All right. Any other questions before everyone goes back to work? I'm just finishing my morning sink meeting with my team. I'm an operations manager in a massive warehouse for a global retailer, and our days are fast and full and long. It's peak season leading up to the holidays, and this is my fifth consecutive shift.
Which will most likely be 14 hours, like the last four. I've been working since 5:30 AM and I start to feel a throbbing in my chest and I realize it's time to pump. So I start to make my way to the mother's room, grabbing my bag and my stuff with my laptop open. Because I needed to continue to respond to all the messages that were carrying my way.
And a team member comes up to me, uh, one of the inventory scanners is broken and we need to submit a ticket. Alright. I let her know I'll do that as soon as I'm back on the floor. I kept on walking. I took a few more steps and a fellow operations manager approaches me with his laptop open and our dashboard with morning results.
He asks me, what are your thoughts on how we'll explain why we missed our productivity targets this morning? I tell 'em, I'll look at the data and talk to a few associates and see if we can understand what's been going on. But first, I need to step off the floor for 15 minutes. And he starts to ask another question that I could tell was just not gonna be quick, was not gonna be a quick response.
I interrupt him and say, really, I, if I don't go now, I am going to burst. And he got a little red in the face 'cause he knew what I was talking about as I looked down at my chest. So as I finally settle into the mother's room, I feel my aching beat. Thanking me for this moment of temporary relief. I set up my pump.
I pull out a picture of my daughter on my phone and I get to business, and then I remember to turn down the really active radio so that it's a faint chatter, and I let out the deepest full belly, full throated sigh. Ah,
Then I hear Natalie. Natalie come in. Natalie, Natalie. Natalie. Come in. Natalie. I could have ignored it, but I'm not wired that way. I'm reliable. I'm responsive. I'm always available, so I say I'm off the floor. I'll be back in 10. A few peaceful moments pass. Then the call started again. Natalie. Natalie, come in.
Natalie. I tried really hard to ignore it. I'm thinking, I think I deserve this time. 10 minutes is not too much, right? I mean, I could turn off the radio, but no, I can't do that. I feel my stomach sink and rage start to swell up at the same time. Finally, I can't take it anymore. I pick up the radio and I say, just give me five more minutes.
And I finally turn down the radio
and I start to sob my hands over my face. I don't even recognize myself anymore.
I don't even recognize myself anymore. I feel so deeply in the grips of sadness and anger and straight up depletion,
and it becomes so clear to me in that moment that this is not. My dream.
Welcome. I am Natalie. I am a recovering perfectionist and workaholic and overachiever. And someone who is deeply experienced in the art of being overwhelmed. In this space, we explore how to move through moments and situations of uncertainty, overwhelm and doubt towards a place of greater alignment and inner peace by taking one intentional step at a time.
Tipa Tipa. This is Tipa Revolution, the podcast and season one is my story.
It's the end of the day and I'm in the manager's office. I just hit send on my end of shift report. One that I probably could have finished in 15 minutes, but I wanted to speak to all the ways that they could challenge our results and might poke holes in my analysis. So I was gonna give them a really good report.
I'm approaching the end of the day of my fifth 14 hour shift, and I'm thinking if I hurry up, I might be able to get home in time to put my daughter to bed. I had missed her every other night that week. And so I quickly shut my laptop. I grab my bag, I leave the office, got my high visibility vest. I put down my radio at its station and I raced to the door.
As I'm going through security, I greet my favorite security officer who has the night shift, and he's come to know me well. 'cause I always seem to stay late enough to be able to cross paths with him. And he says, you're here late again. And I feel my eyes well up with tears. I think it was, uh. It was some embarrassment and shame that, yeah, like he sees me, I am here late again.
And I noticed this nagging dissonance, right? Like, oh, I wanna do my job well, and this truth that I was not feeling good about how I was doing my job at that time because I was starting to realize what it was costing me. And so I ran out the parking lot. I call my sister. Trying to just catch up 'cause I had a few minutes and I could hear her when she said hello and noticed that I was in the car and she knew what that meant.
