9: How To Show Up Completely: A Guide to Managing Your Energy With Andrew Deutscher

We can't grow without stress. And we also know stress really isn't the enemy. The enemy is the absence of recovery to some degree. And the way we misconstrue stress.

Yeah.

If we can reframe certain stresses in our lives as challenge stress. This happens inevitably when people say they have these problems or these challenges and we're talking through them. It's interesting to me that life is calling on something in them that maybe they haven't called on before, because right now is incredibly important for them to understand. What. What is that call? What attribute inside of you? What quality? What is life calling on you to summon and to either get really good at or to draw upon from your previous experiences so you can solve this current challenge and problem and then reach higher ground.

Hi, I'm Paige Nolan. Welcome to. I'll meet you there. A place where heart centered conversations are everything. Living what matters is the truest thing, and sharing the journey is the best. Hi, everyone, and welcome back. When I was first brainstorming guests to have on this podcast, I knew I was going to ask the person who you're going to meet today. His name is Andrew Deutscher. And this sounds sort of dramatic and maybe grandiose to say, but it's true. Andrew taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my adult life. The lesson Andrew taught me is our topic for today's conversation, and it's the foundation of Andrew's personal and professional life. And I've come to believe it's the foundation for all of our lives. That lesson can be summarized in one sentence. Energy, not time, is the most powerful resource we have. Simple sentence.

It makes sense. It's easy to say we all know it's true because we've lived it. When you're energized by something, you find the time, you take the time, it all expands for you. And when you're depleted, you could have all the time in the world, and it doesn't matter. You've got nothing to give but to honor that. Energy is our most important resource, is a real act of courage and intention. It's a lot easier to say it in a sentence than it is to live it in everyday life. I met Andrew 25 years ago. He was working with my husband, Boyd, at Sony Pictures Television, and he was a superstar sales exec. He rocketed up through the organization, traveling, selling tv shows. Very successful. He got married. He had two kids, and with a full, full plate of responsibility, he started to get burned out. It was right around that time he attended a corporate training through Sony. It was facilitated by a company called the Energy Project.

And that was the beginning of Andrew's shift to managing his personal energy differently, which ultimately would lead to him helping others to do the same. Today, Andrew runs his own company called Regenerate. He works with corporate leaders and their teams to develop practices that absolutely transform the workplace. He offers executive coaching, he facilitates workshops and seminars, and he's a keynote speaker. He's consulted for all these big corporations that y'all will know, Coca Cola, Apple, Amex, Intel, United States Air Force, and many others.

I invited him to meet me here because we're living and working and raising our families in this insanely fast paced, relentless lifestyle of doing and keeping up with information and managing schedules. And it's just a lot of output and it's exhausting and it can be really stressful. Andrew offers us a way to think about sustaining energy, and he's passionate about helping us to engage with our lives and engage with each other and lead our lives with truth and intention. In this conversation, you're going to hear Andrew offer a specific reframe around the term managing stress and self care, and he's going to share what he says is the most important thing he does to recover and restore his own energy.

He talks about leadership and what makes a great leader. And by leadership, we don't just mean corporate teams or organizational teams. We were really talking about leadership as it relates to family life and just showing up in your everyday life as a leader. And then at the end of the conversation, I loved the part where he talks about a practice that he feels we could all be doing more of with our families and our colleagues and our business partners. And I got really excited about that because it's something that I see in my coaching practice and I feel in my everyday life all the time. So the end of the conversation is one of my favorite parts. I know y'all are going to appreciate this one. If you're like me, once you really embrace these ideas that Andrew stands for, it's going to change the way you plan and respond to your life for the better. So enjoy this conversation with Andrew Deutscher.

Here's where I want to start. Right between when I left my preschool teaching job and I was going out on my own and I knew I wanted to coach. I have a memory of going to San Francisco. You invited me to a workshop that you were hosting, and it was the first time that I understood the concept of energy within me, as opposed to energy outside of me. So when I arrived to that workshop. This was my thinking is, I'm running out of time. I'm already behind the eight ball. You know, I don't know how to start a business. I know I want to coach. I've been coaching on the side, out of the living room. I've been doing groups of moms out of the school where I was working. But time was the only resource that felt familiar to me. It was the only way I was thinking about my life. And at that moment in my life, the girls were five and miles was three years old, and you just don't have a lot of time.

So already it was like I would wake up at 06:00 a.m. already feeling like a failure. So when I sat in that conference room with you and I heard your message about energy and what it meant to recover, it was a total aha moment for me. And I have to tell you, I don't know if I've ever framed it for you in this way, but it actually really changed everything for me in terms of how I approached launching a business, what the word recovery even means. And it's an ongoing process for me. It's not like, oh, I manage everything perfectly now.

But I want you to share with us your story of getting into that conference room to be able to teach just the idea of recovery and energy management. And, you know, I have to imagine that if you've arrived there to teach it, then you must have had some sort of burnout or understanding of what it means to not have it before you get to the point of leading other people through awareness, because you just don't teach something that you haven't lived through, at least not the way you do it.

Well, I appreciate that, and I remember it well. And you're right. I think there are those things that we're confronted with that we need to learn ourselves that really become probably with some sense of urgency and real clear purpose.

Yeah.

Something that you need to roll into your own life. And then if that puts you in a position to teach it to others, that's great, because then there's more passion with it. For me, I can only articulate it to you this way, which I don't think I could at the time because I was 38 years old. I felt like my life was getting away from me.

Yeah.

That was just the sense that I had. I was moved to a new city. I was recently married, and actually Jake was along. Tara, I think, just had Gavin. So it was just this point in time where I felt like so much was happening outside of me in the external world. So much more was being asked of me at work. I was absolutely inside of the strain that many people were back in 2009. And like, in many ways, we continue to be just the strain of the modern workplace and how it's fairly relentless and ask more and more of you. And I didn't know what to do with that, and I didn't really have a good answer to it. I could barely really name the problem other than I just didn't feel good. Right. I felt depressed. I felt like things were getting away from me. And at a time when I really wanted to be connected with my wife and a new family, that was Paige. It was scary.

