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how to be more productive

We all want to learn how to be more productive, and years ago, I thought endless hustling was the only way! But I’m here to tell you that there is a whole other way to be. 

There’s a way of life that allows you to accomplish everything you want while feeling expansive, peaceful and as if you have unlimited time. 

But it took me a while to believe that. 

I used to overwork to the point of exhaustion. My health was suffering, my relationships were suffering. And frankly, even though I was doing great work in the outside world, on the inside I was burned the f— out. 

You see, there was a part of me that believed I had to hustle and push myself to be successful. This part of me was running the show, showing up for every work meeting, every book launch and even in my personal relationships. 

Now? That part of me is on a beach somewhere! Imagine her sipping a nonalcoholic piña colada and taking a well-deserved break. She knows that hustling isn’t the way to be more productive. 

gabby bernstein photo

How did I go from living in a state of chronic stress to being THIS ^^ chill? 

Here’s how.

marie doesn’t do overwhelm

My friend Marie Forleo, who’s my guest on today’s Dear Gabby, has a similar story of transitioning from burnout to joy and expansion. (You may know Marie as the host of Marie TV, or as the founder of the incredible digital Time Genius course … more on that later!) 

Back in 2020, Marie’s doctor looked at her one day after reading her lab results. “Wow, Marie,” the doc said. “I can’t believe you can get out of bed in the morning.” Marie’s adrenals were completely out of whack!

You see, Marie had an internal belief system that she had to push herself, hustle hard and completely burn out in order to keep her successful business afloat. 

Then she had an epiphany that completely changed her perspective on how to be productive. That epiphany arrived in the form of four words, which felt like a divine download. 

I don’t do overwhelm.

—Marie Forleo
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After making that her mantra, Marie learned how to make her time work for her. She reclaimed her joy and her health. And she saw her productivity soar … even though she was taking more time off to just “relish in the white space” on her calendar. 

Gabby Bernstein and Marie Forleo

Marie and I aren’t the only ones who have pushed ourselves to the point of burnout, believing that this is how to be productive. 

As Marie says in today’s Dear Gabby, “If you struggle with burnout, overwhelm or overwork— or if you have this feeling that you can’t ever stop and you feel guilty when you do—it’s not your fault. You’re not broken, and you’re certainly not weak. You’ve just inherited this very broken and dysfunctional philosophy around time.” 

But you can change your philosophy about time, starting today. 

in this episode you’ll learn:

  • Why two words — “I don’t” — are so effective in changing habits and resisting temptations (There’s science to back this up!)
  • How to become more conscious of your beliefs around time … and how to shift those beliefs so you feel less overwhelmed and more inspired
  • The #1 thing that holds you back from being productive, even if you’re the most organized person you know 
  • How to use Marie’s 85 Percent Rule to become more productive (and WAY more relaxed) at work 
the paradigm of time

Learning to manage your time, bust through burnout and reclaim your joy isn’t just something that takes place in the physical world. 

It’s actually a very spiritual practice! 

To learn how to be productive in a way that really serves you, you have to look within, get very clear on your beliefs about time and productivity and become willing to shift those beliefs. 

And with this willingness, you can open yourself up to embrace what Marie calls “the new paradigm of time.” 

When you live in this new paradigm, you are a time genius! There’s more space in your calendar to do everything you want to do … and you have the energy to do it! You’re kinder to yourself. You’re sleeping well. And you feel more connected to joy and inspiration.

My Big Talk with Marie Forleo will change your relationship with time and give you a brand new understanding of how to be productive. I can’t wait for you to listen!

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disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #90 Oct 10, 2022 emotional wellbeing 52 min

heal burnout, release stress, and get your time back!

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The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. 

Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I'm not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Before we begin with today’s episode, I wanna tell you about Seed. I’ve talked about this product before. It is one I really, really love to shout out from the rooftops. I love this product, I love this product. From the package design to how great it makes me feel, I’m really into the brand. And everything you think you know about probiotics is probably wrong. 

A probiotic is your must-have in your supplement rotation. Must, must-have. If you’re having gut issues, if you’re having brain fog, if your immune system is weak, the answer is a probiotic. 

Good news is Seed’s DS01 daily symbiotic is the real deal. So what's a symbiotic, Gabby? It's a broad-spectrum two-in-one prebiotic and probiotic, a proprietary formulation of 24 distinct probiotic strains, which is really important to have many different strains of probiotic. And proprietary- engineered two-in-one capsules probiotics through digestion to ensure the delivery to the colon. 

And all this sounds like mumbo-jumbo to you possibly, but it's so important to understand that you want that probiotic to get to your gut because your gut is what fuels your brain, your immune system and everything that you want to have thriving in your body. 

It's all about good bacteria and honoring your G.I. tract. It's such an important thing that we overlook. And now you’re thinking, OK that's great but what is this gonna do for me, Gabby? Right? 

