February 26, 2025 • 36 mins
Join us for an invigorating conversation with Lissy Alden, the visionary behind MYNDY, as we unravel the mysteries of burnout among holistic practitioners. This episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to build mental fitness and foster resilience in your healing practice. Lucy brings her wealth of experience to the table, highlighting the unique challenges faced by healers who are constantly pouring their energy into others, often at the expense of their own well-being. Together, we explore practical strategies designed to help you maintain a sustainable practice, emphasizing mental fitness as a proactive approach akin to physical exercise.
Discover how to recognize the signs of burnout before they spiral out of control. We'll introduce you to the "Stop, Slow, and Go" framework, a groundbreaking approach to managing mental fatigue. Learn how rest can be a powerful tool for rejuvenation, how to cross-train your brain with new thoughts and feelings, and why celebrating your progress is vital for motivation. Don’t let the demands of your practice overshadow your own need for care; instead, embrace self-recognition and positive reinforcement as you navigate the complex terrain of mental health.
Check out Heallist.com for digital tools created just for holistic healers.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Yuli (00:04):
Welcome to the Healist Podcast, where we inspire and
guide healers through businessexpansion.
We give voice to incrediblyabundant healers to share their
stories.
We dive into the quantum fieldto unlock the energies of
conscious creation.
We also develop digital toolsto help you grow, which you can
(00:25):
find on healistcom.
I'm your host, Yuli, and I'mgrateful you chose to join this
space.
Now let's go deep.
Hello, my dear friends, andwelcome to another amazing
episode of the Healist Podcast.
We are talking today about abig topic of how to avoid
(00:46):
burnout among holisticpractitioners, and we have
amazing guests to share somereally, really great insights
with us.
So we're joined today by LucyAlden she's a founder of Mindy
to explore today how holisticpractitioners can build mental
fitness and avoid burnout.
With her practical,research-backed approach, a
(01:09):
background working withorganizations like MIT and
Google, lissy will share simplestrategies to help you stay
resilient, focused and thrivingin your practice.
So good to have you with us.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for having me, yoli,it's such a pleasure.
So I like to set intention foreach episode and you're welcome
(01:32):
to do the same, and really myintention for this one is, you
know, something that we'reseeing in our platform and
through my work withpractitioners we do see quite a
lot of burnout in this space andwe do see people that just give
up, right, and they just decidethis is too much for them.
They decide to have maybe moretraditional careers and, just
(01:53):
you know, maybe continue healingpractices as a kind of a side
practice with friends and family, but they really it takes a
toll on them all the demands ofthis profession, right, being in
service and being responsiblefor healing others and
(02:13):
constantly giving, giving,giving.
So my intention for today isreally to inspire people and
give them some really greatpractical tools and really kind
of quick hacks Like I would lovehacks in a tech space right,
what can we give people to justkind of inspire more of a
(02:34):
sustainable practice and how toreally prioritize their own
mental fitness, which is a topicyou're an expert on and I would
love to dig deeper into.
But this is my very longintention.
Lissy (02:49):
Well, I'm going to mirror that same intention.
It's part of why I ended upbuilding the company and doing
the work that I do is thatthere's so much great stuff out
there on the market to help uswork on our mind, our body, our
soul, and we just don't haveenough time and money to do it
all, and so my job today, butalso every day, is to help bring
(03:10):
this to you in a way that feelsactually doable as a human and
also as a healer who spends alot of their time on other
people.
Yuli (03:17):
Amazing and I love the some of the definition that you
told me right before we hoppedon the on this talk, that you,
that who you define as a healeror who you work with usually.
Lissy (03:31):
Yeah, so we always like to say that we work with people
who spend their lives helpingothers.
So maybe that's somebody whodefines themselves as a true
healer, maybe that's somebodywho defined themselves as a
parent or a manager, but theyspend most of their lives in
such a beautiful way thinking ofand dedicating their time and
effort and energy to otherpeople, but have very little
(03:53):
time left for themselves.
And so this is where our workand our heart kind of really
comes in, and it's why I do whatI do.
Grew up always volunteering andI was a peer counselor and did
a lot of this work and knowfirsthand that giving feels
really good and it's like thecoolest job in the whole world
(04:14):
until you've got nothing left,like the giving tree.
And so my job is to figure outhow to do that in a sustainable
way, and that's what I practicenow at my company and with our
products.
Yuli (04:26):
And that's first of all.
It's incredible that you builta company around this idea of
helping servers right People whoserve others and it's such an
incredible mission, and I wouldlove to learn more about how
your company works.
But before we dive into that, Iwould love to maybe define a
little better what mentalfitness actually means, because
I feel like your company works,but before we dive into that, I
would love to maybe define alittle better what mental
fitness actually means, becauseI feel like it's one of those
(04:48):
words that has been recentlyintroduced into our language and
still a lot of people might getconfused about it or curious
about it.
Lissy (04:58):
Yeah.
So we define mental fitness atMindy as the proactive practice
of doing exercises that helpbuild focused, boost mood and
performance in your mind.
So, in the same way, physicalfitness is about these regular,
ongoing behaviors that buildstrength in your body.
We really are here to buildstrength, flexibility and
endurance in your brain, andthere are a whole lot of ways to
(05:20):
do this, which we'll absolutelybe getting into.
But I think when most peoplehear the word mental fitness,
they automatically go to maybeone or two buckets of those
solutions like a mindfulnesssolution, meditation or even
yoga, but there's actuallyhundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of ways to practicemental fitness.
Many of you are probably doingsome of this without even
knowing it, and so our job wasto then take that down a level
(05:46):
and build a framework to helppeople understand what we like
to think of as the food pyramidfor your brain.
It's what are all the thingsyou can do in a really clear
visual.
That's something I'm sure,again, we'll be chatting a bit
about.
Yuli (05:58):
Amazing.
So what are the soundessentials of this food pyramid?
Lissy (06:03):
Yeah.
So we like to say that there'stwo parts to the practice of
mental fitness.
We have a patent pending model.
That's basically.
Again, it's meant to be quitesimple.
So we've got daily mindmovements that your brain needs
every day to feel good, andthere's three of those, and this
is what we'll get into in justa second.
These are mental fitness 101.
(06:23):
These are the basics.
We need them every day.
And then you've got six mentalmuscles that you can activate
whenever you want to achieve agoal or do something
particularly challenging.
Those mental muscles are whatwe call heart core focus.
Heart confidence, optimism,resilience, energy and focus.
So let's get into the three mindmovements that your brain needs
(06:44):
every day.
You can think about these asstop, slow and go like a
stoplight red, yellow, green ifyou're visual, like I am and
these are the three things yourbrain needs every day to keep
going on a regular basis and tosustain itself over time.
So you can kind of think aboutour brains like a car.
The first thing it needs to dois it needs to stop.
If a car never stops, you can'tgas up and you can't recover,
(07:08):
and so we say stop is thepractice of resting and building
awareness in your mind.
Now this stop practice can lookas formal as mindfulness and
meditation sitting on a pillow,maybe with a guided meditation
but what we're a lot moreinterested in at Mindy are these
informal moments of stop, whichare really about doing things
like taking five minutes to justwrite free form on a piece of
(07:30):
paper whatever comes to mind, orgoing to the toilet without
your phone, or taking a walkwithout your headphones in.
For most of us, we spend ourleisure time double screening,
so in front of the televisionwith our cell phones, and so we
really are suffering from oursorry our sleep is suffering as
(07:51):
a result of that, because ourbrains are trying to go a
million miles a minute and thenhit stop, and so we need to
train our brain how to restthroughout the day.
So for practitioners who areworking all day back to back in
these healing sessions with allof their energy going out, they
need time to actually allowenergy to come back in and their
brain to remake theseconnections and recover.
(08:12):
Your stop is the way to do that.
So that's our first mindmovement.
Yuli (08:15):
Any questions there?
Amazing.
No, I'm thinking already.
I'm trying to go through my dayand see how many stop signs I
have in that Exactly Superimportant.