Yes.

That's a scary moment when everything's supposed to be great and this is everything that you work for to get to that place, and then there's unhappiness or discontent, and then you're not even sure where that's really coming from. Yeah, that was a really tough awakening for me. And as you described it, I think similarly for me, I did have the opportunity to engage with a program. It was the energy project at the time.

Yeah.

I was working at Sony with Boyd and really started to feel kind of that modern day stress of the workplace impacting my health. I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now.

Paige Nolan 08:30 Yeah.

Impacting my relationships. You know, Tara and I would talk about it. Things became very transactional, not really connected, and I did not feel like I was performing at the level that I could. So some of the concepts central to energy management spoke to me at a time when I really needed it the most.

Were you able to implement right away? Like, when energy project came into Sony and did the training and it resonated with you? Did you immediately have a sense of, oh, I could make this little change or that little change before you ultimately left Sony pictures and now you're on your own, you know, were there small things that you had to do first before you really knew how to replenish and recover?

That is such a great question, and it reminds me of something really important in this conversation. Anytime we want to make a change, its really helpful that were in the environment where that change is possible. I felt like, well, Sony was investing in this, so they, of course, must have leadership organized and aligned to some of these concepts of taking better care of yourself. Well, put it that simply for right now.

Yeah.

And recognizing that your downtime is not wasted time, it's optimizing.

Yep.

And so coming out of that session, I was excited. I felt like I'm a hard worker, but this was an important piece missing for me because there was no downtime. There was only chase it. What more can you do? How can we do it bigger and faster? And I went to my boss at the time, and I said, this was a great program, and here's a couple of things I'd like to implement. And he essentially said no. So the environment actually wasn't receptive to that. But I also knew that I'm the steward of my own energy. I really did leave that session feeling like, regardless of what my external situation is and my circumstances are, I'm going to manage my energy better, because that's for me and it's for my family and it's for my life. And so I started to do small things, but it was challenging. And, no, I did not really just sort of hop into it. There was a lot of false starts.

Yeah.

But one thing I think, I don't know, sometimes you just know, Paige, where it's like, it may be slipping away from you, but you know you're not going to lose it. And I kept coming back to it, kept coming back to it. And then here's what helped. I was laid off in 2009.

Oh, yeah.

So having those tools and strategies at that time was incredibly helpful.

Yeah.

And then I was able to really start to integrate it into my life in a wholly new set of routines and structure and environment.

Tell me more about that initial gap where you see the opportunity. You know, you're burned out. You know, talk to me about how do you get to a point where you're really embracing not only the new career path, but also this whole philosophy of life, the way that you lived, the way that you're healthy now, all of it has shifted since 2009. So take us back to that initial transition time.

Yeah. So what I remember about that, and it certainly wasn't anything initial where I even had the mindset that I will go and teach this or learn at that level, or even join the company from which I learned it. It really was just starting to put some practical action steps together. You know, right after I was laid off, that was just sort of the immediate, like, okay, let's figure out what we're going to do here to continue to earn money, even though I had a little bit of time. And then even a few months after that, Gavin was diagnosed with type one diabetes. So some of the real strategies and methods for me around what I had learned around energy started to become a little bit fractured or just started to become a little. Some distance yeah. But then I really oriented to leveraging those strategies and mindsets and tools and applying it to those situations in those conditions. And it was amazing. It was an amazing process to do that. I finally felt like, for the first time, the analogy is I felt like I was falling after traveling for 40 plus weeks for ten years and being in an industry that was just so hyper competitive and the onslaught of new media in the old media world. So it really started to put me in a kind of a repurpose my life mode, where I started to earned my attention to living with more passion as I started to take the steps to just summon more energy. So in terms of how that's really evolved, it's become much more integral way of my life. When I think about what does it mean to manage energy, what are the different energy dimensions that are available to us, and then how do you fortify each of those? So having the mental model, having that framework for approaching your life, and I think, Paige, you had a similar takeaway.

Yeah.

It was incredibly. While energizing, but incredibly reachable and tangible.

Yeah.

Because there was really this model that made all kinds of sense. For if you want to continue to take on growing demands that are outside of you, where is that going to come from? That's not going to come from more time. That's going to be coming from reaching deep within yourself and understanding what mobilizes you physically, emotionally and mentally.

Yeah.

And so that's really the turning point, is recognizing that those things worked as well, or even better when you're faced with greater demands and even personal hardships.

Yeah. One of the studies that you cited when I attended your workshop that many years ago was the tennis study. I think it's Jim Layer. Will you tell our listeners about that? When. And I've used that before in workshops because it was that reframing for me, because a lot of people who are listening may not be in this corporate situation that you've described, where the corporate culture is a whole thing and you get swept up in it and there's no way to change it. Maybe people are listening who are in that environment right now, but I think no matter who you are, even if you're not in that environment, the way that we live in touch with our family members, in touch with our friends, having these lives that are so full of information, having handheld devices where you have a steady stream of the news cycles coming in, and just the pressures of keeping up with everybody's schedule, and you're just always plugged in. To me, that is the same thing as the corporate culture that you're describing. And then some people have corporate culture on top of that. But it felt like that study when you told me about that and we talked about that in our small group breakouts or our table partners. It has stuck with me so much and it's something that I've applied to family life.

