🏠 Losing your village
In the U.S., we highly value individualism, counter to the cultures of our parents and grandparents.
Whether your parents were immigrants like mine or from a small town like my husband, they were raised in communities that upheld certain traditions and customs. They based their decisions on the benefit of the collective so that the village could survive.
😞 Even if it meant sacrificing an individual’s happiness.
As we gain our sense of self and identity outside of our roles, relationships, and responsibilities, we risk losing our village.
On top of that, trading village bonds for individual freedom creates the perfect opening for companies to profit from our pain.
🐮 Pain is a cash cow
Become a better you with this one app/retreat/vitamin.
Messages like these imply that if you’re not the “best you” then you're broken, but don't worry because we have the solution. 💸
You are not broken. You are a human being, not an object.
While it’s easy to blame influencers and marketing for showing a misguided version of healing, remember that the companies pay them. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Companies sell tools to profit off of your pain. The tools themselves aren't transformative because they need you to keep coming back.
Healing takes time. But if you’ve been using these tools for years (including therapy) and you’re not seeing any improvement or end in sight, then you are not healing, you are only recovering.
🤔 Healing versus recovering
What’s the difference between healing and recovering?
Both words are used interchangeably. Until I did research for this newsletter issue, I didn’t know the difference.
🤓 So I did what any nerd would do - I looked up the words in the dictionary.
- heal - "The Proto-Germanic word khailaz, which means 'to make whole' is the root of both heal and the closely related word health." (source)
- recover - The word recover comes from the Latin word recuperare, which means to regain.' (source)
🔄 Recovering is a reset.
You’re burned out from working 60 hours a week, so you take a sabbatical or quit your job.
👐 Healing is holistic.
Corporate life isn’t for you anymore, so you identify what your ideal lifestyle looks like and work towards that vision.
Recovery is goal-oriented and healing is growth-oriented. One is not better than the other. You use what you need depending on the situation.
Let's look at an example.
⌚ How long is this going to take?
My healing journey got worse before it got better.
In the beginning, I was in recovery mode; I was ridiculed, abused, and disowned for standing up for myself. Everything has a price, including self-preservation and boundaries. I experienced the equivalent of a natural disaster in my world.
🔥 It’s hard to think about growth and improvement when your house is on fire.
When I could work on healing, I felt like I was failing because I placed arbitrary expectations on how long it should take to heal.
High-performers are impatient. They're used to achieving their goals quickly, so they get frustrated when their expectations aren't met in the time they want to meet them.
💡 Here's a helpful reframe: you lived a certain way for more than thirty years so give yourself another thirty years to see a real change.
Like your retirement, you invest a little bit into your personal growth every month, but you wouldn't expect to retire next year.
Growth takes time and time moves at its own pace.
🪤 Gotcha moments to watch out for
Waze is a navigation app that warns you when there’s a police officer or red light camera on your route. You won’t change your route, but you will slow down and be more aware.
🚦 Think of this next part as Waze for your healing journey.
Quick disclaimer: What I'm about to share is a reflection of my personal experience and clients' experiences (identifiers redacted). I’m not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. Your results may vary.
Gotcha moment #1: You're so damn sensitive now.
Since you’re not using work as a way to numb or distract yourself, you become more aware of physical and emotional pain. Your instinct is going to be to eliminate the pain, but the sustainable solution is to learn how to manage the pain without spiraling.
Take a deep breath, lean into the pain, and ask yourself “What do I need?”
🧡 When you give yourself what you need, ask yourself “Am I loving myself?”
One of the ways I managed my physical and emotional pain was through yoga. At first, yoga was pure torture, but it ended up being exactly what I needed.
Gotcha moment #2: You’re tired all the damn time.
I have no clue how I was able to do so much in the past. I worked twelve-hour days as a teacher, took classes at night for my Master’s degree, and DIY-renovated my house.
When I ditched hustle culture and focused on my mental health, I felt weaker, slower, and lazier. I was still in my twenties so I wasn't that old. 😤
These feelings challenged my beliefs about success, productivity, and worth. I asked myself, “What’s wrong with being weak?", "What’s wrong with being slow?" and "What’s wrong with being lazy?”
What held me back here wasn’t the exhaustion, but the self-judgement.
Gotcha moment #3: You face your prejudices.
I was unaware of my own biases and prejudices until I discovered that my judgment of others was a reflection of the parts that I didn't like about myself.
I had to practice kindness, empathy, and compassion on myself first if I wanted to show up for others.
That’s why every issue of better work starts with the introduction of “a personal development newsletter for high-performers who put themselves first so that they can show up for the people they love.”
⚠️ Warning: be wary of those who are compassionate to others, but speak poorly of themselves.
Earlier, I promised that we would end on an optimistic note. Let's look at what’s possible when you start to heal.
🪟 What healing actually looks like
Healing doesn't mean you're always at peace and life is perfectly balanced. The goal isn't to become a monk who meditates on the top of a mountain (say that five times fast).
Healing is more subtle. You wake up one day and you notice a shift; an "overnight" success that took years of practice.
These shifts can look like:
- It's easier to say 'no' without feeling guilty.
- You get upset over a mistake, but you bounce back faster.
- You still care about what other people think, but you do what you want anyway.
Instead of reacting to what's happening, you will pause and respond thoughtfully. You'll widen the space between stimuli and response - that space is where growth happens. This is also known as the window of tolerance.
The window of tolerance is the ideal state of emotions where you feel balanced and in control.
I'm not going to list out all of the things you can do to increase your window of tolerance because:
- You know how to Google, but more importantly,
- You're already doing the work; you just need to trust yourself and keep going.
It will take hundreds of reps, but the work will pay off.
I'm living proof of this.
After nine years of therapy, I'm happy to share that I don't need it anymore. 🎉
I wouldn't say I'm "healed" because that's like saying I'm done growing (unless we're talking physically because I'm quite sure I'm stuck at five feet).
When I realized my last therapy session was over six months ago (and I barely had anything to say during that session), I knew I was done.
If I needed therapy again, would I go back? Absolutely.
But for now, I got what I needed from therapy which was to work through my trauma and establish my mindfulness practice.
If you’re trying to restore yourself to the person you were before you got hurt, you’re trying to recover. If you’re ready to shed your old self and become someone entirely new, you’re ready to heal.
-Brianna Wiest, author of “The Mountain is You” (source)
Healing is an endurance game. Stay in the game and you'll come out a winner. It also helps to be around others who are also on the same path.
This is the main reason why my clients keep working with me year after year; to help them strengthen their window of tolerance and realign them when they stray from their vision.
Do they also end up with better work and better pay?
→ Yes. This is a by-product of the work we do together.
Do they need a coach to do this work?
→ Of course not. But they choose to work with me because they value having someone in their corner who they can consult privately for honest and applicable feedback (without the bullshit).
🔮 What's next?
When we focus too much on changing who we are, we can lose sight of who we want to become. This is when high-performers feel “stuck” or “something’s missing.”
As a natural problem solver, I created an assessment that reveals the four common blind spots that hold high-performers back.
One of the beta users described her results as “eerily accurate.”
Don’t tell me I don’t know my people. 😉
📣 Want to be the first to get your hands on the only assessment designed to unblock high-performers?
Click here to be added to the VIP list.
🗳️ Let me know what you think about this issue by taking the poll below (make sure to submit your vote on the next screen).
🫡 See you on March 27th.