Lissy (08:26):
So our next mental movement is a fun one.
It's called slow.
It's the practice of expandingyour perspective, or what we
call cross-training your brain.
So in this case, if you're acar and you need to turn a
corner, you need to slow down.
And, at Mindy, what we talkabout is this idea that our
brains think the same thingalmost every day day to day.
(08:48):
We also feel the same feelingson a regular basis as well, and
if we don't interrupt thosethoughts or feelings, then we
tend to live the same existenceover and over again.
So if you love your mindset, wealways like to say you may not
need to practice mental fitness.
Maybe you're alreadyaccidentally doing this, but
slow is the practice of creatingnew thought and behavioral
patterns, and you can do thisthrough things like cognitive
(09:10):
behavioral therapy, byjournaling, a prompt to help you
think about a situation in anew way.
You can think about thisthrough the practice of
creativity.
Instead of drawing or writingyour thoughts, how about you
paint them?
You can do this throughvisualization, so picturing
things in your mind's eye.
Your brain doesn't know thedifference between real and fake
, and so it can be a reallypowerful way to get your body
(09:32):
and mind in motion and aligned.
Or you can do things like wealways like to say.
You can do things like a newtype of breath work or movement
exercise dance being one of myfavorites whenever I'm kind of
stuck in a thought pattern, soslow is the practice again of
expanding your perspective.
There's a lot of ways to dothis and it doesn't take a lot.
(09:53):
We do this with business.
Often we're looking at ourcompetitors, we're looking at
the market, we're trying tounderstand different ways to run
our business.
But how often do we do that forour own thoughts?
So that's our second mentalmovement and I'll pause there.
Yuli (10:06):
I love that.
This is like one of myfavorites and I find it so
fascinating and I've beenpracticing like habits changing
actively in different areas ofmy life and I find it to be one
of the most like, hardest andmost fascinating and most
impactful things that one can do.
And you know, experimentingwith different things from you
know changing like eating habitsto movement and it just I think
(10:31):
this is also ties back to thesubject of like longevity, right
, and I feel like some pointlike I'm getting close to my 50.
And so it's like I'm becomingyou just realize how important
it is because you just get stuckat this point of our lives.
We all just kind of createdthose habits and it's scary kind
(10:53):
of like sometimes to look backand see yourself kind of like
repeating the same patterns overand over and how hard it is to
break those patterns.
So I've been experimenting withit, especially at the beginning
of the year, I feel like alwaysthere's this new energy, new
desire.
I don't know, maybe we sold onit right, there's a lot of
marketing around it, but I dofind it to be very effective,
like just in the last two weekssince the year started, I was
(11:18):
able to really introduce somenew habits that I'm seeing like
tremendous benefits from, and itjust so I agree.
Lissy (11:27):
And this is like one of my favorite topics, so please
continue.
Amazing, amazing.
I love it.
And I think two small thingsthat just came up for me that I
think are important to realize,just in relation to creating new
habits.
When you are creating a newhabit or behavior or a new
thought pattern or a new feeling, it takes energy, and one of my
favorite facts I learned aboutthe brain is that your brain
takes up only 2% of your bodyweight, so it's a very small
(11:49):
part of your body, but between20 and 35% of the energy you
burn every day.
So, again, 2% of your bodyweight, between 20 and 35% of
the energy you burn every day.
So if you're tired, if you'reexhausted, it is really hard to
think well, let alone create anew neural pathway or a new
pattern.
And this is why, for many of us, when we're at our most tired,
(12:13):
it's really difficult.
This is when we want to changeabsolutely everything in our
lives, but the best thing youcan do is take the smallest step
, so small that you trip over it, the smallest step, so small
that you trip over it.
And this actually brings us toour third and final of these
daily mind movements, which isthe practice.
It's called go.
It's the practice of making andrecognizing progress.
(12:33):
So a car doesn't just you don'thit the gas and then it goes
forever.
We're clocking our speed, we'reclocking our distance on our
odometer, but when it comes tothe way most of us live our
lives, we're like a car withoutany sort of tracking mechanism.
We just go, go, go, go, go, go,go.
There's no time for oil changes.
We have forced vacation twice arandom year for holidays and
(12:57):
things, but otherwise there's noway that we're actually
recognizing the things we doevery day.
And what studies are startingto show is that we believe we
get a hit of dopamine when weadd things to our to-do list,
but we feel pain when we removethings.
So while most people say, when Ioriginally say go, everyone's
like oh, I'm good at that, youknow like I'm really good at
(13:18):
making progress.
And as healers, of course youare.
You know you work with peoplehands-on all day, every day.
But how often do you recognizethe impact that you have on
those clients, the amount ofhours and energy you spend
working with these folks?
Do you have a document, a pieceof paper, a checklist, a
celebration at the end of everyday?
Hell, no, most of you probablyare like, oh okay, so care of
(13:42):
everyone.
On to taking care of my familyor myself, my house, I have to
go clean it.
We are always on to the next andso go is a real practice around
goal setting and recognition.
And there's really really smallways to do this.
I mean, I've got right next tome my paper to-do list.
I used to have that digitally,but crossing that stuff off it
(14:02):
just feels good.
My brain loves it.
Right?
Checklists are amazing for this.
Having some sort of trackerwhere you understand where your
clients started and where theyended, feeling words, actually
implementing some sort ofchecking in your practice so
that you and your clients arereally checking in on this
progress together, can bemeaningful.
Celebrating at the end of everyweek, even at the end of every
(14:25):
day, with a little something, isspecial.
We think that this recognition,this celebration, can be
toxically positive.
I always say I grew up betweenthe US and Asia, so I'm very
sensitive to you know, theAmerican form of celebration as
opposed to everywhere else inthe world.
But it's not because it's whatmotivates us.
I always joke can you imaginetrying to teach a kid how to tie
(14:46):
their shoe, and every time theytied it, you were just like,
okay, no, we celebrate.
You tied your shoe oh my gosh,this is big and, as a result,
they get excited about that.
They don't ask you to do itanymore, my nieces and nephews.
They want to do it themselves,and our brains need that level
of positive reinforcement inorder to want to keep doing the
things we do every day.
(15:07):
Your clients may or may not begiving that to you, because they
themselves are looking for somehealing, and so you need to
learn how to give it to yourself, and so that's what all of this
is about Stop, slow and go.
It's about finding these smallmoments of stop or recovery,
slow, cross-training your brainagain to have those new thoughts
and feelings show up and thengo, which is making and
recognizing progress, so that,every day, you can refill your
(15:29):
cup, make sure that your cup isfull of the right stuff, and you
can show up the next day readyfor your clients and yourself to
continue to do what you do.
Yuli (15:39):
Now that's incredible and a very simple framework that I
think is easy for many of us tofollow.
Thank you for sharing that.
It's so generous of you too.
I'm sure this took quite sometime to figure out and put
together so distinctly and it'syeah, I definitely I was.
I'm taking mental notes on that.
(16:00):
So I think this makes totalsense in terms of maintenance
and making sure that we arementally fit.
Well, what point do weexperience burnout or when does
that go wrong?
I understand, if we don'tfollow this fitness routine.
You know, eventually there'slike the slow the slow burn,
(16:21):
right, but what do you see?
You know, eventually there'slike the slow, the slow burn
right, but what do you see?
Are there any kind of likeindicators or like red flags
that that something is off, youin the wrong path?
Because I think for many of us,especially people who go go
right and overachievers,speaking for friends it's really
hard sometimes to recognizethose signs.
So we go probably way longerthan we should be on this
(16:42):
burnout path.
Lissy (16:44):
Yeah, so I could share the formal definition of burnout
, but I want to actually justshare the feelings that are
associated with burnout, becauseI think they're a lot more
important and relatable.
So the first thing is thatyou'll typically just notice,
when people ask how you're doing, you constantly, nearly every
time, say I'm busy or tired.
So just in a constant state ofexhaustion, and whether or not
(17:07):
you feel exhausted, you're just.
That's how you're expressingyourself, like you don't even
have the energy to give itspecific words.