Yeah, I will share it and I'll point people to and we can include it in the resources. There is a seminal HBR article back late nineties or early two thousands called the corporate athlete, in which a lot of the gyms, ideas that are central tenets of energy management that he learned in professional sports, most notably tennis player, that he translated to the always on reactive workplace that we inhabit today. So Jim was a sports performance psychologist, and he worked with some of the best tennis players in the world, and he would monitor their heart rates from the side of the court, did all kinds of studies and observations, and what he found was the best players in the world are not that much advantaged just through their technical skill sets. You know, if you're looking at maybe a top ten player in the world and a top 20 player in the world, and they're just hitting and you don't know who they are, you would be very hard pressed to say, that person's better than that person. Yeah, they hit the ball beautifully. There's not anything in their game that seems an apparent weakness. So they seem equal to you. And really, I think one of Jim's greatest contributions was to recognize that there was this credible period of time called the time between points, where players have an opportunity to recompose themselves. So if you think about this, either if you're a tennis player or not, or you think about this in your work life, how many times a new input may come in that may be a stressor, and how quickly you can poise yourself again and take that on in a way that you won't look back on it, feeling regretful about it. Now, we're always going to have those. But by and large, if you feel like you are handling pressure and stressors, that we get hit with a. On a regular basis from all walks of our life, that you could do that with poise and composure, that's essentially what the tennis player and the pro athlete is looking to do. How do I not lose the next point from the point that I lost? And that's going to mean that I need to regulate my emotion. It's going to mean I need to really re energize myself with oxygen and take a deep breath. And it's also going to mean I need to regulate my attention and control my attention. So we developed a whole thing. It was called the 16 2nd cure because really nobody back then was paying attention to this notion of the time between points. But today, I mean, you see it, tennis players who are very irritable or highly emotional, they don't have long careers, they probably don't reach the levels of the sport that they were hoping to reach simply on the non point time, which is more time on a tennis court than you're actually playing.

Yeah.

So matters what goes through your brain and how you're managing your body and your emotions. So that piece, that whole idea that was then translated to corporate America in a world where we're expecting much more from people with less resources. So we were seeing people that would get laid off right next to us. And then not only is it hard to see those people be let go, but then we inherited their work and there was no backfill for that. And we've sort of now have just become used to that. Backfill is tough for many companies now. They don't necessarily just do that. Right? So other people have to take on additional burden while they're already stretched. So understanding then that recovery is a component of our lives that stretches across all of our domains, maybe we can focus on skills to get really good at it, because as it turns out, that learning is that life is a blend of stress and recovery. We focus a lot on the stress side and we spend a lot of energy. We don't necessarily think as much about, well, how does that energy get replenished dramatically and practically, how do I do that in today's.

Yeah, and I think it often comes like, oh, at the end of the day, I'm going to have two glasses of wine and then I'm going to pass out, not because I'm drunk, but just because I'm exhausted.

So tired.

Yeah. And I think that's the way that I thought about it for so long. And I still have guilt, you know, if I sit down in the middle of the day or if I, I'm pointing to out in front of me, because I, when I do this podcast, I'm looking at my backyard and that's one of my favorite places to recover. And, and I think beginning with a reframe and obviously being in touch with your work and just this conversation at large that's happening in our culture right now about the importance of rest, I started listening to that conversation and taking it seriously. So now I do a much better job of seeing the value of what is restorative and getting intentional about how to restore myself. But even with that, I still feel guilt sometimes, not really connecting. Like, oh, if I take this break right now, it ultimately serves my bigger goal. It's like, if I take this break right now, I'm all these things I'm not doing, and I can rest when I pass out. You know, I can rest at the end of the day when I go to sleep. I think it's a really dangerous way that we live, because in my line of work, I see it so much in relational health, you know, and, like, how we relate to each other, not just in our personal relationships, but in groups. And when you go to your job and you're in teams and, you know, if you don't have what you just described as that poise and that moment of keeping your composure, you're really destructive. And I would imagine. I'm going to ask you this, actually, when you. Because I know you work with a lot of teams. I would imagine that if you didn't have some sort of ritual or culture around recovery, that there's just too many injuries between people. I would think that that would impact teamwork. Is that what you find? And maybe it's in your own family, too. You can notice it since you're in that group as well.

Yeah, well, what you just said, I want to take that on for just a moment, because I think what you said about the narrative and the slippery slope just completely nailed it. And I'm sure resonated with everyone that's out there, because getting your mind around the idea that recovery and elements of self care are not selfish, and we really shouldn't walk around feeling guilty about those things, but we do. It's because of a societal and a cultural construct that we live inside of that more is better, and that always on is productive. And so when you're flying in the face of that, you really have to challenge the story. And, look, Paige, you know me, and I certainly know you from the standpoint of you're incredibly relational, you're very high achieving as well, and you want to achieve, and you want to make a difference, and you want to have impact. And what occurred to me was, when I am not recovering really systematically, I am nowhere near showing up at my greatest capacity.

Yeah.

And here's really where it landed for me. And maybe your audience can take some heat of this. There's the element of the two selves, right? There's times where we show up, we know we're lighting people up, and we feel present and focused and receptive, and we're listening, and we're connected. And then there are times where we're like, where did that go? Like, who am I? Why is that not coming?

I'm a raging bitch. I have nothing for anybody. And I'm like, this friendly, oh, Paige is so cheerful. And my family's like, no, she's an asshole.

And it's the same person, right?

And it's the same person.

Totally the same person. And it's incredible, like, how irritable or impatient or frustrated we may be at times. And if we're really honest with just our own self portrait and a reflection, there are times when, yeah, we are on fire, and we're great. People love us, and we love how we're showing up. And then there are times where, all right, maybe not so much, right? We're less than our best, and it's the same person. So I would really have people think about in that concept, like, well, what makes the difference for that?

Yeah.

Because, you know, you want to show up really well. And here's what I've learned. And this isn't just in my own experience. This is empirical. And it's from performance science, the degree to which you are recovering and ensuring proper levels of restoration and repair. And not just through the overnight period with sleep, but through a regular reflection or rest periods. And what you do inside of that could be a walk, could be a meditation, could be calling a loved one. But times where you get reconnected with yourself, I feel like that's the beauty of self care. If we really want to call it something, it's reconnecting for ourselves. And if we are in a regular cycle of performing and recovering, we tend to show up better. If we're in a cycle between. I can't possibly keep up with the workload another person is making me so that I'm surrounded by idiots, whatever the case may be, and I toggle between the survival reactive state and a more really depleted burnout state, well, guess what? You're not delivering your best. That's the same person. So to consider really your energy, that's why it's so important. Who do you want to be and who do you want to show up as? As people will then say, hey, this is actually this person's reputation.

