Episode 112: Choose your Job or Your Life

In this week's episode, Marvette talks about how you need to set boundaries around your time and schedule and gives actionable tips so you can protect your peace and your time.

Dr. Lacy also goes over how you can stop trading hours for dollars and what you need to do to stop the cycle of equating your worth with doing too much work.

Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marvettelacy/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey friends. The time has come to finish your dissertation, graduate and become doctor. Welcome to office hours with Dr. Lacey, where we talk about how to finally master this time management thing. So you can stay on top of it without losing your mind. Every Wednesday, you can find a new episode wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure you hit the subscribe button to make sure you never miss an episode. I'm Dr. Marvette Lacey, your dissertation writing strategists here to be with you along every step of the way. I would like to thank you for coming to today's office hours. Let's get started on today's episode. Hey scholar. What are your plans for the summer? How are you going to get your writing goals accomplished? I know you cause if you're like me, which you're probably are because you listen to this, then I know you have all of the plans to do all the writing over the summer.

But let me ask you a question. How has that worked out for you in the past? Have you just said, Oh, I just need a break and you're just going to take the rest of May off. And then before you know it, you know, it it's back in July and it's time for the semester to start all over again. Or have you spent your whole summer working, working and you looked up and you didn't do anything. You had no fun. I want to show you how you can have your hot girl summer and make progress on your dissertation. We will be doing a special challenge inside of the finisher dissertation program for the summer. All about protecting your peace, drinking your water and minding your business and making consistent progress in the dissertation. You want to sign up. You don't want to miss out, come on over to qual scholars.com and sign up.

It's only 197 a month. You can cancel at any time, but I promise you, you won't want to cancel. So let's this be your sign and come join us. And I will see you inside the program. Okay. Let's get back to this episode. Hello and welcome back to a new week. Y'all have, y'all seen that, that tweet that's been going around about the woman who got on a plane and was like, I'm vaxed and waxed and ready to park or something like that? Listen, that's my mood right now. On Monday, I will be getting my second shot and I, by the end of the week, no, I think the following week we'll be on somebody's beach, staring at the water and minding my business. I am so excited. I'm still not going to be around people. I'm going to be in a mellow, private with a little beach chair, umbrella situation.

And I am just going to enjoy the sun on my skin, listening to the waves, come in and just living my best life in North Carolina. I won't be waxed though, because I haven't quite figured out how people do that and knowingly go through that pain. And so if you got some tips, let me know, but this podcast just took a whole turn that I didn't attend to, but you know, that's how things roll around here. Let's just get to the episode. So today I am going to be talking about how do you find the motivation to keep going? When you are feeling stuck, you're feeling overwhelmed. You're just ready to quit. You're just ready to give up. You're like, how do I keep going? And what I want to share with you is an example using one of my one-on-one clients, we're going to, we're just going to use her story.

She doesn't even know that I'm doing this. So she might be listening to this, like what is happening, but I want to talk to you about Gabby Sita., Gabby, and I started working together for one-on-one coaching January, maybe. Yeah, the beginning of this year, I met Gabby three or four years ago when I started working at the university of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She was one of the very few people who was just a friendly face that I just, I was like, it's just a sucky place. What did I just end up in? She was just a bright spot in a very dark time. Okay. I'm thinking really dramatic, but that is how I felt in the moment. And she was just her, her energy is infectious. She's just so bubbly. She's always willing to help. And you just, you just feel good around her. I appreciate her.

She is definitely one of those people who will mention your name in rooms, that you have no idea your name as being and mentioning. And she, she was like helped me to get more involved with more of the academic side of campus and even get involved in like women's leadership committee. And it helped me to build more connections than I would have. Like I wouldn't have necessarily had, because if you don't know, I'm a huge introvert. And because I was already sat in that job in that place, I was like, I don't want to do anything. But she helped me get connected to really dope people who really saved me while I was there for the two years that I was there. And so she works in a multicultural center and she primarily works with Latin X students. And she's been doing this work for seven years.

