Leading The Change Without Burning Out With Dr. Joanna Martin
Dec 13, 2022
As we strive to do more and become more to make a difference, we tend to sacrifice ourselves in the process. Dr. Joanna Martin, founder of One of Many, is on a mission to help people change their corner of the world without burning out. In this episode, she joins Lisa Pezik to explain how to get out of "superwoman energy" and more into a feminine and soft power. She breaks down how we can replenish our energy by honoring our needs, evaluate our domestic relationships and friendships, know our power archetype and tapping into internal resources, and learn emotional hygiene to be in tune with seasonal and feminine cycles of life. Dr. Martin hopes to find spaciousness in 2021 and to make a difference without making your soul tired. Join her as she guides us into making this beautiful change in our lives and greet the next year anew.
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Leading The Change Without Burning Out With Dr. Joanna Martin
I’m excited about this one because it is the last one of 2020 and it has been an interesting year. That is an understatement, isn't it? I'm excited about this topic because we're going to be talking about burnout. My guest and I were chatting about how we've been burnt out in our life. As a reader, you're going, “I remember that time when,” and acknowledging it. Knowing how to shift the pattern is what I want to dig into because I want 2021 to go smooth and good for you, leaving behind that baggage and what doesn't serve you in 2020. You will be ramping up in 2021 with the choices that you're making, the way you're approaching your day, shifting that paradigm, getting back into control, and recognizing when you're spiraling into burnout, knowing that you have the power to change it. I have Dr. Joanna Martin here with me. Jo, thanks for being here.
Lisa, thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to having a chat.
I'm excited to have you on because many times when we tackle burnout, we’re like, “We'll stop doing all the things.” Many women feel like, “I can't stop doing all the things.” They don't know what that next right decision is. I can't wait to dive in. You are the expert and I cannot wait to hear the nuggets of wisdom that you share. Let me tell them about who you are. Dr. Joanna Martin is a renowned visionary coach and catalyst leading women into a new global paradigm. Her message and work have directly impacted over 120,000 people on four different continents.
As Founder of One of Many, Jo leads the fastest growing global leadership community for professional women and entrepreneurs changing their corner of the world. One of Many trains coaches and supports women around the world, empowering them to step up and lead the change they want to see without burning out. One of Many has inspired 70,000 women and certified over 1,750 coaches, master coaches, and trainers in over eleven countries in behavioral change tools. Jo is also a committed financial investor in the work of The Hunger Project, as well as a diplomatic wife. She’s sometimes a too tired mother, a protective sister, and loyal friend. I felt that line of sometimes too tired mother.
You would be for half of the planet.
2020 has been such a challenge, but I believe that even before 2020, patterns and systems were broken. The way we were operating was not serving many people at their highest and best self. How did you get into talking about burnout and helping people be change agents, catalysts and not sacrifice themselves in the process?
It's a good question with quite a secure answer. I started my working life as a medical doctor back in the day. I trained as a medic but after my intern year, I knew it wasn't my calling. I was ready to be a doctor. I was making a difference every time I showed up in the woods, but it didn't feel I was making my difference. I made the very logical leap after med school and internship, and went off to drama school. I'd always done drama alongside my academics at school and I loved it. I'd always had this, “I wonder what if I could be a professional actor.”
I ended up at this great drama school in Sydney, Australia. It was fabulous. It’s where Hugh Jackman went and Nicole Kidman. He wasn't there when I was there, unfortunately. While I was there, I was introduced to this concept of coaching. In fact, we had a class at drama school called Life Coaching. It was there that I went, “There are names, words and methodologies for a whole lot of stuff that I've been doing since I was seven years old.” I’ve always been that person. When someone came bitching and whinging to me about their lives, I'd be reflecting back to them their greatness. I'd be saying, “Have you thought about it from this perspective?” I got to always be that person.