Well, a lot of things. It supports and benefits in and around your gut. Seed will support ease of bloating, support you with your gut barrier, your skin health, your heart health. and micro nutrient synthesis. Gut immune function is not boosting the immune system. It is all about supporting the cross talk between your intestinal cells and your immune cells. 

Many see improvements within 24 to 48 hours. I know I do. I take my Seed probiotic as a daily habit and you can start your new healthy habit today. 

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Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host Gabby Bernstein, and if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started.

Welcome back, my friend. I have a topic today that’s going to be very valuable for you. We're talking about burnout. We’re talking about overwhelm, stress, trying to constantly keep up with your to-do list, feeling like a workaholic, feeling like that hamster in a wheel. 

Does this sound familiar to you? Not necessarily at work. We can burn out on childcare, we can burn out on trying to prove ourselves to the world and trying to do too much in life. So if this topic resonates with you, you really can't afford to miss this Big Talk.

This episode is going to really help you re-organize the way you perceive your time. My guest today is Time Genius course creator, my girlfriend, Marie Forleo.

And Marie is an old friend of mine, we've been growing up together in many ways. She's a business mentor to me; we sat together on Oprah, interviewed by Oprah. We’ve been through a lot together. She is a very very valuable resource in this world for entrepreneurs, and for people who are really trying to get out of that burnout and grind. 

And Marie's created a socially conscious, digital empire and I am so pumped to be able to share her expertise with you today. So forgetting Marie’s credentials of, you know, 52 million views, and host of her podcast. All of this is big. But what I love most about this conversation is her vulnerability, her humility, her willingness to show you that even with all the success in the world, she still burnt out. 

And she’s gonna give you the methods that she’s used to transform burnout in five days. So welcome to the Time Genius, Marie Forleo. Let’s enjoy the show.

 

GABBY: So we're here with you. My love, Marie Forleo.

Somebody I have seen it not only as a very close friend, because you're a very close friend and you're somebody that I love very deeply, and you're my neighbor and you're my sister, and we've been growing up together for quite some time. But you're also a major mentor to me when it comes to business and also life in general.

But I was joking with you last night when we were on the phone, we were talking about how contractors never really get us to where we wanna be and we were talking about our luxury problems of contractors never doing the best job that we want.

And I'm sure there are great contractors out there listening to Dear Gabby, so we wanna respect you. But I was joking with you about how well I got to 85% and I said, I learned that from you. 

MARIE: Yeah. 

GABBY: And we can start there. What's the 85% rule? I think that's the most valuable tool you've ever taught me.

MARIE: I was actually, when you were texting me, I'm like, What's Gabby talking about? So I'm curious how you heard my advice to you.

GABBY: Okay, so here's how I heard your advice. Years ago, when I was still living with unresolved ptsd. Totally a workaholic. Absolutely burnt out. Losing my mind. My gut was a mess. My shoulders were tight.

I had one virtual assistant running a massive business, and I was like, Marie, I don't know what to do. And I started hiring people and I was like, they're not getting it the way I want it, or it's not the way it should be, or I feel like I have to do everything. 

You said, you’ve gotta just continue to build your team, You've gotta outsource and you have to be comfortable with 85% because you're never gonna get what you think you're gonna do. 

And that is a really important, valuable lesson. That's not just for work relationships, but contractors or even, your partner, maybe you have a partner who's doing the dishes at 85%, but they're not there at a hundred.

So be happy with your 85%. And that really struck home for me, and I pretty much quote you all the time. Did I take that the right way?

MARIE: And because when we have these expectations that other people are gonna do things the way that we think they should be done, especially in business, right?

They're their own unique individuals and they're bringing their gifts. The whole reason that they're there is because they have something unique to contribute, but it's not the way that you're gonna do it. And to make yourself feel just so frustrated and overwhelmed and, oh, I really have to do everything myself because they're not doing it right.

There's no joy in that, and there's no way to grow. And so, being satisfied with 85% doesn't mean that you don't give people feedback and that there's not opportunity for growth. But as a business owner, it can help you relax a bit. And it can help you learn how to let other people contribute and for you to also take a new perspective to see what are the things where they're probably giving 120%. 

There are certain people on my team who do things, so many things that I would never be able to do. I probably couldn't even give them 85% on their jobs. So it's just a great mentality, especially for those of us who tend to overwork. Which I think on the Dear Gabby show, you have a lot of ambitious creatives.

GABBY: We have a lot of ambitious creatives, and we also have people that they may not be overworking necessarily with their career, but they might be overworking with their personal growth or they might be hustling, with five children. And that can really feel like overworking For sure.

MARIE: Absolutely. And trying to be super mom.

GABBY: Super mom or mom that's working, or dad that's working. Just, there's so much happening in all of our lives, or people starting up their own businesses or changing careers, whatever that might be. There's a lot of burnout and I worry about the burnout. I am very familiar with the burnout.

It actually feels very far away right now. It's a part of me that has gone to sleep and relaxed and she's on a beach in Hawaii, drinking a pina colada without any alcohol in it. And she's on the most beautiful meditative retreat. She's doing well, she's great. But for many years she ran the show. Yeah. And I know that you're not unfamiliar with that as well.

