 I was bullshitting myself the whole time and I was bullshitting myself because my bullshit story was it doesn't matter how I feel as long as I care about my team and I care about the vision and I care about creating a product that people love. I took this idea of servant leadership to mean martyr leadership. I was serving my team and every day I was helping hundreds of thousands of people so I was bullshitting myself that it didn't matter how I felt. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today we drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. All right well welcome to the show Natalie we're so excited for your latest book to launch. Thank you I'm excited to connect with you guys and talk about it in all things awesome human project and more. Absolutely and we started your book with a story that I think a lot of our audience can resonate with and I'd love to hear a bit of your origin story you start with the idea that struggle was your religion and I know many in our audience feel like trying to become a top performer is an endless struggle. Yes and that it's the way to be yes absolutely so I just for background for everyone listen I grew up in Russia I came to the US as a refugee when I was a teenager so I'm a Russian Jew which I feel like the official religion of all Russian Jews is struggle I mean have you ever met a happy Russian person I hadn't and more than that you know my mother is a pianist my father is a scientist and like I just grew up with this idea that anything good has got to come out of struggle like my mom would tell me like you know the greatest composers the greatest artists like they are so good because they struggle so I like took that all the way in then I get here's a refugee that's a lot of struggle I mean I just want everyone to imagine I'm 13 years old I don't speak English whatever I do say comes out with a ridiculous accent everyone's making fun of me I definitely don't look very cool so I was like oh see life struggle and so I really like it became like this thing I really believed in and you know over the next 20 years I worked really hard and I built a really successful successful career and I started companies but I always struggled because I didn't think there was any other way in fact I thought that was the right way you know when I spent 20 years in technology startups right and it was just like saying like the struggle is real man and so I was like yeah the struggle is real I'm like there was this worship of struggle so I was like oh my god I'm really overachieving at struggle like I sleep four hours a night I'm always like overwhelmed with self-doubt and exhaustion but like I'm doing it the right way so I'm listening to myself talk and I'm like this is an interesting story of someone who teaches emotional fitness for a living but it's a truth I never imagined I'd be here and the way the origin story actually gets me to do what I do is several years ago I suffered a really really debilitating burnout in fact I think it was more than a burnout the best expression I've come up with is a breakdown of being I just stopped being I it was the scariest thing I've ever been through I couldn't function I was a kind of a shadow of myself and it's really scary I was I was a CEO of a company called Happier right helping hundreds of thousands of people live Happier but I could hardly function I I was blacking out I hadn't wasn't speaking to my husband of 20 years I didn't know which end was up as a mom and you know it's all really hard to say but I think it's really important to share and as scary as it was in a way as it was a blessing because for the first time in my life I stopped and I had to find a different way because the struggle religion wasn't working and I did a ton of research and explored a lot of Eastern and traditions and just to figure out how to live and work in a different way and eventually realize hold on these things I'm doing for myself they can help a lot of people and here I am now that absolute shutdown is I'm sure what a lot in our audience would love to avoid what were some of the earlier signs of burnout in your life so it's a great question and I just want to be honest and saying there were many signs and I ignored them all like I I don't want to like I had no the skill one of the core skills that I teach now is emotional awareness and I had none I mean I lived from my neck up you know again like the the intelligentsia like you know it doesn't matter what you feel who cares like I'm not even sure I knew a lot of words for feelings and in Russian so I had there were many signs but I never took them as signs because that was struggle and struggle was the right way so some of the signs were I'm a really great speaker I now speak for a living it's something I really love to do and I started to like not feel good in presentations to like investors or my team I started to like forget what I was talking about you think this would you know light bulb but for me it was like wow I'm struggling a lot I must be doing it right the biggest I think signs were the biggest one sign is just dread I just began to dread everything I open my eyes in the morning after my you know maximum four hours of sleep because that's what you know super women do right like if you're you know an entrepreneur that's what you're supposed to do but also I just couldn't sleep more than four hours with all the stuff going on I'd open my eyes and I would just feel this heavy dread and all I wanted was just like not do the things you know and resenting your work is one of the top signs of burnout again at the time I was like wow this just means I'm working a lot look how great I'm doing so that was a huge sign just that feeling of dread of everything including things I used to enjoy but again at the time I didn't take it as a sign of burnout I took it as a sign of fantastic struggle I think this is an important thing to discuss as more and more people take on an entrepreneurial roles in their lives the idea of a side hustle is becoming very popular now and so people are trying to get things moving on the side some of us have jumped right into entrepreneurship and we are going to rationalize a lot of our emotional issues and mental physical issues that are going to come up from all of this struggle and we're going to rationalize it in one way or another in order to deal with it and keep plugging on now is there anything that you can speak to of what those rationalizations look like and know when you're bullshitting yourself so that you can take care of yourself I'm so excited I get to say bullshit on the show I should have asked I usually ask because you know I do a ton of speaking and there's like no you know no word no no bad words on stage so this is uh good I love your question because that's what I was doing I was bullshitting myself the whole time and I wasn't I was bullshitting myself because my bullshit story was it doesn't matter how I feel as long as I care about my team and I care about the vision and I care about creating a product that people love you know I took this idea of servant leadership to mean martyr leadership right like I was serving my team and every day I was helping hundreds of