Minisode Series: Understanding Anxiety and Work Life Balance

This episode dives into the personal journey of balancing work and motherhood while navigating anxiety. Through reflections and shared stories, I explore the unique definitions of work-life balance and the importance of recognizing and addressing anxiety. 

• Discussion on Gary Vaynerchuk's take on work-life balance 
• Personal struggles with balancing career and family life 
• Understanding the different manifestations of anxiety 
• Sharing experiences of anxiety
• Importance of self-talk in managing anxiety 
• Recognizing anxiety as a barrier to engaging in fulfilling experiences 
• The significance of addressing anxiety for future generations 
• Encouragement for listeners to take action towards understanding their anxiety

Chapters

• 0:00 Work-Life Balance and Managing Anxiety
• 10:44 New Episode Updates and Live Shows

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody, this is Still Rose's podcast. This podcast is created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. Little mini-sode, again, a little bit late, but not really Is it late. Who determines what's late? Really, for your own personal stuff, I just recently saw a post on LinkedIn from Gary Vaynerchuk where and if you have been listening for a while you know that I've actually been following him for quite a bit, ever since his early days at the wine library. Check out his story and check out his book Crush it. In general, his vibe is really cool Very high vibe, high energy and insightful, which it's a great combination of information. So strong recommend. If you're not following him or if you haven't picked up any of his books, pick it up, because his story is incredible in the sense that it really does show you you could start from a certain place and end up in a whole other place. I'm sure that 20 years ago, when he was at the wine library, he didn't imagine he'd be having his media empire. So it's just very interesting to see people progress in their entrepreneurship. I love it.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Clearly, that was just a quick thing that top of mind popped into my head. Now the second thing I wanted to talk about oh, so I'm sorry. The thing that he posted about on LinkedIn basically outlined work-life balance and was, like you know, people get really stressed out, they get down on themselves about work-life balance I'm spending too much time at work or I'm not enough work, or whatever it is and we get hung up on like, oh, it has to be the 40 hours, it has to be 35 hours, whatever it is. And his post basically said, like it's really up to you, like what is your work-life balance? Would look like Maybe your work-life balance includes working on Saturday morning for a little while, maybe it includes working evenings, like I don't know. It depends on what feels good for you, like what actually feels good for you in the moment. And I really I paused to really think about that because I'm, like you know, I get really stressed about that as a working mom trying to advance my, my career, and actually let me rephrase that Advancing in my career, as I have, has been hard for me a lot at times, because I want to be there for my kids and that's a personal for me. Like I don't want to travel. I want to make sure that I'm present and accounted for in their lives. I don't want them to always think of me as, oh, mommy worked all the time Although they probably will anyway, because it is what it is. But that's a personal choice. Other people feel more flexibility in that area. They're comfortable traveling while their kids are small. They're okay with being away from them for a couple of nights. I know a lot of people that go on vacations with other kids, and a lot of people you know strongly recommend that. I can't get my head around that just yet, but nevertheless, work-life balance is really what you need it to be, and you have to make it work for you. There is not a cookie cutter that you're supposed to be fitting into. So I wanted to plug that quickly because that popped into my head. Now.

Speaker 1: 2:55

The other thing I wanted to talk about was anxiety. So I'm pretty certain that everybody has some level of anxiety that they feel in their lives. Anxiety can manifest in physical or mental forms. Physical is, you know, usually, oh, I can't breathe, my chest feels tight, I have chest pains, I feel tightness in my throat, my stomach hurts, you name it. Anxiety can happen because of these things. Now, sometimes anxiety is, you know it's not. Sometimes anxiety is is real in the sense that you get anxious because of a big test, or you get anxious cause you're trying to meet a deadline. There's a reason why you're feeling anxious. Sometimes there is no logical, plausible reason to feel anxious.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Yes, I don't want to elaborate here. I'm going to share personally. So, for example, I started a new job. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you would have seen it. I started a new job with a new agency and I really am enjoying it. The people are really wonderful and very supportive, very nice.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Unfortunately, though, for me, because I have had so much anxiety in the past few years overwork, things and just dynamics, just things that happen, because my anxiety has been so bad over the past couple of years I'm the one who's carried that forward. So, at the end of the day, I have this tremendous amount of oh my God, something's about to blow up, something's about to happen, Something bad is going to happen. I'm going to get screamed at, or I'm going to have an email that's like really condescending, or something's going to happen, or I'm going to get in trouble for something. And I texted one of my friends, one of my colleagues, and said you know, when does that stop? When does the PTSD response stop for anxiety and she kind of laughed about it. She's very insightful. She actually has an episode for Steel Roses and she just said she's like it takes time. You know, it just kind of takes time.