MARIE: Oh, not unfamiliar at all. There's a saying sometimes in order to wake up you need a wake up call. 

GABBY: Yeah.

MARIE: And for me, I've visited this topic several times in my life and my career, and over the past few years, there was one that really gave me a wake up call, but it didn't start with a slam.

So I remember one day walking downstairs in the middle of the afternoon and I saw something and it caught my eye and it took everything in me to resist it. It was my couch. I wanted to lie down so bad because I was so exhausted, but then I heard the voice in my head saying, You can't take a break. There's no breaks for you.

You've got another interview coming up in two hours. You gotta go to the store and get groceries for dinner. Kuman needs his medication and he needs to be taken to the vet today. You've got those design approvals, about a hundred emails, 12 texts, and oh yeah, you promise you'd call your parents. So no, there's no five minute break for you.

And then I remember not giving myself permission to put my head down even for a few minutes because you know what that would mean. That would mean I was lazy.

I was not ambitious enough that I didn't have what it takes to be as successful and as accomplished as what I hope to be. And so what did I do?

I pushed myself to keep going. I grabbed another cup of coffee. I love coffee, marched back upstairs and kept on working because, pushing and pushing myself and punishing myself—even if that's not what I realized I was doing. Some part of me believed that must be the key to success because I've been doing it my whole life and look how far it's gotten me, and I'm sure like many of your listeners, everything, at least this was my belief, in my world is riding on my shoulders.

And if I stop or slow down even for a minute, all of the success that I work so hard for is gonna fall apart. And now I wish I could tell you that this incident of looking at my couch and pushing myself to keep going was an isolated incident, but it wasn't. And it was getting to the point where, and Gabby, this was really scary for me.

I started waking up and one of the first thoughts in my head when I opened my eyes was some version of, I can't do this anymore. I wanna run away from my life.

I wanna just disappear and not exist.

GABBY: Mm-hmm.

MARIE: And it wasn't like I wasn't doing all the things, right? So I have adhd, so meditation, journaling, working out, eating right, sleeping enough, all those things that are usually lifesavers for me.

They weren't working. And so, I started to feel this level of anxiety and depression, and then I started to feel so much shame around that.

GABBY: Right.

MARIE: And so, all the pushing and then pushing and punishing, and punishing it definitely created results. Just not all of them were what I was aiming for. 

So I started to have all these weird pains in my body, a doctor.

GABBY: I'm only laughing cuz you're just telling my own story. Like I'm very familiar with everything you're talking about.

MARIE: And a doctor told me, Marie, your adrenals are shot. And basically looked at my labs and said it was a miracle that you're able to even get up every day. 

GABBY: Wow. When was this?

MARIE: This was just a few years ago. This was 2020.

GABBY: I'm not saying great, but I'm just acknowledging that. Keep going. I wanna acknowledge that though.

MARIE: Yes, it was not that long ago at all. And so then I got some more checkups. We found all these tumors inside of me, including one the size of a grapefruit, growing outside of my uterus, pushing all of my other organs out of place, and I had to have an urgent hysterectomy to make the pain stop.

So, I believe what most people don't realize is that your innermost thoughts and beliefs about time and productivity, your innermost narrative about time has the power to create one of two vastly different worlds and one of two vastly different lives. 

And one is this toxic treadmill of never-ending stress and pressure and overwork and burnout and obligation where you feel like no matter how many hours you put in or how hard you work, it is never enough.

And so that was the world I think, that not only I was trapped in, but I think it's the program that so many of us are conditioned into and we don't even realize there's another option.

GABBY: Particularly in the U.S.

MARIE: Yes. Particularly the U.S.

GABBY: Not necessarily other European countries, but here in particular.

MARIE: Yeah. I just came back from London actually, and I was sharing a little of this and having conversations with my publisher over there and different people that I know and we've—this is not a good thing—I think exported some of this mentality, or it's just…

GABBY: Definitely to England.

MARIE: Yes. You know, one of our, our closest friends and allies, so one thing I do wanna say though, for anyone listening, is that if you struggle with burnout or overwhelm or overwork or just this feeling like you can’t ever stop and you feel guilty when you do that, it's not your fault.

You're not broken, and you're certainly not weak. You've just inherited this very broken and dysfunctional philosophy around time. I think modern culture is really set up to create these cycles of fractured thinking and non-stop distractions and interruptions, and it leads to a ton of chaos in our brains, which creates disease in our bodies, and it leads to despair in our hearts.

GABBY: It's gonna create all that inflammation. Yeah. You're in a chronic state of stress and hypervigilance. And we were talking before about how I now have a retainer because of the TMJ. I've been living with TMJ for decades, and that's where my stress response still lives.

Even though I've done so much work to unravel and unwind, we have these sort of silent stress responses, even though I don't feel anxious, I have it in my jaw. So we can use these devices like my mouth guard and we can do these different things, but we also have to address the mental conditioning that leads to those feelings of absolute physical pain. Burnout.