Um, however, a few weeks ago she had went to the doctor just because she was having more migraines and just feeling really sluggish. And the doctors came back and was like, you know, we believe that you have adrenal fatigue. And for those of you who are not familiar, essentially our adrenal glands are responsible for helping us to respond to stress. They are like, our indicators are like, I don't know what you want to call it. Like our warning lights to be like, Hey, something's going on in a responsible if I'm correct, like for cortisol and all of that, you know, my science friends helped me and they were pretty much saying you need to sit the F down somewhere because your body is trying to communicate to you that you're doing too much. And you've been doing too much for too long. But her thought process was more of like, how can I take space when there's so much to do?

Right? So she had her job, she cares deeply about her students. She's teaching a class and she's working with some community organizations in Milwaukee. Um, she loves spending times time where her siblings are brother and her sisters. She just had just started dating someone new in the reason why she was working with me is because she wanted to start a business. Yes. I'm sure that sounds like alot, but it also sounds very familiar probably to your own story and what you got going on. Right. And her, you know, she was just saying like, there's too many people counting on me and she didn't want to let anyone down. She didn't want to let her students down, but she felt stuck and she felt frustrated. And she also felt like a lot of shame and guilt for not managing her time better and for not getting everything done.

And she started to point to like, well, there was those few minutes where I decided to watch TV instead of working and I should have worked and I should have got those emails. Right. Does this sound familiar? She just wanted me to tell her what to do to fix it. She was like, I just, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I'm going to share with you exactly what I told Gabby to do to quote unquote, fix it. And I'm going to tell you first, like, why is this happening? Right? Why did this happen with Gabby? Why does it happen with so many of us? Why is not really all your fault? It wasn't Gabby's fault and how to get long-lasting motivation to keep going. But before I get into that, I just want to say, if you are thinking about coaching, you ever thought about working with me, this is your time.

This is your sign. If you need one-on-one coaching, this is a time I have two spots open. They won't be open for very long. If this is something you are deeply considering, I'm going to highly encourage you to go over to Instagram and my bio at Marvette Lacy, click the link and sign up and let's talk about how we can work together. I promise you it will change your life. Okay. So let's get to the first thing. Y'all hear me in my notes. Look at me. I'm doing really good. I got notes. Cause I didn't want to go on rants. You know, last week's episode, some of y'all were like, Ooh, you were just, you were on one. I was, but I'm gonna try to, you know, keep it cute with these notes and not get too far off track. Okay. So why does this happen?

Right? Like why do we get to a place where our schedules are just like, Whoa, what is happening? The short answer, you're doing too much full stop. You know that though, right? You know that, and you say that, but you said in jest, right? You're like, yeah, no, I'm doing too much, but how do I fix it? I mean, and this comes from this place of feeling like, well, I don't have a choice, right? I want to do a good job at work. Right? I want to get as much experience as possible to prepare me for the next step, the next position. And I need the experience. Everyone is telling me that I must do all these things in order to be prepared for the next step. And there's nothing wrong with preparing yourself for the next step. The issue comes in is that usually when we're doing all of this preparation and getting all of this experience is coming from a place of people pleaser, but er people pleasing.

Excuse me. And if you've never heard me talk about people pleasing, Oh, get ready. Because as someone who's a recovering people, pleaser, I just know it all too well. And what I want you to know as a people, pleaser, you are a liar. Let that sink in. People pleasers lie, right? When we are in people-pleasing mode, what we are doing is we are working to manipulate other people, manipulate their responses, their emotions. We are manipulating our environment, right? Whatever that looks like, so that we can feel safe so that everyone feels good. So everyone is taken care of and satisfied, but mostly so that we feel good and we don't have to feel uncomfortable. Right. And how we lie is we say yes when we really want to say no, right? We go to the training and the professional development opportunities. And we say yes, to being on that committee or being the chair of this organization when we know we're already tapped out.

But we feel like we can't say no. So we say, yes, we go to a homegirl's house to watch Grey's Anatomy because you had it on your calendar for weeks. And even though both of y'all are tired, neither one of you wants to say, Hey girl, can we just do this another time? Because you keep doing that from the past. And you're like, no, we're committed to doing this, but we're tired. And you probably fall asleep in the middle of the episode. No, just me, all right. Um, there's a version of something like you believe that I have to keep all of these balls in the air because if I let just one of them fall to the ground and crash then everything will be ruined. Everyone will know that I don't know what I'm doing. That I don't have it all together. And that they will know that I'm really a fraud.