I was just on my way home. It was eight 30. She knew that my daughter was probably gonna be in bed and I, and I felt her unconditional love and her sadness as I could tell that she was so sad to see. The circumstances of my life in this moment. So she just lovingly spoke to me late night again. Yes, and I noticed a little quiver in my voice, and we caught up a little bit.
I hung up just as I was pulling up to the house and I race in and opened the door. And just as I was entering, my husband was just shutting off the lights going upstairs, and I knew what that meant. My daughter was already asleep. He was turning in after yet another night of being, you know, alone with her bedtime routine.
I said, Hey, and I got a little hello, and he went upstairs and I put down my stuff and felt so alone in the darkness. I slowly made my way into the kitchen and had the meal that I had come to enjoy on my own. A frozen pizza from BJ's. I opened a bottle of wine and I sat at the table and I looked at the pile of mail that I had yet to get to notice the heaviness and sadness on my heart, the quietness of this space, this being all alone.
I peek at my phone and notice that since I've left. All of these emails had already come in, which is typical of working for a 24 7 operation. Even when you're sleeping, things are coming in information that may be pertinent to you the next day, and it's so hard to turn off. But I put down my phone and I sat there and that feeling, that thought that had come up earlier that day.
Came through even louder and in a more resounding way, like this is not. My dream.
In episode one, we talked about a literal earthquake, one that rattled and shook a country and people to its core. And the incredible courage, perseverance, and wisdom that rose from that. Through the story of Paul and his Tipas I had some seeds of that wisdom planted. Fast forward couple years and I am at my not my dream moment.
I've come to see it as a second metaphorical earthquake in my life. While the first one was an external one from our natural environment and led to its own devastation, this one was one that people couldn't quite see. You looked on paper, had you looked at my accomplishments, you would think that I was doing all right.
I had completed my MBA from a top MBA program. I became pregnant with my first daughter, gave birth to her, a true piece of heaven that we were gifted with. I interviewed and was accepted to a leadership development program for a leading online retailer, and I was certain that the sky was the limit. Up to that point, I had an established way of making decisions and choosing what I would pursue.
What I was finding in this experience was that what had been working for me up to that point, well, at some point stopped working, and I was sort of maybe veering off track, but this was the moment where it became exceedingly evident that it was not working. It's almost like I had this outdated operating system that wasn't appropriate for this stage of my life, for the new circumstances of my life and the internal like evolution and growth that was happening.
There had been a certain amount of self-sacrifice that I had allowed. Yeah. Self-sacrifice in the name of achievement. Right. And I had been stuck in, I. What I call the when then loop following the prescribed path to success. That was laid out for me, like get a good degree and then get an advanced degree.
And then I started thinking, when I get this degree or achieve this milestone or get this promotion or raise, then. I'll be happy, fulfilled enough, slow down, take care of myself. Fill in all the thens you want to. But at some point I was never giving myself permission or allowing myself to reap the rewards of the, then I was just always pursuing the next thing.
Granted, that is also a function of the environment that we operate in and the value set that's held by our broader society around productivity and achievement. And you know, it worked for me until it didn't. At some point I started looking outside of myself at the expense of looking inside myself. I can't tell you exactly when that happened.
Probably like unconscious tippa. It's that slowly happened. But at some point I looked up and found myself in a place with a number of sort of characteristics that I didn't like that made this feel like such a significant seismic shift in my life. So despite having achieved all of these things, degrees and jobs, I was feeling less confident and feeling more trapped.
All of this was having an impact on my most precious relationships. At that time, I had been married for over 10 years. I had a daughter, so my priorities were shifting. I was still operating, according to this old sort of model of work can take up 110% of me. There was definitely a very strong conflation of my identity with who I was and the work that I did, which led for me to really prioritize that.
These values that I took on that actually were harmful. This I'm committed to excellence, which meant that I was this unhealthy, perfectionist, striving for, for perfection at the expense of my health and wellbeing. I was outsourcing approval more heavily weighting external voices and markers of success than my own.