MARIE: Yeah. You don't wanna be here, you're like, I can't do it. I cannot do it anymore.

And for me, someone who spent the last 20 plus years of my life, like really building up my business and my career again, there was all this shame around what's wrong with me? And one of the things I wanna mention too, what I've discovered, and we'll talk about where it went, but I was like, I don't think it's me that's broken.

It's like there's this paradigm that I've totally bought into that I didn't realize that there was this whole other option, an option that I call, it's another world, not the world of what I call time stress, which is just what I was describing. 

But really this whole new paradigm, this whole universe of being a time genius where things are more spacious, where you're actually kind to yourself, where you know there's always enough time for what's most important, and you have certain practices and certain things that you do both internally and externally that help you cultivate this feeling on a consistent basis because the external world is always gonna do its best to inject time stress.

And so, you know, you were just saying with your TMJ and with your device, with your jaw. For my experience, you don't just handle burnout and overwork. Like it's not a one time thing. It's a continuous practice of continuing to melt any of the stress that you continue to hold in your body.

And also for me, staying vigilant of flirting with going back to that world and going, nope! I'm gonna stay in my time genius soon and catching myself when I start to get near the edge of going, oh, that's an old pattern. Let me back this thing up.

GABBY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. I love all of this and I also like that, that you've got this course time genius and this is what we're gonna touch into some of the topics of that.

But before we do that, I wanna just acknowledge what you just said, cuz it's this worldly practical organization and respect for your time, but also the internal work because you can't, you could do all the organizing. But if you don't address the belief systems that keep you stuck in the overworking burning out mentality, then it's gonna never really work.

MARIE: Yes! Let's hang out there for a minute. So there's one stat that I actually wanna share with you and with your audience, that I found shocking, but it really brought things home to me just in terms of understanding and being real about the. that we're living in and understanding that it's a real challenge.

Did you know that the average American will now spend the equivalent of 44 years of their life staring at screens? 

GABBY: Really scary. 

MARIE: 44 years. So between cell phones, laptop desktops, gaming devices, Kindles, televisions. 44 years. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think the purpose of a human life is to spend 44 years of it staring at the screen.

I don't think it's the purpose of your human life or any of our listeners. I believe every single one of us was created for more. In fact, I know that. And the first and most important step that I found to becoming a time genius was actually recognizing that it's an inside-out job. So many people will tell you, right?

If you look to the work of productivity, or you look to the work of time management, if you wanna get more done and less time and with less stress, it's about finding the right app or hiring the right team, or learning how to delegate better or using the right calendar system or planner or Pomodoro technique.

Now, there's nothing wrong with any of those external tools, but I will tell you this, after healing myself and now guiding thousands of other people to do it, step number one is recognizing really that it's an inside-out job. So what does that mean? We have to start becoming conscious of our unconscious programming around time.

We have to start to manage our inner world of thoughts, beliefs, feelings and emotions around time in a completely different way. So what we say to ourselves in the privacy of our own mind matters. 

We're either always continuing to program ourselves further into time stress, which is not where we wanna be, or we're consciously and intentionally re-program ourselves to live as a time genius.

MARIE: So let me tell you how I figured this one out. Josh, every day when I'm done with work, Josh is my partner of like 20 years. He would ask me like, hey babe, how's it going? Like, how is work today? How are you feeling? How's it going? And I would always answer with some form of this, ugh. Josh, I'm so overwhelmed right now.

I have so much on my plate. We got this Marie TV shoot coming up. I've gotta hire these new programmers. We've got all this content to create on deadline. If I could just make it through the next few months, then I'll finally be able to breathe. Have you ever said that?

GABBY: Not in a long time. 

MARIE: Good. I'm so proud of you. So that was the thing that I used to say.

GABBY: It was the thing I said for many years. Yes. 

MARIE: So here's the thing. That was a lie that I told myself and believed because without even recognizing it, my internal and my external self talk was constantly drenched in overwhelm, overwhelm. Until one day I had this wild epiphany, this awakening in my kitchen.

So it was one of those out of body experiences where I finally witnessed myself talking about how overwhelmed I was, and I finally saw, Gabby, how repetitive and ridiculous this pattern had become. It was like, oh my goodness, Marie Forleo, what the heck are you saying to yourself? This has been the same sad, I'm “so overwhelmed song” for years.

Are you tired of this? It's getting a little old. Are you ready for a new possibility? And I kid you not, Gabs. In a flash, there was this mantra that appeared in my mind. I didn't try and think of it. I didn't create it. I feel like it was like a gift from the Divine or my higher self. 

Here is the mantra. I don't do overwhelm.

GABBY: There you go.

MARIE: I don't do overwhelm.

GABBY: That sounds committed.

MARIE: The moment I recognized that and I really comprehended it, I felt my shoulders relax. I felt this huge weight lifted off of me, and I saw this kind of portal open up. I was like, Oh my goodness, could that be my life? And Gabby, I'm not kidding you. From that moment on, I kept repeating that simple phrase.