I discovered there was this whole industry and area that that's what people did. I thought, “That's what I want to do.” I then started educating myself in coaching and training, which was fantastic. My first phase into coaching and training was into general personal development. What a lot of women are not aware of, I certainly wasn't at the time, is that a lot of the methodologies and approaches was all created by men for a very masculine paradigm like set your goal and go for your goal. How are you going to get there? If you're wise and strong enough, the hell take care of itself. Make your move and that kind of stuff.
It's fabulous and it ends up only feeding what I saw in myself. I became very successful and nearly burnt out at the same time. I was nearly burned out by the age of 30. I was traveling all around the world. I'd be in Los Angeles one weekend, Sydney the next weekend, London the next weekend, leading trainings of up to 3,000 people at a time. I had a glamorous life. Everyone looked at me and went, “How amazing.”
As little girls growing up, we are trained by society to put everybody else's needs ahead of our own.
I was on my knees. I looked at the men in the organization who were living the same busy life. They seem to be doing okay. Disclaimer, it’s not great. It was not good for men and women but I couldn't keep up. I remember thinking that there's something wrong with me. I went off to naturopaths and trying to find out what am I missing. In retrospect, what I saw was I had an oversupply of what I now call superwoman energy. I had put into this drive to achieve and succeed no matter what. A lot of the goals I was setting for myself weren’t even my goals. I would achieve them and then they weren't even particularly fulfilling.
By the age of 30, I was nearly burnt out, so I stopped. What started as four months turned into nine months to do nothing, which was brilliant. During that period of time, I started to explore and investigate something which up until that time had been a dirty word in my vocabulary. It’s something called femininity because I realized as I looked at the men around me, it seemed to be working for almost every man that I could see. They’re picking up the tools, doing it, and having a great time. For the women, we were getting results but we weren't feeling as fulfilled as the men that I was coaching and seeing.
As I dove in there, I thought, “This is where I'm not making space for this domain in my life.” I did that and found a whole skillset and strength base which I had no role modeling of nothing growing up. It wasn't even in my vocabulary. If you had told me I'm the person who wore Blundstone boots and tracksuit pants to university, less anyone think I was attractive or in any way girly. I thought that was weak. I don't want to be soft and still. I don't want to be any of that. Therefore, I had ended up in this hamster wheel of achievement, set a goal, go over it, make it happen, bigger and better to the point that I turned into what I now call superwoman. In fact, I don't even think I stopped there. I even perhaps became Superman. If you want to annoy a man, be a better man.
I'm nodding my head on many things that you said. What hit me when you were talking was your soul was tired. How many times do we see that? You said you're going to your naturopath. Before you said superwoman energy, I was thinking the same thing. You were thinking it was an energy thing. I'm not eating right and sleeping enough. I must have some wonky disease or something that I'm not addressing. What's wrong with me? There's nothing wrong with you. Your body is not tired. Your soul was tired because you weren't aligned.
How many times do we hear that as women? It’s exactly what you were saying. It’s all those male things like you don't want it bad enough, your why isn't strong enough, and you're not willing to sacrifice. None of that is true. We play into that. We have to get up at 5:00 AM and do this two-hour morning routine. We’ve got to take care of the kiddos. We work all day until 11:00 at night because we've got so much to do. When you lay your head down on the pillow, you did a whole bunch of stuff, but none of it even mattered.
It's exhausting us. We've been operating like this for a long time. Many of us are either in this superwoman mode. Some women do anti-superwoman. Sometimes they have mothers, sisters or older sisters who've been like that. If that's the only way to have an impact, screw that. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to check out. I'll do it on my terms. They don't have the impact they want in the world. We often make this dichotomous choice, so we ended up conflicted.
We had all of that going on at the beginning of 2020, then 2020 arrived and took the level of difficulty up about tenfold, such that not only was it the baseline operating where we had some of our structures in place like we could take kids to school, or we could take them to the childcare. We could pretend our partners were somehow involved in some partnership around the domestic stuff. We told ourselves the story that they were and they can. I got shoved into the same household and the pressure was put on.
