Ep #68: Balance Work and Life Using Thoughtful Authenticity
episode summary
Is your professional life a never-ending balancing act that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and undervalued?
Today's guest has been there, and has great advice for how to manage the delicate balance of work and home. Lauren Wittenberg Weiner's story of starting with a (literal!) dumpster fire and ending up with a $100 million dollar company, while raising kids, is a must listen.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to apply 'thoughtful authenticity' in order to bring your real self to work without compromising professionalism.
Why it's so important that as overwhelmed working women, we model authenticity to our staff and co-workers.
Practical strategies to manage overwhelm and anxiety effectively, drawn from Lauren's personal and professional experiences.
Hit play now to uncover valuable lessons on balancing career and personal life while staying true to yourself.
Featured on the podcast:
Lauren's website
Lauren's TED Talk
Follow Lauren on Instagram
Square Breathing
Listen to this episode on Apple or Spotify!
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
If you are sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed, I can help. I coach clients on 1 on 1 to create a more calm, relaxing, intentional life. The first step is to set up a complimentary discovery session right here.
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Want to learn more about me or my work? Head to my website at www.michellegauthier.com
Discover practical strategies to overcome imposter syndrome, manage time effectively, and cultivate a calm and positive mindset while setting boundaries and combating negative self-talk in high-stress jobs, all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the 'Overwhelmed Working Woman' podcast.
Music Used: Pop Guitar Intro 01 by TaigaSoundProd, Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licen
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CHAPTERS:
10:53 - The Overwhelm is Real
18:10 - Thoughtful Authenticity
21:56 - Priorities
33:30 - Go Take a Bath
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Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 0:00
I got really good at feeling my own anxiety bubble. I mean, I come from a family of anxiety being just the standard and so right, both my parents, my kids, like everyone around me. So I feel that like agita coming up in me and it's like okay, it's almost - the next layer down is I recognize that I'm reacting rather than responding.
Michelle Gauthier: 0:52
You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more and productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life. Hello, and thanks for joining. Today we have a fantastic guest, Lauren Wittenberg-Weiner, who transformed her struggles as an overwhelmed military spouse into a huge company where she created thousands of jobs for people in similar situations. So Lauren has so much knowledge to share with us today. She's going to teach us how she managed her own overwhelm and anxiety, how to apply a tool she came up with called 'thoughtful authenticity' to bring your real self to work without compromising your professionalism. She gave a TED Talk on this and I love what she had to say. And then the third thing is why it's so important that we, as overwhelmed working women, share this with the women who work for us or people who we are peers with at work. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. Hi, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 1:50
Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited about this.
Michelle Gauthier: 1:53
Yes, me too. I have loved your recent TED Talk and I want to just dig into that for sure. But before we get there, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself, and a little bit from the perspective of what you have done, and then a little about if you ever felt like an overwhelmed working woman?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 2:11
Well, the first one is absolutely yes, every single day. So I'm Lauren Wittenberg-Weiner. I started my company basically because I couldn't get a job when we were moved overseas with the military. So I had come out of the White House in DC, I'd met my husband while I was there, single, and we got an offer to go with the military. He was a civilian at the time. He had been active duty before but was a civilian at the time and he got an offer to go over to Naples, Italy Sounded amazing. It was right around the time of Under the Tuscan Sun and I was like, oh, let's go. That sounds amazing. Bucolic rolling hills, all the lavender fields. And then, yeah, Naples isn't Tuscany.
Michelle Gauthier: 2:59
I've never been, but that's exactly what I would have been picturing also.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 3:03
Nope, it is a very gritty city. It's amazing, but it is definitely not the rolling hills of Tuscany, right? So we get over there, and I kid you not, Michelle, the first day we got over there we got off the plane, and in the military they give you what's called a sponsor. So if somebody comes and picks you up, it helps you get settled, particularly when you're overseas. And the sponsor took us the back way into the base through this alley. And Naples had these trash strikes all the time, and so there was a trash strike, because there always was, and there was a dumpster at the start of the alleyway. Well, the dumpster, because it hadn't been emptied in weeks, months, was three city blocks long and it was on fire.
