What if spending a few minutes each day touching a plant or staring into space could change your life? Paloma Medina has seen it happen—and tells us why it’s the first step toward radical, equitable change.
What if spending a few minutes each day touching a plant or staring into space could change your life? Paloma Medina has seen it happen—and tells us why it’s the first step toward radical, equitable change.
Paloma Medina is a management trainer, public speaker, coach, and entrepreneur who uses neuropsychology to help leaders develop more inclusive and equitable practices. She joins us to talk about trading cortisol addiction for life-affirming productivity, the power of tracking equity metrics on your team, and why she recommends everyone spend 5 minutes a day doing nothing.
Inclusion is a sense of belonging. It is how we pick up signals from others that we are valued, liked, that we belong. That we have friends, that we've got people on our side. A ton of the work that I did in the beginning in researching equity and inclusion and how it intersected with the kind of manager trainer I could be was realizing there is all this neuropsychological research that shows that belonging is this absolute core need. Humans are wired to scan for it, protect it, and freak out fully if there's any threat to their inclusion.
—Paloma Medina, management trainer
We talk about:
Plus: in this week’s You’ve Got This, Sara shares a post from Desiree Adaway on the connection between overwork and white supremacy: “White supremacy knows that when we're exhausted, we remain obedient. And when we're overworked, we tend to stay quiet.” For more on this topic, head on over to https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast.
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Paloma Medina 0:00 Maybe they're not actually as worried about their co-workers as much as they're worried about not being loved. And the only way they know how to be loved, and get this cortisol, is to just always, always, always be working.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher 0:23 Hello, and welcome to Strong Feelings, the podcast all about the messy world of being a human at work. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and I'm recording this on such a gorgeous day in Philadelphia. I don't know about where you all live, but I love this time of year here where it starts to cool off. You're starting to see some of that fall color, but it's still so sunny and nice out. Yeah, it makes me want to close Zoom and be outside all day. So yesterday, that's what I did. I met up with a friend and took a little hike, well, mostly a walk, it's pretty flat here at Wissahickon Valley Park which is this huge woodsy area in North Philly. And it was just so soothing to have a deep talk with a friend while crunching around in some leaves. Highest recommendations, especially in light of today's interview with Paloma Medina. Paloma is a leadership expert with an emphasis on equity and inclusion. And I first heard of her through my friend Laura Hogan. Paloma's work on core needs has been a big inspiration to me and something I use all the time. We talk about it in this interview, as well as other concepts like life-affirming productivity, which is not the soul-sucking kind. And also the difference between equity and inclusion and the power of doing nothing except maybe, you know, touching a plant. Yeah, it's good. Check it out.
SWB 1:45 Paloma Medina is a public speaker, a trainer, a coach, and an entrepreneur who is focused on helping people build healthy and inclusive leadership practices. She describes her speaking style as "good for people who like a little cursing with a heavy dose of science." And her recent work has been on what she calls "life-affirming productivity," which I have a lot of questions about. Paloma, welcome to Strong Feelings.
PM 2:07 So good to be here.
SWB 2:08 Thank you so much for being on. First up. I'm wondering if you could just kind of give us a little bit of the lay of the land. Can you tell us more about the work that you do and what you focus on?
PM 2:19 Yeah, my work intersects a few different things, I would say, one, because I'm one of those people that bounces from industry and career every five years or so.
SWB 2:29 Relatable.
PM 2:29 Right? And so the lucky place I get to be at now is I get to have those different things intersect a little more. So I do manager training and leadership development. So it looks like workshops, and coaching, pretty typical stuff. But a lot of folks know me because I essentially took, like, what was supposed to be two years, and ended up being five years to focus on understanding more about how managers, leadership support equity and inclusion. And I went, like, real deep on that. Now, as I train managers and coach them and support leaders, and again, in workshops and trainings and all that, but how do we do that so that equity/inclusion is baked in? And as you mentioned, I am just such a huge nerd of like neuroscience, in particular neuropsychology, I'm not one myself, like a neuroscientist or neuropsychologist. I'm just a huge fan. And that means that a lot of the work I do with managers, which they've kind of brought to me and I've been like, "Yes, I would also love to support you around this," has been that life affirming productivity, which you know, they just call "productivity," or they say, "I'm burnt out," or they say, "I'm exhausted" or "I have bad time management skills or am working with ADHD." But to me, it's so much of the neuropsychology of how to be better at work intersects with equity and inclusion, right? Management, leadership, and productivity. So to me, it feels really flowy, you know?
