How High Achievers Can Combat Burnout Without Settling for Less, with Dr. Laura Gallaher, CEO, Speaker & Leadership Coach
In this episode of Exploring Growth, host Lee Murray talks with leadership coach Laura Gallaher about the challenges high achievers face: stress, burnout, and the elusive pursuit of balance. Laura shares insights on self-acceptance, self-awareness, and self-accountability. The episode invites listeners to rethink balance and approach personal growth with greater compassion and inner harmony.
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Lee – https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray
Laura – https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-gallaher-phd/
Laura Gallaher
00:00:00
This is the part of the show where I'm glad that nobody can throw anything at me. because this is where I say that stress is a choice. Okay. And you kind of mentioned something about like, stress and fear. Like you kind of pulled on this a few minutes ago in our conversation. Stress is absolutely a choice.
Lee Murray
00:00:24
So if you're listening to this podcast, there's a really good chance that you're a high achiever, which means you're a person who pushes yourself to accomplish big things, right? But the problem is, with high achievement comes burnout. And some people I meet talk about creating balance in your life. Some people say there's no such thing. My guest today, Laura Gallaher, CEO, speaker and leadership coach, is going to get to the root of this problem and help us understand. Is there a way for high achievers to not burn out, but also not settle for less. Well, welcome to the show, Laura.
Laura Gallaher
00:01:03
Thank you for having me, Lee. Here.
Lee Murray
00:01:06
So, you know, let's just do, like, a one minute background on who's Laura.
Laura Gallaher
00:01:11
Sounds great. So I am somebody who is passionate about inspiring introspection. It was a major game changer for me in my life, both personally and professionally. And so the way that I tend to apply that my background is organizational psychology. I just fell in love with psychology from my first, you know, psych 101 textbook in college. I just found it so fascinating and I could apply it to my life right away. And so I had the fortune to start out my career working for NASA, which was incredible. We may talk about that a little bit, but I was working on a culture change with them following the Columbia accident that happened in 2003. And 12 years ago, I started my own company, which is called Gallaher Edge, and I focus a ton on working with leaders to help them grow their self-awareness, their self-acceptance, and their self accountability. To create more conscious organizations, more mature organizations. Which is really what you need to drive organizational performance.
Lee Murray
00:02:12
That's awesome. So these we talked about this a little bit in our pre call these these sort of tenets of awareness acceptance accountability.
Lee Murray
00:02:22
Explain what you mean. Because when you said these are sort of like elements or components to maturity I'm very interested in that.
Laura Gallaher
00:02:30
Yeah I know. And you know when we created the culture model and maturity was in there, I remember thinking, is this going to resonate with people? And then I started hearing leaders talk about it all the time, like how much they wanted a higher level of maturity in their organizations. You know, like, I just I want the leadership team to be more mature in how we're, you know, approaching this. and so I think that it really struck a chord. Okay. So these three components self-acceptance, self-awareness and self accountability, Really cool interactions between them on and from my lens. It actually starts with self-acceptance. Self-acceptance. Am I okay with who I am right now without changing a thing? So not like, well, I'd be okay with myself if you know if this is different or. Well, once I hit that goal, like, maybe then I can accept myself.
Lee Murray
00:03:19
Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:03:20
Am I okay with my strengths and my talents, as well as my imperfections and my weaknesses? That's self-acceptance, that your self-acceptance is always going to actually be like the ceiling for your self-awareness. Because when you are okay with who you are, the good and the bad, the ugly, whatever, all the labels we put on ourselves. When you're okay with who you are, you're letting yourself actually see who you are. So higher self-acceptance allows higher self-awareness with higher self-awareness. Somebody is going to have a better grasp on how they're contributing to everything in their life, right? And you probably have known people in your lifetime. You don't have to name any names, but you probably have known people who are, like, so frustrated with something about their life. And you can see, yeah, you can see how they're like contributing or creating it exactly as it is, but they're just like blaming the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can always see it in other people. But the truth is, like, we all do it.
Laura Gallaher
00:04:28
Like we all do it, all of us. I there's things that I'm like, I don't see my own contributions, but I'm totally contributing to it. That's where self-awareness is so key. Am I willing to see the good, the bad, the ugly? Everything about what is that self-awareness. That is what actually creates higher self accountability. Because if I don't think I'm contributing to something, if I think I have nothing to do with it or this was totally outside my control, I have just disempowered myself completely to change it. Yes. And so that person lacks any self accountability. All they want to do is blame or play the victim. Which for leaders and organizations. You know how exhausting that is to be working with somebody who doesn't have self accountability, doesn't take initiative to solve a problem, wants to deflect blame. So those are the three tenets of self-acceptance self-awareness, self accountability that we work to elevate in every leader in the organization in order to create a higher level of maturity.
Lee Murray
00:05:28
So interesting.
Lee Murray
00:05:29
I mean, I mean, we talked about this before, and I'm hearing it again for the second time, and it's like I heard it for the first time. It's really opening my mind up. So these things are not and they're all connected, but they're almost they build on one another. So the more you are accepting of yourself, the more you are then able to be aware and therefore open to a kind of accountability of yourself, which leads to accountability outside of yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that's a lot to chew on. Just kind of right out of the gate there.
Laura Gallaher
00:06:03
I know. Right? Yeah. Right.
Lee Murray
00:06:06
Yeah, it really is. I mean, but it it does make a ton of sense though. Like from all the, the, observing I've done, both of myself and, those around me. and, you know, just seeing, how people interact. it makes a lot of sense. The, the more kind of, I guess one you are with yourself, you are open to these other layers of awareness and accountability.