Yeah.

You may not think you're like that, but people know. They know when you are tired and emotionally exhausted and mentally scattered, and they know when you're together and you are in a readiness state, and that has to do with your energy.

Do you find that the leaders with whom you've consulted are creating routines and rituals around this practice that you're describing? You know, like this culture of restoring and replenishing? Can you see the correlation that they're more generous Leaders or they're more patient Leaders? And when you do see that, has that person implemented some real things in their life that you've seen, and you can see how it impacts the team.

Oh, yeah.

And let me just Sidebar for a listener, too. I mean, parents, too. Like, I'm talking to you a lot because you consult and you have the organizational team background, and I love that. But I really want people to hear this part because families are systems and families are team. And there's a lot of parents who listen to this podcast, and so please apply that also. And you're thinking as, like, just parents running a household with either small children or teenagers.

Andrew Deutscher 24:00 - 24:08: I love that. And you're right. It is a system and it is a culture. And there's great books. It's Bruce Feiler or Feller who wrote a book on family culture.

I love that.

So let's thread this between the two, because you're right. The energy to lead is the same energy to live, and I love that. Yeah, it's, you know, we are mobilized through this resource to engage with what we're doing at work and engage with what we're doing at home. The challenge is when we're so engaged and our energy is flying all over the place at work, the question then becomes, well, how much energy do I really have left at the end of the day for the people that are really important in my life? That's always an interesting discussion for people because they recognize, they see that in themselves. They see that they're spending so much energy at work and not managing that very well that by the time they get home, the people that matter most to them are getting less of their energy, very little to no energy. And obviously, thats a real issue. So lets talk about whether youre leading a family or youre leading a team. There are, I think some of this is intuitive. For some, they recognize that they want to lead in a certain way, and they can see when theres fractures or when theres confusion or when theres chaos. And when those things are happening, they are wanting to be really adaptive to leading and engaging in a different way. So, you know, we're trying to sell our work, let's say, to a leader who really isn't interested in first acknowledging that they're depleting other people and not showing up. Well, there's nothing we can do for them. Right. You have to be a lean in person. You have to recognize that something may not be right and be willing. And I think it's very courageous to go there and say, you know what? I am exhausted. I'm not sure how I can continue.

To keep this up.

I can't get the pulse on my team. I'm having trouble connecting with my kid. Those things are tough to acknowledge. But I feel like there's a set of people, and it's not that not everyone could get there, but there's a set of people who really want to make a pronounced difference in the way that they're showing up and the way they want to have impact in their lives.

Yeah.

And I think that's your audience, so I think we're probably talking people. And so if they are lean in that way and they just haven't recognized, like, they can name some of those symptoms, but they don't really understand the root cause of that, then, like me, like you, once you get underneath it, then you feel like there's hope and there's inspiration, there's promise in showing up in a different way. When I understand what is my primary resource to not just get things done, but to engage with all the things that I want to do and to connect with people, and then how do I regularly pay attention to that resource and not have it be like you were saying before, as sort of a happenstance or, you know what, I'll manage my energy better when my kid goes off to college.

Right.

Or when we get through this next project, there's always sort of that next thing. And that's another part of the narrative that you were talking about before of that slippery slope of, I'll get it together when demands drop a little bit.

Yeah.

When does that gonna happen?

Right.

Is there nothing really seeming to happen? So if demands are high and they're still going higher.

Yeah.

And we only have really one way into that. We have to build our capacity to meet those demands. We could start to trim things out of our life. Some of us really need to do that.

Yeah.

But I think for really ambitious, engaged, highly achieving types, parents, leaders, brothers, sisters, whatever.

Yeah.

We're wanting to do a lot. So if you want to do a lot, you have to build the capacity to do a lot. And that means you can't always be on and always rely on a reactive state to get things done in a way that you're going to be satisfied and people are going to feel that impact.

I think that's so true because people think that they need the stress or the urgency. Like we get addicted to the urgency, like that. That's our engine. And it really takes courage. I like that you use that word, because I use that word a lot. It doesn't take more time. It takes more courage to look under that and say, well, what do I really want to do? You know? And that's a really confronting question for everyone, but especially for women. I think it's a whole other thing to name what you want as a woman and then to trust that you can get there and you can get motivated by something other than stress.

I love that. I love that you brought this up and we should talk a little bit about the nature of stress and how we respond to it.

Yeah, please.

So because of the fact if we're sort of, as we're going through this and jumping around a little bit, if core to energy management is balancing of stress and recovery, then on one side, okay, we know probably not recovering enough. And then if I start to recover, how do I do that? And how efficient can I get at that? There's a whole set of opportunities there, starting with the recognition of probably spending more energy than I'm recovering it. So let me focus on recovering on the other side of it's really important. I really don't like to refer to it as managing stress because in reality, our experience of stress is how we relate to it, not how we manage it. If we are really good at understanding how stress impacts us, and then what do we do when stressors hit? Do we eat for comfort? Do we get angry? Do we say yes to things we probably shouldn't do we sort of build that fire that we don't want to build through just the reactive state of how these things tend to be accretive and build on each other. So understanding that stress in your life, and this is the way I will, I will ask people in sessions to just let me know when stress really served you, because without stress, you don't put attention on things that matter to you. So were you stressed the first time you went up to your girlfriend or boyfriend, who is your spouse right now? Were you stressed a little bit when you went for that job interview? You didnt think you can get that job, but you went through with the interview, you got that job, and now youre in this place today.

Yeah.

Like the absence of stress, nothing meaningful happens in our lives.

Yeah.

So stress is twofold. There is Eustress and then theres distress. And not to get too technical about it, but all we think about is distress. We don't think about EU stress, which is the stress. It's a beautiful stress. It's the one that mobilizes us to start a business, to lead a team, to step into a stretch zone of any kind of challenge that we want to put ourselves through, to grow ourselves.