SWB 3:53 Yeah, well, I want to ask more about that because I think when people talk about productivity, they often are actually talking about what I would call now hustle culture, like they're talking about, "How do I do more? How do I be kind of like the 10x version of myself?" And there's something underlying that that's kind of this idea that in order to be valuable as a human, I have to be "productive all the time," which I will say right up front, I do not believe. I don't want to perpetuate that. I don't think people always have to be producing things. They're valuable as humans, and rest matters for rest's sake. And so when you talk about productivity, and this idea of life affirming productivity, I have a suspicion that you're talking about something a little bit different. And so I'm curious if you can describe a little bit more about, you know, how you would say that this approach to thinking about productivity differs from that kind of like "always on," like I said, hustle culture sort of mentality?
PM 4:49 Yeah, when I say life-affirming productivity, I am speaking of that other side. So I am still talking about productivity. I'm still talking about when we mean to create things, to solve problems, to support others, to launch a business, to just show up to work so that other people can do their job by us doing our job: that's productivity. How to feel productive in a way that affirms the rest of our life and the rest of our, like, whole self. You're right; because of the current work culture that we're in is, especially in the US, I couldn't talk about life-affirming productivity, i.e. how to be productive when you're trying to be productive, without in this culture, spending at least 30% of my time, if not more, on supporting people and reconnecting to their body and what it needs. And that mostly what it needs is rest, and to not be doing as much, and to not be multitasking. And so the only way to do those things is to get like real deep. I mean, some people say that after one-on-one coaching session with me, it just felt like psychotherapy. And they seem to like that. They're like, "Oh, my God, finally, I figured out what's going on."
5:57 And so we started, right, the coaching session with them saying, "I'm just so bad at managing my time, and it's affecting my co-workers." Sure, we started with that. They're like, "How can you help me?" we end up realizing they've been probably addicted to cortisol, the stress chemical, right, for a long time, maybe a decade or more. And that maybe they're not actually as worried about their co-workers, as much as they're worried about not being loved. And the only way they know how to be loved and get this cortisol is to just always, always, always be working.
SWB 6:29 Yeah.
PM 6:30 And the only way to like detox….I mean, really, it's almost literally detox from a cortisol addiction, or just really, really ingrained habits around that "rest is never normal," and that rest is never okay, unless it's like your six hours of sleeping or whatever, people allot themselves.
SWB 6:47 Yeah.
PM 6:47 Which is true. A lot of people I support are like, "Oh, six hours is luxurious." And I'm like, "Let's begin there." Right? So like, I think you're right. The reason I don't call it "life work balance" or "life-affirming rest" is because nobody would take that workshop.
SWB 7:00 Yeah.
PM 7:00 My colleague and I used to joke about how so much of management training is actually teaching people the very tactical skills of listening, but no one shows up to a listening workshop. That's why I call it that; it's totally a branding thing.
SWB 7:13 Yeah, absolutely.
PM 7:14 We talk a lot about rest. I mean, we talk a lot about what you said: the worth, your worth. When you're just standing there noticing the sun on your skin--
SWB 7:23 Yeah.
PM 7:24 You are still so, so valuable, so worthy.
SWB 7:29 I love that. This is what people really need. I mean, I think, this issue where people are like, "What's the minimum sleep I can not die on?" Right? Like, you know, you extrapolate that out over a lot of different facets of their lives, and you're like, okay, what is the toll that that takes on you as a human? And what kind of life are you leading at that point? And then like, you take that a few years down the line, and you know, this is where people reach a level of burnout, where they're like, "I gotta get out of my industry. They get to these places where it's really hard to come back from, and I love this idea of thinking about productivity kind of radically differently. I would love to hear more about how you think about the way that equitable and inclusive workplaces kind of fit into that message of productivity.