Lee Murray
00:06:31
It's funny because I tend to think of myself as pretty self-aware. But, you know, when I took your quiz, it was like, okay, you know, down the road a bit, but I'm not completely there as far as I thought I was, because I still have a little bit of accepting to do, I guess.
Laura Gallaher
00:06:52
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think that it's a journey. I don't know of anybody who has achieved an ultimate level of self-acceptance. I think that if you're if you allow yourself to be honest with yourself, you will continuously find areas that you're still stuck in some self-judgment. Okay. I literally have the word journey tattooed on my wrist on the inside of my wrist as a reminder to myself that there's there's no real destination in this work. I don't think I actually think it's part of our human experience to be here and, and continuously change the relationship that we have with ourselves. Yeah. So yeah. And I'd love to speak a bit about about the quiz that you mentioned.
Laura Gallaher
00:07:33
So it's, it's just self-acceptance quiz.com. If any of your listeners are wanting to check it out. Okay. So, Lee, do you do you have the inner critic like do you have that inner voice that. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:07:46
That's right.
Lee Murray
00:07:48
100%.
Laura Gallaher
00:07:50
Yeah. Most of the high achievers that I work with have a raging inner critic, you know? Kind of dominates their self-talk. I still have mine, for sure. I've changed my relationship with her, but she definitely is still around. Okay, so let me talk for a second about this relationship between self-acceptance and self-awareness, because I know you're like, oh, that was a lot to unpack. Yeah. So okay. So if you think about.
Lee Murray
00:08:13
I just wanted to like. Yeah, just let's recap. Let's go back to the fact that this the whole impetus of me wanting you to come on this show was the question that I sort of posed at the beginning. Yeah. Is there a way for higher achievers to not burn out, but also not settle for less? Right.
Lee Murray
00:08:29
Totally. because that's where the issue comes for. I think people like me where I'm trying to do big things. Of course, I've got this inner critic that we're about to we're about to, you know, quench. But I want to do big things, but I don't I feel like accepting myself is settling. So, you know, it feels like I'm being too soft, you know?
Laura Gallaher
00:08:51
Yeah. Yeah. That is this. Okay? I had the exact same belief structure. I felt like, as a high achiever, which, by the way, I have to just comment. You probably have people listening who are freaking high achievers and are unwilling to identify themselves as such because they just keep. Right. Yeah. So sometimes I'll go. Do you have other people in your life who would say that you're a high achiever? Like, sometimes I frame the question like that because my high achieving clients are like, well, I don't know if I'm a high achiever. And I'm like, okay.
Lee Murray
00:09:23
Well, that's all this is.
Laura Gallaher
00:09:24
Is that critic again?
Lee Murray
00:09:26
You know, it's such a mental backflip because I can easily answer all those questions and, and tag myself out as a, not a high achiever because you'd say, well, yeah, I got people in my life, but they're all not high achievers. So what am I going to compare against them? Like, I could I could easily turn this into.
Laura Gallaher
00:09:41
You could totally. Yeah. Just plain avoidance game. Totally. So yes, there is absolutely a way for high achieving people or driven self-starters. You know, however you might identify to like, you can choose strength without choosing the life that you want to have. It's not, doesn't it? Yeah. I and I will not I will not go into the optimism thing and be like, it's easy. It's just one, two, three. I'm not going to pretend that it's easy, but it's worth it, okay? It is worth.
Lee Murray
00:10:16
It. That's appealing.
Laura Gallaher
00:10:17
Yeah. So.
Laura Gallaher
00:10:19
Okay, so the inner critic. So if you imagine me for a moment that somebody came to to speak with you, somebody like maybe on your team, some you work with could be family member and they let you know about like a mistake they made or, you know, some kind of flaw or some shortcoming. And picture yourself talking to them the way your inner critic talks to you like just sort of see that.
Lee Murray
00:10:45
Scene that worked.
Lee Murray
00:10:47
Out. Well it would.
Laura Gallaher
00:10:47
Be very would be a rough conversation.
Lee Murray
00:10:50
With a.
Laura Gallaher
00:10:52
Person, are they more likely or less likely to come back to you again with a mistake or short.
Lee Murray
00:10:58
Clip, or not coming.
Lee Murray
00:10:59
Back?
Laura Gallaher
00:11:00
Yeah, they're going to they're going to try to avoid it like the plague. They're going to do whatever they can to hide it from you. Oh yeah. Because they don't want to feel that. So your own mind works the same way. So when you are being really hard on yourself and really critical, that inner critic, what's happening is your psychological immune system pops up.
Laura Gallaher
00:11:21
And to actually work to protect you, it hides thoughts and feelings that you're having about yourself from yourself. And so this is the essence of self-deception.
Lee Murray
00:11:34
Yes.
Laura Gallaher
00:11:35
This is the relationship between self-acceptance and self-awareness. Right. So if you're going to, like, kind of berate yourself, belittle yourself, talk down to yourself, be really hard on yourself. If you know you missed a goal or whatever, then you're going to know a little bit. You'll know just as much as you can sort of tolerate from your inner critic berating you. But you're going to hide a whole bunch of it. Now, if you flip it and you have higher self acceptance, which means that either it's not the inner critic that's responding to, hey, I made a mistake, or you've got the inner critic, like working with your inner champion, right? The one that actually has compassion and is there to support you. And that conversation goes totally differently. Then they're actually going to tell you even more. They're going to be like, oh, and also, by the way, here's this information too, that you might want to know.
Laura Gallaher
00:12:25
Yeah. And so the more we have high self-acceptance, the more you actually know your own full experience, which is self-awareness.