Michelle Gauthier: 3:58
Oh my gosh. A literal dumpster fire.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 4:00
I was like, oh my God, there is a literal dumpster fire here, right? And it got worse from there because I couldn't find a job, and I had been, right, PhD from an Ivy league school, White House for four years busting my tush to kind of get somewhere in my career and then it was like full stop. So I didn't do well sitting home. I also didn't do well with lower level kind of entry level positions, which is the only thing that I really could get on base. So the woman who turned out to be my business partner was a corporate lawyer and she started a company for me, basically just incorporated the company and it was a placeholder, right, instead of being a 1099, they tell you, don't do individual 1099,
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 4:47
you have to have a shell of the company to protect yourself, whatever. So that's what we did and it grew and blossomed from there. So we started it, it was me and then I got a contract for one and a half of us, so she came on to get away from her colicky baby and then it kind of just blossomed from there. In 18 years, which is jumping ahead quite a bit, but over the course of 18 years we went from one and a half of us to over 350 of us and we were about 100 million in annual revenue.
Michelle Gauthier: 5:20
Oh, my goodness, that's quite a jump. 18 years suddenly seems very short.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 5:24
18 years seems like a long time and now I look back I'm like, oh my God, it really what it feels like yesterday that we started this thing, but we sold it about almost two years ago now to a tribe, a Native American tribe called the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, and it has been a phenomenal wild ride, both as the owner, now in the transition. It's incredible. We're growing by leaps and bounds now again, so we grew over the course of us individually owning it. Now the tribe is taking it and the team that we built, along with the team the tribe is building over top of that, are taking it to totally new heights, which is amazing.
Michelle Gauthier: 6:07
Oh my gosh, that's fantastic. So you basically went from I don't have a job, I'm going to create a job for military spouses. And how many jobs do you think you created over time?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 6:18
So I think we counted. The last I had heard was we had 250 military spouses that had worked for us over time, many of those for 10, 12, 15 years. But I would say over the course of the 19 years, 18 years, that we had it - well over 1,000 jobs. Certainly there were people that had been employed over the course of, because when we left, when we sold it, it was 350 individuals that were working at that time, and I would probably even guess 1,500, 2,000.
Michelle Gauthier: 6:49
That's so wonderful, like 2,000 people in the position you were in, where they're a military spouse and being supportive of their spouse, but also want to have a career and might not have that opportunity.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 7:01
Yeah, I mean we had everyone. We had military spouses, we had veterans, we had civilians, we had all sorts of different people. So it wasn't - we started with military spouses and it was - we just changed up the rules, really. I mean we really, just people were like, you can't hire military spouses. Wait, why not? And oh, the military spouses don't have professional level careers. No, they do. No, they absolutely do.
Michelle Gauthier: 7:26
Yes, I'll count myself among that group of people. Yes, yes, they do. Maybe they didn't at some point, you know, at some point in history. Maybe that could have been true, but recent history.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 7:39
Well, this was in the mid-2004, 2005 era and I don't know why people thought that this was the case, but we really, I mean, we had one guy years ago at UCOM, which is European Command, up in Stuttgart, Germany. We had this guy who basically said, oh no, no, I love military spouses, I love hiring military spouses. They make great secretaries. Oh, all due respect, sir, they do make great secretaries, you're absolutely right. They also make great comptrollers. They also make great strategic planners. They also make great all sorts of different you know jobs. But he refused to believe it, and this was 2010, 2012.
Michelle Gauthier: 8:26
Interesting, yeah. So so many doors that you opened, that's amazing. And then, now that you have sold the company, did it feel like a complete stop, or is it still really busy, or how does it feel now?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 8:40
So it's funny because people were like, y ou know, I talked to a lot of people when we were looking at selling who had sold the companies that they had owned before. Almost all of them meant for whatever reason, just because of who I knew, and all of them were telling me things about how it was going to feel after the sale, and most of it was around bluntly, it was around ego, right, it was oh, you're going to feel really bad about not being the CEO anymore, about not having the title, about people not listening to you as much. None of that mattered to me, none of it.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 9:12
So after it you were like that's fine, I'm fine with that, look I've got my own kind of self-worth outside of my position right and I still have done all the things that I've done. Whether or not I have the title or not doesn't matter, yeah. So to me, the stuff that they told me was going to be the hardest was watching someone else make decisions that well, actually shutting up was actually the hardest, I think.