PM 8:13 Yeah, I mean, I think humans are biased beings, I mean, we can just start there. A lot of the research I did early on equity and inclusion was just the basic neuropsychological, and just neurological, foundations that make us really ethnocentric, make us really into social stratification, which is a very fancy word and just means we like to rank each other and rank people. Very, very strong, millennia-old inclinations toward those two things. And then the after-effect of those are down the line, what it looks like is in-group/out-group bias and all these different biases that most people know about these days, I think, especially, I would say, your listeners, right? I mentioned that as, like, the first thing because if we start with "all humans have a very strong, early, millennium-old inclination towards ethnocentrism and social stratification," everything, including work, and including who gets asked to do what work, who gets asked to do the hardest work, who gets asked to do the physically hard versus emotionally hard and how that affects their productivity is absolutely going to be along in-group/out-group and depending on which country you're in. In the US, obviously, race and gender are humongous ways that we are ethnocentric and socially stratify each other. And so at the granular level, I do think that it has in effect whose rest we value more, and whose family time we value more, i.e. time, not at work, whose off-hours we value more, whose boundary-setting around time, and work, and life are we more likely to attribute to them taking care of themselves, or whose will we attribute, when they set those boundaries, will be attributed to them not being a team player. That's largely going to also lie around ethnocentric, social stratification lens. You know, again in the U.S., it's race and gender. I had to clarify "in the U.S." because the U.S. doesn't have, like, a monopoly on racism and ethnocentrism.
SWB 10:13 No. We're pretty good at both of those things, though.
PM 10:17 Yeah, I mean, it deeply shows up everywhere. My specialization definitely is supporting managers and leaders to make decisions so that those systemic structures, and policies, and procedures, and workflows, implicit or explicit ones, so that they are more equitable and more inclusive. So yes, that's my work. That is my work. I mean, this year has really changed how I talk about this because there's been, obviously in the past year and a half, this massive spike in leaders and managers coming to me being like, "Oh, my God, can you help me because race, gender, I don't know what?" Like what? Right? Or like, "Oh, yes. Can you help us with equity and inclusion? We don't know what we don't know. That work was always there before, but then in the last year and a half, there's been a spike. And that means that there's like a spike in how much data I can collect about the kind of shared assumptions, which is cool, which has been really helpful.
11:12 And so I've been talking a lot, and I think this has been really helpful to people is to be like, first of all, I'm picking up a shared assumption here that needs to get clarified, which is that equity isn't inclusion, inclusion isn't equity. You can't work on one and get the other. They are very different, actually. And it's been fascinating how as a country, and definitely, as leaders and managers, we almost, like, merge it like it's all one word like: equityandinclusion. Equityandinclusion. Like it's one word.
SWB 11:39 Mhm. Yeah. So parse those out for me here.
PM 11:42 Yeah. Right. So they are different. The way I think about inclusion is inclusion is a sense of belonging. It is how we pick up signals from others that we are valued, liked, that we belong, you know? That we have friends, that we've got people on our side. A ton of the work that I did in the beginning and researching equity and inclusion and how it intersected with the kind of manager trainer I could be, was realizing there's all this neuropsychological research that shows that belonging is this absolute core need. Humans are wired to scan for it, protect it, and freak out fully if there's any threat to their inclusion, and of course, depending on who it is, and all that, but yes, that is a core neurological thing that we're wired to care for. So inclusion matters, yes, yes, yes. But a lot of that comes up in the conversations, in the signals that we get. Equity, I think of equity is really just: who gets which goods? Who gets the goods? And is it fair who gets the goods?
12:39 And in the, you know, my modern workplace that, you know, the clients that I have, that mostly is around three things that most leaders and managers need a lot more support. And that is, are your promotions equitable? Is your professional development and opportunities there equitable? And is your compensation equitable? And I can just tell you they probably aren't. There's not, like, I didn't even need an assessment. And that's, again, because we all, not just managers, leaders, are hardwired to make these weird, ethnocentric, social-stratifying, invisible decisions that we make. And so who gets what kind of professional development, how often they get it, and thus, that obviously affects who gets promoted as well, how often they get promoted, how highly they get promoted, into which fields they get promoted. And obviously, that also intersects with how much you get paid, which benefits you get, what perks you get, and how quickly that compensation increases. That's equity. There's lots of other areas, but those are the three that we as an entire country, leaders and managers in this country could just focus on for the next five years, and have our work cut out for us. And they're just the basics. So really different than, like, having conversations about how people are feeling. Again, that matters. But one doesn't get us the other.