Lee Murray
00:12:36
Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:12:37
That's crazy. It's like what I'm taking from this is like the, you know, going back to your first question, like, how would I respond to someone who brings something to me? And I think, generally pretty. Kind. I might be, you know, I might have questions and say, you know, let's get to a solution kind of thing and let's all move, move ahead, let's move. This conversation needs to have us all be building and moving ahead. but but generally a lot of kindness. And so I take that and apply to myself. And it's just even weird to think what that conversation would look like. But if I were kind to myself, yes, you know, immediately there's a lot of things that come that that just pop up of like, essentially I'm, I'm settling like I how else to say it like it's almost like this defense mechanism that's saying, well, yeah, you could be kind to other people, but you need a harsher you need a harsher critic.
Lee Murray
00:13:39
You need someone to hold you accountable to what's really the goal, what's really, you know, the ideal that you're not meeting.
Lee Murray
00:13:47
Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:13:48
And so I love this so much. So when somebody comes to you with that and you do respond with kindness and that, ask for accountability and okay, let's grow and learn from this. Does that work well?
Lee Murray
00:14:05
yes.
Laura Gallaher
00:14:07
I would imagine so.
Lee Murray
00:14:08
Yeah. Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:14:10
Right. And so you're so willing to do that for other people. You don't feel like you have to be harsh with them. Right. Beat them. Not like the inner critic beats you up in order for you to still say, let's grow from this, let's learn from this and let's do better next time. So this is so common. Yeah. People are willing to do this for other people and not for themselves. And this highlights exactly what the self-acceptance quiz is all about, because so many people, and I was absolutely one of them, believed. I believed that if I accept myself, then I'm going to stop growing.
Laura Gallaher
00:14:48
I'll just settle. I'll become complacent. That's what I thought it meant. But okay. But self-acceptance and self-improvement are not opposites. They're not opposite ends of the continuum. The opposite of self-acceptance isn't self-improvement. The opposite of self-acceptance is self-judgment.
Lee Murray
00:15:09
Okay.
Laura Gallaher
00:15:10
Self-improvement is a totally different dimension. So this is called paradox theory. There's actually several elements of paradox theory bringing into our work a lot, where it's like two things that appear to almost be in conflict. But upon closer inspection, you see that they coexist. And so the self-acceptance quiz, which again, that's because this is the coexistence of self-acceptance and self-improvement. In other words, you and your listeners, again, I have high confidence that all the people listening to your show, we are high on self-improvement. That's why they're listening. Yes. Right. And it's part of why you do it. Like they want to grow. They want to learn. They want to like they're all going to be high above what we're doing.
Lee Murray
00:15:53
Yeah. Well, it's called exploring growth.
Lee Murray
00:15:55
Like we're trying to improve.
Laura Gallaher
00:15:56
We're trying. Yeah. Exactly.
Lee Murray
00:15:57
We don't want to go backwards. Why don't we just stay the same? We want to grow. Improve.
Laura Gallaher
00:16:01
Yeah. And keep moving that bar up and keep setting up the next big goal and keep having dreams. So I know that all of your listeners are going to be high on self-improvement. The question is, are they focusing on self-improvement through a self judging lens or a self accepting lens? And so that's what the quiz is designed to do. And it's like it's extremely simple right. It's just three quiz. It's like 3 to 5 minutes. Yeah. Very very short. So you know psychometric. Yes. There's a lot more to it. Like I'm enough of a psychology geek that I can. Yeah, I can acknowledge like it's not a deep psychological instrument. It's a moment in time to help you see where you are. Right.
Lee Murray
00:16:41
That's the little snapshot.
Laura Gallaher
00:16:44
Yes, it's a snapshot. It's a moment in time. And you know, you got your report.
Laura Gallaher
00:16:47
You get the results right away. And then you'll get some coaching emails to follow up to say, hey, here's maybe how you've come to be where you are. And if you're wanting to move more into that high self-acceptance and high self-improvement quadrant, here are some things that you can start to do to cultivate that.
Lee Murray
00:17:05
Yes, and yeah, I don't want to give away all of the answers here like the matrix here, but.
Laura Gallaher
00:17:11
I know you're welcome to talk.
Lee Murray
00:17:12
About it. The quadrant that I ended up pushing but pressured. So it shows high self improvement but lower self self-acceptance. And the goal here now is to obviously continue with self improvement. But but improve that acceptance side so I can move into more of a natural flow state like a where it says flowing and growing like flowing and growing myself is what I'm asking, right? Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:17:41
Yeah that and that's the goal, right? That is the goal that I have for myself. It's the goal that I have for all the clients that I work with who I would say they're all high achievers, whether they self-identify that way or not.
Lee Murray
00:17:51
Yeah, right.
Laura Gallaher
00:17:52
Yeah. And so a research on self-acceptance and its relationship to self-improvement is actually pretty clear. The fear that high achievers have, that self-acceptance, high self-acceptance, means that they won't grow, or that's going to slow them down. That is not supported by the research at all. In fact, research shows that when people have a higher level of self-acceptance, they actually improve faster, and they're more oriented towards that self-improvement than people who have lower self-acceptance. And I have this really simple story. It's actually in our book to, like, really simple to to kind of drive the point. How can I share it?
Lee Murray
00:18:32
Yeah. Yeah. Please do.
Laura Gallaher
00:18:34
All right, so picture two kids at the batting cages, and there's this one child, and we're going to call him Joey. And let's just say he's lower on the self-acceptance Spectrum. The pitch comes, he swings, and he misses. His emotional reaction to missing is rough. Like, you can kind of start to picture this child, like, almost tantrum ING, right? Like his face starts to get red.