We added global levels of fear to what was already a very adrenalized state of being. Superwoman is our adrenaline by self. I often say, “That drive for achievement and focus, no matter what, is moderated by hormones.” Any energetic state in our body is moderated by hormones. In the male body, they've got testosterone. You put testosterone into a rat and it gets aggressive and focused. It's the same in women and men, but we have a fraction of the testosterone.
We tend to rely on our adrenaline cortisol access of hormones. That is my hypothesis on why we’re about 60% more likely to suffer from job stress and burnout than men. It’s because we hormonally don't have the same biological makeup to be able to stay in the state of heightened alertness and drive that the cultural paradigm is calling of us. Throw all of that into the mix, and then the pandemic on top of it. All of a sudden, the coping strategies for many women in our community, and I bet you saw it in yours as well, Lisa. It was no longer about, “What do I do to grow my business? What do I do to get ahead?” It's like, “What do I do to survive?”
We were on our knees. In our community, there was this real sense of, "What do I do?” We had to get right down to the nitty-gritty and looking at, “Let's look at your energy levels.” We always say, “First, replenish your energy. It's got to start there.” Let's look at what's going on. What's the domestic partnership looking like? Do you have support? Who's in your network? Who's in your community? You’re going back to the real basics to go, "How do we get through?” 2020 stripped out basics away or it shines a spotlight on where we were kidding ourselves. I've seen exhaustion reign supreme in 2020. As we transition in 2020, we have to be able to get it out of our systems, shake it off, find a way back to our soul self that you beautifully identified there, so we have something to build with in 2021. To think that we can sail into 2021 with the hangover of 2020 is not even possible.
I love that you said we're looking at replenishing our energy and then looking at our domestic situation and our friendships. It's that foundation. I was a nurse in my day before I was an entrepreneur. I have that same mindset background as you. Back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we're asking people to perform at self-actualization and creativity at the top of that pyramid. 2020 went safety, security, food, clothing, water and shelter. Those bottom rungs were shaken up. If you didn't have that solid foundation, it didn't matter what business strategy you threw at or sales strategy and lead generation strategy. If you didn't have that foundation, you weren't going anywhere. You were built on shaky ground.
Even beyond that, I would call those stable needs like roof in our heads and income. We always overlook something that women do so much worse than men. It’s overlooking what I would call replenishable needs. We're trying to create the most amazing email copy or broke us on a fabulous joint venture deal. We forgot to eat lunch and haven't had a glass of water since 7:00 AM. God knows when’s the last time you stepped away from your desk and took a pee. Those replenishable needs are critical to us being okay. It's something we tend to overlook because as little girls growing up, we are trained, not exclusively by our parents, but by society to put everybody else's needs ahead of our own.
Especially if we ended up at caring professions like you as a nurse and me as a doctor. We each self-select for matters. We’re mapped to act through-and-through. If you look at most men, they're great at taking care of their needs. I saw this with my husband when I had a newborn. I would wake up in the middle of the night to the baby crying. I am out of that bed into the room, boob in the mouth, before I've even registered that I'm busting for a pee. My blood sugar is in my boots because it's 3:00 AM, but I'm stuck with a child on my breast.
My husband, when it's his turn, he hears the crying, gets up out of bed, sits on the edge of the bed, has a glass of water. He walks down the hall while the baby is still crying. He walks to the bathroom, goes to the toilet, walks into the baby, and picks up the baby. I'm like, “What am I missing?” This is one of those things that it's a strength of us about what I would call our mother power type. It’s the ability to sacrifice for others and put their needs ahead of our own. If we leave our whole life from that place, then we are always going to be at a depleted level. We consistently try to perform from depletion. All that we end up with is more tired, frustrated and resentful.