Maybe it's to your partner,maybe it's to a friend, maybe
it's even to your clients, butyou just have this like very,
very regular response becauseyou just can't articulate
yourself more clearly orspecifically.
And remember what I said aboutthe brain, which is, when you're
(17:28):
tired, you physically, it iscognitively expensive to find
new words that you'll default tothe same stuff over and over
again.
The second thing to keep inmind is that you tend to find
more negative in your day thanpositive.
You tend to find more negativein your day than positive.
So when someone's asking youhow your day was, you tend to
(17:48):
talk about all the things thatwent wrong, which, by the way,
as a healer, there is plenty ofstuff.
You know you've just got a lotof people coming in and out.
You've got a lot of energiescoming in and out.
You also show up with your ownsense of self and how you're
doing, and so there's just likea lot of recipes for every day
to be different.
But instead of talking aboutthe one to three to six clients
(18:10):
that are fantastic, you're goingto talk about that one person
who was late and rude and wantedtheir money back, or the one
vendor who accidentally chargedyou and you just couldn't get in
touch with, and they must befaulty, and you're going to
cancel your credit card.
Like you're always talkingabout the thing that isn't going
right in your day.
And let me also just say thislike I'm sharing this without
(18:32):
judgment there is nothing wrongwith being here.
We all get here.
I'll talk about that in asecond just the frequency of
this.
And then the third thing to keepin mind of is you tend to feel
less effective at your job.
So maybe you're going through aperiod where you're just
feeling like not particularlythe term is efficacious but
you're just not feeling likegood at healing and maybe you're
(18:53):
finding yourself with moredifficult clients.
Maybe you're finding thatwithin session, it's taking a
lot more energy that you may ormay not have, but you're not
able to handle your normalworkload with the same level of
confidence or excitement thatyou had before.
So it's those three things toreally keep an eye out for, this
regular, repeated sharing ofhow you're doing and
(19:15):
non-positive ways.
It's this, like you know,constant focus on the things
that aren't going right in yourday, and it's also this focus on
you maybe not feeling or doingyour best.
And what I will say also isthat, from a physiological
perspective, when you are inburnout this is why I said no
judgments you're typically in astate of fight or flight when
(19:38):
things happen.
So we are.
We tend to think, especiallywhen we're tired, we tend to
think in very extreme heuristics.
Heuristics meaning likepatterns, and those patterns
tend to be things like either orthinking I had a great or bad
day, catastrophic, thinking thiswas the worst.
The news takes advantage ofthis particular pattern.
(19:59):
You might have that negativitybias triggered.
Meaning your negativity bias,like paying attention to the
negative stuff in your life, is,from an evolutionary
perspective, very adaptive.
It's good because when badthings happen, then we can avoid
them, we can deal with them.
The challenge is when you'retired or you're nearing burnout,
which is like a period ofextreme exhaustion and emotional
(20:21):
fatigue, in addition to theseother things I mentioned again.
Your brain is defaulting tothese things, so it's not your
fault, if that makes sense, thatyou're feeling this way.
There's no shame.
We all get there sometimes butit's just important to
understand that these patternsare occurring and that if you
don't like them, if they don'tbelong with you, if they're
interfering with your practiceor your feelings of efficacy for
(20:45):
your job or your desire to evenbe a healer, I just have to say
we need you, all of you, likeevery single one of you.
We are at a shortage of you.
Then that's when it's time tosay okay, where to stop slow, go
, fit into my life or how can I,you know, get some help from
the people around me to get myenergy back, so I can get my
thoughts in the right place.
Yuli (21:06):
Well, such a clear and brilliant definition.
Thank you for sharing that.
And, as you were speaking, Iwas thinking about periods in my
life when I was doing thosethings and, yeah, it's an
amazing framework to work with.
And, as you were talking, Icouldn't help but also think
that, in addition, healers beingmostly empaths by nature, right
(21:28):
, how much of that they oftentake from their clients when
they don't have strongboundaries, strong, just
protection mechanisms, right,some of those things can trickle
in from just the.
You know the sheer amount ofpeople that they're seeing and
the fact that they're sosensitive.
So can you talk a little bitabout that?
Is it something that also beingpassed like a virus?
Lissy (21:51):
Yeah, so there is something in our brains called
mirror neurons, mirror neuronsand they're basically, we tend
to mirror the people around us.
So you know, there's studiesthat show.
You know, you have someonesitting down with their legs
crossed and then they uncrossthem and the person across them
uncrosses them.
(22:11):
And you know, again, from anevolutionary perspective, like
we're pack animals, we want tobe like other people, especially
empaths.
We are particularly attuned notonly to people's emotions but
their physical space.
So if somebody is coming intoyour office with their you can't
see me, but their shouldersslouched and they're feeling
small to meet them, whether yourealize it or not, you're
(22:33):
probably making yourself a bitsmall.
Or if someone's coming in andthey're vibrating at a lower
level, feeling like a little bitsad, in order to meet them,
you're probably not going tomeet them with your normal level
of chipperness.
You're going to try to againlower your tone of voice, and
that all takes energy to matchyour clients.
So, again, in addition to thisenergy expenditure, which we
(22:55):
already know is taxing, nowyou're also trying to meet them
where they are, which is maybenot feeling their best.
And so, all of a sudden, youtwo are working on the same
wavelength, which is superpowerful, but again a challenge,
not to mention many of us,until you consciously realize it
, are absorbing these feelingsAgain, not just in your actions,
but in the way that you feel,and so this becomes ever more
(23:19):
important to come back to.
This stops, slow and go, becauseif you have back-to-back
clients energetically, you arewhiplashed In many ways.
You're attempting there's nosuch thing as multitasking, but
you're attempting to move fromone space with one client who
feels, acts and does something,and all of a sudden your mind,
(23:40):
body, soul has to shift to acompletely new way of being.
And so this is the thing wedon't think about.
It's not a cost that we writedown in our book, because it
doesn't take time which we cansee on a clock.
It doesn't take money, but ittakes the most important thing
in the world that we have, whichis like our energy and, again,
our feelings of our overallenergetic feeling.
(24:01):
And so when I think about evenagain, why I got into this work
and why I do what I do, it's,you know, I have my mom used to
say too much chocolate cake istoo much chocolate cake.
You could love helping peopleevery day, and if you don't
create these spaces to rest, tomake sure that you are really
(24:22):
again creating these newpatterns and conscious of what's
going on for you and yourthoughts, your feelings and your
behaviors patterns, andconscious of what's going on for
you and your thoughts, yourfeelings and your behaviors and
then recognizing the work thatyou do.
You're at an inordinate riskagain for for burnout just
because of the emotional liftthat you do, which makes you, by
the way, amazing at your job.
Yuli (24:43):
Right, right, no, this is so brilliant.
As you were speaking, I wasjust thinking, oh my God, people
are going to be listening tothis and they're just going to
feel so inspired and so full ofinsights.
Because we have amazing, wealways have inspiring speakers
on this podcast, but we rarelyhave people who can really
really feel the way you feel,the exact pain points that
(25:04):
practitioners experience, butalso give some really practical
advice.
So thank you for that.
Just wanted to acknowledge tocelebrate this moment.
We're already doing that.
We're implementing yourstrategies, love it, but also
but as you were talking anythingelse that they can do
specifically to protect theirenergy from a neuro perspective,
(25:27):
from another mental fitnessexercise.
Maybe that will specificallyaddress that energetic shift
that you just mentioned.
That is so tasking.
Lissy (25:38):
Yeah, so I'm going to be .
I'll give you some example.
I'm going to give you the onething that you could do more
than anything else that's goingto help you.
It's going to be the hardest tohear, but stay with me for a
second, because my expertise, inaddition to mental fitness, is
actually organizational fitnessas well.
Before I did this work, I wentto MIT to build a quantitative,
research-backed model to fixcompanies, because I burned out
(26:00):
at a bank, I burned out at astartup and I thought companies
and my work must be the thingcausing my burnout.
So I go to MIT and I told youone of the single most important
facts about the brain, abouthow small it is, how much energy
it takes when it comes tobuilding a business.