Michelle Gauthier: 9:40
I bet, yeah, when you're used to being the boss.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 9:43
So like sitting and going, because I literally the first couple of weeks in particular, we'd be in these meetings and somebody would say something and automatically just go to answer, because that was my default. But oh wait, I'm no longer the CEO, I need to shut up now. So I was really bad. I got better. It's gotten much better over. I have literally like I have actually taken time to sit on my hands and push my mouth shut and be like I am not going to answer. I am not going to answer, and so I have literally trained myself not to answer or to text on the side and be like hey, I was thinking this, you might want to consider this, as opposed to jumping in, because that role just changes so dramatically.
Michelle Gauthier: 10:31
Yeah, yeah. So how, when you were building that company for those 18 years, how did you deal with the overwhelm that came along with, we should say, you have two kids, two teenagers and a spouse and parents, and you know all those things, yes, so how did you deal with that?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 10:53
The overwhelm is real. The overwhelm happens, it does, and anyone who tells you it doesn't is lying. Right. And so you know I got good at, I mean, I used to literally take deep breaths, mm-hmm, calm down. I need my parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. I just I do the deep breathing because that, to me, is the easiest and fastest thing for me to calm down.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 11:32
Yes, that said, I actually would get people who thought that I was sighing when I was on call, so I got really good at doing that, but also going on mute, cause it was, and it was like they thought I was mad. Somebody said something to me about like, and my daughter does the same thing, she's like, mom, you really make me mad when you do that! I'm like, I am trying to respond effectively. I am not mad at you, I'm trying to calm myself down and I want you to learn how to do that. But it like I realized that there was actually something kind of an unintended consequence of me calming myself down is spinning other people up, and I didn't want to do that.
Michelle Gauthier: 12:14
Yes, so good to do it, good to do it on mute, and did you get to the point where you could just automatically know when you needed to do that? Because I feel like that's such a simple solution and you can often do it without other people even knowing what you're doing, but we have to realize that we need to do it.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 12:32
I could say I mean, look, I got really good at feeling my own anxiety bubble. I mean, I come from a family of anxiety being just the standard and so right, both my parents, my kids, like everyone around me. So I feel that like agita coming up in me and it's like, okay, it's almost, the next layer down is I recognize that I'm reacting rather than responding, yeah, and so I need to stop and calm down so that I can take the next step and react. I'm sorry, respond, not react.
Michelle Gauthier: 13:10
Yes, yes, that's so good and I think for everyone listening, the thing that Lauren is doing that is a great thing for you to think about is to identify in your body what anxiety feels like and to know yourself. For you to say I come from a family of anxious people, so I am an anxious person and that's okay. I don't need to fight against that. I just need to know that sometimes I get anxious, and when I get anxious, this is what it feels like, and when it feels like this, I can take deep breaths and just take myself down a couple levels. Just curious, what does it feel like? What does anxiety feel like to you in your body?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 13:52
I get buzzy. I feel like I've had too much coffee. I feel like my head is - I get fuzzy and buzzy, like the word is buzzy.
Michelle Gauthier: 13:59
Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. That's interesting. I get that too, but only in my like my fingers and my hands, and then I get tightness in my chest. So I find that when I ask people how certain feelings feel, there's usually a similarity, even though everybody's is different. So that's a good one. So, for everybody listening, just think about what that is for you. What does it feel like when you're anxious? And when you can notice that you're anxious, you can just do any kind of breathing. Square breathing is a really easy one that I definitely recommend. I'll put a link for how to do that one, but I think any type of breathing is good. Yeah, okay, so that is a good tip. The reason why I wanted to have you on today is Lauren has recently done a TED Talk on thoughtful authenticity. First of all, I want to know how it was to do a TED Talk, because it sounds kind of terrifying.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 14:46
It's terrifying.