SWB 13:55 And we can't, yeah, we can't tell ourselves that we're done if we do one of those, but not the other one of those. You know, one of the things that I notice as you talk about that, too, is that I think organizations seem to have gotten a little bit more comfortable talking about maybe the feelings piece of it. But the, like, “Let's look at the data”-- and they're not great at the feelings part of it. But maybe a little more there. But then the "Let's look at the data. And then let's actually make changes based off of the data and actually set goals and targets and have accountability to hitting them," that part seems pretty slow to get traction. And I'm curious, in the work that you do, you know, as you're working with leaders who maybe have some power in their org, but not necessarily like ultimate power over everything, how did you help them figure out places where they can take meaningful action?
PM 14:44 Oh, yeah, I mean, I know that feeling, right? I focus on kind of like three levels of options, like whether if you're looking at professional development, if you're looking at promotions or compensation. I call them PPC, by the way, just for short, just like "the P, the first P, the second P, or the C." Whichever one you're looking at, I get that kind of deer in headlights, where you're like, "But what control do I have?" And so with, say, professional development, one of the things that I share with them is this thing called the three E's, which are the three E's of professional development. There's three categories of professional development. And they each work differently based on, say, neurodiversity of their reports that you have, but they also work differently in that there's research that shows that two of the categories of the three are way more impactful for fast career growth.
15:32 So the three are: Education. So things like trainings, going to a workshop, reading a book, you know, that kind of thing. The second E is Exposure. So getting to hang out with people that do a work better than you, different than you, or just two totally different work. And sometimes, you know, that used to be conferences, sometimes we would go to a conference to kind of network and connect not just with people, but with their ideas that were outside of our little bubble. That's exposure. But often, it's also getting to shadow someone, that first time I shadowed my boss, where she went to a VP meeting, and I was like, "Whoa." I wasn't doing anything, I was just shadowing, but it was really changing how I was thinking about her job, about the role of the VP, right? That's exposure. And then the third one is a really, really important one for career growth, especially fast career growth, which is Experience. Getting a stretch project, getting a bonus project, getting five minutes a week to work on that little, you know, side thing that's your passion project but that could contribute to the company, getting a promotion, accounts, right, you're kind of stretching.
16:33 One of the things an early manager did for me is she had me fill in as her proxy at three of the VP meetings when she was out on vacation. That was not exposure, that was me experiencing and actually doing, right, like, getting a little experience being her. All of those. So the three E's. One: for a lot of managers, they're like "Whoa. Okay." And then secondly, you often are the ones who decide who gets what, and you often are the one who realizes where there are opportunities that your report may not be aware that exist, right? Like my manager, it cost her nothing to have me be her proxy, nothing at all. No time. No, nothing. And so what's really hard about the three E's is that there's quite a bit of research at this point that depending on the industry, but Black, brown employees, women, they tend to get a lot of education, that E, and very little exposure and very little experience. That's again, just ethnocentrism, in-group-out-group bias stuff just kicking in invisibly into the tiny decisions that managers leaders are making. So what I tell managers is like, "One now that you know, the three E's, yes. Two track them." Make a little excel sheet or like on paper: columns, each report. In each quarter, which one are they working on? Which E? And if you keep seeing the education one is filled out for some reports more than others, but no exposure or no experience, that's it. It checks your bias. No biggie, we all have it. It's fine. And it just course corrects in real time for you. That's it.
18:08 Also, there's awesome things about the three E's, which is that, like I mentioned before, they work for lots of different brains. And one of the best things you can do for folks is give them the option of like, "Hey, here's some ideas I have based on the skill that you're working on, or based on the career goal that you have, or that I have for you," right? That, like, "I'm preparing you for that manager role" or whatever, "which work better for you?" It's been fascinating, as a manager myself, to hear reports say, "I actually hate workshops, I can't track anything. I would love a book recommendation instead." I'm like, "Oh, I thought you were so lucky that I got to send you to that workshop." But it turns out because again, whether it's ADHD or something else, dyslexia, that actually isn't how you learn. The same thing: someone is like, "I do not want to squeeze in five hours a week of a bonus project. That's not how I learn. I'd rather shadow you at the X or Y thing." And I'm like, "Cool. That's way easier."