I don't do overwhelm. I don't do overwhelm. I don't do overwhelm. Like I don't touch this stuff. And after a few months of doing this intentionally and really watching and observing myself and bringing awareness to it, overwhelm started to become foreign to me. It was like somebody asked me like, Marie, go murder your neighbor.

I would be like, What? What are you talking about? That's not something I do. 

GABBY: Yeah. 

MARIE: But here's what's even more fascinating about the phrase, I don't do overwhelm. So it leverages this extremely powerful linguistic tool that hardly anybody knows.

GABBY: Right.

MARIE: It's based on research done by Dr. Vanessa Patrick, and she found that basically using the little phrase, I don't, or I don't do blank, helps people be way more successful when they're resisting temptations. So according to the research, let's say that you're trying to up-level your behavior and you just wanna not go near certain foods because they're not good for you, right?

So if you frame refusal as I don't, for instance, eat chocolate cake, it is three times more effective than saying no to chocolate cake. And it's up to eight times more effective than saying, I can't totally eat chocolate cake. So why is that? So when we human beings say I don't, instantly, we feel strong. We feel clear. We're at choice, right? We're expressing our identity.

GABBY: Not lack of, I can't. 

MARIE: Correct. The moment we say I can't. Like some part of us, even if subconsciously starts to feel restricted, like we make ourselves feel weak or like a victim or like we're being controlled by some external authority or circumstance.

I shared this with a friend of mind. And she said to me this is fascinating, Marie, but my toxic time, stress, self-talk isn't about overwhelm. You know what it is? Guilt.

She said, I'm always feeling so guilty that I should be spending more time with my kid, even though in reality I spend a ton of time with her.

But this guilt thing, it's making me exhausted. It's making me, just miserable. And I said, Okay, great. So your experiment is gonna be, I don't do guilt. Try that on for a few weeks. Yeah. Let me know how it goes. Gabby, it completely changed her life. 

GABBY: I can testify to this. Listen, 17 years ago this week, literally I decided that I don't drink or use drugs and it wasn't I can't. It was I don't; I choose not to.

I've had enough. Literally, I've had enough and even to this day, my husband will be like, no, she's had enough. And 17 years of sobriety because of that empowered way of communicating that I don't do that rather than I can't do that. And I think that's excellent. 

But I'm curious about the part of you that was so in that story of, cuz here you are, you have so much success, so much financial success, so much celebrity in the world, so many people that absolutely swear by Marie Forleo. She's changed my life, she's saved my business, she's saved my life, whatever the storyline is. A beautiful partner, your doggy, everything. Great friends.

You probably five years ago could have just said, I retire. Not that you emotionally, you never because you love your work, but let's just say financially you could have retired 10 years ago. Okay? But I'm wondering what was the part of you that’s staying in that hamster wheel saying to you?

MARIE: I think first of all, I think part of it was an addiction.

GABBY: Okay.

MARIE: I think part of it was also patterning, not having come from a lot of money. And having to climb out of debt and wanting so badly to make my dreams come true. I put my head down and I got to work. And I started working when I was nine years old and I've basically never stopped.

Mm-hmm. And when I had the hysterectomy, Gabby, I kid you not. That was the first time in my entire life, I think it was either a six or an eight week recovery where I wasn't allowed to work out. And that's usually one of the things that I do to kind of just even move energy and to feel grounded and to feel clear and to keep the channels open.

And so being forced, I'm using bunny ears here because of, the surgery to just sit and be, it really had this beautiful effect of giving me an opportunity to see the patterns that were running me and to see how much fear and how much I was trying to hold onto and keep doing what I'd always done, not realizing that I was overdoing, if that makes any kind of sense.

GABBY: And so can I ask the question to that fearful part? So what was that fear saying? Cause if you're saying like, if I don't work I will be.

MARIE: I will lose everything that I've created. That somehow everything I've worked so hard for and because I'm just a person that has, for years been like, Okay, I've got all these livelihoods that I'm taking care of through the business. My family, all the kind.

GABBY: Your team, your this, you're that. Yeah. Whatever it is.

MARIE: Where it’s connected or has been connected to my ability to provide.

GABBY: Okay.

MARIE: And so there was a fear in there around, if I stop or slow down, I'm gonna let all these people down. Everything I've created is gonna fall apart.

Whether or not these are rational or not, that's what was happening underneath. 

GABBY: They're rational and they're real to your nervous system because little Marie at nine who went to work because Was it just lack in the, like a lack of…

MARIE: Yeah. And it was also, it was that, and it was also this want and need for freedom and independence.

GABBY: Okay. 

MARIE: So it was like both I want this thing, we, that's not possible. There's no money for that. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go make the money for that. 

GABBY: That's so cool.

But I also wanna acknowledge that you and I have a very similar history as it relates to finances at home. So growing up with a very financially insecure household led me to a very similar energy of I'm gonna make it happen. I have to hustle and work. I don't, I gotta keep it going. I gotta take care of everybody.