I felt a sense of deep sort of betrayal. It was a rupture in my sense of self trust. I was like, Natalie, you. You got yourself here. I chose this. I chose this job. I had interviewed people before I spoke to my future boss. I asked all the questions that I thought I would need to ask as a new mother, and how did I get it so wrong?
How did I miss the mark? So by so much, that really got me into an internal narrative and story about how I couldn't even trust myself. To make decisions that would best serve me, and so that my friends sort of where I was and what got me there. I moved through life with great success and the best of intentions and a practice and approach that served me until one day it didn't.
There's two pieces of wisdom that I wanna share that have helped me over the years. One is this quote by Alice Walker. And she says the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. And that spoke to me so deeply when I was in an experience of.
Believing that I was powerless and trapped by my circumstances. It took me a while to get to this, but what I have come to land on, my interpretation of this is that I see this power as our ability to choose our choice points. And yes, we live in a very challenging, difficult. Oppressive world that is oppressive for many, where we have values that are deeply misaligned with what I wanna see present in our world.
And I am so inspired by the realization that no matter how hard it may be, how can we. Start to open our eyes and awaken to some of the choices that we do have. So we'll talk about that a little bit more. I offer that like every tippa is a choice point. It is a moment to either shift how we're seeing, what we're believing, how we're relating to the circumstance, and it's also an action that we take.
But those internal shifts, that boundary, that saying, not my dream, that moment of resistance for me. And really claiming that that was a choice. So we're gonna continue to talk about Choice Points and TPAs as your point of power. Thank you for that wisdom, Alice Walker. And the other piece of wisdom I wanna share is this thing called the change formula.
This was popularized by a behavioral psychologist or scientist. I'll link to the appropriate name in the notes. The idea is that change happens when. Your dissatisfaction or discomfort with the current state, plus your vision for what you want to be true or stepping into plus the first step. When those three combined are greater than the force of the resistance at play, then that is when change happens.
We'll revisit the formula, but for me right now, I see that in that moment I wasn't ready for change because I had been allowing myself to be okay with the discomfort. But that not my dream moment is the moment when you say, mm-hmm this is not my dream. And you may not know what your dream is exactly, but you know this ain't it.
I didn't know exactly what I was going to do next, but that moment of awakening to the potency of my resistance to staying in this situation was a pivotal moment in the journey. We will continue to explore this change formula over the season. You'll hear me talk a little bit more about how the future vision comes into play.
How First steps are all the TPAs, right? So we're, every episode we're gonna be talking about the Tepa, and in this episode, the awakening to this not being my dream and just saying, I ain't gonna tolerate this no more. That is the tipa, because then I. Couldn't even begin to see the path forward or know what I wanted, but I knew this wasn't it.
And I knew I wanted a change, but was overwhelmed with the how. And so I started on my journey to start to figure it out. Tepa, Tepa.
Before we leave, I'd like to turn it over to you and invite you into some moments of reflection. Around what may have come up for you in this episode. Have you had a not my dream moment? That moment where it's so clear and visceral to you that a situation or circumstances that you're in are just not for you.
Have you started to notice that perhaps there's certain ways of approaching certain aspects of your life that used to work that aren't working anymore? Where might it be time to update the operating system or lovingly challenge some of the assumptions you have around what your options and choices are.
And also as we're starting to think about this resistance piece, what are the stories you're telling yourself about why things can't change for you around what is not an option for you?
And if you were to gently start to poke some holes in that, could you find some or maybe ask a friend or a loved one, someone who really cares about you, if they're may be seeing some options or choices that you're not currently seeing in the moment.
So those are some of the questions that came up for me. We will draft the handout to a company this session. It'll include a summary of some of the wisdom we shared today, as well as these questions for you. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for taking this next step on the journey with me, and I look forward to continuing to share the unfolding of the Tepa Revolution in my life.
And I look forward to hearing any insights that may be surfacing for you as you are reflecting on where you are in your own journey. Thank you. And. See you on the next episode.