Laura Gallaher
00:18:56
You can see his, like, white knuckling in the back. He's like, you know, he's frustrated. His coach is there trying to give him feedback so he can improve. Yeah. Trying to help him. He's trying to get his attention. Hey. Hey, bud. Hey. Just. And the kid is just like. Like he's beating up on himself so hard. In fact, so much so that by the time the next pitch comes, like he has not even pulled himself together yet. Yeah, right. And the next pitch always comes, like is always going to keep throwing any pitches. So that's kid one in contrast. Think of child two and I'll call him Jamal. And let's say he has higher self acceptance. Okay. Pitch comes swings. He misses okay. But he doesn't have the same big emotional reaction. In fact, he just looks looked straight at the coach for, you know, help, guidance, improvement. And the coach says, hey buddy, no worries.
Laura Gallaher
00:19:48
You don't just choke up on the bat a little bit and watch the ball. Don't be afraid to actually turn your head and watch it make contact with the back. Jamal goes okay, chokes up, and then nailed it. Nails the next one. Yeah. It's like we can kind of like, picture these two kids and how the higher self acceptance child is actually able to jump straight to self-improvement that much faster. There's this entire emotional hurdle that they don't have to deal with when they're not beating themselves up.
Lee Murray
00:20:16
This is hitting so close to home. Yeah, a lot of people listening, it's such a challenge to not put myself in the mix, right? Like to not just pick myself up and put myself in front of myself and create a roadblock to that next. You know, it could be that next natural step. That's such a simple thing to do. It's not some big thing that has to happen, or it can be some big thing and I and I feel like that's the that's what I continue to do.
Lee Murray
00:20:46
I continue to to put myself in as the bottleneck and out of myself. and it's making a lot of sense about why. Okay.
Laura Gallaher
00:20:56
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we're just I think we're conditioned to be really hard on ourselves. I think societally. And then of course we all have our own experiences with, you know, whoever raised us, we are all raised by imperfect humans. That's right. And we all personalized stuff that was not ours to own. We were kids. It just sits with us. And the basic distortion that we all have is this belief that we're not enough. All of us have that distortion to varying degrees. Higher self acceptance helps. You see, I am enough just as I am. And if I want to improve and grow, I absolutely can.
Lee Murray
00:21:39
Yeah. Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:21:41
So, like, you talk about setting that goal, right? Or like moving that bar. So you're going to have a gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Laura Gallaher
00:21:49
Right I do. I assume you do as well right now. Different areas of your life.
Lee Murray
00:21:53
I do, and that gap has never gone away.
Laura Gallaher
00:21:56
It's never going away. That's exactly like this was one of my huge moments for myself. We do. We have time for a story.
Lee Murray
00:22:03
We got plenty of time.
Laura Gallaher
00:22:04
Okay. So I this story was, I was like, in my early 30s and, like, leading up to this point in my life, you know, everything felt like it was preparing me for the next thing, you know. College was all about getting into graduate school. Graduate school is about getting a job. And, you know, I remember I didn't even want my boyfriend at the time to propose to me while I was finishing school because I was like, I can't, I just can't take on one more thing. Like, I had a full time job at NASA. I was working on my PhD, so I was teaching classes, taking classes, doing my dissertation.
Laura Gallaher
00:22:36
It was just constant. I don't even know how many hours a week I was working. And then I finished school and then it was all about. Then we got engaged, and it's all about finding the wedding. And then it was all about buying a house, which we actually had a house built. It's like decision after decision after decision.
Lee Murray
00:22:51
The whole.
Laura Gallaher
00:22:51
Thing. It's a whole thing. And so that kind of takes us to where we are. Oh no. One more thing. I decided like, okay, the house is is done. We're living in it. I'm going to start a business. So I started this business when I was still working full time at NASA. And so I was just continuously on this, like, hamster wheel. the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, it was like a Wednesday evening. I'd already done a whole day at NASA, and now I'm sitting in my home office working on the business, and my husband comes to the door and he said, hey, Patrick and Kelly invite us to go to the movies.
Laura Gallaher
00:23:25
Do you want to go? I was like, oh, I can't right now, babe. I've got to work. He's like, come on, Laura, you never have time. And I said, I know, but it's only going to be like this until.
Lee Murray
00:23:37
Until then.
Laura Gallaher
00:23:39
Until when? Yeah. Like I just realized there was no end to that sentence that wasn't told. Yes. Yeah. Because I'd been giving him that same story for years. Right. Like that. It's not always going to be like this. And, you know. Poor guy. He believed me. And so it's just this moment of, like, if you think you're not enough now, you never will be, right? Because there's always going to be that next thing that you're going for.
Lee Murray
00:24:11
Yeah. For sure. And and I think that resonates again across the board because it's always like that. I mean, we for what, whatever reason, we're wired to, to achieve great things in our minds. It's funny.
Lee Murray
00:24:24
Those things are just in our minds. And, you know, some people would love to achieve those same things that don't have the ability to. And so then, in effect, it makes it reality. Some people achieve way much, so much more. And so in effect, it makes it not as good in reality. But reality is relevant to the person and in their their context of their life. yeah. And so I think a lot of there's a, there's a quote about, you know, stress or fear being mostly in the mind. I don't know who said, oh, yeah, but, that is so true for, for for me. I know, personally because it's the stuff that I can make up in my mind that doesn't really exist in reality. and then I take all of that non reality and beat myself up with it, you know, create that gap, make the gap bigger. yeah. You know, talking about the gap like I'm looking at, some like, further down on this, quiz results, talking about how, I nearly tend to always move on to the next thing and want something is accomplished, like a milestone or what's so funny is like, I just right there I'm I almost said goal, but then I said milestone because I know that's not the goal.
Lee Murray
00:25:40
The goal is the goal, right? So yeah, I achieved a milestone. But everybody achieves milestones.