They will know that I really don't have it together. And you are coming from this belief of, I have to work hard. I have to be prepared. I have to be twice as good. Right? Because that is what is expected of me. That is what has been told to me my whole life. Y'all don't leave me hanging and say yes or something. If you like feel this, and I know me on a podcast and you like, can you really hear me? Just know I hear you in spirit. Does this sound familiar? Right. But what have I told you that none of this is true. None of it's true. You don't have to keep all the balls in the air. You don't have to work twice as hard. You don't always have to be prepared. You don't always have to say yes. When you really want to say no.

What if I told you that? None of that was true. Now you're probably looking at me with a good side eye like Gabby was on the call when I told her the same thing, but let's go further. All right. So why is this not entirely your fault? Right? Society loves a struggle. I call it struggle porn. They love a struggle, right? We love a good movie or a story about someone pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. And we love someone who went from rags to riches. Right. But we really never like truly see the process from rags to riches. Right? Like, think about movies. Usually when people are doing the quote unquote work to get from rags to riches, it's like cue the video, montage, cue them like, you know, at their desk. And it's late at night and they're writing and typing fiercely on the tech or the keyboard with a little lamp.

Right. Or they're waking up early. Right. I'm thinking about right now, the devil wears Prada. When Annie finally made the change and decided she was going to go all in and she started dressing cute. And it was that montage of seeing her and all those different outfits and come into work. And she finally had to got it together. But we really don't know how she went from crying in the closet to now being this fabulous assistant. Like what if you don't know what I'm talking about? You need to go watch the Devil wears Prada, a wonderful movie. Um, right. We don't really see the doubt in the late nights. We don't see the, really the struggle. We don't see the low moments. Like we don't really hear them talking about how they're not sure what the right decision is, or they're not sure how to like move forward or what to do next.

Right. To take this further. Think about when you were a tiny human, right? Your parents expected a lot from you, right? They expected you to grow up. There was no room really for you to be just a kid for a lot of you. I know this is your story. There was no room for you really to be a kid, right? Because your parents or whoever took care of you, they had to work. Or they had to take care of other family members who were in great need right. So you had to learn how to take care of yourself. You had to learn how to cook, to clean, sit still and be quiet. The goal was for you not to cause any more problems than the million of problems that already existed in your family and your household, right? Your job was to be a good little who was well behaved and got good grades and worked hard in service of the family of the collective.

Meaning you learned from a very young age to sacrifice your needs for your family, for others. Right? But this also, isn't just about like our childhood or our immediate family. This comes from our history, from our histories and looking back through the ancestors, right? Like our parents and our family, they did the best that they knew how to do. They did the best they could and all they knew, all they ever seen, all they've ever experienced was that in order to get anywhere, you have to work hard. You have to put in the time, right. I'm sure most of you come from families where everyone had, or has hourly positions, right. They're not salary. And survival was the key. Right? So survival. When we think, when we go way back, right. Survival was based on how much you can work, how much you can produce, right?

How much cotton can you pick? How much tobacco can you pick? How much coffee beans can you pick avocados, apples, whatever else that your family did, right? How many hours of overtime could you put in them to work was tied to their survival and the survival of family and the survival of you to make sure that you had clothes on your back to make sure you have food on the table and make sure you had somewhere to lay your head at night, they sacrifice, right? So that you can have these opportunities that you have right now. And they taught you what they knew best, which was to work hard, to make sure your family has what they need hard work. And survival is in your blood. It's all you know, so yes, when you go to work, working hard is all, you know, right.

And it probably has never occurred to you that there

could be a different way that you can question those beliefs. Right? Gabby never knew that she could question, do I have to work this hard? Do I have to do all of these things in order for the next step? Could life be different? So here's what I tell Gabby to do. First, we coach on this, this very thing about her, the motivation for why she was working so hard and doing so much. We, we worked through her questioning how she was prioritizing her job over her life. And if you're like, Oh, how do we get there? Go listen to last week's episode. Cause I explained it there, right? It all boils down to choosing her job over her life. Right. This is how she gets to the doctor. And they're like, yeah, girl, no. And many of you are having those moments.

You probably just haven't gone to the doctor yet, but you know, something's quite right in your body, but you just keep pushing through and you just keep going and telling yourself, I just got to get through the semester. I just got to make it through the summer. Everything's going to slow down. I'm going to have all the time and guess what's going to happen. You're going to get to the summer. And that time won't be there because you haven't stopped to do the work now seconds. Here's the kicker. Y'all second. I told her she had to take at least a week off of all forms of work at least seven complete days off y'all you would think I had told her she has to pay a million dollars or something. And I know some of y'all are looking at your phone or your radio being like, say what now?