thousands of people so like I was bullshitting myself that it didn't matter how I felt and that's the biggest lie that we as entrepreneurs and as leaders tell ourselves that how we feel does not impact one our ability to actually make the right decisions you know when you're constantly exhausted and stressed out your brain starts to interpret that you're in danger we can handle us human being short periods of stress we're actually very good at short-term stress if you're under chronic stress your brain says oh I am in danger and when your brain senses danger it goes until we all notice fight or flight well you may not know about fight or flight when you're in fight or flight the brain says okay I only want to focus on the most important things that help me stay safe so things that go out the door are analytical thinking being able to consider multiple points of view being able to consider alternative paths these are all essential things for anyone having a side hustle or running a company like these are the most important things when you are under chronic stress your brain considers those luxury it's a waste of resources you know it's really good when you're what your brain does it narrows your vision literally and figuratively like your field of near your thighs get really strong because your brain is literally getting you ready to run and so I say all this because this whole idea like the biggest bullshit is it doesn't matter how I feel like you said I can just keep plugging through yeah you can keep plugging through but you can't do great work you can't make good decisions and you definitely can't build a great business and to me this this is the wake-up call that I want to be you know and I speak to a ton of entrepreneurs and when I started sharing my story I can't tell you how many people came to me were like with the quiet the sh like nobody knows but I am where you were so this idea that somehow our well-being our energy level is separate from what we can output it's just the biggest bullshit this is why to me you know one of the missions I'm on is you know that we have in this culture like this idea of like oh you're such a she's such a superwoman like oh he's a superhero being human is hard enough let's take off the cape because if we acknowledge that I'm a human being I have a limited amount of emotional mental and physical energy every day everything I do needs energy so if I am on empty I actually can't do the things that I need to do and for me you know I'm happier and a few other companies I've run I raise money for them I hired a team right these are all things that entrepreneurs we know are essential right you need capital you need a team you need product well your energy level is that essential right it's like people tell me like oh I have 12 months of runway you know cash for my business and I say how much energy runway do you have and they're like what who cares that's actually more important so it's a great question because that's the biggest lie that I told myself and that we tell ourselves is somehow we have unlimited energy to keep plugging away we can keep plugging away but no one builds a great business by plugging away we drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends it's so true and I was listening to another podcast you're on on my flight to Vegas last week and what do they say when you're on the plane right put your oxygen mask on first before you help anyone else but often as entrepreneurs and leaders we're not even thinking about our own oxygen we're running around the plane trying to get everyone else masked and trying to get everyone else moving in the right direction and usually it's the people closest to us who aren't involved in the venture who aren't involved in the business who see these signs see us not sleeping see us popping up in the middle of the night and feel the grumpiness the lack of energy and emotion expressed in our relationships and I know you talked about that in the book how it had an impact in your marriage in the way you were showing up for your kids a huge impact and again this is something that's really painful to say but I think it's really important to share I lived under this like lie that it didn't matter how much darkness I felt or exhaustion or a self-doubt that it wasn't affecting anything was affecting everything right my husband and I have been together we met in college we're like a really old married couple but it spilled into everything and I'm not blaming myself I you know I say this with a tremendous amount of compassion but when I am unempty I'm snappy I have no patience I expect only perfection I know listeners are nodding right now because I know I'm not alone I work with a lot of leaders right and it's normal like you don't have anything to give you can't give what you don't have and so I didn't have anything to give to my husband and at our marriage separate I didn't have a lot to give to my daughter not for lack of love right this is the thing I say to leaders and entrepreneurs like it doesn't matter how much you care about people in your life or people at work or it actually doesn't matter if you're if you don't have anything to give you actually can't give so it had a huge impact on my close relationships on my close relationships at work and you know in retrospect do I wish I caught some you know do I wish I had a moment of clarity at one point and been like oh wait hold on this is impacting everything I do but you know our brain loves inertia this is one of the things I write so much about in my book of how we have to talk back to our brain I was in this inertia as I said like I thought that was the right way like I just assumed everyone did it that way I didn't think there was a choice like my choice was I either succeed and I achieve a lot of things and I build a successful company like I honor this American dream or I take care of myself and I take care of my well-being and that was in my mind for lazy people like I saw well-being and success as a choice but it isn't well-being is a non-negotiable ingredient and success so I just had it wrong the book define awesome human because who doesn't want to be an awesome human no it's a great point and when we were working on the book we have the content like I knew what I wanted to write but we didn't have the title and then my publisher was watching videos of me speak and for years I get on stage and I say hello awesome humans and she was like what do you mean by that and I was like well I actually mean something really specific I believe we all have an awesome human inside of ourselves we all have this unique capacity to do something meaningful and good like I don't know if you guys have heard of acorn theory a lot of philosophers I really believe in that I believe we're each born with a destiny a gift and our life's work is to figure out what the heck that is and then work really hard to bring it out that's the awesome part but we're also human that means we mess up and we can't do it perfectly and it means we have to take care of our energy reservoir and we actually have to do work with our thoughts to kind of shift them to be more productive so we're awesome and we're human we're awesome humans