Michelle Gauthier: 14:47
It's terrifying, oh my gosh. So I want to know about that. And then the thing that I loved so much about your talk and I don't think this is giving too much away by saying this, but you talk about kind of bringing your real self to work, but not too much, and it just makes me think of the anxiety and overwhelm that we get as women when we have to present in a certain uber professional, or like, I don't have kids kind of way, and how stressful that is. But then overcorrecting to the side of just being an open book is maybe not the right way either. So I just I loved your approach and I thought it would be useful for our audience to know.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 15:30
Yeah. So first of all, it was absolutely - I love speaking. Like I get so much energy out of speaking but I have always been a kind of off-the-cuff speaker. I actually had an early, early speaking failure when I was in graduate school, where I read off of a script, because that was what all the professors at Dartmouth used to do, is they used to read their lecture word for word off of a script and I bombed it. It was the worst talk I think anyone in Hanover had ever given, probably.
Michelle Gauthier: 16:08
I kind of doubt that.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 16:09
But I literally finished the lecture and one of the I was like, does anyone have any questions? And one of them was like yeah, can you go over that again? I'm like which part? And they're like the whole thing.
Michelle Gauthier: 16:20
Oh, that makes me just sink in my chair.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 16:27
And I'm 21 years old. I'm the same age as most of the kids in the class. I'm like I'm going to die. This is awful. I'm never going to like I'm never showing my face again. So I had never given a talk that was memorized since then. So this is now 30 years later almost, and I was like I have to memorize like word for word, memorize this talk, and I don't want it to look too scripted, but it has to be scripted. So it was so out of my comfort zone and I was so terrified the entire time. Hopefully it didn't come off like that.
Michelle Gauthier: 17:00
No, it did not come off like that. Tell us a little bit about the behind the scenes. So does it have to be exactly to the minute and they have to know exactly what you're going to say.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 17:11
So, you don't have to be exact, right, but you do have to give them a script and you have to keep, as you update anything, you have to keep giving them the script. They generally are looking to know exactly what you're going to say, and ours was. It was a TEDxEustis, which is outside of it's, kind of between the Villages and Orlando in Florida, so a bit rural. It was a phenomenal experience. Phenomenal experience, much more so, I think, than most TEDx's. They're really good at editing, so if you kind of bombed at any point or forgot something, they would actually edit it through. So there were a couple of people who got really, really nervous and kept stopping. You can't tell from their video.
Michelle Gauthier: 17:58
Oh good, okay, I feel better knowing that.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 18:01
Yeah, I didn't know that until like the day before. And then I'm like, oh wait, you could actually edit my video? Okay. Oh, now I'm feeling much better about it.
Michelle Gauthier: 18:08
Yes, I'm going to be okay.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 18:10
Yes, that would make me feel better too, but I was terrified, yeah, so, but it was fun, I mean, and it was, I mean I wrote the whole thing. So if somebody asked, did somebody write it for you? No, I wrote the whole thing. It was a blast to do. I had - they gave me a coach who was phenomenal. She was a kind of acting coach generally, and she brought her husband along, who had done a TEDx a couple of years before, and so the two of them together were amazing.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 18:39
I did thoughtful authenticity, which essentially is, somebody put in the comments,
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 18:44
this is basically saying, read the room.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 18:46
And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of like the psychology version of read the room, right, but really thinking about not having to position yourself so that you pretend you don't have kids, because that's ridiculous, right, not feeling, you know, when you are overwhelmed to be able to say, hey guys, I'm feeling a little rough today, this might go a little badly or whatever, and showing kind of the mess behind the curtain to a great extent, which I am a big fan of doing, partially because I can't live my life without doing that, because I am a mess behind the curtain, right, and that's okay and that humanizes you and it makes you actually, I think, a much better leader, but I can be very different on this podcast than I would be on even a different podcast, right? Like you and I can have a different conversation than I would for a national security podcast.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 19:46
It doesn't mean that I'm inauthentic on the National Security Podcast and more authentic on this one, it means that I am thinking about the audience in which I'm presenting myself and regulating kind of what presentation of my authentic self I'm giving.