Yes. Seven days off. So she was like, but what about my class? And I was like, you always have the option to cancel. Have you ever canceled a class this semester? And or there are a million options, right? There are options of where you can work with students to co-create their own learning. There's ways to get them to learn whatever the lesson was for the week without you physically having to be there. That is an option for you. Then she said, but what about the office? Like, you know, we're already down staff member, we're going to be down another staff member. I don't want to leave them hanging. And I was like, the work will always be there. You're always be down a staff member. There will always be more work than there are people there to do the work. And because you've been working for seven years, right?

All of you like you've been working, you've earned paid time off. You've earned holiday and vacation time and sick time. You've earned it. You can use it because you've earned it. Right. And the doctors told her she wasn't well. Right. Which means you pay sick time and SLA, this is what this time is for. But this is really a decision. Do you want to take a week off or do you want to permanently leave your job? Right? Because a lot of you are paying for like this short-term disability. Right? We have the family, family, medical leave act when things happen and you got to take off, I'm saying, use your time, take this week off to take care of yourself so that it does not become more serious. Right. Because if you're no longer here, then they really going to have to find something. Right.

And they, then they will have no problem that year. They might be sad for a few days, but they're going to replace you. And that's true for everyone. Life will go on. So take your time that you learned. And then she was like, what about the community organizations? I'm like, that's not real. There'll be fine without you for a week. Right. We're communicating ahead of time. There'll be fine. So then she started to come around and she was like, Oh, well yeah, maybe I can go to Costco with my sister and maybe we can go get our nails done and do brunch. And I was like, no, no, no, no. That sounds good on the surface. Right? That sounds like what the people tell you to do in the name of self care. But no, that's just you doing more, you're doing more work. It's just in a different form.

Right? You still got to get in the car and go through traffic, go through Costco, have conversations, right? Figure out the plans, go back and forth. It's still you doing your brain. Doesn't have any time to focus on you. You're just taking, you're replacing the time and energy from work and putting it to your family. And I'm not saying right, that you shouldn't spend time with your family. I'm just saying where's the time and energy that you're going to dedicate solely to yourself. Right? Yeah. So single sound fun on the surface, but can you really enjoy them when you're tired? Can you really enjoy that time with family when you're exhausted? Can you really enjoy going to watch? Right. Like thinking about what I said earlier, the Grey's Anatomy. If you just going to fall asleep before the credits even start like the beginning credit star rolling.

She was okay. What about working now? I was like, does it energize? You didn't do that. And fortunately, her health coach and I were on the same page because our health coach was like, this is not the time to be hitting PRS. This is not the time to be going all in at the gym. Your only job when it comes to working out is a yoga class or stretching or a light walk. That is it. Your body needs time to recover. You going to like lift heavy weights or doing all these things. And the gym is just going to put more stress, which is the whole adrenal fatigue. Right? Think about that. Y'all how often do you take time off from work? And you're like, yes, this is going to be for me only to use that time to run all the errands that you've been putting off the past few months and to go spend time taking so-and-so here and there.

And then you go back to work being like, did I really have vacation? Did I really take time off? No. Cause you didn't sit still. You were still doing. And so then she was like, but what would I do with all that free time? If I'm not going to be working or doing anything, I'm like, the options are endless. You got sleep, right. You got watching TV. You can get high, watch some ridiculous show on Netflix. Right? You can make new recipes. Cause she loves to cook. You can decorate your environment, play with your cat, right. Journal, read a good fiction book, drink your water, get your booty rubbed on dreamed. Like there's a lot of things you can do. Okay. And then the third step I told her was she had to be willing to feel her feelings, right? Because what will happen is you will take the time off.

And then first moment is going to feel good. And then all of a sudden, every emotion that you have been resisting and putting off will smack you in a face. And you're going to be like, wait, why do I feel worse than I did before I took this break? And the analogy that I love to use is think about it. You were sitting cross-legged on the floor, right? And your right foot fell asleep because you were sitting down, you know, getting older, whatever circulation got cut off. And you didn't realize that it had fallen asleep and you were sitting on the floor for like an hour, but then you need to get up and go to the bathroom. Right. And you know how you like jump up for a split second. You're like, okay, it's fine. I'm just going to go walk to the bathroom.