You were speaking to the heart of where I was. I can remember talking to a healer and I was like, “I'm putting boundaries in place. I'm not going to accept these clients that are narcissistic or that don't value me.” I can remember I was going on and on. She was like, “Timeout. On a macro level, you’ve got it, but I want to talk to you about the fact that you're scheduling yourself each day at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00. How about you focus on eating lunch?” It didn't even register to me that I wasn't taking care of, exactly what you said, getting outside and getting fresh air, eating meals at a proper time, and drinking water. Sometimes we're focused on these big things and we've completely lost touch with the little things that keep the replenishable things that you said or replenishable needs. I love the way that you frame that. You said something about archetypes. I want to dive into that with you. Tell us a bit about that.
A lot of the way we work at One of Many is based on archetypes. That came from the fact when I started looking at what I needed to develop more of in myself to be able to live a highly fulfilling life with a big impact without burning myself out. I recognized that what I needed was to shift out of the superwoman mode. Superwoman is an archetype of our time. I need role models of strong feminine women. I looked around me back then and I didn't see them. My mom is awesome. She is incredible, but she's a tomboy. She had three brothers and she's quite masculine.
My dad was one of three boys. Both of my grandmothers, growing up, were these matriarchs but fiercely masculine energy, very individualistic, achievement-driven. It's all about doing it on your own by yourself. You don't ask for help, and you get crap done. In my family, I had no frame of reference for, what does soft power looks like? What does a strong feminine look like? What does that look like? In our culture and media, there wasn't much. We're starting to see it now. We're starting to see some examples. Where I ended up looking at that time was delving into archetypes. I first started looking at Jung’s Four Archetypes of the mature feminine.
He's got different names for them, but we call them the queen, the mother power type. We're allowed mother power type in our society. It's the only one we’re allowed. It has her downfalls as we've started to already discuss, and also the lover power type. He would also talk about the sorceress energy, our wise woman’s access to that connection to source. Looking at all of those was part of it. For me, there was another one which was missing which is more playful and that energy of getting things done. We introduced also the warrioress archetype. We work with these five that I started working with myself back in the day.
When I got together with my content collaborators for One of Many, Susie Heath and Annie Stoker, we started looking at, what do we know about this? What do we know about being highly effective, fruitful, replenished and sustainable? What do we know? In these five power types, we realized that when we operate from balanced access to this, when we can access each of them in response to the situation or whatever a moment is calling of us, then we have access to all of the inner resources that a woman could ever need to be able to handle most anything that life is going to throw at her.
If we consistently try to perform from depletion, we end up more tired, frustrated, and resentful.
We made them our central piece. When women come along into our community now, we stopped by looking at their profile and getting a sense of what their natural strengths are. All of us will have a natural strength in one of these areas. I was doing a VIP session. I do one-on-one retreats from time-to-time with a client and her strength is in queen. She's great at leadership but inside of that, she had very low mother power type. The downside of that is teams burnout and people think she feels distant. She's got to bring some nurturing as a way of being into her team. That's common pattern in our community of women who have the highest mother power type and very low queen.
They're terrible at boundaries, terrible at holding the big picture vision, analysis-paralysis all over the place, putting everybody else's needs ahead of their own, and sacrifice. It’s first understanding what your makeup is and then we help women to build access to all of these. We apply them in a bunch of different tools to help them with time management and understanding their cycles. There are dozens of different ways we apply them to different pieces of life. It makes a huge difference for women.
Can you be a different archetype in your family life than you are in your business life or is it even across the board?
What we tend to notice with women is that their truest expression of themselves has a natural makeup, a profile. How it shows up is there is an area of life where they feel more like themselves. That's what tends to happen. I bring a lot more queen energy into my workspace than I do into my home space, but my highest is sorceress energy followed by queen. They're my two highest. When I'm with my kids sometimes, I can feel less myself because what kids demand more of me is mother power type, unconditional love, patience in buckets and also warrioress.
They want the warrior, rough and tumble. They want the, “Let's play lions, mommy.” Those are not my naturally highest, so I have to work to bring my whole self into my mothering. I have lots of fun, and it's been conscious once I realized there was a lack of alignment and fulfillment for me there. I’m consciously bringing in my spirituality to my kids. Especially during COVID, it was important because they were feeling all of the feelings. How can I help them with this? Mother wasn't enough playing and distracting.