Laura Gallaher
00:25:47
Yeah. So quick to like yeah diminish it.
Lee Murray
00:25:49
It's like but not everybody achieves goals. And that's what I'm going to do one day right. So like even in the language it's like I take this, these things and turn them into different things in my mind.
Laura Gallaher
00:26:01
Uhhuh.
Lee Murray
00:26:02
You know, but to this point of not celebrating, it's true. Like, yeah, I would feel bad. I feel bad celebrating. I feel like I'm needed somewhere, right? Like, why am I here celebrating? I should be, like, doing something productive. You know what I mean?
Laura Gallaher
00:26:16
I know, oh, my God, I had the exact same thing. I just posted a super short story on LinkedIn about this earlier this week, about my friend Lisa that I worked with and when I was at NASA, and she was always encouraging me to celebrate things. And I was I mean, I was kind of a bee about it because I was just like, what is there to celebrate? Like? I was so snotty about my own stuff.
Laura Gallaher
00:26:39
She wanted me to feel good about my own accomplishments and I had such a similar perspective. You know that I hear from you of like, but do you see all these goals ahead of me? Like, do you see how much work there is to do? Did you see all the mistakes and flaws and how that thing even happened? Like, I was so hard on myself and it was brutal celebrating. There's a lot of research, actually, about the positive effects of celebrating. It changes your brain chemistry and it actually makes you more receptive to learning. It increases your resilience. Like there's so much about celebrating that's huge. And anybody listening who is a leader or even holds influence within their workspace or within their family, like you, have a huge impact on the people around you. And if you're unwilling to celebrate, then you're actually creating an environment of fear for people. Yeah, which fear is a motivator? I'm not going to pretend it's not, but it is never going to get the same level out of people as like this sounds cheesy, but like what? Moving toward what you want.
Laura Gallaher
00:27:39
Not moving away from the fear of not being enough, but moving toward the goal. Moving toward the impact you want to have. Always more powerful.
Lee Murray
00:27:48
And I don't want to perpetuate the same thing that I'm dealing with, you know, with my children or with my team. Depending on the culture we're talking about here. Yeah. So, you know, that's that's valuable in and of itself. but I have to tell you, celebrating is hard. It's it's like I have to force myself to do it. It's like one of those things where almost like when you do public speaking and you kind of become a version of yourself, like a character in front of everyone on the stage, so that because, you know, you have to present yourself in a certain way, it's not how you would talk to your friend or what, or, you know, whatever. But it's almost like that when I'm celebrating, it's like, yeah, we're celebrating. Like, this is what we're doing. Oh, we're gonna go with dinner, we're gonna have some drinks, and we're going to do this thing.
Lee Murray
00:28:30
And this is how you celebrate?
Laura Gallaher
00:28:32
No, no. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:28:33
Yeah, I don't do that well.
Laura Gallaher
00:28:36
So there is vulnerability and celebrating.
Lee Murray
00:28:40
That's it. That's why I don't want to do it.
Laura Gallaher
00:28:43
Yeah. Yeah. I remember the moment that I, I, I felt that so deeply, and I talked about the importance of vulnerability a lot in my work. Self-acceptance makes vulnerability easier. It actually kind of removes the feeling of vulnerability, because the vulnerability, for the most part, is like, oh, gosh, you know, somebody might judge me. You only worry about others judging you where you judge you. If I'm not judging myself, I'm accepting myself, then I'm not so afraid of other people judging me.
Lee Murray
00:29:10
What it sounds like is you're saying in order to accept yourself, you have to be vulnerable with yourself.
Laura Gallaher
00:29:17
Yes.
Lee Murray
00:29:18
And that is scary. Because I'm giving up control essentially this, this, this mechanism of control that I've created in my mind. It's not real. but it's.
Lee Murray
00:29:33
It's happening. I'm giving up that control. And what that might lead to that I can't control is the fear. Yeah, yeah, I know what that is. It's probably just a fear of the unknown.
Laura Gallaher
00:29:43
Fear of the unknown. Yeah. So my question for you then would be whatever that unknown might bring you, whatever that fear is, worst case scenario plays out. If that happened could you cope with it.
Lee Murray
00:30:01
I don't I would have to think about what the worst case scenario would be. You know.
Laura Gallaher
00:30:06
Is there any situation that you think you couldn't cope with.
Lee Murray
00:30:12
No I don't think so because there's not like I was going to say that like there's not something that I'm fearing to be found out about, you know, like or some kind of surprise or something I'm hiding or none of that. Yeah. Like, for the most part in my life, you know, I like to keep my life private for my family, but, like. But with my friends and even family, like my kids.
Lee Murray
00:30:32
Everything's pretty transparent, so I don't it's not like that. So I don't know what it is that I would, you know, it's more of like the just the judgment of. Yeah, it's almost like breaking up with that person that that judgment. Like, that's the fear is like, what does life look like? Not judging myself. The fear of what the life would be. It's like out of control. That's what it feels like.
Laura Gallaher
00:30:56
That's the fear, is that it would be out of control. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. So I mean, it's so good, right? Like, this is because I think that.
Lee Murray
00:31:07
She's like.
Laura Gallaher
00:31:08
She let.
Lee Murray
00:31:08
Me just dive into that.
Laura Gallaher
00:31:10
Like I get excited about all of it because it's all stuff that I have worked to reckon with and I still work to reckon with. Yeah, I have a high preference for control personally, so I feel you. I feel you on this big time. One of the things that helped me the most was the recognition that I can always go back to doing things how I used to do them.
Laura Gallaher
00:31:33
Yeah. So if I choose to release something or experiment, just. I'm going to step into this space over here and see what it's all about. I can decide not for me. And I can step back.