I'm da, da, da, da.

That I think is really resonant for a lot of people listening. So if there's people out there that are burning out with work, there's definitely those parts of us that from way back when, that are terrified of being in that lack ever again. That's right. It's complete terror. The trauma of lack, right? Because it's very insecure and that's something that, yes, it's a pattern adjustment, but it's also, let's just give a moment to honor those little children in us that are like, I don't know how to stay safe. Like I don't have enough to feel safe.

MARIE: That's right. And for me, creating that sense of safety and stability. For me, stability was huge and security, because I didn't necessarily find that always externally. I was like, I am going to create that for myself. So when I really slowed down, I was like, whoa.

Seeing all the things that were running me, and then also really getting interested. My whole career I've been interested in, because I am a passionate person and I love what I do, and I love people and I love creating and I love connecting. 

And so I'd had a lot of history in terms of studying the neuroscience and behavioral science, understanding how our brains work and our bodies work, and, usually in service of how can I get the most done in the least amount of time?

But now, looking through all the science and when I went through my own health scare and really sitting and taking a look at this deep stuff, I was like, I wonder if I'm alone in this. And so, Gabby, what I did is, I created this email and I sent it out to my audience. And I was basically like, hey, I have all these questions about how you feel about your time and about productivity.

Gabs, we had over 7,000 people respond in under three days. 

GABBY: Beautiful. 

MARIE: That wrote the most incredible things. They all sounded just like us. And so I knew that I was onto something and I know I can help. So that's when I just started putting together. I was like, There's a completely new way, really, I think that we need to operate in this world because so many people are in burnout.

So many people are wanting to just. Stop or they can't do it or they're getting sick or there's all of these different manifestations of the type of pushing and punishing that we were describing. And it doesn't have to be that way.

GABBY: I actually just interviewed a young woman recently, and her career is kind of budding and I was just sitting with her and I'm like, freaking out and uncomfortable, but it's not because there's anything wrong with this young woman, it's just she's reflecting back to me where I was.

And that workaholism that if I'm not hugely successful, I'm not good enough.

If I'm not keeping it going, it won't happen. What's the next shiny object? And it was frankly, triggering for me to witness because even though I've very much so transcended that way of being completely. It's still ptsd.

MARIE: Yeah. That came from somewhere that's, your history. 

It’s a part of me that may be relaxed now, but it's still something that I have experienced. Yeah. I really wanna acknowledge those folks out there that were 7,000 people and everybody listening that's yeah. Raising their hand. I get it.

I've got burnout. I gotta keep working. If I'm not doing it, I'm not good enough or nobody else will. Or if I'm not seen, who am I? All of this is all I believe really based on those core needs as children, we wanna be seen, soothed, secure, and safe. And if we don't have one of those 4 Ss that's, or all of them really consistent, then we're gonna try really hard in the world to be seen, to be soothed, to be secure and to be safe, and of course big time, social media work, relationships, money.

MARIE: Those are the big areas. Those are the huge areas. And so, on my journey with this, it has been remarkable. Like I was telling you, I just came back from a trip from Europe and folks that I had met there the first time when we launched Everything Is Figureoutable back in 2019, they're like, Oh my God, Marie, you look different. You look so relaxed. 

GABBY: You do. 

MARIE: Yeah. I had friends, I was like, and I'm looking at myself every day.

So I, I don't feel like I look any different, but friends and people that I really trust are like, no your energy's different. I was on a radio show over there, and the host, who I adore is a guy named Chris Evans, who has the breakfast show, but I won't do the accent.

But he was basically telling me its like my energy is so different. He's like, I loved you before and I love you even more now. Yeah. And so I. I wanted to talk about this so much because I was in so much pain and I had so much shame around it. And I feel like where we are in the world with social and with audiences and millions of people look up to you, Gabby, and I know that we have our audience of folks that look up to me and I'm like, I want to talk about this. 

Because if there's people that are out there that are raising their hand right now going Yeah, I wake up in the morning and I'm like, I can't do this anymore.

Like something's gonna break. I am breaking. I wanted to let people know that there's this other possibility of being a time genius. We've taken like thousands of people through this and to watch people, Gabby. You know, I've taught folks how to start businesses. I've taught folks how to make more money. Like all those things are amazing and I'm super proud of it.

But to have people say, You helped save my life. And in five days my husband said, I got my wife back. Or someone going to the doctor who was going to a stress doctor, who she was following the program that they were giving her. Nothing worked, and she followed what we taught her and her stress went down 40% in five days and seeing people find their joy back.

And being kinder to themselves and going Oh my goodness. I am tripling my productivity, but I'm actually sleeping well and I'm waking up and I feel good about myself. It makes me emotional.

Because I know how painful it was to me and no one could help me but me.

So to be able to share this with other people who I'm like, Hey, if you have gotten any of the I call it like the disease.

GABBY: It's an addiction.

Yes. And I see you very emotional and I see you tearing up because it's not only these people that you've served, but you served yourself.

