Tedx Talk: How To Lean In Without Burning Out

Help me welcome to the stage Vanessa Loader.

Thank you.

As I was sitting down at my desk in my office to prepare for this talk,

Something out of the ordinary happened.

My cat came into the room with a hummingbird in his mouth,

Still alive.

I screamed,

Which scared the cat just long enough for the hummingbird to break free.

The hummingbird flew up to the top of the ceiling and started beating its head against the wall trying to force its way through.

I felt so sad and helpless watching it.

It even had little feathers fluttering down to the ground because it was hitting its head so hard.

So I quickly quarantined the cat,

Opened all the windows on one side of the room and the sliding glass door on the other,

Hoping that the cross breeze might draw the hummingbird out to no avail.

The hummingbird thought that the only way out was to go straight up.

I was so upset that I did something dramatic.

And I'm embarrassed to tell you what it is.

I posted about it on Facebook.

Yeah,

I got two replies.

One of my clients wrote back and said,

Did you know hummingbirds represent female energy?

I thought,

Interesting,

Not very helpful right now,

But interesting.

Another person responded and said,

Why don't you try chasing it out with a broom or a mop?

And I thought,

Now that is a tactical suggestion I can act on.

So I went downstairs,

Got a broom,

Came back up,

Stood on my tiptoes and tried to push the hummingbird towards the windows.

But the closer I got with the broom,

The more frantic the hummingbird became and it started beating its head even more furiously against the ceiling.

Gentle guidance was not going to work.

So I calmed down and took a deep breath.

And then I was struck by a creative solution.

I went out to the deck and grabbed our potted lemon tree and dragged it across the deck through the sliding glass door,

Put it just inside the threshold of the room.

Sure enough,

Within a few moments,

The hummingbird smelled the beautiful citrus scent that was wafting up,

Flew down to the lemon tree and on out to the open sky beyond.

Phew,

I could finally get back to brainstorming this talk I was writing about women banging their heads against the ceiling.

And that's when it hit me.

The hummingbird really was a metaphor for the feminine and everything I was going to talk about.

My client on Facebook was right.

So I'd like to start by telling you all a little bit about my story of banging my head against the ceiling and tell you my secret for how I found the sky.

My name is Vanessa Loeder and I am a recovering perfectionist.

I have been an overachiever my entire life.

I graduated from an Ivy League school with a 4.

0 GPA,

Phi Beta Kappa Summa Cum Laude,

While playing Division 1 varsity soccer because it wasn't good enough to be smart or athletic.

I had to do both.

And then upon graduating,

I took the most intense job I could find,

Which was investment banking on Wall Street.

And I would work around the clock and I would feel so exhausted when I finally did make it home.

After that,

I went on to work in private equity at another top firm.

And then I got my MBA from Stanford.

After Stanford,

I went back to investing again.

And several years later,

I got to the point in my career where I was sitting on the boards of companies,

Financially very successful,

On track to be a partner in my firm.

Everything on paper looked great.

And yet inside,

I felt really lost and unfulfilled.

And I couldn't understand why.

I had climbed to the top of this ladder and all I could think was,

Crap,

Wrong ladder.

So as you can imagine,

That led to what PhD and bestselling author,

Brene Brown,

Calls a breakdown and her therapist gently calls a spiritual awakening.

I started asking myself all of these questions.

Why had I been following this formula for success?

And why hadn't it worked?

Does success really have to require sacrifice?

And perhaps most importantly,

How could I be happy?

And not just the happy that depends on external validation,

On climbing the next rung of that ladder,

But a deeper joy that comes from within.

Questions led to more questions.

And I ended up studying all of these alternative healing modalities that were really effective.

I sought out some of the most prominent neuroscientists,

Psychologists,

Healers,

And coaches in the entire world.

I was literally my own guinea pig for several years.

I tried everything.

And I ended up changing so dramatically that I quit my job in finance to dedicate my life to helping other people who wanted to experience this change as well,

Especially those in the business world and especially women.

Women who maybe have some outer success,

But inside,

They feel as though it's never enough.

And I got really curious about what drives this feeling of never enough.

And here's what I discovered.

It's shame.

Brene Brown,

Who I mentioned earlier,

Has been studying shame and vulnerability for the last 12 plus years.

And what she found is this.

For women in particular,

Shame shows up in three ways.

Do it all,

Do it perfectly,

And never let them see you sweat.

This explained so much of my life,

How I have been trying so hard to be good at so many things and just exhausting myself in the process.

There's been so much debate about women.

Can we have it all?

Can we balance work and family?

And is there a glass ceiling?

