Transcript

All Gifts Leading Yourself Change & Disruption

SPEAKERS

Pandora Villasenor

Pandora Villasenor  00:18

You are listening to the All Gifts podcast where we unwrapped some of life's most challenging and painful topics to help you find the hidden gifts within. Here's your host and MBA, entrepreneur, author and Coach Pandora Villasenor. Today's episode of All Gifts is adapted from a talk I gave at a national sales meeting to a group of hundreds of high performing salespeople. The talk was called Reimagine Yourself: Leading Through Change and Disruption. My mission is to help people build resilience by finding the gifts in their challenges and adversities in building resilience. People can develop into the best version of themselves personally and professionally. But getting to that mission has evolved quite a journey in my life and career as I leaned into changes and disruptions and met my challenges head on. Hopefully, by sharing my journey, I can inspire you, my listeners to do the same. I've held many titles in my life. I've been a sales rep. I've been a regional operations director and area business manager. I've also been a teen mom, a single mom, a working mom. But of all my titles I've identified the most with being a hard worker.

Pandora Villasenor  01:45

Being a hard worker helped me get off welfare, get an education, build a career and provide for myself and my children. And it's been a good thing. Along the way, I went through the consequences of unwise business decisions dealt with difficult people got laid off and navigated challenging HR and legal issues. Yes, I come from the school of hard knocks, things. All these things really stressed me out. I'm not trying to act like it was easy. It was stressful. But I leaned into stress. And I leaned into the anxiety to motivate me even more. And you know, I always landed in a place a bit better than I was before. But at some point in my career, the stress and anxiety induced motivation started to have diminishing returns. The striving and worrying thoughts took a toll on my mental and emotional wellbeing. I turned to smoking marijuana and drinking every night to take the edge off. Eventually, I found myself in a cycle of addiction. I went to a recovery group at church to address that. But then without marijuana without drinking, there was that anxiety again, there were those worrying thoughts. I had to come to a point where I realized that although the hard work had served me well, I had to find a way to let that low grade anxiety go. I'm not talking about clinical anxiety here. I'm talking about that low grade hum. That just sort of happens. You know, when your mind wanders, and you go to those worried thoughts. I wanted to feel secure in my work and my career. Can you relate to this, wanting to be motivated by a higher purpose, a higher mission. But probably like many of you listening, I wasn't sure how. And I've been going through this cycle many times, I switched jobs many times hoping that that was the solution. But a few years ago, I got that old familiar sense of discontent again, at yet another job. My heart was longing, aching for something more fulfilling and for relief from the worry from the insecurity. Ultimately, at this point, I became a Christ follower identified with being a Christian. So I knew that no job no career, no degree, no achievement, no, you know, earthly situation would ever completely fulfill me, I knew that with my mind. And I did have my face. But I still worked harder to try to figure it out. Even under the guise of religiosity. I operated as if I only tried harder, prayed more, or found the right formula, or streamed better sermons, or listen to more podcasts or wrote out more gratitude lists. I thought maybe I could figure out how to get rid of this gnawing feeling how to feel more secure, how to feel more grateful, more content in my career. Well, a few years ago, I felt like I couldn't take it anymore. I got on my knees and I prayed and fasted for a rescue and let to tell you, fasting is not my strong suit. But I wanted so badly to just be supernaturally plucked from my situation. And given some sort of rescue, but things seem to get worse, the fire was literally turned up on my job that was already pretty stressful. And it didn't seem like my prayers have been answered. But suddenly, a series of events took me out of work for several weeks. First, there was a natural disaster. I'm not saying the natural disaster was orchestrated by God just for me. But this natural disaster took me out of work, I wasn't able to get to work because of this main highway that had been blocked. I was unable to get to the most stressful neediest part of my responsibilities. No sooner did that natural disaster get cleared up, that I got a really bad flu, and probably the worst flu I've ever had in my life. I had the flu for over 10 days. But every day, I didn't know how long it was going to last. So every day I pushed myself to get up shower, I'd get dressed, only to fall back into bed exhausted. I was in and out of fever. I mean, this went on for days. And as it happened, at first, I was just frustrated and angry and very anxious. When I was awake, because, you know, being in fever, I was in and out. I would pray, “God don't you know, I need to go to work. I have to solve these problems. I have to do my duties. I have to follow up on my responsibilities.” I was beside myself, and really tempted to give into my anger. I just laid there on my bed frustrated, thinking, you know, God, this wasn't the answer to my prayer I was looking for. It felt like he'd abandoned me. Honestly, I cried. I prayed, you know, to try to cope to try to improve my mind state. I ended up like listening to Bible verses and streaming, you know, hymns out loud, anything to make myself kind of get through that time. It was very dark. I mean, like I said, it went on for over 10 days. By the time it cleared, and I was ready to get up and get back to work, I made a simple movement to get off the couch and slipped a disc in my back. This injury brought me back to my bed staring at the same exact spot on the wall I was staring at through the whole flu. So here I was going on three weeks, not going to work. It was in that week, with the backache with the back pain, that I began to really pay attention. I mean, you know, I'm just hard-headed, you know, it took all these things for me to finally look inward and ask, okay, what are these experiences trying to tell me? Why do I keep getting pulled back into bed? Well, then kind of a breakthrough happened. There, I was still in bed, unable to move without pain. And suddenly I saw that the way I've been seeing myself through the lens of hard work was wrong. It was really wrong. I came away with this thought, you know, I didn't have to work anymore. No, I'm not saying I didn't have to have a job anymore. No, I'm saying I came to this place where I realized I didn't have to do the extra work anymore, that I'd been striving that I'd been, you know, problem solving, quote unquote. But really having you know, these worrying thoughts problem solving, what starts as problem solving in my head becomes