggest thing I realized is when we live in the fear that if I don't do it everything's going to fall apart what really is happening at like a deeper psychological level is we feel like we don't have any other choice we are disempowered empowered. Yeah.
And that creates so much resentment in relationships. And so by practicing this slowly, not only are you doing yourself a service, you're doing your relationship of like, you know, a service as well. I think it leads me to this this question, which I think is like the the big question for me. I have a really difficult time saying no. Like next level no, I'd rather inconvenience myself, make myself miserable going into it and coming out of it than saying no.
And I think that there are a lot of people Yeah. That feel like that. Is there a script that you can give us to help us say no more maybe in 2026, but to to to say it and say it in a kind way and say it in a way where we don't regret that we've done that over and over again in our minds. Yeah. So, I dive into this a lot in a lot of my work, including the book, but outside of it as well, as to why people struggle with saying no.
And we know the reasons are like whether or not you feel awkward with somebody for what they've asked or whatever. The truest reason someone struggles to say no is they can't tolerate the discomfort of disappointing someone of you know letting someone down or making someone angry or you know making someone uncomfortable. So the first step is like learning how to just tolerate discomfort. But a script how do you learn how to tolerate discomfort? Oh yeah.
Do it enough. I mean that's one way to do it for sure. But also just you know again you want to start with safe relationships. You want to you know say to them I had a friend who would say to me this is something I'm practicing with my therapist. So I'm going to say no to you more to the therapist.
No to me as a friend. Oh it was a safe person for her. And she would just practice saying no when I offered recommendations for restaurants or parties or whatever and it slowly made her comfortable enough to say it to other people. Wow. Okay.
And how do you tolerate discomfort? You you know you breathe through it. That's the simplest way to do it. You label it in your head. You take a breath and then you shift your energy by doing something like you move, you get up, you wash your face, you leave the room, things like that.
But if you have issues with saying no, the most helpful way I found is to first take the pause. Someone has asked you for something, take a pause and ask for time. So that's the delay piece of it. So hey, take a deep breath. Is there do you want to go to dinner tonight?
You want to go grab drinks after this? Okay. Tamsen, let me get back to you in 20 minutes. Right? Okay.
That takes the pressure off of me to think about how I should say no. Then the formula is you thank the person for thinking of you because you don't want nos to burn bridges, right? Then you can offer either a direct decline or you can offer an alternative that still keeps the connection or you can support them in getting that request elsewhere. Okay. So there's three choices.
Yes. So I could say Tamsen, thanks for the offer for drinks. I'm not able to today. That's one clear. Not an explanation.
Not a reason why. Okay. Second is thanks. I'm not able today. How is next week?
Mhm. Right. Third is I'm not able to, but one of my girlfriends is free right now. If you're looking to meet someone new, right? So, there's a way to kind of like soften the edge, protect your energy, and also protect the relationship.
You know, you do a really incredible job in your book of turning shame into curiosity. Can we talk a little bit about what that looks like in real life? So, shame is a statement. And so, you might hear it as a statement to yourself. You're lazy.
You're such a loser. How could you mess this up? Like, that's a rhetorical question. That's a statement. There's never to yourself.
This is how shame shows up for us. And you know the way to kind of shift that is to transform that statement into a question that you would ask someone else. So if your thought is you messed up the presentation, right? If you think about how you would phrase this as a question to someone else, it might be what do you think went wrong or where could it have been better and how could we actually change this for the future? Those are all questions that are getting to the same thing, which is you want to improve at your presentation, right?
Sol more solutionoriented. Solutionoriented in like very tactical things, but if it's like an emotional thing that you're feeling shameful about, like it's maybe it's around like a friendship or a romantic relationship, it doesn't need to give you a solution, but it needs to ask a question that can help you expand the way you're looking at things. Because a shamebased statement is a closed statement. It's very black and white and it is it feels immovable. I'm lazy.
Period. Right. But if you transform it into a question, it allows you to actually access different parts of the story so you can make changes if you want. Oh my gosh, there's so many things I've learned today. I I hope that I want to put it all make sure it's all in the show notes, too, so it's it's so much easier for everybody.