As a healer, this is gonna beone of the single most important
things you need to remember,which is that to build an
(26:22):
operational system that worksover time, best practice for
capacity and utilization meaningthe amount of time you should
be booking yourself is at around80% of your capacity.
Now, capacity is difficult whenit comes to hours in the day,
because some people can work a10-hour day, some people can
(26:42):
work a four-hour day, butwhatever your day looks like
like a full day, you should bebooked at around 80% of that.
Because when you're tired, whenyou're sick, you should be
booked at around 80% of that.
Because when you're tired, whenyou're sick, when you have a
difficult or late client,there's no buffer in most
people's schedules because theybook to 100% capacity.
Now this exact same metaphor istrue for our brains we book
(27:05):
back to back to back to back toback and there's no buffer space
.
There are so many studies thatshow that if you just take a
quick five to 10 minute breakand you can do anything in that
break and I will list a wholebunch of things We'll use that
as our fun brainstorming.
You know, slow moment for thecall, but if you can take a
quick break away from yourcomputer, if you're doing any
sort of virtual healing, or ifyou're in person just in a room
(27:29):
in silence, you're going to findyour ability to not only
sustain yourself but, mostimportantly, feel good while
doing that, and then do itwithout burning out is just
immeasurable.
And so taking breaks in yourday between clients maybe you
need to go back to back toclients, back to back Cool If
you're doing like four clients,back to back whoa, whoa, whoa,
(27:50):
whoa, whoa.
This is why the healthcareprofession has such a burnout
problem now, from surgeons tonurses I mean all over the
hospital.
It's because we staffed peoplewithout thinking about how their
brains work.
We staff them according to whatthe numbers need.
And so, all of this said, takea break.
In that break, do not look atyour email.
(28:10):
Do not put on a podcast on 2X.
You can read with your eyeballs.
You can listen to some lightmusic.
You can sit in a room, you canput your head on the desk.
You can take a walk, you canstretch, you can have a snack.
Chew slowly, right, mindfulnessis a fancy way for saying be
where you are.
(28:30):
So during that break, just bewhere you are.
And if you can do that, that'sgoing to be an incredible thing
for you.
And if you are like Lissy, youmust be insane.
I can't take.
My capacity is 10 clients a dayand I have to do this.
Okay, but I'm going tochallenge you one break in the
(28:53):
day, five minutes.
Be five minutes late for aclient.
I guarantee they're fiveminutes late for you sometimes,
but if you can't show up withthe ultimate presence in these
meetings, not just today, butover time, that's where the toll
really starts to take hold.
And so one break, start withone, see if you can put a couple
more in there as time goes on,but one little break to do
(29:15):
nothing really matters.
Yuli (29:17):
Amazing.
I couldn't agree more, and it'sso funny that you mentioned
that, because we literally onour platform, healist, which is
a practice management platform,and we built this whole booking
and scheduling systemspecifically for holistic
practitioners and we justintroduced this buffer feature
that allows them to customizethe buffer time between 15
minutes up to an hour.
(29:38):
We we we give them so, and it'salso something that's been
actually requested by some ofour users, but we felt that it
was really important to allowthem to have that custom time
between each appointmentactually, and so I'm glad this
is scientifically backed feature, I laugh.
Lissy (29:56):
So instead of taking a break, we'll say take a buffer
time for the Healist community.
No, totally, and you know andit's also.
Yuli (30:03):
I was literally this morning I was listening to this
amazing book If any of youhaven't read yet, it's called
the Essentialism and I literallywas listening to a chapter
about buffers.
Today to protect your own youknow essentialism mindset and
you know your time, so it's allkind of like this message comes
(30:26):
through a lot and maybe it's asign that I need to create some
more buffers in my life as well.
Lissy (30:33):
Well, today, most of us need to create more buffers in
our lives, but I think step oneis being aware and step two is
committing to at least one.
Yuli (30:40):
Amazing.
Well, this was really anincredible advice and I think
you started touching a littlebit about your journey into all
of this and all this incrediblediscoveries, and I'm sure at
this point, our listeners arereally craving to learn more.
Yeah, sure.
Lissy (30:55):
So I always wanted to help people.
Growing up, I mentioned this,but I grew up all over the world
.
My family moved every two tothree years.
My dad was in the auto industry, and so what was really cool is
like volunteering was a hugepart of my life growing up,
(31:25):
no-transcript.
So I went and worked at a bankafter school and I always say I
did not learn how to run acompany, but I honestly had set
my career off to do exactly whatI'm doing now.
I've been.
I burned out at the bank.
I was just not able to bemyself.
I was working all the time.
It was just a veryuncomfortable experience for me,
(31:46):
and the time it was just a veryuncomfortable experience for me
.
And so I talked to 100 peoplearound New York City and ended
up at an ed tech company thatwent from 40 to 1,000 people in
three years.
It was an incredible job.
We worked with the C-suite at awhole bunch of Fortune 500
companies, but my physicalhealth, my mental health, all
just took a total nosedive.
I was working all the time andtrying to help my team and
(32:08):
trying to figure out how to runa business and ended up going to
MIT to build a quantitative,research-backed model to fix
companies.
Because I was like we're alltalking about company culture
and how to create greatworkplaces and my question was
who's holding people's hands todo it?
It's really easy to look at aleadership team and say this is
what you should do, but most ofthem are trying their best.
It's really hard to make thesedecisions, which tend to be
(32:30):
cross-functional decisions, thatend up getting deployed in
silos, you know, in these verynarrow departments, and so often
you know a good decision at thetop ends up filtering down in
the wrong way, and so that'swhen I started my work on
organizational fitness.
So I worked for the founder,shake Shack.
For my internship I then went toa publicly traded biotech
company as a change agent.
So the CEO hired me to improveeverything from work-life
(32:54):
balance to helping with thingslike career pathing and making
sure that we had the rightmanagement and data systems to
manage our people population.
But I ended up leaving to studythe brain because I realized
that even when work is reallygreat for people like for all of
you like you probably got intothis work because you love it
People were still stressed andso I left.
(33:16):
I started doing research on thebrain.
I brought on my professor fromMIT to oversee that work and
ended up building a quantitative, research-backed, step-by-step
model to manage your mind, whichis the minding model.
So we've talked about kind ofthe three mind movements that
your brain needs every day.
There's then the mind musclesthat you can activate, which is,
like we always say, there'sthree stages to mental fitness
(33:36):
get fit, stay fit, cultivatehigh performance.
So mental muscles are abouthigh performance and I started
teaching it and the number onepiece of feedback I got was hold
us accountable.
So kind of like the culturework.
It's one thing to write a bookon this stuff, but I'm obsessed
with follow-through,accountability and outcomes, and
so that's why we built Mindy,which is a gym for your mind,
(33:57):
and so we've got the consultingside of things, which is
organizational fitness, where wework with companies, and then
we've got mental fitness, wherewe've been working on these
products and services to helppeople do these mental fitness
routines every day, and rightnow we're in beta for that.
So I freaking love what I doand I have to practice these
things every day too, both formy company, when I think about
you know, we staff and how wethink about things, but also for
(34:19):
myself as a leader.
You know this, yuli like youdon't get to turn off and like
just go, go, go.
You have to practice thesethings every day, and so some
days I'm amazing and other daysI'm human.
And then you know, rinse andrepeat over and over again.
Yuli (34:35):
Amazing.
Well, you inspired us so muchand your journey just so amazing
.
It seems like you were born todo this, and thank you for for
creating this system and alsosharing with us again so
generously and, yeah, it's beenreally, really insightful and I
can thank you enough for beinghere and if there's anything,
(34:57):
any words of wisdom you wouldlike to share with our listeners
at the end, please do.
Lissy (35:02):
Yeah, I think the big thing for all of this mental
fitness is I think a lot ofpeople hear this and they're
like, oh, simple framework, I'mgoing to stop.
So go every day.
Don't pick one just like.
Pick one mind movement and onething within that mind movement
that you want to do for one tothree minutes a day.