Speaker 1: 4:56

Now, the reason why I'm sharing this is because I think again, I think a lot of us go through this where we feel anxious and we're not exactly sure why. Now I've had the benefit of being able to join online communities and take courses and really engage with all these wonderful guests that are on the podcast, and through engaging with all these people, I already knew the anxiety that I was feeling wasn't actually real. It was a trigger response in my body where I got so conditioned to feel anxiety that it's like oozing out of me and it's going to take time for me to not stop it, but time for me to break that habit. I've talked with you before about when change is happening. Here's another reason why I'm probably feeling anxiety when change is happening, your brain is rewiring itself and thus it feels uncomfortable, which also would tell you you're anxious. But you're not really anxious. You're just uncomfortable because you're going through a change and a growth. Recognizing these things in the moment is very interesting. So for me.

Speaker 1: 6:05

What I've been doing is I've been acknowledging the anxiety. I know I'm feeling anxious and I know it's not real, and this is, by the way, the self-talk that I've been doing. I know I'm feeling anxious, but I know it's not real and I know that the reason I'm feeling anxious is just because of a response from prior events, past events. Now, this would apply to all anxiety in most cases. If you are, I'll use another one for me. I get anxiety.

Speaker 1: 6:35

This is going to make me sound like a recluse, but I get anxiety when I have to drive long distances by myself and it sounds a little odd because I try to maintain a lot of independence and I want to lead with independence. But for some reason, when I leave my area, when I leave my town not just my town, but my area when I leave my local area, I start to get anxiety. Leading up to it, I will actually have nightmares leading up to the day that I'm supposed to go and drive somewhere because I just get this anxiety. Now, I don't know why that had started to happen, but in the last couple of years it had started to happen Again. I don't know why, but I also know that it's not real. Now my mom also gets anxiety when she knows she has to travel long distances, but she kind of leans into it.

Speaker 1: 7:25

I'm trying not to lean into it. So I'm recognizing I have anxiety. But you're okay, jenny, you can do this, you can leave your area Like this is no problem. And I just self-talk my way through it and I kind of just face it. I throw myself into it because if I don't, what's the alternative? If you don't face the anxiety, if you don't acknowledge I am anxious, I know I feel crappy, I know that I just need to get through this little hurdle and then I will be okay. If you don't make that choice, what is the alternative? The alternative is you are allowing an anxiety response to hold you captive. You are allowing an anxiety response to take you away from something that would potentially be very rewarding for you personally, mentally, like whatever. If you get anxiety getting on planes, okay, I get it, me too. That's an area where I'll lean on a little pharmaceutical support. And here's another one water slides. I can't the closed water slide. I mean in general it's water slides Like that's not my jam.

Speaker 1: 8:32

When my husband and I were dating and we used to take my stepkids to the water park. I had to take a sedative to be able to manage going, because I really wanted to go, but I knew my anxiety was gonna prevent me from really like doing anything. But I really wanted to participate, I really wanted to be involved, so that was my solution in that moment. Now I'm not saying everyone, go out there and pop some Prozac, but I am saying that sometimes I have to do what I have to do. Right, what is your anxiety keeping you from doing? Is your anxiety keeping you from having, from traveling or having experiences? You from having from traveling or having experiences?

Speaker 1: 9:11

And furthermore, depending on where you are in your life cycle, if you don't recognize your anxiety now and if you don't address your anxiety now, what will you pass on to future generations? What is going to happen when you eventually have children? Or when you you know, yeah, actually, when you eventually have children, when you you know, yeah, actually, when you eventually have children, when you get married? Like what's going to happen in those moments? Do you want to carry the weight of that anxiety with you like a hundred pound bell around your neck, or do you want to be free? And I think that you all really just want to be free and I think that with work, if you can recognize it, acknowledge the anxiety, I know I'm feeling anxious, I know that it's not real, I know it's just my brain wiring its regular synapses and I have to get past this little hurdle because once I do, the reward is on the other side and the reward is a great experience. The reward is accomplishing a task you didn't think you could. The reward is living your life. So I do put that out to all of you.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Today I've been feeling terrible anxiety. I've been tapping into some of my former guests and reaching out to people and saying, hey, I'm feeling anxious, I'm just telling people because I'm freaking out. Talk to someone, talk to someone you trust. Tell them like, hey, like this is kind of happening to me, like just trying to figure it out, talk about it, journal about it. You know I'm going to say meditate about it, because you know how I feel about meditation. Do something to combat it, because if you don't, you are not going to get to live your most authentic life. So I'll leave you with that.

Speaker 1: 10:44

I hope that you all are having. So I'll leave you with that. I hope that you all are having. I hope you all had a great January. Happy February to you all. January was like the longest month ever. Oh, tune in for tomorrow's guest episode. I didn't have my notes with me because I'm pulling a fast one and recording in my car, but guest episodes are dropping every Sunday 8 am or 9 am. I am going to start doing lives again. I just have to get myself settled with my routine. Check them all out. Very interesting stuff. I hope you enjoy this little mini-sode and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.