The book is Toxic Productivity. What does healthy productivity look like? Healthy productivity does not think rest is a reward. In healthy productivity, rest is a requirement. That's number one.
Number two, healthy productivity is very much aligned with your values. So, you're not just doing things cuz you're comparing yourself to other people or you're not doing things and then trying to back fit them into your values. Any decision you make at the forefront, you know that it's moving the needle forward to the life you want, which is the life you truly want, not because you saw someone's Christmas card. And healthy productivity also has end points. So, we say to ourselves, okay, you know what, this season I'm working on this, this, and this, and when I meet that, that's good enough.
We are done. And then I'll restart a different project at a later time. So, we should give ourselves those end points. Yes. But not to achieve those, check them off and go to the next thing.
To achieve them, appreciate them, and then decide what else we're going to do. Exactly. And when you make those decisions, make sure you ask yourself, do I really want to do this? Do I want to do this right now? And what would happen if I didn't do it?
How do you help people celebrate their wins when they get to that point versus checking it off the list and trying to find the next one? The first thing is to name it, you know, name it. And and I think having accountability partners is really important. And so if you have one person who you can actually say it out loud to and they can mirror it back to you, that's a really important way of like plugging in. So you know, our brains, we have these neurons that are kind of like ish right here.
I think they're called mirror neurons. And they essentially mirror what the other person is saying in front of you. That's why emotions are contagious. That's why babies laugh if you smile at them. That's what's working.Mirror neurons. There are neurons. Yeah. And so we should leverage that as adults. And so being with somebody who can help you remember that your wins matter, it kind of mirrors it back to you.Okay. So if you struggle with that, I think having an accountability partner is very helpful. So like naming it to yourself, having someone name it to you and then also assigning like a like a like a like a treat, but it doesn't have to be like something you purchase. It can be anything. Can it be champagne?It for sure. Could be champagne. It could be said it was okay. It could be things you buy, of course, you know, treat yourself, but something that's like a positive reinforcer to actually getting the win. And that's just how our brain is wired.What we're not get when we immediately jump to the next thing. What we don't get is that valid like positive reinforcement, that validation, that dopamine. And so we're like still searching for it. So we're like, "Oh, let me go get the next book or the next whatever." Right? If you actually give yourself that, your brain will feel satisfied.What are some examples of that? I mean, champagne, I'm joking around, but what what are I mean, that could be it. It could be it could be something that is joyful, right? So, it could be like letting yourself take a day off. Okay.
And really just appreciating the journey that you took, doing like a retrospective and like looking at all the things that you worked on and like doing like a little bit of like memory lane is always really nice. Another thing that you can do is you can actually write positive reinforcement to yourself and that actually feels really good. And so if you write like letters to your past self or your future self is like a really helpful exercise in giving yourself that dopamine boost, right? I like that. I think that you know sometimes it is nice to reward yourself with things like I I can't take that off the table.
But that can't be why we do it but it is nice to do that. Something simple as like even buying yourself a fresh bouquet of flowers for like 10 bucks and making a nice arrangement. Putting some music on and really appreciating the moment that you're in. All the things we do for other people, I think, right? Like we people come over, we put music on, we make sure there's flowers, we want to cook for them.
So yeah, we forget about ourselves in the process. All right. So I know there are women that are listening. Maybe there's a woman that is exhausted, still convinced that she has not done enough. For the woman that feels like she just hasn't done enough, what do you want her to believe about herself?
I want her to believe that she absolutely has done more than enough because there is no way that you're a woman today in today's world where you haven't done enough. Whether it's taking care of your romantic relationships, your partners, your children, your workers, co-workers, friends, yourself, like we are all doing a lot, you know. So, what I want her to believe is that she has done enough. But what I want her to like I want to invite her to look back and actually pick three things this year that she was thinking about last year, you know, and and it happened because and it doesn't have to be workrelated. It can be, you know, I Midi, the care women deserve.