SWB 19:05 I love the Three E’s framework because it makes it also very concrete to come up with ideas that fit each of the categories and to think about what's the balance of stuff that works for me? And it kind of gives it a good framework. I love that framework idea since people often really need something, right, to help them make sense of this for themselves and to then check in on that accountability piece, right? Like, "Am I actually offering the people on my team what they need?" Or, "Am I getting what I need for myself?" That kind of thing.
PM 19:31 Yeah, I mean, I think what's lovely about a lot of the updated manager tools that bake in equity and inclusion are weirdly easier to use, way less scary for managers, there's way less guesswork, less, like, psychic work. You know like, "Oh, I don't know my employee well enough." And they often are much more adaptive and flexible based on, you know, budgets changing, workplace changing. The three E's are a good example of that, right? Like, "Yeah, okay. If your budget gets slashed, focus on the other ones which are free. That's cool. It's okay."
SWB 20:04 Yeah.
PM 20:04 And for a lot of managers, what I've heard...I mean, there's, you know, there's tons of these different tools. And what I've heard is like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know that I was ever really properly doing professional development conversations before I had the three E's, and now they're really easy. Like, I mean comparatively. One: I wasn't sure I was doing them. Two: if I was, I was unsure if I was having an impact. Is this actually helping someone?" And here we're like tracking it on this sheet. We're like, "Cool. I see it. It feels so good."
SWB 20:31 Yeah, I love this. Okay. Paloma, I know that you are doing work right now to set up programs that people can be part of to work on this kind of thing. How can people best work with you right now?
PM 20:43 Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm a fan and love manager trainings and leadership trainings. Yes, yes, yes. I also, I want to meet more companies that are interested in doing this thing called pure learning cohorts. It's the driest sounding name, when I used to run them before I called them Dens, like fox dens because that's actually kind of what they feel like: this safe, recurring, peer camaraderie environment that totally works virtual, which is amazing, where managers and leaders get to learn from an expert. There's like a facilitator and trainer in the room. But they're learning a lot from each other, and they're getting to work on the hardest issues in this really confidential, safe, camaraderie-building environment. I miss Dens, I used to do them before. I would love to talk to more folks who are interested in, like, bringing these to companies because they are, I think, one of the most magical ways to support and grow managers or soon-to-be managers, but they're also, financially, the most scalable. So yeah, I'm excited to get back to that work, too.
SWB 21:44 Yeah. Where can people find out more about working with you?
PM 21:47 My website: https://www.palomamedina.com/.
SWB 21:50 Paloma, thank you so much for talking about all of this. This has been great so far.
PM 21:53 Yeah. Thank you for having me on.
SWB 22:04 Okay, so Paloma, we have talked a lot about the work that you're doing with leaders and in workplace culture. Before we go, I do want to switch gears for a second and ask you just a couple questions, maybe get a little more personal. Because I want to ask about something I think a lot of people have been experiencing, which is what do you do when things don't quite go to plan or your goals change and you kind of are making a pivot or a shift? I know that's a big topic right now. I know it's something you have experience with. So are you ready for that?
PM 22:35 I'm so ready. And I have a little experience. Yes, that's true.
SWB 22:39 Yeah, well, so let's talk about it. I want to ask you a little bit about 11:11 Supply because I know that that was also an endeavor of yours that you've kind of pivoted away from, and I'm curious, can you talk about what it was, and how you've shifted, and how you came to that decision?
PM 22:54 Yeah. So many years ago, I was a manager trainer, and I was doing it all virtual, which is really fascinating. This was way, you know, years and years before the pandemic. And I decided to totally switch and do retail because back when I was super, super young, like most people, I did retail, and I loved it. And I decided what if I make this store where we merge the neuropsychology workshops and beautiful tools like office supplies, right, around productivity, but we do it all with this aim of like, retail is, speaking of inclusive, it's open to everyone. Literally, you can walk into any store. And so I started 11:11 Supply, and I had huge plans for it. Like I was going to open an L.A. store. It first opened in Portland, Oregon, it was amazing. It completely took a life of its own. I was very surprised how quickly people would just call themselves, like, fans. They were just like, "I'm a fan girl," and like, "I'm such a fanboy of 11:11." I was like, "Whoa." And so it got really wrapped up in my identity. This was my everything. It just became everything, it just grew. And then the pandemic happened.