Yeah.

So we can grow without stress. And we also know stress really isn't the enemy. The enemy is the absence of recovery to some degree. And the way we misconstrue stress.

Yeah.

If we can reframe certain stresses in our lives as challenge stress, this happens inevitably when people say they have these problems or these challenges and we're talking through them. It's interesting to me that life is calling on something in them that maybe they haven't called on before, because right now is incredibly important for them to understand. What is that call, what attribute inside of you, what quality? What is life calling on you to summon and to either get really good at or to draw upon from your previous experiences so you can solve this current challenge and problem and then reach higher ground.

Yeah.

So that's just from the standpoint of really thinking about stress. Let it mobilize you, not sink you.

Gosh, I have to pause on that because I'm like, wow, what has life called me? So much of what I face is impatience. So I feel like, oh, it should already be done, or I should already, like, even with this podcast. Like, I should already know that. But I button, I should know how to do the thing. I've never done a podcast before. I, you know, I'm still in my top ten episodes I've ever, ever done. So sometimes I stress myself out being impatient that my skill set should be in a different place that it is. So even hearing you say that, I'm like, wow, okay, so that means I have to stop and breathe and, like, summon patience.

Yeah.

I'll let you know how that goes.

Yeah, good luck with that. I know you can do it right now. You know, I don't think I would have started a business had I known, like, some of the things that I was going to be contending with. But of course I would have started, like, it's just, you know, when you put yourself in a position to be uncomfortable, it's very distressing and it can be.

Yeah.

And then, look, I mean, if you go out and you start a business today, there's a so many different aspects of it. Right. You're an artist, you're a talent, and there's all these other pieces of making a business fly that aren't necessarily your comfort, and you have to just get good at them if you're going to be successful, at least to a minimum level.

Yeah.

So I think just with the nature of, look how much change is afoot in people's lives, how much they're asked to continuous learn today, because we need to. The upskilling, reskilling, all this kind of skilling, constantly is not for the faint of heart. It's engaging in today's workplaces, day in, day out, mentally and emotionally exhausting.

Yeah.

So how do you want to really frame that up for you about what is going to excite you about being in today's workforce? How do you kind of regenerate to innovate around yourself and your own brand and your own value proposition? And I think there are so many opportunities there that maybe we just get scared of because we feel like we're not good at it or we don't want to be stressed that way.

Totally. Yeah.

When we all know deep down that if you step into that, life just gets richer and fuller and better, because then you work through it, you figured it out, you build that confidence, and maybe you fall down a few times, but you know you're going to keep getting back up until you figure it out.

Yeah. How have you learned to replenish and regenerate and restore in your own journey from that? You know, back in that we referenced earlier, the transition period, but now you have a thriving consulting business. What keeps you motivated? What keeps you on track? What keeps you holding, holding yourself accountable?

So let me get into this page with a little bit of a funny story, because, you know, after I went through the energy project program, which was years ago, and I was so excited about, you know, incorporating some of these changes.

Yeah.

And then I was laid off, as you know. There was a whole set of time I had, you know, and I was really just working on recovery because it had been a long time where I was just spending energy. So I was going to the gym. I was taking the afternoon nap. I was, you know, hitting golf balls. I was taking my kid to the bus stop. Like, it was like, might as well been retired. Tara was like, it was really funny because she said to me one day, she's like, I think you're good on the recovery piece. Like, can you come back this way a little bit to the stress side of the equation?

I can totally see that. I would probably have said the same thing to Boyd. I can totally relate to a wife saying that.

Perfect, right? Like, just so good. And I really started to recognize how much of the value was there, but she had a great point. Like, what we're not telling people is just go and recover. But, like, there's probably some of that that needs to happen for you to manage your day to day at the intensity that you're doing, and then either to not take your full vacation or, you know, look at a sabbatical and be like, oh, I would never do that. Like, and then you hear from people who have done these things and the difference it's made in their lives and their relationships and their work, game changing. But today, Paige, here's where I'm fortunate, and I think this is harder inside of the workplace, but certainly doable.

And this is where we will engage with teams many times. The parts of your calendar that after you're done filling up with meetings and all those things you see where you have these little glimpses of opportunities to take care of yourself. And even then, it's probably meant for someone else to take care of a family member or a friend or something else. And what I've learned to do is to jump out of my calendar far enough so if you're that person who's like, yeah, that's me. Yeah, jump out two weeks, three weeks, see where there's some open space and grab a few of those blocks. You may feel guilty, you may feel uncomfortable. Maybe just grab 290 minutes, periods you don't have to figure out right now what you're going to do with that. Just grab that time and wall it all.

Yeah.

The other challenge for people is they may do that, but then they give it up. Right? Like now they're pressed and they need to put the time in there, so they give up their own time. And I don't do that. I've learned to not do that because when I do that, I just get strained and stressed and reactive, and I'm not focused on the right things. If you think about this, if we are organized around a clear goal with a set of priorities that we know can move the needle on things that if they don't, we can revisit and re examine the metrics.

You shouldn't be so busy. You should not be that busy. You should be super focused on the few priorities that make a difference. And that's really where the whole leadership piece comes in, because very few leaders understand the importance of that, let alone are willing to do it or feel like, they have the information from their leaders that can do that. But in our homes and in our families, we don't even do that because we're so conditioned to not doing that outside. It's like we can do eleven things, like, Joey's in baseball, but he could be in tennis, and we'll go straight from that to that and then we'll pick up her over there and then, you know, like the next thing you know, you're so overburdened and over scheduled, it's like, well, of course you don't have time to recover.

Right.

Because you're taking on way too much. So for me, it's really been about fundamentally putting first things first instead of those first things that people have negotiated, as those aren't first things, those are second things.

Yeah.