We got together and we did some writing about the feelings they were having. We did a little ritual in the garden, we burnt their little letters, and sent it off to Mother Earth. We did stuff which was up until lockdown, my spirituality I'd kept private because I was brought up Christian. It never fit me. I found my own spirituality but I’m being private about it. I hadn't spoken about it to my kids. Isn't that our job to bring up our kids with values? That was one of those moments for me where I got to discover my strength. It's centered to who I am. Let's bring more of that to my kids.
Now, I can feel more aligned there. If we're doing too much modal operating like, “I am this person at work, this person in this relation, and this person at home,” we often end up with the feeling in the middle it all of, “Who am I?” If we know ourselves, the more we can bring our full strengths to all of our contexts, in work contexts, and other contexts higher for where we're not as strong. In a parenting context, you're not going to outsource your mothering. You're going to bring more of that. It can be incredibly fulfilling.
I love that you said it starts with getting to know ourselves. We're not saying, “I wish I was more lover, mother or queen.” You are who you are and learning how to bring all of yourself that, “I need to be a little bit more mothering or queen in this scenario.” There's nothing wrong with where you fall. It's knowing where you fall and then knowing how to be your true self in those scenarios. It’s exactly what you were saying that I can relate to. I am so mothering with our little guy, unconditional love and positivity, but I find in the business sense, I tend to be more excellence, "Let's get it done, and don't be slacking.”
I don't want to ever pull anybody across the finish line. That's where sometimes I'm like, “I need to be more nurturing. I need to listen more. I need to meet people where they're at.” A lot of people have always said to me, “Lisa, people don't run at the pace that you run at. You forget when you're a high performer and your self-care is bang on. You can produce at Ninja level. When you've done so much self-work, you are operating at a higher system than someone who isn't. It's mean when you're badgering people.” I was like, “What do you mean? I never want to be mean.” I'm like, “I am being mean.” I have to be more mothering in this scenario to meet people. Of course, I meet my child where he's at. Why am I not meeting my team members and my clients or whatever where they're at?
We forget sometimes that grownups are kids in disguise. We need all of that. I want to show you the cards. We've got these cards for the power types. This is your prime by the sounds of it, warrioress energy. The benefit of warrioress energy is you're the most dedicated, the most excellent, you're the kind of leader who's going to roll up your sleeves, get everybody empowered, and alongside with you, you inspire action in others. Being in your energy makes everybody want to get into action. I've experienced this even talking to you in this show, you feel the energy coursing through your body.
That's the natural leadership strength of warrioress. The downside of warrioress is her team will burn out behind her because they can't be as excellent as she is. No one can ever quite live up to her expectations of herself. There's this undercurrent in teams where there's a warrioress leader of, “I don't know how long I can keep up.” They're very inspired when they first start like, “She's the most amazing person,” but then they get to the point, “I don't know that I can keep up. I'm failing her.” They start not saying things to you because they don't want to let you down.
Having that gear shift and recognizing that, “I can bring in a little bit of mother for you.” I can open the space and go, “How are you? What's going on in your neck of the woods?” Holding that space for people to go, “Here's how I am.” If you know your strongest is warrioress and queen, you've got high access to either of those, if you can allow people the space to tell you that they feel like they're not keeping up, they're not able to fulfill your expectations, they need to say it out loud. You can go, “I don't expect this of you. This is what I hope for you. I want you to be different to me.” They need to have that space.
That was a big lesson I learned as a network marketer. I'm not a network marketer anymore, but I was a while ago. I had team members saying, “I don't want to let you down.” The guy never wants someone to feel like that. I had that exact lesson that I had to meet them where they were at. I had to stop talking about quotas and all the nonsense that doesn't matter. I had to bring the human side. Sometimes we hear this B2B and B2C. Human-to-human is how we need to be operating. What's the first thing someone who is feeling burnt out should do? They're in that rat race. They are being told they need to slow down, simplify, get up earlier, give up TV, hire a babysitter so you can do more, and all these myths. We equate productivity with doing more.