Michelle Gauthier: 20:03
Yes, yes, that makes so much sense. And I'm thinking of an experience that I had when I was working in the corporate world and I had a sick child home with me. You remember those days, it's like, how am I going to do all of this today? And she had the stomach flu and I was literally trying to take care of her and be on a conference call at the same time. And now, with the age and experience that I have, I would just be like, hey guys, I've got a sick kid, but I had this just huge fear. I don't know even what it was like, how they would perceive me or that I wasn't dedicated enough to my job, or something like that. So I guess, how do you know what the sweet spot is between that?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 20:47
It's a really good question. It's a gut feel to a great extent. Also, I mean, you have to know your audience, right? So I guarantee you, in that circumstance, you knew that the people probably would have been okay for you to say, hey, Josie's home is sick, I'm here and I'm working, and I'm here with you. But if you hear something in the background, please, I'm really sorry.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 21:14
Right, but in some contexts you can't do that, and if you find yourself in those contexts too often, you might then kind of start thinking about, is this the right place for me? Yeah, if you can't be authentic, look, you can't be a hot mess all the time. If I'm just focused on me, I'm not a terribly good leader anyway. Right, I need to be focused on my people, I need to be - so I can't be, like you know, throwing all of myself out there all the time. That's narcissistic, right, that's just being a jerk, but it is hey, I want you guys to know, and particularly as a leader, I want you guys to know that I'm struggling with this back here, because it gives you an opportunity to allow them to say, hey, I'm struggling here too. Yes, yeah, then you can actually manage that.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 21:56
I have a new assistant for the you know for uh, who just started maybe a month ago, and she I had said, hey, can you come do this for me? And she was like, and she didn't say anything at first and said, yeah, I can make that happen. And then she kind of stopped and she was like - I think she had actually watched my TED talk before she started with me - and she said you know what my husband's going to be on travel next week. I am so sorry. If you need me to, I will get a babysitter, but I really hadn't planned on it. Go, I don't need you. This is not time sensitive, right? But if she hadn't done that, I wouldn't have known and I would have just been like, okay, because I need you here at some point to do this piece, but I don't need you here right now.
Michelle Gauthier: 22:43
Right this moment, yes, and so she told you.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 22:47
Exactly. Her being authentic, her being clear, and saying hey look, my priority is this job, but I'm going to have to move some stuff around. Is that okay? Like, if you need me to, that's fine, right. Then she was able to do it. I didn't need her, and so it made it so much easier for both of us, because I would have been I mean, I would have felt horrified if I found out three months later that she scrambled and paid for a babysitter, for no reason.
Michelle Gauthier: 23:18
Yeah, when it wasn't actually top importance to you. Yeah, that is so good. And I feel like people in that example that I gave it was my male boss and his male boss, and so I think that, but they were both dads. But I think that my brain just told me they're not going to understand this pressure and I want them to think of me the same as they think about the guy on our team who doesn't have any kids. And in reality, I don't even think that was true. I think it's a good reminder for us to question. Essentially, my brain made up that story and I believed it, and so I think, pausing, like your new assistant did, pausing to just say is this really true, or can I just tell the truth and see what happens? It's such a smart idea.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 24:11
Well and again, if you're starting to feel like you're in situations where you can't be your authentic self ever, not all out there all the time, bring your whole self to work all the time, right, you don't bring everything to any relationship or any situation because you can't have your entire self out there at all times. It doesn't work that way. You can't be kind of all there so figuring out what you are and what you can bring. But if you find yourself holding back huge parts of yourself in a consistent pattern in a situation, then maybe that's another signal to say wait a second, this is the wrong situation for me because I can't be authentic.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 24:54
Yes, right, and I think in the long run, that's what you ended up coming up to is, wait a second, this corporate life isn't the right life for me. And maybe if you had turned around - and I'm not questioning your decisions in any way, shape or form, certainly - but if you had turned around at that time and said, hey, look, I got a sick kid at home and they went, okay, what do you need from us? How can we help? Right, and it had no impact on your career, you might have been able to if you wanted to stay in that position.