MARIE: Yes.

GABBY: And I actually remember when I heard from you and you're like, I've got this. I've gotta go into the hospital. Yes. I was not even, I wasn't even slightly worried for you cuz everything looked good and there was a path forward.

But I was, I, this might come across weird, but I was like, Wow, this could be a really big shift. And I always say this, my favorite quote, The wound is the place where the light enters you. And so if you've got these cracking open, these moments of cracking. Look what's possible. You really have changed so much.

MARIE: It's so exciting too, and it's these tools that we have at our fingertips, all the technology that we have to reach each other and to teach each other and to connect and to learn, it's like they're amazing.

I'm so grateful that I was born at this time. It's awesome. And at the same time, it can be really destructive if we're not aware and if we don't have people talking about stuff like this, you don't feel alone. So you don't feel like you're doing it wrong.

So you don't feel like you have to try and be everywhere all the time, 24/7, 365, and you're failing at it. And even if you're, achieving some modicum of success, that it's just never enough. And it was like, whoa. It was a really big shift for me. And I want people to know that it's possible for them.

GABBY: I wanna come back to the 85% now because if you have that 85% mentality for others, you can have it for yourself. It's okay, maybe I don't have to stay up until 10 o'clock at night.

Maybe I can just get this to the place that feels good today.

MARIE: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And I think one of the things for me too is as I'm like the original multi-pass and entrepreneur.

What's also been really fun for me is just going into this stage and season of my life where I'm like, okay, what do I wanna work on now? What's my primary project? And going I'm an entrepreneur and I'm super creative. I'm always gonna have a gajillion ideas. That's a beautiful piece of me. And now I'm just gonna continue practicing, like putting some of my ideas aside, really honoring my calendar and really relishing in the white space. 

To leave myself even more than I think I need. Cuz as we were talking about with contractors and renovation and like all the fun stuff of life and some of the not so fun stuff of life.

We need those margins. We need those margins more than w realize and when you are wired for high achievement, whatever that looks like for you, business, personal life, spiritual, all of the above. 

For many of us, it's like we've gotta really recognize that we don't have to subscribe to hustle culture. We don't have to push and punish ourselves, and there's this whole other possibility where we can be even more joyful, even more creative, even more contributive, and actually enjoy our life along the way.

GABBY: Yeah, and I wanna talk about how you do that in Time Genius. But before that, I have one last really important question. Many of my listeners, many of your listeners, maybe even more yours than mine, because they're entrepreneurs, a lot of them have a belief around being seen, right? So there's this hustle to get there, be seen.

We've addressed this already. What's your number one piece of advice for that listener who's I gotta get those likes, I gotta get that client. I gotta, just hustling for the outside achievement.

MARIE: For the outside acknowledgement? That outside seeing? I think, the thing that's helped me the most with that, because as just to be absolutely real, you know this about me, we've talked about this privately.

I am not the best. Like I'm not on social media all the time like you were taking a video for. I'm like, okay, great, I'll take a video because it's like you inspire me. 

One of the things I would say, especially to entrepreneurial type people, is whether you have a side hustle, you got this thing, one of the things that's awesome is I would say, don't necessarily follow the likes, follow the money. Likes don't pay the bills. 

GABBY: Love that.

MARIE: And so we had a guest on our show, Morgan Harper Nichols. She has It's probably well over this number now. I haven't checked but 2 million followers and she's, Marie, Instagram likes don't pay the bills. That's right. What's the business about?

And one of the things I always like to share with business owners is email is still one of the best ways to make money. Text messages, all these other channels. And you can use social to grow your audience and to grow your business, but you don't necessarily have to always be the face of it.

And you don't have to be the one that's sitting there on the phone and I tell people, we've had a show for over a decade on YouTube. I'm not the one putting the videos up.

GABBY: Yeah. 

MARIE: You can hire someone to help you do that. So if you are someone like me who tends to find social to be a little bit of a danger zone where you can go down these comparison sinkholes, where you can feel completely inadequate, where you just get on there and it's just whoa.

Like for a gajillion reasons, you wind up walking away feeling not so good about yourself. It is not the only game out there when it comes to being successful in business.

GABBY: And I think that there's just a lot of toxicity around the likes and the for, for children, for everything.

I mean, it's a disaster, but, and, but like anything, if you use it wisely, it can be really beneficial for you. We've, I've seen in my, OKRs for my company are objectives and key results. Like the only thing that's been needing to be up-leveled is more social. Because social is where so many people are finding our resources.

And it's, and for me that's an effortless action because I enjoy it. But I always said from the very beginning of my career when I used to speak on entrepreneurial panels, if it's not an effortless action, if it's not something that you would do by choice, either hire somebody to do it or just don't do it at all.

So just, it's gotta be in the flow. It's gotta be something that's super joyful for you. You can't force yourself to do any of it, cuz it won't work and it'll be a waste of your time.