Just start there.
Our brains like big things butwe discount small things and so
(35:25):
start really small when you'rethinking about mental fitness,
especially if you're feeling alittle what we call toasty,
tired, exhausted, overwhelmed,burned out, and yeah, and go
from there and I can promiseyou'll start to feel better
quite quickly.
Yuli (35:39):
Amazing.
Well, thank you again for beinghere with us and please come
back anytime we can talk aboutbrain and mental fitness.
I think it's just such animportant topic for many of us.
Thank you again, thank you.
Welcome to the Healist Podcast, where we inspire and
guide healers through businessexpansion.
We give voice to incrediblyabundant healers to share their
stories.
We dive into the quantum fieldto unlock the energies of
conscious creation.
We also develop digital toolsto help you grow, which you can
(00:25):
find on healistcom.
I'm your host, Yuli, and I'mgrateful you chose to join this
space.
Now let's go deep.
Hello, my dear friends, andwelcome to another amazing
episode of the Healist Podcast.
We are talking today about abig topic of how to avoid
(00:46):
burnout among holisticpractitioners, and we have
amazing guests to share somereally, really great insights
with us.
So we're joined today by LucyAlden she's a founder of Mindy
to explore today how holisticpractitioners can build mental
fitness and avoid burnout.
With her practical,research-backed approach, a
(01:09):
background working withorganizations like MIT and
Google, lissy will share simplestrategies to help you stay
resilient, focused and thrivingin your practice.
So good to have you with us.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for having me, yoli,it's such a pleasure.
So I like to set intention foreach episode and you're welcome
(01:32):
to do the same, and really myintention for this one is, you
know, something that we'reseeing in our platform and
through my work withpractitioners we do see quite a
lot of burnout in this space andwe do see people that just give
up, right, and they just decidethis is too much for them.
They decide to have maybe moretraditional careers and, just
(01:53):
you know, maybe continue healingpractices as a kind of a side
practice with friends and family, but they really it takes a
toll on them all the demands ofthis profession, right, being in
service and being responsiblefor healing others and
(02:13):
constantly giving, giving,giving.
So my intention for today isreally to inspire people and
give them some really greatpractical tools and really kind
of quick hacks Like I would lovehacks in a tech space right,
what can we give people to justkind of inspire more of a
(02:34):
sustainable practice and how toreally prioritize their own
mental fitness, which is a topicyou're an expert on and I would
love to dig deeper into.
But this is my very longintention.
Lissy (02:49):
Well, I'm going to mirror that same intention.
It's part of why I ended upbuilding the company and doing
the work that I do is thatthere's so much great stuff out
there on the market to help uswork on our mind, our body, our
soul, and we just don't haveenough time and money to do it
all, and so my job today, butalso every day, is to help bring
(03:10):
this to you in a way that feelsactually doable as a human and
also as a healer who spends alot of their time on other
people.
Yuli (03:17):
Amazing and I love the some of the definition that you
told me right before we hoppedon the on this talk, that you,
that who you define as a healeror who you work with usually.
Lissy (03:31):
Yeah, so we always like to say that we work with people
who spend their lives helpingothers.
So maybe that's somebody whodefines themselves as a true
healer, maybe that's somebodywho defined themselves as a
parent or a manager, but theyspend most of their lives in
such a beautiful way thinking ofand dedicating their time and
effort and energy to otherpeople, but have very little
(03:53):
time left for themselves.
And so this is where our workand our heart kind of really
comes in, and it's why I do whatI do.
Grew up always volunteering andI was a peer counselor and did
a lot of this work and knowfirsthand that giving feels
really good and it's like thecoolest job in the whole world
(04:14):
until you've got nothing left,like the giving tree.
And so my job is to figure outhow to do that in a sustainable
way, and that's what I practicenow at my company and with our
products.
Yuli (04:26):
And that's first of all.
It's incredible that you builta company around this idea of
helping servers right People whoserve others and it's such an
incredible mission, and I wouldlove to learn more about how
your company works.
But before we dive into that, Iwould love to maybe define a
little better what mentalfitness actually means, because
I feel like your company works,but before we dive into that, I
would love to maybe define alittle better what mental
fitness actually means, becauseI feel like it's one of those
(04:48):
words that has been recentlyintroduced into our language and
still a lot of people might getconfused about it or curious
about it.
Lissy (04:58):
Yeah.
So we define mental fitness atMindy as the proactive practice
of doing exercises that helpbuild focused, boost mood and
performance in your mind.
So, in the same way, physicalfitness is about these regular,
ongoing behaviors that buildstrength in your body.
We really are here to buildstrength, flexibility and
endurance in your brain, andthere are a whole lot of ways to
(05:20):
do this, which we'll absolutelybe getting into.
But I think when most peoplehear the word mental fitness,
they automatically go to maybeone or two buckets of those
solutions like a mindfulnesssolution, meditation or even
yoga, but there's actuallyhundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of ways to practicemental fitness.
Many of you are probably doingsome of this without even
knowing it, and so our job wasto then take that down a level
(05:46):
and build a framework to helppeople understand what we like
to think of as the food pyramidfor your brain.
It's what are all the thingsyou can do in a really clear
visual.
That's something I'm sure,again, we'll be chatting a bit
about.
Yuli (05:58):
Amazing.
So what are the soundessentials of this food pyramid?
Lissy (06:03):
Yeah.
So we like to say that there'stwo parts to the practice of
mental fitness.
We have a patent pending model.
That's basically.
Again, it's meant to be quitesimple.
So we've got daily mindmovements that your brain needs
every day to feel good, andthere's three of those, and this
is what we'll get into in justa second.
These are mental fitness 101.
(06:23):
These are the basics.
We need them every day.
And then you've got six mentalmuscles that you can activate
whenever you want to achieve agoal or do something
particularly challenging.
Those mental muscles are whatwe call heart core focus.
Heart confidence, optimism,resilience, energy and focus.
So let's get into the three mindmovements that your brain needs
(06:44):
every day.
You can think about these asstop, slow and go like a
stoplight red, yellow, green ifyou're visual, like I am and
these are the three things yourbrain needs every day to keep
going on a regular basis and tosustain itself over time.
So you can kind of think aboutour brains like a car.
The first thing it needs to dois it needs to stop.
If a car never stops, you can'tgas up and you can't recover,
(07:08):
and so we say stop is thepractice of resting and building
awareness in your mind.
Now this stop practice can lookas formal as mindfulness and
meditation sitting on a pillow,maybe with a guided meditation
but what we're a lot moreinterested in at Mindy are these
informal moments of stop, whichare really about doing things
like taking five minutes to justwrite free form on a piece of
(07:30):
paper whatever comes to mind, orgoing to the toilet without
your phone, or taking a walkwithout your headphones in.
For most of us, we spend ourleisure time double screening,
so in front of the televisionwith our cell phones, and so we
really are suffering from oursorry our sleep is suffering as
(07:51):
a result of that, because ourbrains are trying to go a
million miles a minute and thenhit stop, and so we need to
train our brain how to restthroughout the day.
So for practitioners who areworking all day back to back in
these healing sessions with allof their energy going out, they
need time to actually allowenergy to come back in and their
brain to remake theseconnections and recover.
(08:12):
Your stop is the way to do that.
So that's our first mindmovement.
Yuli (08:15):
Any questions there?
Amazing.
No, I'm thinking already.
I'm trying to go through my dayand see how many stop signs I
have in that Exactly Superimportant.
Lissy (08:26):
So our next mental movement is a fun one.
It's called slow.
It's the practice of expandingyour perspective, or what we
call cross-training your brain.
So in this case, if you're acar and you need to turn a
corner, you need to slow down.
And, at Mindy, what we talkabout is this idea that our
brains think the same thingalmost every day day to day.
(08:48):
We also feel the same feelingson a regular basis as well, and
if we don't interrupt thosethoughts or feelings, then we
tend to live the same existenceover and over again.
So if you love your mindset, wealways like to say you may not
need to practice mental fitness.