It depends on how acute it is. We'll come back to hyperacute. If you're on your knees, I'll give you my on your knees version. If you know you’re on the edge, the first thing that we need to do is solidify what I call a shift in paradigm. You've got to shift out of productive. If we look at the definition of productivity, it means to create or bring forth goods and services, which sounds mechanistic. We’ve got to shift out of that into a paradigm of fruitfulness, which I believe is a far more sustainable approach. In other words, to produce an abundant growth as all fruit. That's the definition of fruitfulness.
Inherent in the definition of fruitfulness is the shift that needs to happen. It's the recognition that first of all, we are seasonal creatures especially women, although not exclusively. We live in a matrix of seasons. We're in an annual season. We’re in the northern hemisphere and we're heading into winter. It is naturally the time for us to be pulling inward to be closing off. I see a lot of the people I most admire on social media at the moment, coming away from social media saying, “I'll see you in the new year. I’m going in.” It’s that time to dig inwards. If you look at the trees out there, there are no leaves. It looks like nothing is happening, but everything is coming inward.
In the spring, the blossoms will come forth, but we don't expect fruit in the spring. We expect blossoms in the spring. We expect fruit in the autumn. First of all, I live in this annual seasonal cycle, which all of us could do a good job of tuning into and recognizing that our business cycle can sometimes overlay that. Women then have overlaid over that in a monthly cycle especially, although not exclusively if we're still menstruating. The postmenopausal women in our community tell me that they still experience the cycles around monthly.
Sometimes, they come out to six weekly afterwards, but it's still there. We've experienced all of those seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter every month. For instance, when we're menstruating is what I would call out winter phase or sorceress energy phase where we need to give ourselves the space to come in and to rest. We get our superpowers back. The warrioress phase comes right on the back of that. If you notice your cycle, you have more energy for late nights, starting projects, and getting stuff done immediately after your period than you ever would, getting close to where your period is on the horizon.
We see these seasonal cycles. Every week, we have rhythms. Every day, we have optimum times for each of us. Your question was, when we first want to start getting over burnout, the first piece is this shift. Get out of this feeling that you need to be productive every day and show this much at the end of every day. Lose that belief and shift into, “What if I was to start working with my energetic cycles? What if I could start to now focus on being fruitful? What if the most fruitful thing that I could do is take a nap? What if the most fruitful thing that I could do is be with my kids because they're demanding my attention and I can't focus here? What if the most fruitful thing I could do is pour myself a liter of water and neck the whole thing from top to bottom because my brain is foggy?”
We have fifteen self-power principles that we work on here at One of Many. Number one, I already hinted that already, is first replenish your energy. Making the shift from productivity into fruitfulness and then off the back of that going, “What do I need now to maximize my energy levels?” It doesn't matter what the problem is. The problem might be you don't have enough sales this month, or someone slept on the couch because there was a great argument before bed, or your kid is not doing well at school. It does not matter what the problem is. The answer starts with first, replenish your energy.
First, get enough fluid into you, have a square meal, sleep on it, and then let's talk about what comes next. If you're edgy, that's the first piece. There's hyperacute burnout which is a separate category which some of your ladies may be in at the end of 2020. We've been in this situation. Sometimes, you can't even tell, do I need to drink a glass of water? Do I need sleep? I remember when I was pregnant with Rosie, I had all in my tools. I was tooled up in this area and shrinking it to millions, but pregnancy and I are not friends.
It does not matter what the problem is. The answer starts with replenishing your energy first.
I had two big events within two weekends of each other. By the end of that final event, I was on my knees. I got to the end of that. I got myself home afterwards and I could not tell what I even needed to replenish my energy. I called my assistant who was also a good friend at the time. I said, “I'm lost. I don’t know what to do.” She went, “Sister, I'm coming up.” She got in her car. She drove up to my house and she said, “I am here for your whole family for the next two days until we get you replenished.”