Why are there too few female leaders?

I'm here today to tell you that there is a different way.

There is a different way to achieve success.

And you can do it with ease instead of exhausting yourself and burning yourself out and climbing and sacrificing again and again.

Why is this important?

Well,

This is very important.

It matters a lot because this pressure that we put on ourselves as women,

The way we're so hard on ourselves,

In my opinion,

This is the number one thing that's holding us back,

That's keeping us small,

That's stopping us from owning our greatness.

And owning our greatness is our true power.

So I want you all to experience this with me physiologically as a quick demo.

So I want everyone to curl up in a little ball in your seat right now,

And those of you at home do it with us.

Pretend like there's a lot of pressure on you and just get really small and just notice how that feels in your body.

Now I want everyone to stand up out of your seats.

Please stand up.

At home,

Please do this with us.

And I want you to get into a power stance.

Put your hands on your hips or you could do like a victory move and just take a deep breath with this.

Okay,

And you can sit back down.

Just notice how that felt in your body in comparison.

So powerful can break glass.

So research has shown that this simple shift in body posture can actually lead to a 25% decrease in cortisol,

The stress hormone,

And it can cause other people to perceive you as being more powerful.

What you just experienced is very similar to what happens when women start to release some of this pressure that we're putting on ourselves and we step into our power.

And I want to teach you a way of doing this today.

I want to teach you a system for starting to shift out of this pressure and into your power.

It's called success with ease.

And there are three main components to success with ease,

R&R,

Self-compassion,

And the five-year vision.

I've helped thousands of women to find more happiness,

Success,

And joy in an easier way.

And I've done it for myself too.

So I know this stuff works.

So let's get started.

The first step to success with ease is what I call R&R,

Which stands for recognize and release.

Recognize and release the pressure when it shows up.

One woman told us this story.

Her husband was picking their son up from daycare one day,

And he got there early.

He ended up having about 45 minutes to kill.

And that evening when they were catching up over dinner,

She said,

Oh,

Honey,

What'd you do during that 45 minutes?

And he said,

I got a beer.

She said,

You got a beer at 3 PM before getting our son from daycare by yourself?

You just got a beer?

And he said,

Yeah,

Why?

I had 45 minutes to kill.

Let me ask you this.

And you're laughing because you know the answer.

What would a woman do in that situation?

I don't know.

Buy diapers online,

Go grocery shopping,

Take a call for work.

All of the women in the room said it would never even cross their mind to go get a beer,

Much less a pedicure.

They wouldn't do anything for themselves.

They would get something done.

They would be productive.

And many of us might tend to judge that husband and say,

Well,

Who does he think he is getting a beer at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?

I want to invite you to turn that on its head and ask yourself,

Who do I think I am not taking some time for me if I have 45 minutes to spare?

And this pressure isn't just around household duties.

This pressure mounts in the professional arena as well.

I was talking to the CEO of one of my corporate clients,

And he told me this story about the head of sales,

The third most valuable employee in his entire organization.

She came up to him and she said,

I love my job.

I give it my all.

I give it everything I got.

And then I go home at night,

And I'm with my three kids and my husband,

And I give them everything I got.

And I love that too.

And we cook dinner and everything.

And by the time I put the kids to bed,

I literally collapsed on the couch.

I turn to my husband and say,

I got nothing left for you,

Let alone for herself.

This woman ended up quitting her job because she was so burned out and exhausted.

And interestingly,

The CEO told me she could have been working 80% as hard and still exceeding their expectations for the role.

This pressure that we put on ourselves is stopping us from owning our greatness.

So what's the solution?

Well,

The first step is to recognize and release the pressure when it shows up.

Recognize and release.

So how can we do this?

We can start to shift the belief that success must require a Herculean effort.

Start by asking yourself small questions like,

What if I prepared less for this presentation?

What if I didn't try to run three errands in 40 minutes?

What if?

Allow it to be easy.

Allow yourself to relax.

And take time for yourself if you have 45 minutes to spare.

Now I know many of you are looking at me like,

She's crazy.

You want us to get all this stuff done and take it easy?

How are we gonna get anything done?

My former investment banker is right there with you saying,

No way this could work.

And you might even be thinking,

Okay,

So now I have all this stuff to do and you want me to be relaxed while I do it?

Great.

Now I'm gonna be putting pressure on myself about how I need to not be putting pressure on myself.

This is how women's minds work.

This is the tailspin we're in.

And I have a solution for that too.

It's the second step,

Which is self-compassion.

Self-compassion,

In my opinion,

The most underutilized muscle,

Especially in overachieving women.