Lee Murray
00:31:44
Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:31:45
And because everything's impermanent, right? Everything's temporary. Yeah. And so that was like a very I was like.
Lee Murray
00:31:51
Giving yourself permission. Yes, to do it, which is huge. And you're giving yourself permission to come back if you don't like it.
Laura Gallaher
00:32:01
And the idea of can I cope with it? This is one of my favorite questions to reduce my fear. Have you heard, Lee, that when you make decisions rooted in fear, you manifested everything you're afraid of?
Lee Murray
00:32:13
Yeah. So I've heard some version of that, and I've lived it, too.
Laura Gallaher
00:32:17
Yeah. Same, same. And so, making decisions from a place of fear. I don't have to recommend it. People don't always recognize when they're doing that. They think that they're being really prudent, but they're actually being driven by fear.
Laura Gallaher
00:32:29
There's anxiety. whatever euphemism you might want to use instead of calling it fear. And so the way to the primary way that I have found to decrease fear very quickly is ask myself that question if the worst will happen, whatever, whatever I fear that is that I'm making up in my head. Could I cope with it not? Would I be happy and jumping up and down and celebrating if it happened? But could I cope with it? And I, I always say yes to that. And I, I have coped with every single thing in my life that I've ever been through. So have you. And I know that because here you are. Right. So there's I don't think there's anything that life can throw at us that we can't cope with, which just drops the fear. It returns the power. You know, fear can be so disempowering, but we call it culpability. Can I cope not believe that I can cope with something? Okay, well, then I don't have to fear it.
Laura Gallaher
00:33:28
I can take this step forward.
Lee Murray
00:33:29
This is interesting because it's like the difference between staying in control of your life. Control kind of in air quotes this this idea of control that I have versus actually accepting myself and seeing myself for who I am so that I can improve actually, and actually have more control. more. Right. And what comes to mind is, I don't know if you've ever, seen this, but many years ago, Tim Ferriss has this, YouTube, video. And there's probably other places too. It's called, fear setting. Instead of goal setting, you should look it up if you haven't seen it, because you would love it. okay. I watch it probably like once a year, every couple of years. Like, it'll come across my path because of conversation like this. And it's probably a eight minute video on YouTube and it's sort of Hopefully I can wrap all this back together. It's like he's basically taking the fear out of doing something that you would normally have fear. So you set a goal.
Lee Murray
00:34:37
And then there's this unknown. A lot of things come into play and you all end up in your goal. and so instead of instead of going down that path, sometimes you won't go down the path because there's a big fear. So what he says is let's switch that around and and set fears. So you look at your fears first and you map it out practically like kind of logistically, not logistically, but like pragmatically. And you come to the answer of what you were just sort of saying psychologically, you come to this answer of, okay, if I travel this place, what are my fears? All my fears is that I'm not going to sleep well. I'm going to, you know, meet a stranger that's going to, you know, have malicious things could happen to me. And you go through these fears in your head. Well, if you start to name the fears, then you start to sort of map them out. You can say, okay, well, how can I prepare for this.
Lee Murray
00:35:28
And how can I, you know, get myself in a situation then. Then once you get to the point of saying, okay, what if it actually does happen? And I'm very much paraphrasing his thing, then what am I going to do? And so what's interesting about that? I really love it because it allows someone like me who likes to be in control in this sort of non reality control, to take a mechanism that is in reality and apply it to my non reality of control and it makes me put my hands around the fear. So now all I've done is I've, I've incorporated in a reality form of control into my non reality. Yeah. All these years I've been watching that and thinking like this is the this is so great. This is so good. I'm now thinking that there's a whole new unlock here because all that's doing is it's it's doing a good thing because it's, it's sort of allowing me in my mind to work it out. And I'm able to now achieve more. Right.
Lee Murray
00:36:25
Like, do more and be unlocked to do more. That's great, but I'm not really going to the lengths that I probably could go personally because I haven't gone to this other this deeper layer of acceptance which unlocks so many other. It's almost like a prism that it unlocks versus just the layer of planning.
Laura Gallaher
00:36:47
Yeah. Absolutely true.
Lee Murray
00:36:48
This is like blowing my mind.
Laura Gallaher
00:36:51
That's awesome. And that's cool I'm going to check that out. Will you describe what you're studying. Video sounds a lot like a more detailed way to go through that process of asking yourself could I cope. Like what would I. Well then what would I do. Well then what would I do. And you know if ever somebody says like no I don't think I could cope like a, you probably can because you can't really cope with everything but okay, okay. What could you do to increase your confidence that you could cope. Like that's our follow up question. If anybody says no and it feels very similar to what you're describing with that fear setting.
Laura Gallaher
00:37:21
So I think that that is useful. And yeah, self-acceptance is like that one level down. That is just so much deeper. And I want to make sure that I tie this back into the question about like burnout, because I know we started there.
Lee Murray
00:37:34
Yeah, let's do it.
Laura Gallaher
00:37:34
And I haven't made the connection as as solidly as I can. Okay. This is the part of the show where I'm glad that nobody can throw anything at me. because this is where I say that stress is a choice. Okay. And you kind of mentioned something about, like, stress and fear. Like you kind of pulled on this a few minutes ago in our conversation. Stress is absolutely a choice. You can look at this statement on so many levels. The one level people might think about is, okay, sure I am. I am choosing to set high goals for myself. I am choosing to try to have it all. I am choosing to wear multiple roles. I'm choosing right, like the surface choices of like literally.