But then reality sets in and the circulation starts to get back, going to your foot. And the blood is going into your foot. And the tingling starts, right? Y'all know that feeling I'm talking about. When something falls asleep, it's like tingling. It's like, it's a relief, but it's also uncomfortable. You kind of want to laugh. You want to cry. You just feel a lot of emotions, right? It's the decompressing that is happening now that the pressure of your body is off of your foot. And the blood is able to go back through. It just feels really funny. It feels uncomfortable, right? It doesn't quite hurt. It just feels uncomfortable. The same thing happens when you go to take a break, your body and your mind has to decompress. At first, it feels good. Everything Gucci. And all of a sudden these emotions start flooding because your body's like, finally we got the time and we got the space to decompress and take care of ourselves.

Right? And so what I tell Gabby to do is during the seven days, find a notebook and track what is coming up track and answer the question. Cause I know, I know a lot of y'all don't like the journal. So the question I gave her to add, like to say five reasons why it is the best decision for me to take this week off. Why is this the best thing that I could have ever done for myself? Even if you don't believe it, just see what comes up and she did it y'all but what I want to say is this process isn't just for when something seriously bad has happened or something has gone wrong. I tell my clients to do this every single week on Saturdays, we rest, we don't work. We're not answering nobody's emails. I'm not cleaning our house. We're not doing laundry.

We're only doing things that fill us up and energize us, right? You block the time, right? So if you're going to be like Gabby, if you need that week, take the week. If you need a full, what I tell clients is at the minimum, you take a full 24 hour period off of all forms of work and you feel your feelings and you give your body what it needs. That is how you get to long lasting motivation. You can not just keep pushing yourself to keep going and pushing through without giving your body what it needs, because you know what it's going to get, what it's need, what it needs one way or another. Whether it's going to sit you down, cause you got a migraine or something seriously, or you take the time yourself. Gabby did it. She trusted the process. She took the time.

And when she came back, she felt refreshed. She had the space to think about what she wanted for her life, what she wanted for her future. She was able to make some very big decisions that seem very complicated and confusing. Before this seven day period, it was very clear. After the seven day period, she was able to make decisions about what she wanted her job to look like this new relationship she was in and her future. And she's still doing the work. I'm not saying like this one seven day break period was everything was the be all end. All. I'm saying that it gave her space to focus on herself, to take care of herself and to think about how do I want to move forward? How do I want to move differently? So this doesn't keep happening. She now has the motivation and the energy to keep going after her dreams like she ever has up.

We've been working on her plan for the summer, right? Because nature, abhors a vacuum, right? And we're getting to the end of the academic year, meaning that she's not going to be teaching. And her student load won't be as high because it's the summer. However, if we don't intentionally filled that time with something that we want it to be filled with, all what we will do is just continue to say yes to people and things and opportunities that we don't really want to do because we have so much time that we don't know what to do with it, but not Gabby. She has a plan and she is dedicated to focusing, focusing primarily on her health spending time and taking trips with friends and building a six figure business. If it doesn't fit in those things, she doesn't do it yet. She's still going to work, but they only going to get there 40 hours a week, really 35 hours because it's the summer.

Everything else is going to those three things, her health going on trips and building her business. She is setting boundaries left and right already had to set a boundary with a friend, which I'm so proud of her. She's drinking her water. And my then the business that pays her. And that is what I encourage you all to do. As you go forth this week, think about how can you take space for yourself? How can you allow yourself to feel your emotions? That may feel very woo. But if you want to have long lasting motivation, if you want to be able to do like the things that really matter to you, the most you're going to have to give yourself the space. You're going to have to be courageous enough, to feel your feelings and process them fully and give your body and your mind what it needs.

Take care of yourself. All right, that is going to do it for today. I'd love to know your thoughts and then I will talk to y'all next week. Bye for now. Thank you for joining in for today's office hours. If you're ready to take this work to the next level, I invite you to join the happy free and pay collective. We will show you how to finish your dissertation and build your consulting business, using the skills and knowledge you already possessed. Come on over to Marvette lacy.com and let's get started. I'll see you on the inside of the collective bye for now.