SWB 24:04 Yeah.
PM 24:04 What's fascinating is the pandemic was the third really hard thing to happen to the store in like a nine-month period. And the first two were probably harder, I would say. I won't go into details, it was just like hard things that happen in business. So by the time the pandemic came around, I was at the end of my rope from like a productivity perspective. I was being everything to everyone. I was a trainer, I was a coach, I was doing public trainings, corporate trainings. I had a shift in the store. I was coaching and mentoring staff who were amazing. And also running a store which is a whole other thing it turns out, running inventory, I was the buyer/seller. So by the time those two hard things happened and then the pandemic, speaking of unexpected surprises, I mean this really...couldn't tell why I was making it, and thus it became a really painful decision to make, but I could sense that I didn't have it in me to figure out how to get 11:11 Supply to survive. In hindsight, I'm like, "Oh yeah, that was fine. No biggie. Totally correct, right decision." But in the moment, I don't think I had realized how much 11:11 was both my identity but also my community. It was like the anchor to all these different things.
SWB 25:17 Yeah.
PM 25:17 And so the decision wasn't like, "Oh, I have all these data points, I can now make a decision. Also, because of the pandemic, having to temporarily close the store, all these different things, my depression came back, which I used to deal with 12 years ago. And then it just like, "Hello," came back and was like, "I'm here now too also." And so I think it was more of like, one day, just waking up being like, "I just don't want to anymore. And maybe that's the depression talking, but some part of me is like, that doesn't matter. I just need to trust this thing."
SWB 25:51 Yeah.
PM 25:51 And so I make that also sound really short, but I decided that and then for like, two months, talked nonstop about it to every friend and family member that would listen, and eventually just closed it. Closed it, closed the online store. Everything, just closed it and decided, what is the thing that will support my mental health? What is the thing that will support the things I value most in myself? And weirdly, that was going back to manager training and like baking in the equity and inclusion work. And also for the first time realizing, "Ooh, that is a lot. Why did I expect myself to be six things?" Fascinating, right? And I think I was, I call it like "buying insurance that you won't be worthless." You just keep buying insurance policies, like "I'll be this, I'll be that, I'll be this, I'll be that. It will ensure that I'm never worthless to others."
SWB 26:44 Yeah.
PM 26:44 "It'll ensure that I feel purposeful." But of course, that doesn't address the fact that nothing can ensure that you'll feel valuable in the end, right, besides like working on that alone.
SWB 26:56 Right. Right.
PM 26:57 So yeah, I cancelled all the insurance policies, and just got one, which was the manager training.
SWB 27:02 How did you start working through that feeling of being able to trust in your self-worth without 17 different titles or labels on top of it?
PM 27:12 Yeah, I mean, this is not going to sound helpful for a lot of people because I know how it sounds. But I kind of did an experiment of like, what happens if I do nothing?
SWB 27:22 No, I like how this sounds, yeah.
PM 27:23 Yeah, I seem to think I'm the center of the universe to several things. Right? In the end, it's a little bit also about status, that purpose drive or that productivity drive. And I presume that if I'm not doing this very long list of things, that things will fall apart. And I did that; I just did the experiment. What happens if I do nothing? I did it in part because I was recovering from surgery also. But a lot of people were like, "Oh, well, that makes sense because you were recovering from surgery. But I was like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, I was still trying very much to be productive while specifically my doctors were saying, 'Please stop.'" So like, we all know that mode, right? We're like, "I know I should stop, but I'll just squeeze in one more email." So it was really just like, well, what happens? And of course, I mean, you know the end, nothing at all bad happened. Nothing at all bad happened, including a lot of people were like, "Oh, well, that's nice. You must have had savings." I was like, "No, no, no, no. I don't think you understand the first three years of retail." It is all, all, all startup debt. So no, I had startup debt.
28:27 This sounds weird, but I have I think my depression to thank a little bit for that, versus fighting it, versus feeling shame about it, versus making it the reason I couldn't do things, I was like, "Well, what are some ways that the depression is teaching me something?" And it definitely taught me it was fine. Everything was fine, everything was fine. I mean, everything was better than fine. My mental health is so much better. My depression is super managed again. My relationships are better. I feel focused again on the things that matter. Still learning how to be a better listener. Still learning how to be a better aunt, a better sister, a better partner, a better friend. Those are huge, those huge things to get to spend a little more time on, not just being a better entrepreneur.