Michelle Gauthier: 25:25
Totally agree with you. I think that just seeing that it was me creating a story that may or may not have been true, and trying the other way to approach it, the truthful way. I personally think we always feel - everybody feels differently, just like we were talking about the anxiety thing. But I think we always feel something when we're being inauthentic, and in that moment I was hiding something and I was trying to pay attention and trying to do both of these things at once, and I think that always feels bad, and so had I known then how to tune into that and be like wait, something's off. What do I need to change here? What do I need to say or do differently here?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 26:04
That's where my overwhelm would often come. I mean, look, there were some times when I just got overwhelmed because there was just too much on top of everything.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 26:14
But a lot of times it was when there was something layered over that chaos. And the chaos was there just because I was pushing too hard on too many things at once and oftentimes they would all pile on top of each other in ways that I couldn't function and handle. But when there was an inauthentic layer on top of that, when I felt like I couldn't be myself, when I felt like I couldn't raise my hand and say wait a second, there's something wrong here, that's when the overwhelm came, as opposed to just the chaos management.
Michelle Gauthier: 26:48
Yes, exactly, and those are like two different causes, one of them much more solvable than the others, I think.
Michelle Gauthier: 26:56
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Michelle Gauthier: 26:59
I also think I want to circle back to your point about being an authentic leader and setting examples for people, because I have another example from the corporate world where I mentioned to I don't know, she wasn't my boss, she might have been like my one over one boss or something but I mentioned something to a woman about how I was traveling and my kids were both small and how it was just a struggle.
Michelle Gauthier: 27:22
And she just looked at me and she said, oh my gosh, I live here and I'm working here and I cry on the way home from work a lot of nights. And she just left it at that and I was like, oh, thank you, thank you, because you feel like you're holding this secret struggle. I'd bring my kids a blanket of theirs or something with me in the hotel and I'd be so sad and missing them, but so loving my career, and just for her to say that look where I am and I cry all the time on the way home. So I think, both as working for someone and leading someone, we can use our authenticity to create just so much better relationships and better situations.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 28:04
I feel like there is something to be said, for when I was coming up in the working world, nobody talked about it. Everyone was like you can have it all. This was the post 80s, but with the big shoulder pads, Working Girl, whatever, and it was either you, you couldn't have it all or you could have it all, but it was always like it's your fault if you don't do it right. And nobody showed us any sort of way that it didn't work for them, until I found a couple of people who were like no, no, no, this is really flipping hard, right, and it was. I kind of looked at them and I was like, oh my God, thank you.
Michelle Gauthier: 28:47
Yes, exactly, thank you.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 28:50
I think before the generation before us, right, they were just you got to go, you got to be perfect. There's only one seat at the table, so it's going to be me. I'm going to have sharp elbows, I'm going to knock out everyone else, so I'm not going to show any weakness whatsoever. I'm going to be as masculine as possible and never show any of the other sides of myself, because there was such a scarcity mentality.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 29:18
And then I had someone - the chief statistician of the United States government - which scared the bejesus out of me when I first met her, because I was like, oh my God, this woman. And she was perfect, like her hair was perfectly coiffed, her makeup was perfectly done. She always wore like St. John's suits and nice, like, you know, really expensive heels, and she was intimidating as all get out, until she opened her mouth and it was like here you go, here's what this is, this is hard, it's supposed to be hard. And like tell me what's going on. And she mentored men and women over, I don't know, 40, 50 years in the government and I'm pretty sure half of the senior, senior, senior people in the government were mentored at some point by Kathy because she was really open about it. She didn't sit there and look perfect - she did, but she wasn't, and she showed it. And I think, as leaders now it's really I find it really imperative for us to be open about the way that this goes, because it's really really hard.