Laura Gallaher
00:38:18
What are you choosing in your life that are these, you know, creating these quote stressors, But the reality is there is no such thing as an inherent stressor. There's nothing. There's no event that you could describe where every human being on the planet would say, yes, that would stress me out. But what about literally impossible?
Lee Murray
00:38:45
Well, you're talking about inherent. Not like an external threat.
Laura Gallaher
00:38:50
Well, so every stressor, like we like to label stressors as these external things. Yeah, right. Like, on my job is a stressor or a stressor. Workload is a stressor. You know, bad weather is a stress. Like, we look at the stressors instead of really focusing on the true source of stress. So does the inherent inherent stress. Or does that make sense?
Lee Murray
00:39:10
Yeah. We say the true source of stress meaning us in our minds.
Laura Gallaher
00:39:15
Yeah. Because and this this statement goes beyond just stress. You are never responding to the world around you. Ever. Never. You are only ever responding to the meaning you are putting on.
Laura Gallaher
00:39:30
What's happening?
Lee Murray
00:39:33
I believe that.
Laura Gallaher
00:39:34
And this is always true. One of my favorite when I'm doing my talks and I'm a bigger audience. I love to ask the question of when you see a red traffic light. What meaning do you put on that? What meaning would you put on it?
Lee Murray
00:39:50
Yeah. To stop.
Laura Gallaher
00:39:52
To stop. And when you see a yellow light, what meaning do you put on it.
Lee Murray
00:39:56
To slow down or speed up, depending on where?
Laura Gallaher
00:39:58
Yes. And I always get like half and half and it's hilarious. And it makes my point so well. So yes, we put meaning on what a red stoplight means. And yellow. It's so funny. Like, well, like, slow down. Screwed up. and so just just to drive that point home, you're always responding. You're not responding the world around you. You're only responding to the meaning you're putting on what's happening. So these stressors that are external to you. That's not the stress. The stress is the meaning that you're putting on what's happening.
Laura Gallaher
00:40:27
And it goes even one level deeper than that. So people often feel stressed because they have too much to do. Right. All right. My workload is too big. I'm stressed out. So what is the meaning that you're putting on it if you have too much to do? There's a lot on your plate. Like this is the introspection part. Is it what? You're going to let somebody down? You're going to miss a deadline. You're going to complete work that's subpar. Like. Like what? You're putting meaning on it. And so figure that part out. And then one layer deeper than that is what meaning do you put on what that says about you. Yeah. Who are you.
Lee Murray
00:41:06
Before you got to. Where are you. Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:41:08
Okay. Tell me what comes up for you.
Lee Murray
00:41:10
No, I mean I was already there, like like this is exactly how I think is like, you know, for example, I run a content agency, so we do client work, and a lot of our stuff has to be on time, has to be good, has to be impactful, has to drive revenue or outcomes.
Lee Murray
00:41:25
Like there's a lot of pressure put on the impact of our work. It's not just showing up to the meetings and saying stuff. So so that sort of is out in front of us, but it's also sort of following us around at the same time. It's like we're there's the pressure from day to day. So the question of are you letting someone down? Yeah. That's real right. That's real. Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:41:48
So then maybe the meaning that you're making.
Lee Murray
00:41:50
Then what does that what was the question? What does that say about me or what do I think. Yeah yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:41:55
Yeah. Because that's because that's one more layer meaning that you're putting on it. And I always loved that. Yeah. This question with like a little bit of sass too. It's like, well, who are you? If you let somebody down, what kind of person does that.
Lee Murray
00:42:08
Yes, that is.
Laura Gallaher
00:42:10
Right.
Lee Murray
00:42:10
Oh there's no mute tone. It's it's that it starts as that.
Laura Gallaher
00:42:16
Yeah. And so like this is a question, you know, for you and for your listeners to actually ask yourself, what is the story you're telling yourself about who you are fundamentally like your self-concept or your identity? What are you thinking is true about you? If you would dare let somebody down like it, it's when it hits you on a self-concept level that is the source of stress.
Lee Murray
00:42:41
Yeah, because underneath all of that is what's driving the stress. It's what's driving the it's what also is driving the high self improvement. Because it's almost like if I can improve myself more today, I'll outpace the stress or whatever is true. Oh yeah, there's this pressure, but it's almost like I just need to settle into it and recognize more of what I'm putting of myself on it. And then I don't. Then I it's almost like I disconnect or detach from that actual stress. And I can continue to improve and maybe even improve Exponentially versus having this drag? I don't know. That's just the way I think of it. It's.
Laura Gallaher
00:43:24
Yeah, I think you're nailing it. I think that's exactly it.
Lee Murray
00:43:27
This is spot on because, you know, and I think a lot of people are the same that are listening. It's like we are we have companies with people who are paying. We have insurances, we have liabilities. We have debts. We have, you know, revenue, we have families at home.
Lee Murray
00:43:41
We have kids about to go to college. And you just make the list, right? Try not to list all at once. Right. And all of these pressures we've chosen to put on our shoulders. But I think it comes down to that whatever question that you're asking, it's about that next question of what are you saying about yourself relating to this question that gets to how you're orienting all of this in your mind?
Laura Gallaher
00:44:10
It's always about the meaning making. And this is why I say you can choose stress without choosing this life. Because yes, it's viable if you want to go down a path of like choosing to do less, that's fine. And for a lot of high achievers that I work with, they would actually probably feel stressed out at the idea of doing less because it challenges their own self-concept. It challenges how they want to see themselves. But it's the self acceptance of who you are as an imperfect being that removes the true source of stress. But it doesn't take away the improvement.
Lee Murray
00:44:44
Yeah, I'm going to have to, spend some, some time just marinating on this and trying to getting like, get this in my head.