Maybe you're alreadyaccidentally doing this, but
slow is the practice of creatingnew thought and behavioral
patterns, and you can do thisthrough things like cognitive
(09:10):
behavioral therapy, byjournaling, a prompt to help you
think about a situation in anew way.
You can think about thisthrough the practice of
creativity.
Instead of drawing or writingyour thoughts, how about you
paint them?
You can do this throughvisualization, so picturing
things in your mind's eye.
Your brain doesn't know thedifference between real and fake
, and so it can be a reallypowerful way to get your body
(09:32):
and mind in motion and aligned.
Or you can do things like wealways like to say.
You can do things like a newtype of breath work or movement
exercise dance being one of myfavorites whenever I'm kind of
stuck in a thought pattern, soslow is the practice again of
expanding your perspective.
There's a lot of ways to dothis and it doesn't take a lot.
(09:53):
We do this with business.
Often we're looking at ourcompetitors, we're looking at
the market, we're trying tounderstand different ways to run
our business.
But how often do we do that forour own thoughts?
So that's our second mentalmovement and I'll pause there.
Yuli (10:06):
I love that.
This is like one of myfavorites and I find it so
fascinating and I've beenpracticing like habits changing
actively in different areas ofmy life and I find it to be one
of the most like, hardest andmost fascinating and most
impactful things that one can do.
And you know, experimentingwith different things from you
know changing like eating habitsto movement and it just I think
(10:31):
this is also ties back to thesubject of like longevity, right
, and I feel like some pointlike I'm getting close to my 50.
And so it's like I'm becomingyou just realize how important
it is because you just get stuckat this point of our lives.
We all just kind of createdthose habits and it's scary kind
(10:53):
of like sometimes to look backand see yourself kind of like
repeating the same patterns overand over and how hard it is to
break those patterns.
So I've been experimenting withit, especially at the beginning
of the year, I feel like alwaysthere's this new energy, new
desire.
I don't know, maybe we sold onit right, there's a lot of
marketing around it, but I dofind it to be very effective,
like just in the last two weekssince the year started, I was
(11:18):
able to really introduce somenew habits that I'm seeing like
tremendous benefits from, and itjust so I agree.
Lissy (11:27):
And this is like one of my favorite topics, so please
continue.
Amazing, amazing.
I love it.
And I think two small thingsthat just came up for me that I
think are important to realize,just in relation to creating new
habits.
When you are creating a newhabit or behavior or a new
thought pattern or a new feeling, it takes energy, and one of my
favorite facts I learned aboutthe brain is that your brain
takes up only 2% of your bodyweight, so it's a very small
(11:49):
part of your body, but between20 and 35% of the energy you
burn every day.
So, again, 2% of your bodyweight, between 20 and 35% of
the energy you burn every day.
So if you're tired, if you'reexhausted, it is really hard to
think well, let alone create anew neural pathway or a new
pattern.
And this is why, for many of us, when we're at our most tired,
(12:13):
it's really difficult.
This is when we want to changeabsolutely everything in our
lives, but the best thing youcan do is take the smallest step
, so small that you trip over it, the smallest step, so small
that you trip over it.
And this actually brings us toour third and final of these
daily mind movements, which isthe practice.
It's called go.
It's the practice of making andrecognizing progress.
(12:33):
So a car doesn't just you don'thit the gas and then it goes
forever.
We're clocking our speed, we'reclocking our distance on our
odometer, but when it comes tothe way most of us live our
lives, we're like a car withoutany sort of tracking mechanism.
We just go, go, go, go, go, go,go.
There's no time for oil changes.
We have forced vacation twice arandom year for holidays and
(12:57):
things, but otherwise there's noway that we're actually
recognizing the things we doevery day.
And what studies are startingto show is that we believe we
get a hit of dopamine when weadd things to our to-do list,
but we feel pain when we removethings.
So while most people say, when Ioriginally say go, everyone's
like oh, I'm good at that, youknow like I'm really good at
(13:18):
making progress.
And as healers, of course youare.
You know you work with peoplehands-on all day, every day.
But how often do you recognizethe impact that you have on
those clients, the amount ofhours and energy you spend
working with these folks?
Do you have a document, a pieceof paper, a checklist, a
celebration at the end of everyday?
Hell, no, most of you probablyare like, oh okay, so care of
(13:42):
everyone.
On to taking care of my familyor myself, my house, I have to
go clean it.
We are always on to the next andso go is a real practice around
goal setting and recognition.
And there's really really smallways to do this.
I mean, I've got right next tome my paper to-do list.
I used to have that digitally,but crossing that stuff off it
(14:02):
just feels good.
My brain loves it.
Right?
Checklists are amazing for this.
Having some sort of trackerwhere you understand where your
clients started and where theyended, feeling words, actually
implementing some sort ofchecking in your practice so
that you and your clients arereally checking in on this
progress together, can bemeaningful.
Celebrating at the end of everyweek, even at the end of every
(14:25):
day, with a little something, isspecial.
We think that this recognition,this celebration, can be
toxically positive.
I always say I grew up betweenthe US and Asia, so I'm very
sensitive to you know, theAmerican form of celebration as
opposed to everywhere else inthe world.
But it's not because it's whatmotivates us.
I always joke can you imaginetrying to teach a kid how to tie
(14:46):
their shoe, and every time theytied it, you were just like,
okay, no, we celebrate.
You tied your shoe oh my gosh,this is big and, as a result,
they get excited about that.
They don't ask you to do itanymore, my nieces and nephews.
They want to do it themselves,and our brains need that level
of positive reinforcement inorder to want to keep doing the
things we do every day.
(15:07):
Your clients may or may not begiving that to you, because they
themselves are looking for somehealing, and so you need to
learn how to give it to yourself, and so that's what all of this
is about Stop, slow and go.
It's about finding these smallmoments of stop or recovery,
slow, cross-training your brainagain to have those new thoughts
and feelings show up and thengo, which is making and
recognizing progress, so that,every day, you can refill your
(15:29):
cup, make sure that your cup isfull of the right stuff, and you
can show up the next day readyfor your clients and yourself to
continue to do what you do.
Yuli (15:39):
Now that's incredible and a very simple framework that I
think is easy for many of us tofollow.
Thank you for sharing that.
It's so generous of you too.
I'm sure this took quite sometime to figure out and put
together so distinctly and it'syeah, I definitely I was.
I'm taking mental notes on that.
(16:00):
So I think this makes totalsense in terms of maintenance
and making sure that we arementally fit.
Well, what point do weexperience burnout or when does
that go wrong?
I understand, if we don'tfollow this fitness routine.
You know, eventually there'slike the slow the slow burn,
(16:21):
right, but what do you see?
You know, eventually there'slike the slow, the slow burn
right, but what do you see?
Are there any kind of likeindicators or like red flags
that that something is off, youin the wrong path?
Because I think for many of us,especially people who go go
right and overachievers,speaking for friends it's really
hard sometimes to recognizethose signs.
So we go probably way longerthan we should be on this
(16:42):
burnout path.
Lissy (16:44):
Yeah, so I could share the formal definition of burnout
, but I want to actually justshare the feelings that are
associated with burnout, becauseI think they're a lot more
important and relatable.
So the first thing is thatyou'll typically just notice,
when people ask how you're doing, you constantly, nearly every
time, say I'm busy or tired.
So just in a constant state ofexhaustion, and whether or not
(17:07):
you feel exhausted, you're just.
That's how you're expressingyourself, like you don't even
have the energy to give itspecific words.
Maybe it's to your partner,maybe it's to a friend, maybe
it's even to your clients, butyou just have this like very,
very regular response becauseyou just can't articulate
yourself more clearly orspecifically.
And remember what I said aboutthe brain, which is, when you're
(17:28):
tired, you physically, it iscognitively expensive to find
new words that you'll default tothe same stuff over and over
again.
The second thing to keep inmind is that you tend to find
more negative in your day thanpositive.
You tend to find more negativein your day than positive.