Michelle Gauthier: 30:23
Yes, and you have so much more trust in someone who can just say that like, yeah, I struggle with that too. Yeah, oh, I love that, I love that. And I feel like there are so many people listening who are either in the position to be the example or to take the example or to pass it along. And I agree, we're in a unique position. I feel like, from my family's perspective, I am doing the job of my mom and my dad. My mom stayed home, she took care of us, she made us dinner, all that stuff. My dad went to work and I feel like we're one of the first generations, if not the first generation, to have the opportunity to do both. But those were two separate full-time jobs and we cannot do two separate full-time jobs. So something has to give somewhere and I think being truthful about that is so powerful.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 31:09
Yep, I've been doing a bunch of writing lately and that's one of the things that I was just playing with the other day is this idea of so what is your priority with all of this? Because, yes, you have, and you have to make some of these things your priority, right. Your kids are your priority. Sure, absolutely. All of our kids are our priorities. Not everything about your kids is your priority, right?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 31:35
I used to hate, hate, hate the spirit weeks at school because the bar was here and I love my sister-in-law. She's amazing. She has a daughter who's right around my son's age and she would take these photos of spirit week and my niece would be in like head to toe head to toe in red, white and blue, whatever it was, and it was like out of a Pinterest or like a JCrew ad or whatever. And I was like that's never going to happen for me and you know, it's okay for her to have that as a priority. It was awesome. My niece loved this stuff. My sister-in-law enjoyed it. Yeah, it killed me. So if you can make the determination of what your priority is right without it being, yes, your kids are your priority, but you have to get more granular than that and go okay. And then just how do I manage all of those priorities and do I have to knock other things that I thought were my priorities down the priority list, because I can't do everything all the time?
Michelle Gauthier: 32:50
Yes, yes, yes, a hundred times, yes. That is exactly it. I love that and I love how you're not saying either one of those is wrong. They're just, where do you want to spend your time? If that's what really makes you happy, then that's great. Go ahead, do that. Or if it's something that you just have to do right now, do that thing. I love it. Well, I don't want to keep you too much longer, but I have two questions. I want to ask you that. I ask every guest. So the first is what is something you do to make yourself feel better? Like a quick fix for feeling better or more calm when you're overwhelmed?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 33:30
I take a bath. I don't care if it's a fancy one. I like, yes, I would love like the Epsom salts and the you know, candles and whatever, but I don't care, I just - if I need to get away I will, and my husband has gotten to the point where he's like, go take a bath.
Michelle Gauthier: 33:43
Please, for the sake of all of us.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 33:45
Yes, yes, you're driving all of us crazy. Go take a bath, yes.
Michelle Gauthier: 33:51
Yes, that's so great. You know exactly what it is, and is it, do you have no sound, like you're not listening to something or using your phone, or whatever you're just -
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 34:02
I don't use my phone. It just literally takes me. It just takes me out of the situation. It usually takes me out of the chaos of whatever is going on and I think, really, what - I'll get myself out of wherever I am. I'll put myself in the car and start driving. I'll take a walk, I'll do whatever, but it's just getting myself out of the situation. So the bath is at least, although my kids are not terribly good at boundaries even in the bathroom. So like they'll walk in and be like, mom, what are you doing? I'm like naked in the bathtub, right. Teenage kids, including a son, and he's like mom, can you -?
Michelle Gauthier: 34:39
I'm like, I know I'll just be like, give me one minute! I thought this was a toddler phase, but it isn't.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 34:50
So that's usually what I - it'll take me out of it.
Michelle Gauthier: 34:53
I love that. That's a great one. Okay, and then what is something that you do consistently to do less on purpose or to save time?
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 35:06
I outsource everything I can. Well, first of all, I outsourced cleaning my house from the time I got out of graduate school and had a paycheck. I was perfectly happy to eat ramen for a lot longer if I could get somebody to clean my house every two weeks. And I still do that and I can't imagine. But I outsource really everything. I mean if I can.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 35:28
You know, we had an au pair literally up until my kids were, last year, so 14 and 12, I still had an au pair, my daughter. No, she was 15. My daughter revolted after I said okay, the other au pair left, we tried managing on our own, I was like this is not working, I need somebody to help me do something. And she was like I'm not getting an au pair, I'm 15 years old mom. And I was like, all right, well, this is not for you, it's for me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we're making do with help from you know, extra drivers, and whatever instead of an actual au pair. But I mean I had that for 15 years, right, somebody doing, and it it was that over schools or preschool or whatever camps you know after school, because they would do all the other stuff too. Yeah, right, it wasn't just drop them at school, and then I still had to do all of the laundry. They did everything, which was amazing.