Lee Murray
00:44:53
but before we go, I want, I want to get your take on balance because, you know, when we you we're zoomed in here on this conversation. And when you start zooming out, you get back to the labels of the world. The world, you know, putting this this way or it's that way. And that's kind of how I started this. It's like some people say there's no such thing as balance. Some people say you need to try to try to achieve balance, which honestly, for a lot of people it's like I'm trying to achieve balance here. That's just another weight on my shoulders of trying to, you know, achieve. How do you think how how would you advise that people like the people were talking to here. Think about all of this when they think about balance or no balance.
Laura Gallaher
00:45:37
I have kind of a goofy aversion to the word balance. Like my team knows this about me so much. So much. Like if somebody says the word balance, they all kind of look at me to be like, what are you going to say? And it doesn't mean that I think the balance is at all.
Laura Gallaher
00:45:49
I actually think that like on a universal level, balance is everything. Sure. But the reason I have an aversion to it is because I almost always hear it in a way that yada yada is over what's important. I might talk about how self-acceptance and self-improvement coexist, and people go, oh yeah, it's just a balance. You know what that means? I don't know what you think that means. And balance to me. I picture this like seesaw going back and forth, and I picture somebody trying to stand in the middle to get it to balance. You're going to get tired real fast.
Lee Murray
00:46:22
A lot of.
Laura Gallaher
00:46:22
Work. It's so much work. And so this is why paradox theory is so powerful to me, and why I push so hard on the truth that self-acceptance and self-improvement coexist. Instead of thinking about it as a balance. And that's just one example. The same is true. There's lots of other areas where paradox theory is really useful and important. And if you talk about work life balance.
Laura Gallaher
00:46:45
It's different for every person. I don't even know what balance. I don't know what that means. But I want people to figure out like what is what is harmonious for you. I think inner harmony matters more than balance. And I completely agree with what you said about I have to be balanced often feeling like one more weight that high achievers are putting on their shoulders, which is not what they need.
Lee Murray
00:47:08
I think it's so complicated. I think I say it a different way. I think it's very complex, the lives that we live. And for us to think that we could have true balance. Like that's a almost like perfection, like that's a possibility is we've already started off on the wrong foot. And if you start to look at the complexities, you know, you have seasons of your life, right? School entry level professionals, starting a business, having a family like getting older, older, age, taking care of your parents. Like there's all these seasons of our life that we go through.
Lee Murray
00:47:44
They're not all the same. Then we're all make up. All of our personalities are are a mix right. So not everybody's the same. I don't think there's one size fits all for this. I think that it is. I think honestly, if we get back to this question of self-acceptance, it starts to make a lot more sense. Because if we can be vulnerable with ourselves, we're then out. And that's the way I'm taking it. Like we can be vulnerable with others, which shows that we have compassion for others. It shows that we have, you know, empathy and grace on others. which is going to come back in those relationships being deeper and, you know, better. but it naturally leads to these other things like, awareness because awareness matches right up. and, and the improvement is going to be there almost as a byproduct. So improvement doesn't need to be some this manufactured thing that we're doing through books and tapes and podcasts and whatever. Please. Yeah, it's the next episode.
Lee Murray
00:48:45
But, you know.
Laura Gallaher
00:48:46
Keep listening to this show. Yeah. For sure.
Lee Murray
00:48:50
But yeah, this is amazing. This is so good.
Laura Gallaher
00:48:53
Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:48:54
I'd love to share my favorite quote. Please. That really ties this home. This comes from Doctor Robert, Doctor Robert Holden, and he said there is no amount of self-improvement that ever makes up for a lack of self-acceptance.
Lee Murray
00:49:11
I'm gonna have to marinate on that one.
Laura Gallaher
00:49:13
Yeah.
Laura Gallaher
00:49:14
This this myth that I just need to improve in these ways, and then I'll think I'm good enough to accept myself. Yeah. It will never come. It will never come. So self-acceptance in its own direction, it's not something you work on by just getting better at this thing and building more skills here. It's all about the relationship that you have with yourself. And and just to drive this point home one more time because high achievers, this is the biggest misconception. You will actually grow more from a place of self-acceptance than you ever will be a place of self-judgment.
Lee Murray
00:49:47
Awesome.
Lee Murray
00:49:47
This is amazing. Such a great episode. Such a great conversation. Thank you, thank you.
Laura Gallaher
00:49:52
Thank you. I appreciate all your openness.
Lee Murray
00:49:55
Yeah, I think that people listening are to get so much value from it, for years to come. So this is this is awesome. people want to find you. Where should we send them?
Laura Gallaher
00:50:05
So definitely self-acceptance dot com. If people want to check it out and then we're going to be connected via email, please feel free to reply to that on Real Human. I'm going to get your message and I'll respond to you or on LinkedIn. I love to post on LinkedIn. Just tell me that you heard me here on the show exploring growth, and I'll be happy to connect with you and answer any questions that come up.
Lee Murray
00:50:25
And I will attest to the quiz was very eye opening. it's different than like a personality test and these behavioral type tests, it gets a little bit deeper than that. It is a snapshot. So it's such a great conversation starter to get you thinking about, where you stand.
Lee Murray
00:50:42
So, I definitely recommend it. You end up getting back like four packed pages in a PDF of kind of the, you know, result of what you enter in. And, so it's not overwhelming. It's like it took like maybe five, ten minutes for me to do the quiz. So yeah. So I definitely recommend it.
Laura Gallaher
00:51:03
Awesome. Thank you.
Lee Murray
00:51:05
Yeah. Thanks again. And we're definitely going to have you back at some point to to dive into this stuff again because this is okay. We're just scratching the surface here.
Laura Gallaher
00:51:12
Absolutely I would love that.