MARIE: No, it'll be super frustrating. And again, you'll just continue down that kind of rabbit hole of feeling really inadequate and it's, you don't need to feel that.

GABBY: And it's very, it all comes back to the conversation that you're having inside Time Genius. Because the same thing that's pushing someone to need those likes is the same thing that's pushing somebody to burn out. 

MARIE: That's right. 

GABBY: Because the need to be seen, the need to earn, the need to feel good enough, the need to have that next accomplishment. And so what would be, your sort of overview of what someone can expect from this course, and I'll then tell everybody where they can find it. 

MARIE: Oh yeah. So the coolest thing, when I was creating this, I was like, okay, so I know there's literally millions of people out there that feel like I do, and we're already overwhelmed, right?

We've already got too much on our plate. So how can I construct an experience that's A) joyful, B) fast and C) really transformative and science based? So Time Genius is literally an online experience, it's over in five days, less than two hours a day. You get lifetime access to the content. 

If you wanna coach with me and I can answer your questions, we have all that available, but you don't have to do it. We've had people go through the program and they're like, great, there's really, there's five key components.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Gabby the fastest, most transformative thing that I have ever created in my life. We have, I think, over 1200 pages of stories of people. My team were just like, Oh my God. We had no idea how quickly people's lives could change. And again, so much of this is based, you'll hear…

GABBY: Is this another book?

MARIE: I think it will be, but the way that I always do things as a creator, like I love having people and working with them and seeing okay, great. Is there any places where folks get stuck? Is there any places that people need more explanation or further examples, and with this one, people are like, Oh my gosh, I love it.

Can we do it again? Yes, we can do it again. Let's do it again. Because it's the kind of experience where you. It's not a rigid system as a multi-passionate entrepreneur and as a person who has folks who are at the beginning of their career, some are not entrepreneurs, they work with teams. Other people are entrepreneurs.

Some people have kids, some people don't. It is a very flexible system. And for someone like me, and many of, I'm sure people listening who rail against a lot of rigidity, a lot of structure, right? If you fail when you're like, okay, it must be this way every day.

GABBY: Oh, I'd be out.

MARIE: It's not like that at all.

We introduce you to the most cutting edge understandings around how your brain is gonna thrive, how your body's gonna thrive.

We help people understand how they create best, how to create an ecosystem around you that helps you get your best work done, and it feels joyful. And so essentially you learn all of these different possibilities, and at the end, you only pick one or two strategies to use only one or two.

You can always go back to your grab bag if you want to, but what that does is it makes it really easy for people to win fast and then all of a sudden they're out of the overwhelm. They have completely new understanding of how time works and how they interact with time, and then all of a sudden they're off to the races.

I'm like, hands free. They're good.

GABBY: I love it because it's that interruption of the addictive behavior, it's the pattern interrupt. Then it's putting something better in its place, live for it.

MARIE: Completely. It happens from the inside out. So all of the steps, we go internal first to really transform the mindset and to understand there's always time for what's most important.

We transform beliefs, we do all that deep work. Then we start to look to the external strategies that each individual needs to get their best work done. So if procrastination is your thing, we handle that. If it's feeling like you have too many priorities and you don't know what to focus on, we teach you how to decide exactly what's most important at this stage and season of your life.

We show you how to language things around boundaries so that if one of your things is people pleasing and everybody always asks you for something, you can never say no, we help you with that. But it all comes from this very loving and honoring and respectful place of yourself first. And then people wind up.

They're like, Oh my goodness. One woman said, I used to be a zombie mom. Like her kids would come into her office and say, Mommy, will you just come and watch me get dressed. You can bring your laptop or Mommy, will you come with me to the park? You can bring your work with you. It's okay.

GABBY: Oh no.

MARIE: Now she's like going on walks with her kids in the middle of the day, guilt free.

She's I've gotten more done in less time. She signed a new lease on a new, she owns a bookstore in Alaska, tripled the size of her business, and her husband is like, this is the person that I first fell in love with. 

GABBY: Beautiful. 

MARIE: And again, five days.

GABBY: Do less and attract more.

MARIE: Yes. Come on Gabby. This has been the song you've been singing.

GABBY: So good. So to learn more about Time genius, go to Deargabby.com/marie. All the details are gonna be there.

I am actually ready to rumble, actually, now that I know that it's five days, Marie, I can start Monday.

MARIE: It's so easy.

GABBY: I'm ready to go and I need it. And I definitely am ready to have that structural stuff. Cause I definitely feel like I've addressed the nervous system now the structural stuff is ready.

MARIE: And it's really fun. And I dip back into it. And again, it's not about doing everything perfectly or right.

It's going what's gonna serve me best, at this stage and season my life based on what my primary project is right now? And that primary project will shift for all of us. But you have all the support you need to go in and stay in that Time Genius zone. 

GABBY: Love it. Love you. Everybody. Go to dear gabby.com/marie, get all the details. I love you, Marie.

MARIE: I love you too. Thank you so much.

GABBY: I can't wait to read the book Time Genius.

MARIE: Me too. 

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