Michelle Gauthier: 36:27
That is amazing. Oh my gosh. What a lifesaver when you're the CEO of a huge company. I don't know how you would have done that.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 36:34
There was no way. And then the other thing that we do a lot of is extra mommies is what we call it in our friend group and like it is, just, you know, my one of my best friends had gallbladder surgery the other day and so we just scooped up the kids and they were at our house and that was okay and you know, we were just nice, right. And then my daughter, who's 15, who's lovely and wonderful and amazing and overwhelmingly exhausting at times because she's 15 and we butt heads she called one of my other best friends and she talks to her all the time and she turned around and said mom, can I go to Sam's house? For Sam lives in Texas, we live in Florida. She was like, can I fly to Sam's? And I called Sam. I'm like she wants to come to you. She's like sure, send her over. So she's going for four days to sit with Sam. And, by the way, Sam is taking her shopping because I can't do it anymore, okay.
Michelle Gauthier: 37:31
Okay, awesome. So this sounds like a free solution in terms of it's really just your community of friends and you guys are just having each other's back and knowing you can do it. I love that. Those are two great answers. Thank you so much. I want to wrap up with all the info so people can follow you. So I'll definitely put the link to your TED Talk, which has like half a million likes or something.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 37:54
now, right, yeah, it's almost 500,000 views in two and a half months, which is crazy.
Michelle Gauthier: 38:00
That's crazy. Oh my gosh. Congratulations.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 38:03
Yeah, so I've been. So I'm, I'm reinventing all of the stuff that I'm doing and doing all of the like, Instagram, all the socials, all the Instagram that - I haven't fully gotten on TikTok yet. I'm there, but I'm not doing anything yet cause I just can't do it. That's a tough one, but the one thing I have been told is I need as many likes and comments, not just views. So if anyone watches it, please comment and please like it.
Michelle Gauthier: 38:33
Hey, good to know, Good to know. That would be really really helpful.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 38:37
I have a new website, laurenwittenbergweiner. com, and you can sign up for my newsletter, which is going to start generating lots and lots of content. Like I said, I'm writing a lot more, so a lot of the stuff that Michelle and I were able to talk about here, I get to kind of put out there in thought pieces. I'm going to be doing videos. I'm going to do all the stuff that you do, Michelle. I'm like taking inspiration from you and all the stuff that you do to be well. But yeah, so follow me on all the socials and sign up for my newsletter, and there should be something more substantial in the writing realm.
Michelle Gauthier: 39:17
We won't say the word.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 39:22
I am writing a book. I don't know if I'm supposed to tell anyone that or not. I am writing a book, so it should be - i you follow me on all the things, I promise to announce it as it gets closer, but it is so much harder than I thought it was going to be.
Michelle Gauthier: 39:34
Oh, I can't imagine. I think everybody says, I'd love to write a book.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 39:40
I, for years, for 30 years, wanted to write a book. I didn't have anything to write about, but now I do, and so it's actually harder to keep it shorter rather than like I've got way too much content for it. Yeah, I bet. So rewriting now, but it's been really fun.
Michelle Gauthier: 39:56
Okay, good, yes, will you come back when your book's out? I'll read your book, we can have a little book club on the podcast and introduce it to people.
Michelle Gauthier: 40:04
Okay, perfect, I love it. I love it. Wonderful, well, thank you so much for being with us and for sharing your wisdom with all the rest of the Overwhelmed Working Women. I'm glad you're in the same boat with us Always. We're all here together, always. Thank you so much.
Lauren Wittenberg Weiner: 40:23
Thanks, Michelle.
Michelle Gauthier: 40:26
Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.
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