SWB 29:14 Yeah, I love that because I know so many people find that their work identity sort of becomes their identity-identity. And, you know, I think you know, those things can be intermixed, like, my work is absolutely a part of who I am. But it can be a real sense of loss when the work identity shifts or goes away. And it's like, "Wait, who am I now ?" And so, I love this idea of, you know, really allowing yourself to listen to your body and your needs and to say, "What do I need to take care of myself?" And to let that guide you.
PM 29:46 Yeah, and one of the things I'm exploring and I'm starting to talk to a very different field of folks, very different than my field. I partially got to that place of like, "What happens if I do nothing? Here's the experiment: do I become a worthless person? Does the world fall apart? Does my world fall apart? Do my finances fall apart?" What are all the fears I have and do those happen? And then realizing they don't. And in fact that the grief that is allowed a little room, right, the grief about what has happened this year, the slowing down of the depression gets a little room. And that's okay. Like, that's not the worst thing in the world to slow down a little, to sleep a little more, to take a few more naps.
SWB 30:24 Yeah.
PM 30:24 And I've been talking to folks like, who knows, outside of my little area of manager trainers and consultants, who actually does the work of teaching people how to do that without having to go through a pandemic, and lose your business and, you know, have to fire all your staff who you love and adore and were your main community because I spent a lot of time with them? Is there a way that people can get to this place of balance on the other side of cortisol addiction, if you will, without having to go through these things? And so I'm actually, that is a question I'm still holding, and exploring with other people. There's a woman who does, I believe her organization’s called Insight Alliance, she does work in prisons doing this 10-week program teaching, essentially, this thing, obviously to people facing very, very different circumstances than I did. And so it's still a question. I'm still exploring it.
SWB 31:18 Yeah, if somebody is listening, and they, you know, had something shift for them dramatically over this past year or two. They're trying to make sense of, like, what's next for them and how do they sort of reestablish their sense of self? I'm wondering, what would you tell them? How would you encourage them to start?
PM 31:39 Yeah, I think there's two things that are very tactical and really impactful if people try them long enough, because I think in the short term, I don't know that they do a lot. I think one thing that I've been working with some clients who kind of face that cortisol addiction but yet also exhaustion and just overwhelm and fear, right, fear of the future because we clearly know less about the future than we thought we did two years ago. I would say one: there's these things called BICEPS, these six core needs. I didn't come up with them, I came up with the acronym so it was easy to share them with clients. The six core needs are belonging. A sense of improvement, that's the second one or our sense of progress. The third one is C: choice, autonomy. And then E: equality, fairness, right? That brings us to P, so predictability. And then the last one is status or significance, so BICEPS, like, you know, like the muscle. You can also just spell the word "biceps" and my name, and there's a whole PDF that people can download.
32:33 And these things were based on tons of people, really brilliant research. But what I recommend to folks is, look at that list and kind of self-coach yourself, like take some 15, 20 minutes of quiet somewhere you can squeeze that in and journal, like pen, paper, scrap piece of paper, that's fine, which two feel the scariest, or the most threatened, or the least nourished for you, and which two are actually feeling okay and that you care about those a lot, so it's good that you're getting those two. And then the second question is what might be two things that you can experiment with to address the two that are not doing great. And, speaking of what you mentioned earlier, right, make sure to make a list of those ideas that you have a lot of control of and the ones that you're not sure if you have any control of. And that's fine. That's a good brainstorm list to differentiate and explore. And even that alone can really calm people's kind of fight-or-flight brain because they start using their prefrontal cortex, which is the PFC, the very rational brain, they start using it to make sense of what otherwise feels overwhelming, what otherwise feels out of control. And they start seeing a little bit mapping the parts that might matter most of them.