The first thing she did when she walked in, she went up and she said, “What do you think? Do you need a bath or something to eat?” I'm like, “I don't know.” She said, “Stop even thinking about it.” She went up and poured me this bath. She put me in the bath. She went down to the kitchen, made lunch for my family, made some lunch for me. She got me out of the bath and helped to dry myself. I was exhausted. She suits me up, put me in my bed, brought me lunch and continued with that. She’s giving me meditations to do, helping me sleep, and handing me Netflix, just to pull me back together again for two days.
Sometimes, when you're at that point where you don't even know what you need anymore, you have an emergency on your hands, you need to reach out for help. I always say, “If you've got a sister or a mom,” they have to have mother power type. Mother power type is different to father archetype. It often needs to be a woman, although not exclusively. You need to be scooped up for 24 to 48 hours until you can get back to being able to answer the question, what do I need to get back to okay? Do you know?
That is such good advice. I hope that every women and men get the permission to be real and this myth that I hate. I used to run by this myth that we’ve got to push through. That was my mantra. I can't tell you how many women when I’m like, “How are you doing? How is it going?” I'm going to keep pushing through. My heart drops when I feel like this weight hits me. I remember what I felt like when I was pushing through. I was pushing myself into exactly what you described, not being able to get out of bed and bath, and not even knowing what I needed. You called it an emergency state. I don't think we think about it like that, and it is.
We don't think about it. We don't recognize the warning signs early enough. Warning signs that something like that is on the horizon is every three months you're getting a cold and you can't get out of bed. You let yourself have it because you've got the cold. We don't recognize it in people until they're at their desks and can't stop weeping. We don't recognize it in people until they're being physically sick every morning before work. When we have these moments, you can't work out what you need, you're at an emergency level, you need some hardcore nourishment short-term, and then you need a long-term plan for getting you back to okay.
You need support, coaching, and help to do that. It's because of the cultural paradigm that we live in that celebrates superwoman and pushing through. Busyness is a badge of honor, “She's very important. She had to work until midnight last night. She's up on meetings again at 7:00 this morning. She must be important.” She's so on the way to burnout. Our whole culture makes heroes and heroines of those sorts of people and it is killing us. It's not good for women, men, and role modeling for our children. We've got to turn that around and it starts with putting your needs first, putting you at the center, and finding a new way of operating.
Superwoman is great. She's fabulous for fifteen minutes. I'm not saying you don't ever push through. Of course, you do. Fifteen minutes at the end of a busy launch, you do it. What you don't do is push through for fifteen days or where most women find themselves, fifteen months or even fifteen years of pushing through. That is the recipe for exhaustion, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, burnout, that whole spectrum of exhaustive conditions, which is going up at a rate of knots. We’ve got to catch ourselves early and reach out for the help that we need.
Before the monkey mind takes over because I hear many women say, “There must be something wrong with me if I can't operate at this speed or I can't do the thing that's being asked of me.” That's where that whole fear of not pushing through, meaning we're not worthy, not enough, not loved, and not good enough. All those monkey mind things. They aren't even true. You've depleted yourself so much that you're not thinking clearly. This is such a needed thing and I'm glad that you talk so much about getting back to knowing yourself, replenishing those things that you need, and stopping when it's like, “I'm going to push through.” Catch yourself.
We know it’s part of the creative process too. If you want to create something, you go at the thing directly for a while, then you come away from it. You let your unconscious or the superconscious, and the collective unconscious then start to feed in. You find the wisdom in nature, shared wisdom or whatever, but you’ve got to give it space. If there was one blessing or one thing that I could wish for everyone in the world, it would be spaciousness. The ability to find inner space and outer space, to be able to just be, and discover that that is where the power lives. You think about this queen power type who is perhaps the most effective of the power types because she doesn't do any of it herself.