I think the degree to which you have quality sleep, the degree to which you rest during the day and whatever practice that is, the degree to which you move and fortify yourself for nutrition. Right. And practice these elements of emotional resolve and gratitude and focus and meditation that serves you in so many different ways that it doesn't have to take very long. So I put those pieces in first and then build my life around that rather than that being an afterthought.

And they're non negotiable. You don't move that block of time.

No. Now, do things come up that are truly in the sense of urgency? But that's another whole issue we could probably talk an hour about is the things that are emergent or urgent in the ways that teams operate or families operate. It's really. There's very few real emergencies.

Yeah.

You know, I had to email you right now, or I had to text you right now or call you outside of work hours. And you really did.

Yes.

It's because your poor planning may put you in a situation or for some reason you think that that is urgent when it's really not. Could we have asked the customer or the client to let them know we're going to push on a deadline for two days, but we're going to get what they need? Like, we're not communicating, we're not slowing down long enough to say how urgent really is this? And is that a coachable moment? So there's a lot of opportunity inside of this if we just slow down, take a breath and really try to return to a healthy priority number.

Yeah.

And understanding what we're trying to impact and stay focused on that.

If I get a text from my mom who's shopping for one of my kids in New Orleans. And it'll be like, what size shoe does miles wear now? It's literally like, I have to answer right now. It's almost like the speed at which we reply, it's like you're addicted to it. Like, I have to do it now. And some of it is thoughtful, obviously, my mom is in a store, and I want her to be able to get out of the store. And it's very generous of her to be thinking about my kids. But some of it is, like, to your point, really unnecessary.

So I think that's a really thoughtful, I think, prompt for people to consider response time and, like, emailing your team back at midnight at night, maybe you don't need to do that, you know, responding that way. And then when you get into the power structure of, like, if you're the one in charge of other people, then you've set it up that way where response time has to be so urgent, and it becomes this whole cycle and it turns into culture. And I think that's when it's really hard to change. It's hard to change culture.

Yeah. And you're right. It's all about setting the tone. What kind of tone do you want to set? Do you want harried, reactive people, or you want really thoughtful, compose? Like, we could take a breath here. We have some time.

Yeah.

It's just interesting to me that whether it's since COVID I think it was certainly the issue before where perceived busyness is what people are after. You know, it's like if I do jump on something and I am quick to reply because I'm not necessarily in the office all the time, then people will see that I'm on. Right. The green lights on my chat is on. Open for business.

Yeah.

And that has become the perception that you're there and you're engaged. When we know that is a mental glitch.

Yeah.

You know, there's people who are offline who are doing deep work and really moving things forward and not available tend to be some of your best performers where someone else that you can reach and is replying in a moment. Oh, they're on it. Like, they get back to me right away. Is that what you want? You want that person?

Right, right.

Are you sure that they're delivering in the way that you need to or they're just responsive to you?

Yeah.

So it's sort of like, just. I think what you said is great. It's just recognizing what tone that you want to set for your family, for your. For your team, for your company.

Yeah.

And then being able to bring it into the culture in a way that is actually more sustainable.

Yes.

Because I think that's the other piece of this. The recovery piece is really about sustainable. We talked about that. And, you know, the sort of the definition of energy, the byproduct of that is that it's. That it's sustainable. We could do anything for a quarter or for an hour.

Right, right.

Are you trying to be that next quarter and next year and five years from now?

Yeah.

And it's more then maybe it's a different approach.

Yeah. Do you find that true engagement with teams, with each other also has to do with this overall kind of your approach to restoring energy and really feeling in touch with replenishing yourself? Like, are those two correlated? I would have to imagine that engagement has a lot to do with taking a break. And what do you see? Tell me more about your work around getting people to engage, because I have that trouble in my home. You know, again, the family is the business around here, and it's like getting people to really engage and stay engaged.

Well, for the most part, the big question that comes in a lot is how do I engage my team more?

Yeah.

It's not. I'm exhausted and, you know, I'm fed up. And they may be feeling those things, but they don't necessarily come with that problem. Right. And so underneath that, if we're really extrapolating recovery to the broader team and organizational health and climate of whether it's a team or a division or a company, is what is the percentage of time that you honor and value debriefing things? What just happened?

That is so good. That is so good. Like reflecting, and I love that.

Reflecting and assimilating and planning and what did we do well, and what did we not do well? Can we actually own up to that level of feedback to say, you did well there, but you didn't do so well here? And we got away with it this time, but next time that could be an issue. If you think about all the high performing teams, they're spending a lot more time in striving for clarity, in creating alignment through great communication and regularly fostering levels of commitment, checking in with people, are you clear?

Are we connected? Are we together? Are we headed in the same place? Do I have your commitment there? And then reflecting back what I heard you say was this, and here's what I'm hearing from the team. So regeneration really started as sort of this personal roadmap for me of recovery. What I've really learned though, like, if we're not managing our own energy personally, how are we going to be a good teammate?

Yeah.

Let alone lead. So where it really translates to the other side is the amount of time that you spend actually recovering, learning about past events that you just were inside of, whether you won or you lost. Why and how did that happen? What are you going to do differently next time? And we just move through stuff. We just blow right through it. And there's incredible lessons to be learned to actually work smarter, not longer, but we skip those conversations or we're afraid to have them, and then we're too busy for them, so we lose the opportunity to actually get everything much more better orchestrated for execution.

Yeah.

So the amount of time that we spend thinking instead of doing, the amount of time you spend planning instead of executing, the amount of time you spend, in that sense, strategizing and creating and innovating rather than implementing, that's the side of the equation that I think gets far fewer minutes in the day. And it's not just tired from the physical exhaustion of hours. It's tired from not working on the right things and not feeling aligned and connected with the people that you're doing things with toward a goal that makes sense that everyone could buy into.

Yeah.

That's what's really exhausting.

Yeah.

You know, because I think people are willing to work hard, but they want to know that their work is smart, it's efficient. They're doing it with people that they care about and are connected with, and even if they're not best friends with, they know that they're accountable to things.

Yeah.