So when someone's asking youhow your day was, you tend to
(17:48):
talk about all the things thatwent wrong, which, by the way,
as a healer, there is plenty ofstuff.
You know you've just got a lotof people coming in and out.
You've got a lot of energiescoming in and out.
You also show up with your ownsense of self and how you're
doing, and so there's just likea lot of recipes for every day
to be different.
But instead of talking aboutthe one to three to six clients
(18:10):
that are fantastic, you're goingto talk about that one person
who was late and rude and wantedtheir money back, or the one
vendor who accidentally chargedyou and you just couldn't get in
touch with, and they must befaulty, and you're going to
cancel your credit card.
Like you're always talkingabout the thing that isn't going
right in your day.
And let me also just say thislike I'm sharing this without
(18:32):
judgment there is nothing wrongwith being here.
We all get here.
I'll talk about that in asecond just the frequency of
this.
And then the third thing to keepin mind of is you tend to feel
less effective at your job.
So maybe you're going through aperiod where you're just
feeling like not particularlythe term is efficacious but
you're just not feeling likegood at healing and maybe you're
(18:53):
finding yourself with moredifficult clients.
Maybe you're finding thatwithin session, it's taking a
lot more energy that you may ormay not have, but you're not
able to handle your normalworkload with the same level of
confidence or excitement thatyou had before.
So it's those three things toreally keep an eye out for, this
regular, repeated sharing ofhow you're doing and
(19:15):
non-positive ways.
It's this, like you know,constant focus on the things
that aren't going right in yourday, and it's also this focus on
you maybe not feeling or doingyour best.
And what I will say also isthat, from a physiological
perspective, when you are inburnout this is why I said no
judgments you're typically in astate of fight or flight when
(19:38):
things happen.
So we are.
We tend to think, especiallywhen we're tired, we tend to
think in very extreme heuristics.
Heuristics meaning likepatterns, and those patterns
tend to be things like either orthinking I had a great or bad
day, catastrophic, thinking thiswas the worst.
The news takes advantage ofthis particular pattern.
(19:59):
You might have that negativitybias triggered.
Meaning your negativity bias,like paying attention to the
negative stuff in your life, is,from an evolutionary
perspective, very adaptive.
It's good because when badthings happen, then we can avoid
them, we can deal with them.
The challenge is when you'retired or you're nearing burnout,
which is like a period ofextreme exhaustion and emotional
(20:21):
fatigue, in addition to theseother things I mentioned again.
Your brain is defaulting tothese things, so it's not your
fault, if that makes sense, thatyou're feeling this way.
There's no shame.
We all get there sometimes butit's just important to
understand that these patternsare occurring and that if you
don't like them, if they don'tbelong with you, if they're
interfering with your practiceor your feelings of efficacy for
(20:45):
your job or your desire to evenbe a healer, I just have to say
we need you, all of you, likeevery single one of you.
We are at a shortage of you.
Then that's when it's time tosay okay, where to stop slow, go
, fit into my life or how can I,you know, get some help from
the people around me to get myenergy back, so I can get my
thoughts in the right place.
Yuli (21:06):
Well, such a clear and brilliant definition.
Thank you for sharing that.
And, as you were speaking, Iwas thinking about periods in my
life when I was doing thosethings and, yeah, it's an
amazing framework to work with.
And, as you were talking, Icouldn't help but also think
that, in addition, healers beingmostly empaths by nature, right
(21:28):
, how much of that they oftentake from their clients when
they don't have strongboundaries, strong, just
protection mechanisms, right,some of those things can trickle
in from just the.
You know the sheer amount ofpeople that they're seeing and
the fact that they're sosensitive.
So can you talk a little bitabout that?
Is it something that also beingpassed like a virus?
Lissy (21:51):
Yeah, so there is something in our brains called
mirror neurons, mirror neuronsand they're basically, we tend
to mirror the people around us.
So you know, there's studiesthat show.
You know, you have someonesitting down with their legs
crossed and then they uncrossthem and the person across them
uncrosses them.
(22:11):
And you know, again, from anevolutionary perspective, like
we're pack animals, we want tobe like other people, especially
empaths.
We are particularly attuned notonly to people's emotions but
their physical space.
So if somebody is coming intoyour office with their you can't
see me, but their shouldersslouched and they're feeling
small to meet them, whether yourealize it or not, you're
(22:33):
probably making yourself a bitsmall.
Or if someone's coming in andthey're vibrating at a lower
level, feeling like a little bitsad, in order to meet them,
you're probably not going tomeet them with your normal level
of chipperness.
You're going to try to againlower your tone of voice, and
that all takes energy to matchyour clients.
So, again, in addition to thisenergy expenditure, which we
(22:55):
already know is taxing, nowyou're also trying to meet them
where they are, which is maybenot feeling their best.
And so, all of a sudden, youtwo are working on the same
wavelength, which is superpowerful, but again a challenge,
not to mention many of us,until you consciously realize it
, are absorbing these feelingsAgain, not just in your actions,
but in the way that you feel,and so this becomes ever more
(23:19):
important to come back to.
This stops, slow and go, becauseif you have back-to-back
clients energetically, you arewhiplashed In many ways.
You're attempting there's nosuch thing as multitasking, but
you're attempting to move fromone space with one client who
feels, acts and does something,and all of a sudden your mind,
(23:40):
body, soul has to shift to acompletely new way of being.
And so this is the thing wedon't think about.
It's not a cost that we writedown in our book, because it
doesn't take time which we cansee on a clock.
It doesn't take money, but ittakes the most important thing
in the world that we have, whichis like our energy and, again,
our feelings of our overallenergetic feeling.
(24:01):
And so when I think about evenagain, why I got into this work
and why I do what I do, it's,you know, I have my mom used to
say too much chocolate cake istoo much chocolate cake.
You could love helping peopleevery day, and if you don't
create these spaces to rest, tomake sure that you are really
(24:22):
again creating these newpatterns and conscious of what's
going on for you and yourthoughts, your feelings and your
behaviors patterns, andconscious of what's going on for
you and your thoughts, yourfeelings and your behaviors and
then recognizing the work thatyou do.
You're at an inordinate riskagain for for burnout just
because of the emotional liftthat you do, which makes you, by
the way, amazing at your job.
Yuli (24:43):
Right, right, no, this is so brilliant.
As you were speaking, I wasjust thinking, oh my God, people
are going to be listening tothis and they're just going to
feel so inspired and so full ofinsights.
Because we have amazing, wealways have inspiring speakers
on this podcast, but we rarelyhave people who can really
really feel the way you feel,the exact pain points that
(25:04):
practitioners experience, butalso give some really practical
advice.
So thank you for that.
Just wanted to acknowledge tocelebrate this moment.
We're already doing that.
We're implementing yourstrategies, love it, but also
but as you were talking anythingelse that they can do
specifically to protect theirenergy from a neuro perspective,
(25:27):
from another mental fitnessexercise.
Maybe that will specificallyaddress that energetic shift
that you just mentioned.
That is so tasking.
Lissy (25:38):
Yeah, so I'm going to be .
I'll give you some example.
I'm going to give you the onething that you could do more
than anything else that's goingto help you.
It's going to be the hardest tohear, but stay with me for a
second, because my expertise, inaddition to mental fitness, is
actually organizational fitnessas well.
Before I did this work, I wentto MIT to build a quantitative,
research-backed model to fixcompanies, because I burned out
(26:00):
at a bank, I burned out at astartup and I thought companies
and my work must be the thingcausing my burnout.
So I go to MIT and I told youone of the single most important
facts about the brain, abouthow small it is, how much energy
it takes when it comes tobuilding a business.
As a healer, this is gonna beone of the single most important
things you need to remember,which is that to build an
(26:22):
operational system that worksover time, best practice for
capacity and utilization meaningthe amount of time you should
be booking yourself is at around80% of your capacity.
Now, capacity is difficult whenit comes to hours in the day,
because some people can work a10-hour day, some people can
(26:42):
work a four-hour day, butwhatever your day looks like
like a full day, you should bebooked at around 80% of that.