She does it all with and through others. Her gift is in her ability to pull back, stand on the parapets, see out over her realm, and hold a vision for her realm. She doesn't go and do the doing. Men and women lay down their lives for the vision of the queen. She's the most effective at bringing a vision into reality because of that. It requires spaciousness. We can't get to that space without. We've got to have this ability to find that space. I don't even like to say slow down because it isn't. It is slowing down but most people who are going fast hate that advice, but it's finding space and always looking at the counterbalance. You can go fast and hard, and then you need to find space. I don't like the word balance because it's impossible to remain in balance. It's tipping from one to the other, but most of us tip into busy and stay there. You need to get back into still.
I heard an expert say which always stuck with me, Ben Hardy, he's an author. He said, “The higher the stress, the higher the recovery.” I know he was talking about athletes but I was like, “Isn't that true of life.” You go and have this big launch. You go and speak at this event, or some personal thing rocks you, you need time to recover from that.
Let's call a spade a spade. 2020 is one of those events. We've had several of those things. Many of us have had our businesses on distress and personal crises where we've counseled friends through having COVID or mental health-related issues because they're isolated or we may have had those ourselves. 2020 has been a traumatic, stressful event for almost every person on the planet. I'm not saying many of us have had great years as well.
There have been great moments of true beauty and joyous moments. I look back over my year and I've had 3 or possibly even 4 events during that period which if I hadn't had my emotional hygiene techniques and post-trauma tools to get it out of my system, it would still be with me now and still informing my hyper adrenalized state of superwoman, had I not known, “Look at me, I'm in post-trauma, I need to let this through and out.” I know I'm not alone. Many women have had this experience.
Even when you were talking about the seasonal, monthly cycles and weekly rhythms, that hit me even to start there. Pay attention during those times of the month and where your energy is getting back in tune with your natural rhythm. Even that in itself was such a nugget and a gift to people in our time. How can they best get a hold of you? Do you have anything to give them to help those readers who are like, “That is me. I am in that burnout and hyper state. I am one decision away from a crash?”
Our website is OneOfMany.co.uk. You can come and start diving into loads of free resources there. We said that one of the best things to do is to start to understand yourself. I'm happy to give your readers an opportunity to do our PowerType Profiling Tool. Ordinarily, we sell this for $97, but I'll give your audiences a token to do that. They can go to OneOfMany.co.uk/powertypes. The token that they'll need to use is FSCHO. If they put that in, then you'll get it for free. You can see what your strengths are and start to understand why you might be where you're at. If we can support you to help get you back to great, it would be a deep honor.
I'm going to run and do that because I want to know more about myself. Thank you so much for coming on and speaking so vulnerable, generous and honest. I love that this was my last episode of 2020 because it talked about all the BS that we've been carrying and permission to nurture and love ourselves. As women, our archetype a lot of times is caring for everyone else and loving on everyone else. That nurturing has to come back to you. You nailed home that point in such an eloquent amazing way. Jo, thank you so much for being here with us.
Lisa, thank you so much for having me. It's been beautiful. I have enjoyed it.
Thank you for being here. Check out Jo and all those resources. Download all of that stuff so that you can know yourself better. You are powerful, beautiful and amazing. We want to see all of you. Thank you for being here. I'll see you next time.
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- https://Twitter.com/joannamartin
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/joannamartin/
- One of Many
- Four Archetypes
- OneOfMany.co.uk/powertypes
About Dr. Joanna Martin
Dr Joanna Martin (Jo) is a renowned visionary, coach and catalyst; leading women into a new global paradigm. Her message and work have directly impacted over 120,000 people on 4 different continents.
As Founder of One of many Jo leads the fastest growing global leadership community for professional women and entrepreneurs changing their corner of the world.
One of many trains, coaches and supports women around the world - empowering them to step up and lead the change they want to see without burning out.
One of many has inspired 70,000+ women and certified over 1750 coaches, master coaches and trainers in over 11 countries in behavioural change tools.
Jo is also a committed financial investor in the work of The Hunger Project, as well as a diplomatic wife, a sometimes-too-tired mother, a protective sister, and loyal friend.
Written by Lisa Pezik
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