worrying. And I didn't have to have this anxiety anymore. I guess what I'm trying to say is, at that time, I saw that all of this had been a choice. I love the way Alan Fadling puts this in the book and Unhurried Life. He says whatever I do and worry, I could do equally as well in peace. And he may be quoting somebody else on that. But what a great concept. Whatever I do in worry, I could choose to do in peace. Now, realizing that it was going to take some work to change, right, because worrying thoughts are habitual. So I had to undo the habit. So that really started to undo when I began to really examine where this came from, where did this, this, this overwork mentality come from? Well, for one, I landed on work had been a major part of my identity. My identity wasn't in, you know, my belovedness as a child of God, my identity was in work. And I realized that in order to overturn that identity is going to take some serious prayer, but also, I needed to cultivate some other areas of joy in life. My life. Alan also says in an Unhurried Life, what we do is an expression of who we are. What we do does not establish who we are. I'll repeat that. What we do is an expression of who we are. What we do does not establish who we are. I read this book, during this time off, I'm in my forced rest. And that really struck me. My identity wasn't work, my identity was who I am beyond work. Number two, I realized I was looking toward work for a sense of worthiness. And that was being driven by old wounds. I had felt like I'd healed so much from old wounds. I grew up the oldest of four kids, my parents were both drug addicts. They were both abused as children, and then they pass that abuse on to us. I spent years doing personal and spiritual work to heal those wounds. But during this time of force, rest and reflection, I had to see that I was forced to see that the shame of abuse, neglect, and poverty was still haunting me. God was inviting me to allow him to heal me even more. But I had to slow down to hear this. Three, I landed on, it was my choice to build in times of rest and recovery. I had to take control of my schedule. I spent years comparing myself to others who seemed to be able to have more rest, I mean, lamenting that I didn't have more rest, looking towards usually other women thinking, gosh, she seems to be able to get rest. Why can I but I finally had to land on, God offers that gift of rest to all of us. But I was the one standing in the way of receiving that rest. I had to choose to take the time to slow down to enable me to be attentive to God's presence and guidance. Well, in order to do that, I had to put balance, excuse me, I had to put boundaries on my time. I needed more time to pray. I needed time to just sit in prayer listening. I realized, you know, I need to spend some time really digging in to silence and lean into it. And of course, discovering in that that I had to put boundaries on my thinking I had to put boundaries on my mind. What do I mean by that? Well, I couldn't allow work, and thoughts of achievement to occupy my thoughts unchecked, they had been occupying my thoughts completely unchecked. I was always trying to figure out how to do my best how to get ahead how to get one step further forward, so that I didn't fall backwards into poverty. Again, these thoughts, of course, quickly became worrisome and anxiety provoking. And when I'm in that state, I can't see my goodness, I can't see the goodness and prosperity and blessing that I already have. And of course, it's hard when you're in that state to pray. It's hard to focus. It's hard to remember the truth. But it was vital that I did. Okay, so fast forward. Here we are. It's years later, I started this process that was probably three, four years ago. I still have big goals, I still have a corporate job, and I'm launching this podcast, my book, All Gifts, I'm busy. But I have been committed for several years now to doing work differently, not just for me, but as I influence the people I live with, I work with and that I love. So here's some commitments I've made, that have served my career greatly, have served my relationships greatly, but most importantly, has really served my emotional mental health. One, I am committed to slowing down and checking in really checking in with myself, I am taking the time to cultivate that. Because in that I can cultivate self awareness. And like I've shared before, when I'm self aware, I can take that time to really process my feelings and land on the gifts in every situation that comes up the difficult the challenging the changes all the different things. Secondly, I am committed to paying attention to my thoughts. I am very aware now, what am I thinking? Am I really problem solving? Or am I trying to control the situation with my mind? I love saying that because it's so it's kind of funny write trying to control the situation with my mind. Impossible, but yet, it's what I've been trying to do for years. In other words, when I examine my thoughts, I really have to ask myself am I really doing something useful here? Or am I ruminating? Am I worrying? And of course, making a different choice if I find that I am. Third, I have to check the guilt about rest, I have to continuously renew this commitment, it is not an easy commitment to make when everything is pulling at our attention. When information is coming at us, when emails are coming from all directions, I get tons of communication coming at me all day. But I have to check the guilt about rest, rest feeds and informs my work. It feeds it informs my creativity. It feels my relationships, it's so important. You know, there is tons of research that shows that really good rest and recovery on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, makes us better problem solvers makes us more creative, it helps us it basically creates an environment with which we can collaborate better, and so many good things. And so lastly, my commitment is to build in times of rest and recovery, which I do on a daily basis as well as a weekly, more extended basis. And then I try to even on a monthly basis, do something even more extended, which I can get to and give you guys more information on down the road. But all that to say I loved ones. These are the commitments that I've made to really take care of my mental and emotional well being. So, a couple questions I have for you to ask yourself. Are you being gentle with yourself? Do you have the humility to understand your limitations? Are you willing to accept your limitations? Do you see your great need for rest? I hope sharing some of my journey helps you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The All Gifts podcast. Thank you for listening to the All Gifts podcast. I'm your host Pandora Villasenor I have a passion for coaching people to overcome the challenges in their lives by helping them discover ways to transform those challenges into gifts. Gifts of accomplishment, perseverance, strength and resilience. But most of all, peace and self love. Loved ones go to WWW dot All Gifts book.com to join us for exciting updates on the launch of All Gifts the book and sign up for our free newsletter.