So raise your hand,

How many of you have a belief like,

I need to be hard on myself in order to get stuff done?

Raise your hand,

There's no judging.

Or if I'm not stressed out,

I'm not motivated.

Right?

Yeah.

I lived with this belief the majority of my life.

It's what we're taught growing up,

That if you're not hard on yourself,

You can't create change.

You can't get anything done.

You need to crack the whip.

We've all been taught that this is the only way to get stuff done.

I'm here today to tell you this is simply not true.

And the research backs me up.

I have some surprising evidence to share.

They did this study with chocolate cake,

Where they brought a group of people into a room and they showed them this tempting piece of chocolate cake.

They could smell the chocolatey frosting,

Just look at the deliciousness of it.

And then they broke them into three groups.

One group was given a message of self-compassion.

The second group was given a message of shame or guilt.

And the third group was the control group.

They were given no message.

And they could observe the cake,

They had the opportunity to eat it,

They wanted to try to resist.

What do you think happened?

Well,

As it turns out,

The group that practiced self-compassion was four times as likely to resist eating the cake.

But even more interesting,

In my opinion,

The control group was twice as likely to resist eating the cake than the group that had the shame or guilt message.

What does this mean?

Let me break this down for you.

We are better off doing nothing than criticizing ourselves.

Self-criticism falls apart.

It does not work.

And I believe it's the biggest way that we are holding ourselves back and keeping ourselves small.

So what can you do to shift this?

Well,

You can start to practice self-compassion.

So when you make a mistake,

If you mess up at work,

Or you say something in a meeting that you regret,

Or you eat too much dessert,

Or you don't work out,

Or you snap at your partner or your kid,

Instead of saying,

Oh,

I'm such an idiot,

See if you can practice self-compassion instead.

Tell yourself,

You know what,

I'm only human.

And everybody slips up now and again.

It's okay.

If you do this,

You will not only feel better,

But you will get better results.

It's counterintuitive,

But it really works.

And you don't have to take my word for it.

I invite you to try it out for yourselves and see.

So the third step to cultivating success with ease is the five-year vision.

Research shows that one of the best ways you can create change is to envision yourself in the future and then really connect with that future self today.

I teach people how to do this through a five-year vision.

So for those of you who aren't familiar with visualization,

Let's do a quick demo.

I want everyone to just allow your eyes to gently close.

And now I would like you to see a yellow flower in your mind's eye.

Can you see it?

Okay,

Now open your eyes.

Congratulations,

You just did a guided visualization.

It really is that simple.

And it's incredibly powerful.

They did one study with basketball players where they found that one hour of visualization is the equivalent of seven hours of physical activity.

And all Olympic athletes use visualization.

And yet corporate athletes and everyday people are not harnessing the power of this incredible tool.

An important step when doing a five-year vision if you want to cultivate success with ease is to think even bigger.

Why?

Women tend to play small.

Research shows that women internalize failure.

What that means is when we fail,

We tend to think it means,

Oh,

I am a failure rather than,

Oh,

I just,

You know,

Maybe you need to try a different way or make more effort.

What I found is that if you really want to cultivate success,

You need to stretch yourself and view failure as feedback,

Nothing more.

There's a woman who works at a really large internet company and she had applied for this position that she really wanted and didn't get it.

She ended up going home that night feeling devastated,

Feeling like a failure.

And fast forward a year later,

Her entire group was going through a reorg.

There was a lot of uncertainty.

She felt really scared.

She practiced allowing herself to feel that fear in her body and she did some self-compassion.

Then she did a five-year vision and she saw herself in a really senior role in the company.

Well,

Shortly thereafter,

She applied for a stretch position and got it.

Now that guy who got the job over her a year ago,

She's his boss.

We are so much more powerful than we realize.

And when you start to think big,

You can tap into your true potential.

I care about each of you sitting here today.

And I care about my daughter at home.

And I want her to grow up loving herself exactly as she is.

And I know that in order for me to care for her,

I must first care for myself.

What I get most excited about with this vision is that as we each start to remove some of this pressure that we're putting on ourselves,

It becomes available as energy that can change the world.

So how many of you feel like either you are that hummingbird or you have been,

Where you're just banging your head against the wall again and again,

Wanting so hard to achieve and succeed and contribute at home or at work,

And yet you're just making it so hard on yourself?

Well,

Just like that hummingbird found,

There's another way and an easier and a sweeter way out.

And when you go this way,

The sky is the limit.

There is so much potential energy and power that is trapped and misdirected in women today.

And when,

Not if,

But when we unlock this power,

We are unstoppable.

Thank you.

Thank you.