And it's just. It's unfortunate, Paige. It's just not the experience that I see with a lot of teams why we're working with them. But when leaders get turned on to that, it just changes the game.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, new people want to come work for that leader because they. That energy speaks much louder than any real words. Right. It's the behaviors around that.

otally. It makes me think of when I was teaching preschool, so much of what I learned about coaching and helping people with relationships I learned from children. And when a child stumbles, the first thing that the child does is look back at the pavement or the earth and tries to figure out why he or she stumbled. And then there's that moment where they look to the adult, like, should I be crying? You know what I mean?

Like those, let's say they're walking on pavement and the pavement is uneven, and they stub their toe and if the parent keeps a calm face or the child giver keeps a calm face and is like, oh, you hit the pavement and the child has already turned, the head is already turned back to try to see what happened, and the parent is calm, and then you go touch the pavement, like, put your hand on it. Look, this is where the pavement is uneven. It just goes away so much faster. The whole process is like, oh, this is what happens when you walk on pavement. Sometimes the pavement's uneven and you can get hurt, and sometimes your body gets really hurt and you cry, or sometimes you don't need to cry.

But I'm not crying. I'm not gasping. I'm not worried about you. And I think about that so much with relationships, whether it's in family, whether it's, I help a lot of people in their small businesses. So onboarding new employees, figuring out what their mission is to retain employees and work together if they're already an existing, thriving small business. And so much of it, to your point, is understanding how to talk to each other, reflecting on what went wrong in a business practice or a business process that they're trying to develop or they're trying to sustain, and really having a conversation around that. And I'll hear people say sometimes, oh, I didn't want to talk about that.

Or, like, in the marriage, people say that all the time, well, I don't want to talk about the little dispute we had over who should go to the grocery store to buy butter. And it's like, well, it's better to talk. Talk about the way that you communicate about the grocery store than it is to go get a mediator or divorce attorney. You know, like, talk about the butter, talk about the things, little by little that you notice, because the way that you talk and the way that you engage with each other and kind of figure that out from the perspective of what happened, what went wrong. So I never even realized that was so connected to engagement. But I think that's really powerful, and I'm so glad you shared that because it's really thought provoking in each of our everyday lives.

Yeah, there's no doubt that there's probably an opportunity to do more of that, not less of that. You almost can't much of that because you learn so much from it. Then people feel like they're getting the constructive feedback that they need. You know, we hear this from, this is a thing across generations. Like, ultimately, I think there's a view that younger generations can't handle the feedback. I've found that to be different. If you actually really engage with them and you care about them, they absolutely want that feedback. Don't make that a them problem when it can be, you know, it's probably a YouTube problem.

Yeah.

But I love your story of the child that will look back because sometimes there's also the feeling, I remember this with my kids of, like, well, I'm stupid. I tripped.

Yeah.

And it becomes like something that you get mad at yourself on and you're mad at the pavement and quickly realize that you're not stupid. Like, you didn't see that. Right. And you can learn from that. That was an uneven thing. Not be too emotional about it. And they can feel your energy there and you can separate. Like, that's not you being, you know, silly or stupid. And it feels like sometimes in these team dynamics, when we are debriefing, the reason that we may be afraid to debrief is because leaders or teammates have fear of people personalizing it.

Yeah.

Well, you could have done this better. And next time we need you to do that. Like, you're not a bad person. We just need more from you in that instance. And that is either a learning thing or that's a willingness thing. But to be really open and receptive to that, to grow, is such a healthy thing for teams. In the absence of that. Seen so many teams fall down. Right. They just can fall apart around that because they are either feeling overwhelmed with too much work or they're feeling neglected that they're not getting the clarity and the guidance that they need.

Yeah.

And so if we think about that, just even as, you know, for you and me as parents and everyone out there who may be raising kids, what may they be experiencing from you? Do you ask a lot of them? Do you not ask enough of them? You know, do you let them do some of the things that they need to do for themselves? Because one of the things, no matter what our age, is that we are reacting to, even if we don't call it out, is that we feel way too micromanaged and overwhelmed with too many things to do, or we don't feel enough care and attention and resourcing to do the things that we're asked to do.

Yeah.

Andrew Deutscher 48:53 - 49:22: And what I've found, whether it's from my own experience in sales and leadership and now with my own company, is to strike that balance for people. If you can help guide them when they need the guidance and then let them be free to express that creativity and what they've learned in that process, now you have a growth model between stretching them outside of what they thought was possible and then also making sure that they feel like you are really invested in their success, that you really care about them.

Yeah.

And that's just in a fast paced world, we miss on that one. The recognition, the appreciation, the opportunities for growth, the debriefing.

Yeah.

All the things that are so rich in a work experience that people would benefit most from, they're just not happening enough.

Yeah. Is that just because we get obsessed with producing? So we think if I'm not going to take the time out to do those other things because there's this perception that it doesn't hit the bottom line.

Directly, I think there's a lot of reasons for it. That is definitely one of them. I think we're, like you were saying before we were adrenalized, and if we're used to that source of energy.

Yeah. Addiction. Yeah.

Then we sort of just run around like that and then we infiltrate and infect others with that.

Yeah.

And then part of it is, and I think this is a struggle for leadership today, even very senior leadership, as they spend a lot of time buffering, communicating. You know, you're hearing this over here, but here's the real story and what's going on over here, and don't get caught up in this. And then leaders complain, like, I spend my whole day buffering things for my team and I remind them, that's your job. And if you get really good at that, you will keep them on task. But if you're not paying attention to that or you're like, they're just hearing things and they're going to have to tell their own narratives around that you've already lost them. You have no chance.

Yeah. So I want to be aware of our time, and I want to conclude on something that I'm thinking about for this community. And it's this idea of being at the moment in life, whether you're at a crossroads and you're about to start maybe a new chapter of your life, or maybe you just sense that life needs to change somehow. And this is the person. And I'm like this. I'm going to be 50 in December. I have two identical twin girls who will go to college, hopefully leave the house, which I think they will. They'll graduate this coming may.