33:50 So BICEPS, I think BICEPS can really help ground and assess what matters. And then the second thing is, this is the one that no one ever wants to believe me, but it is transformational, which is start every day with a five-minute timer, whether on your phone, or if you just have a separate timer, five minutes where you do nothing but stare at the sky or, like, touch a plant and like, feel it. It's five minutes. You've got to do it for five minutes, every day for five minutes for, say, two weeks, or a week. And if you're able to, extend that to 10 minutes, whenever you feel ready. I think it's fascinating how many people are like, "What? No, I don't know that I can do that." I think that says a lot about where we're at.
SWB 34:35 Yeah.
PM 34:36 But the people that I've coached being like, "Set a timer. You can decide when. Go outside, look at the sky or touch a plant and just notice the plant, or the grass, whatever." It's based on a ton of research. And what it's simply doing is giving your prefrontal cortex, that rational part of your brain a whole five minutes in the day to do nothing at all. And weirdly, I've coached people for weeks before they were able to stick to the daily five minutes. That's how much their brain wanted to fight just doing nothing.
SWB 35:11 Yeah.
PM 35:11 But after two weeks all of them, and I mean all of them. 100% which is, you know, rare for a tool, or a habit, or a thing, an idea. 100% of them said, "That is so weird how much that has changed my relationship to like myself."
SWB 35:27 Yeah, okay, Paloma. We have got a couple of really good pieces of very practical things people can do. Thank you so much for sharing that and sharing more of your personal story. It's been so great to have you on today.
PM 35:39 Thank you so much, Sara.
SWB 35:41 Yeah, okay, everybody had to palomamedina.com, and we'll have links in the show notes as well. And I will tell you, the BICEPS tool is one I turn to constantly, so absolutely go looking for that. Thank you, Paloma.
PM 35:53 Thanks, Sara.
SWB 35:57 Okay, so for today's You've Got This, I think I need a home back in on Paloma's call that we all try to do nothing every day because yeah, that's not my strong suit. I'm a very active person, you could say. Like, I like to create, and read, and write, and talk, and walk, and run, and bike, and, and, and, and, and oh, and also do things like play with my phone and stare at Netflix, all of which is fine, but I know Paloma is right when she says that spending time every day being instead of doing is really valuable. It allows you to see yourself, to process things, to get some distance from all the stuff that's vying for your attention all the time, and then figure out what really matters. And so her advice was to spend five minutes a day just staring into space, touching a plant, and I think I'm gonna make that my goal: five minutes everyday this week. I hope you'll try it too.
36:50 And if that's uncomfortable to you, I want to call your attention to something I read last summer. It's from Desiree Adaway's newsletter; she runs The Adaway Group, which offers equity and inclusion audits to organizations and educates people on, like, how whiteness shows up in their workplaces. Important stuff. So last summer, she wrote this post called Sense of Urgency Keeps Us Disconnected, and I think about it a lot. I think about it whenever I start to feel myself pulled to do, do, do or pulled toward that place of overwhelm. And it helps me remember to pause and stay still for a minute. So here is some of what she had to say: "One of the tools of white supremacy is busy-ness. The sense of urgency makes it so we do not connect on a deeper level. It allows no time for discernment, reflection, or real repair. We're busy all the time. We're busy holding pointless meetings, busy planning for next quarter, busy overthinking things and not trusting our decisions. White supremacy loves that. White supremacy knows that when we're exhausted, we remain obedient. And when we're overworked, we tend to stay quiet. It rewards us for our silence, for not pushing back, for not questioning."
37:55 You hear that? There's a direct line from being busy all the time to staying obedient and quiet in the face of injustice. So if you struggle to do nothing for yourself, go read that post. There's a good reason to spend some time slowing down, and if you want a link to it, plus some other resources on how to look inward and give yourself a little rest, head to https://www.activevoicehq.com/podcast.
38:23 That's it for this week's episode of Strong Feelings. I'm your host, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and Strong Feelings is a production of Active Voice. Check us out at https://www.activevoicehq.com and get all of the past episodes, show notes, and complete transcripts for every episode of Strong Feelings at https://strongfeelings.co/, This episode was recorded in South Philadelphia and produced by Emily Duncan. Our theme music is "Deprogrammed" by Philly's own Blowdryer. Check them out at https://blowdryer.bandcamp.com/. Huge thanks to Paloma Medina for being our guest today. And thank you so much for listening once again. If you liked our show, please subscribe and give us a rating wherever it is. You listen to podcasts. See you later.