Because when you're tired, whenyou're sick, you should be
booked at around 80% of that.
Because when you're tired, whenyou're sick, when you have a
difficult or late client,there's no buffer in most
people's schedules because theybook to 100% capacity.
Now this exact same metaphor istrue for our brains we book
(27:05):
back to back to back to back toback and there's no buffer space
.
There are so many studies thatshow that if you just take a
quick five to 10 minute breakand you can do anything in that
break and I will list a wholebunch of things We'll use that
as our fun brainstorming.
You know, slow moment for thecall, but if you can take a
quick break away from yourcomputer, if you're doing any
sort of virtual healing, or ifyou're in person just in a room
(27:29):
in silence, you're going to findyour ability to not only
sustain yourself but, mostimportantly, feel good while
doing that, and then do itwithout burning out is just
immeasurable.
And so taking breaks in yourday between clients maybe you
need to go back to back toclients, back to back Cool If
you're doing like four clients,back to back whoa, whoa, whoa,
(27:50):
whoa, whoa.
This is why the healthcareprofession has such a burnout
problem now, from surgeons tonurses I mean all over the
hospital.
It's because we staffed peoplewithout thinking about how their
brains work.
We staff them according to whatthe numbers need.
And so, all of this said, takea break.
In that break, do not look atyour email.
(28:10):
Do not put on a podcast on 2X.
You can read with your eyeballs.
You can listen to some lightmusic.
You can sit in a room, you canput your head on the desk.
You can take a walk, you canstretch, you can have a snack.
Chew slowly, right, mindfulnessis a fancy way for saying be
where you are.
(28:30):
So during that break, just bewhere you are.
And if you can do that, that'sgoing to be an incredible thing
for you.
And if you are like Lissy, youmust be insane.
I can't take.
My capacity is 10 clients a dayand I have to do this.
Okay, but I'm going tochallenge you one break in the
(28:53):
day, five minutes.
Be five minutes late for aclient.
I guarantee they're fiveminutes late for you sometimes,
but if you can't show up withthe ultimate presence in these
meetings, not just today, butover time, that's where the toll
really starts to take hold.
And so one break, start withone, see if you can put a couple
more in there as time goes on,but one little break to do
(29:15):
nothing really matters.
Yuli (29:17):
Amazing.
I couldn't agree more, and it'sso funny that you mentioned
that, because we literally onour platform, healist, which is
a practice management platform,and we built this whole booking
and scheduling systemspecifically for holistic
practitioners and we justintroduced this buffer feature
that allows them to customizethe buffer time between 15
minutes up to an hour.
(29:38):
We we we give them so, and it'salso something that's been
actually requested by some ofour users, but we felt that it
was really important to allowthem to have that custom time
between each appointmentactually, and so I'm glad this
is scientifically backed feature, I laugh.
Lissy (29:56):
So instead of taking a break, we'll say take a buffer
time for the Healist community.
No, totally, and you know andit's also.
Yuli (30:03):
I was literally this morning I was listening to this
amazing book If any of youhaven't read yet, it's called
the Essentialism and I literallywas listening to a chapter
about buffers.
Today to protect your own youknow essentialism mindset and
you know your time, so it's allkind of like this message comes
(30:26):
through a lot and maybe it's asign that I need to create some
more buffers in my life as well.
Lissy (30:33):
Well, today, most of us need to create more buffers in
our lives, but I think step oneis being aware and step two is
committing to at least one.
Yuli (30:40):
Amazing.
Well, this was really anincredible advice and I think
you started touching a littlebit about your journey into all
of this and all this incrediblediscoveries, and I'm sure at
this point, our listeners arereally craving to learn more.
Yeah, sure.
Lissy (30:55):
So I always wanted to help people.
Growing up, I mentioned this,but I grew up all over the world
.
My family moved every two tothree years.
My dad was in the auto industry, and so what was really cool is
like volunteering was a hugepart of my life growing up,
(31:25):
no-transcript.
So I went and worked at a bankafter school and I always say I
did not learn how to run acompany, but I honestly had set
my career off to do exactly whatI'm doing now.
I've been.
I burned out at the bank.
I was just not able to bemyself.
I was working all the time.
It was just a veryuncomfortable experience for me,
(31:46):
and the time it was just a veryuncomfortable experience for me
.
And so I talked to 100 peoplearound New York City and ended
up at an ed tech company thatwent from 40 to 1,000 people in
three years.
It was an incredible job.
We worked with the C-suite at awhole bunch of Fortune 500
companies, but my physicalhealth, my mental health, all
just took a total nosedive.
I was working all the time andtrying to help my team and
(32:08):
trying to figure out how to runa business and ended up going to
MIT to build a quantitative,research-backed model to fix
companies.
Because I was like we're alltalking about company culture
and how to create greatworkplaces and my question was
who's holding people's hands todo it?
It's really easy to look at aleadership team and say this is
what you should do, but most ofthem are trying their best.
It's really hard to make thesedecisions, which tend to be
(32:30):
cross-functional decisions, thatend up getting deployed in
silos, you know, in these verynarrow departments, and so often
you know a good decision at thetop ends up filtering down in
the wrong way, and so that'swhen I started my work on
organizational fitness.
So I worked for the founder,shake Shack.
For my internship I then went toa publicly traded biotech
company as a change agent.
So the CEO hired me to improveeverything from work-life
(32:54):
balance to helping with thingslike career pathing and making
sure that we had the rightmanagement and data systems to
manage our people population.
But I ended up leaving to studythe brain because I realized
that even when work is reallygreat for people like for all of
you like you probably got intothis work because you love it
People were still stressed andso I left.
(33:16):
I started doing research on thebrain.
I brought on my professor fromMIT to oversee that work and
ended up building a quantitative, research-backed, step-by-step
model to manage your mind, whichis the minding model.
So we've talked about kind ofthe three mind movements that
your brain needs every day.
There's then the mind musclesthat you can activate, which is,
like we always say, there'sthree stages to mental fitness
(33:36):
get fit, stay fit, cultivatehigh performance.
So mental muscles are abouthigh performance and I started
teaching it and the number onepiece of feedback I got was hold
us accountable.
So kind of like the culturework.
It's one thing to write a bookon this stuff, but I'm obsessed
with follow-through,accountability and outcomes, and
so that's why we built Mindy,which is a gym for your mind,
(33:57):
and so we've got the consultingside of things, which is
organizational fitness, where wework with companies, and then
we've got mental fitness, wherewe've been working on these
products and services to helppeople do these mental fitness
routines every day, and rightnow we're in beta for that.
So I freaking love what I doand I have to practice these
things every day too, both formy company, when I think about
you know, we staff and how wethink about things, but also for
(34:19):
myself as a leader.
You know this, yuli like youdon't get to turn off and like
just go, go, go.
You have to practice thesethings every day, and so some
days I'm amazing and other daysI'm human.
And then you know, rinse andrepeat over and over again.
Yuli (34:35):
Amazing.
Well, you inspired us so muchand your journey just so amazing
.
It seems like you were born todo this, and thank you for for
creating this system and alsosharing with us again so
generously and, yeah, it's beenreally, really insightful and I
can thank you enough for beinghere and if there's anything,
(34:57):
any words of wisdom you wouldlike to share with our listeners
at the end, please do.
Lissy (35:02):
Yeah, I think the big thing for all of this mental
fitness is I think a lot ofpeople hear this and they're
like, oh, simple framework, I'mgoing to stop.
So go every day.
Don't pick one just like.
Pick one mind movement and onething within that mind movement
that you want to do for one tothree minutes a day.
Just start there.
Our brains like big things butwe discount small things and so
(35:25):
start really small when you'rethinking about mental fitness,
especially if you're feeling alittle what we call toasty,
tired, exhausted, overwhelmed,burned out, and yeah, and go
from there and I can promiseyou'll start to feel better
quite quickly.
Yuli (35:39):
Amazing.
Well, thank you again for beinghere with us and please come
back anytime we can talk aboutbrain and mental fitness.
I think it's just such animportant topic for many of us.
Thank you again, thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.