So looking at that, and you are a big advocate for assessing life, you know, so taking a pause and assessing your life, but then feeling that overwhelm, like, how do I even do this? What needs to change? I'm not sure. Help us relate to that moment. And I know you had that moment in your life, too. I'm sure you continue to have it. As a business owner. What do we do with those feelings and how do we relate to, oh, my gosh, I don't even know how to get my energy back, and I'm so off rails, and I've got all these bad habits, and I'm exhausted all the time. Talk to us from that perspective of, like, just getting in there and starting this conversation with ourselves in a more positive, forgiving way.

I love the question that certainly speaks to what I love about you, which is, is really understanding people and hitting it where it really matters. We go through a lot of change, and there are decision points, and some obviously bigger than others. It's a relational thing. We're always inside of relationships that are ever changing and evolving, and then we're in a growth process and changing and evolving, and we have to do that with partners and with friends, and we have to take care of ourselves as we get older.

Right, while we're minding the care for others. So it can feel really daunting and overwhelming. And I'm really glad you asked that question, because I feel like the tendency in this sort of, as we're describing the society that is relentless, it's always asking more of you. The feeling is like, well, to answer the bell, I just have to do all this. I gotta sleep better, I gotta start eating better, I gotta do this and that. And I would just caution against that. In terms of an overreach. One of the principles from the energy project, and even in energy management fundamental theory, is incremental success beats ambitious failure.

Have you ever found yourself at those times where it's like you try to do so much and it breaks because you're trying to do so much, or what you just described is perfect? I hear often from people, for me to really get my own energy back suggests that, like, I don't have a lot of energy right now, so getting started feels like a lot of energy. But even choosing one or two things that you can start to bring into your life in a way that you feel like they could be predictable and routine, then you get to a higher level, right? You get to another plateau, and then you revisit it from there, there.

So don't overreach would be guidance on that. And then the other thing that you added there, which is incredibly important, is, look, everyone should reconnect to the idea that you really matter and you want to have impact and that you are valued in what you're doing, and never to doubt that. Right? Like, some days, we have to summon the energy that our contributions are actually heard, that we are still really valued in what we're doing, whether it's in our families or whether it's thankless errands or things that work that we're doing that people aren't noticing and we're not getting a lot of appreciation.

So stay within yourself around reminding that this is worth it and you are worth it. And bring in a piece or two pieces that, you know, used to work for you. This isn't that complicated. There was a set of activities or a behavior that you did that brought you joy.

Yeah, right.

And choose one and bring it into your life in a way that you will benefit from that. And then revisit in two weeks or a month, and then choose another one. And to build it incrementally and to be patient with yourself and to have that self compassion, that's not just a good recipe. It's really required today because it is such a demanding environment that we live in.

Well, you're certainly living that. I watched you live it. I watched you get healthier, and I watched you step into this courageous path of following your passion and showing up as a dad and a family man and doing your thing. And it's been amazing. It's so inspiring.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for sharing yours, Andrew. Such a treat to have you.

Thanks, Paige. That was awesome. Love being with you.

I would love to tell y'all, I've got this energy thing mastered, and I relate to my stress with curiosity. And I know how to work smarter. Not longer every time I take on a new project. And I know how to keep my teenagers engaged. And I'm delighted to be continuously learning things like the new online school system, to check their schoolwork. And I'm so happy to upskillen and embrace change and have hard conversations. I would love to say those things are true all the time, and they definitely are not. What I can say is that I have wholeheartedly embraced the idea that my energy is my most important resource. I do have to remind myself sometimes, and when I remember to honor that energy, I do small things like walk around the block before I talk to my girls about the college admissions process.

I look at my calendar on Sunday night and block in the times that I want to take yoga that week. Boyd. An extra long hug in the morning, even when I feel like I don't have time. Because once I settle in, it really is nice and anchoring to hug someone you love in the morning, I revisit a conversation I had with Miles when I wasn't sure he heard what I meant for him to hear, and I take quality notes. After facilitating a group. What went well? What do I need to change about the content? There seems to be a theme that runs through this podcast. It keeps coming forward in different ways with each of our guests.

Yes, small changes make a big difference. Andrew says it this incremental success beats ambitious failure. What are the small changes you do for yourself when you remember that restoring your energy and reconnecting with yourself is actually that essential for the quality of your life? How do you show up for yourself these days? How do you relate to your stress? What is your life calling you to draw upon or develop? Andrew invites us to pause, slow down, and consider these important questions. We're not going to get more time in a day. The only thing we can do is get more capacity to meet the demands of the day. And when we lead our lives with clarity and commitment, we can lead others as parents and just as responsible, decent human beings. Regardless of your age or parental status.

I can't think of anything more important than sustaining our energy so we can lead and live with compassion, generosity, confidence, and joy. Thank you, Andrew. All of these years later and I'm still learning with you and growing from the ideas and work you offer the world. I'm so grateful you decided to meet me and share your journey with all of us, and I admire how you live your message. You face your challenges and you lead your life with courage and connectedness. You inspire me and I'm sure you're going to inspire a lot of other people listening to do the same. Okay y'all, that's it for this one. I'll meet you there again soon. Thanks to each of you for being here and for listening.

I'm so grateful we can to share life in this way. As always, full show notes are available@pagenolin.com podcast there you will find a full summary of the episode, timestamps and key takeaways and any resources mentioned in our conversation. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love if you would leave me a rating and a review, you can do that by visiting pagenolan.com. love your reviews. Really do help people to discover the show. And if you know someone specifically who would enjoy this episode, I'm so grateful to have you all share. I'll meet you there with your friends.

Lastly, if you have any questions or comments or if you would like to share any feedback with me. Please email to meet me there. I would love to hear from you. Thank you to the team that makes this show possible. Podcast production and marketing by North Node Podcast Network Music by Boyd McDonnell cover photography by Ennis Casey okay, y'all, that's it for now. I'll meet you there again soon.